Streamer Junkie

I’ve been sitting on the portage bar, drifting along and making casts to the fishiest looking spots and coming up empty. Last year this stretch was full of smallmouths. They raced to the streamers at the ends of my casts like dogs all trying to beat each other to the table scraps tossed to the floor. I’m not saying there aren’t any smallmouths in it this year, I’m just having a hard time finding them. Every now and then I find myself making one too many casts when I should instead be dropping the fly rod and grabbing the paddle to correct the canoe. More times than I care to I find myself drifting completely sideways and then eventually backwards, or into the banks and trees overhanging them. I somehow never tangle the rod tip or leader in them, but there are a couple close calls that end with me thrusting my hands out blindly into bushy leaves and branches the way a person gropes around in the dark, trying to find something substantial enough to push back out against.

The same thing played out over and over for the next half hour or so. A good cast, a good drift, a rise and inspection, and a refusal by a dumb nine inch stocked brown trout. I looked closely at the small caddis imitation between my thumb and index finger several times. Each time I thought to myself that it looked real enough to me, that it should look even better to a dumb animal, and that neither one really mattered since it was the only one I had.

I knew I only had one larger streamer in my fly box, so I moved my hands slowly up to my chest pack and began the task of snipping off the crayfish pattern and tying on the five inch streamer tied entirely of flash. No deer air. No Hackles. No marabou or even fake craft fur from the craft store. Nothing but flash. A black back, a blue mid-section, and a silver belly. I made a short cast just above it and out in the current, and as it sunk it passed the fish on the bottom at about its eleven o’clock. The fish turned to face it and stare it down like a top predator does. I gave a twitch.

I had a fly box full of streamers, a box of nymphs, and a box of dries, but I knew the streamer caught in the hook keeper above the cork handle would probably be the only thing I’d fish. I’d grabbed the small pack with all the fly boxes out of routine, nothing more. There wasn’t much concern for variety in the decision. I just didn’t seem to care about much of anything. I was going through motions. I walked knowing where I’d end up, but without a plan and little concern for anything involved. It was hot. At least I could stand in the water.

Back at the camp site I started a little fire at the back of the Jeep, but I wasn’t really sure why. A granola bar for dinner didn’t actually require a fire, and while I did have a folding camp stool, the black flies were so bad that I didn’t see myself sitting out for more than a few minutes before going insane. I guess I was lighting a fire because that’s just what you do when you’re camping. It’s an expected routine thing. You’ve always done it, so whether you need one or not it just seems the thing to do. It passes time anyhow. 

The stream’s last defense was the thick alders that lined it, so thick that I doubt thorn bushes could have done much better at all to keep us out. The Lost Boys had told me no waders, you’ll destroy them in there in two minutes. I left my waders behind but questioned it of course, but now I could see, I could confirm. Pushing though the undergrowth, I felt a stinging on the back of my left calf, and then the same on my right thigh as alder branches that were intertwined better than the fibers in a rope held me back as I tried to push through. They grabbed fly rods, slashed at faces, pulled hats from heads, but in the end the will of the fly fishermen was more than they could hold back, and we stood at the water’s edge.

Some might say not packing up because of a little rain is what separates the men from the boys, while others will argue that the fish bite the best when it’s raining. I’ll admit to using both excuses more than once to keep casting, whether I was catching anything or not. If there’s one thing fishermen are good at, it’s lying. And if there’s a close second, it’s making up excuses.

I’ve got a big streamer stuck in a wine cork that sits on my desk at work. If you fly fish then it’s probably nothing I need to explain. It’s about as at home on my desk as a snow globe would be on Santa Claus’s, except way cooler.