My favorite kind of trip

I simply love to fish. I'd fish in a puddle for minnows with thread if that's all I could do. But everyone has a favorite kind of trip. I think mine is that early summer day when you feel the whole summer stretching out before you full of possibilities. A lunch thrown in the rucksack, a couple little boxes of lures, a spinning rod and nothing else. There's this one special place I fish. It's a stretch of river with small pools interspersed with small riffles and then a big chute no one could ever wade. Enough water to feel, like summer, seemingly endless. Even if neither actually is. During the week at least, more than likely I won't see another person all day. In the early morning, as the light shines golden on the very tops of the trees, deer are almost always somewhere. Wading the river in a shallow riffle, picking slowly along the bank, maybe just the flick of an ear or tail in the brush. In the early morning I wade slowly fishing things like pop-r's or minnow plugs, trying to coax a smallmouth to the surface. I remember last year throwing a pop-r in a tiny little pocket below a limb and twitching it once. A smallmouth, perhaps ten inches long, jumps out of the water taking the plug on the way down. It doesn't take many fish like that to make a perfect day for me. Later on as the bands of sunlight slowly slide down the trees and touch the water, I fish a spinner or a crankbait in the faster water. Maybe catching the slash of a good fish as it flashes out at the lure in the current. Before I know it the morning has gone. Maybe Ill hear the cry of a redtail circling overhead and look up to find the sun straight overhead. Then Ill find a big rock to use as a place to spread out lunch. Or maybe up in the woods if it's getting warm. But always where I can sit and watch the river while I eat. There's always something to watch sitting beside a river. After lunch is harder more technical fishing. Fishing the runs and deeper slots with a hair jig or grub. Carefully paying attention, trying to feel the lightest tick or even just the momentary pause in the drift that might mean a fish. As day slowly turns to evening, this will often produce the best fish of the day, a fat smallmouth lurking along the current edge or suddenly the heavy weight and the throbbing of a big channelcat taking the grub in the fast water of the chute. As I'm unhooking the channel I'll notice I'm in shade the line of sunlight from this morning has crossed the river and is now making it's way back up the trees on the other side of the river. I'll switch to a spinner and fish the shallow pools for the smallies that move up here shallow on summer evenings. These are some of my favorite fish of all. One second the pool calm and serene, the surface still or maybe only marred by the bulge of my spinner just under the surface. The next second a savage strike and the wild runs and jumps of a smallmouth hooked in really shallow water. Often one of these fish will be so perfect I'll use it as a perfect frame for the day and end with that fish. Other days Ill find myself caught up in the river, unable to leave and fish till the moon is high in the sky and I'm fumbling thru my pack for the headlamp to light my way thru the woods back to the truck.