Streamer Junkie

When you worked hard for a fish all day on the previous day and came up empty and then had reserved yourself to the idea that today would be more of the same, suddenly that fish, that moment, becomes the most genuine high five with a friend that’s ever happened.

The stream keeps my attention when I’m not scanning off through the forest. The hardwoods are dull browns and grays, the pines are the only real color, and that’s only a dark green. The forest floor has no color, only white. Except for the stream. The dark tinted Adirondack water contrasts with the ice attempting to cover it like a slash of brown paint on a clean piece of paper.

  I found myself this year. Right where I knew I was. But this year it was different. Maybe it was just a time thing. Probably was. All things take time. Especially fishing.

The silence of a winter river is what really pulls me out there this time of year. Not another angler around for miles normally, this is the time for solitude. If you think it’s peaceful standing in a river with a fly rod, then you owe it to yourself to try it on a nice winter day.

. Whatever patterns I take are stuck on my hat, a couple spools of tippet, and my small net. I don’t worry about running out anymore. I don’t think it’s that I’ve become such a proficient angler that I never lose flies in trees or break off fish, because I still do those things frequently enough to say I’m still fairly good at them. I do it because it’s just simpler, not carrying all the extra crap with me on a creek.

I really do remember all the details to my fishing trips. I remember catching walleye on chunks of hot dogs on Fish Creek at my great aunt and uncle’s camp on family weekends. I remember drives to the Judge’s camp, a good friend of my Grandfather. Collecting worms by a stream that passed by a barn. Bull frogs in the weeds along the bank and a goat that couldn’t be trusted once you sat on the end of the dock.

Paul looked at me and said something about it seeming like it would be a shame not to give it a shot, and he was right. Too good to be true or not, I tied on the smallest streamer I had, crouched, and made a bow and arrow cast sending the streamer back in deep at the top of the ledge and let it drift through.

So we push out onto the lake with a row boat and spend a couple hours taking turns casting a 10’ 6” 4wt fly rod. We talk as much as we fish. About the rod. About the rainbow trout. About life.