I spent most of spring wishing. Wishing the rivers I love would go down. No terrible floods just enough rain spaced out just enough to seriously crimp river fishing, my fishing. Like all things tho, given time things seem to have a way of settling back down. Till now looking back, I fished about as much as I always do and caught about what I always do. But it's sure hard not to panic at the time. When it's like the third or fourth weekend in a row you cannot wade. I did spend a lot of time camped along the river this year, I'm awfully thankful for that. Watching deer wade the Little Miami as night falls. Having a beaver slap his tail as I got up to stoke the campfire on the Great Miami. To me that's one of the greatest joys of life. Sleeping outdoors staring into the fire or lying on your back watching for a shooting star, When you fish as much as I do, the fish themselves sometimes blur a bit and run together but a few things stand out that I'll never forget. A little ten inch smallie in a tiny creek jumping clear of the water and taking my pop-r on the way down. The feeling of being towed around in a belly boat by the biggest largemouth I've caught in many years. And being there when Dan caught his two spectacular fish, the prettiest river largemouth I've ever seen and the biggest striper ever seen around here. A policeman pulling up and stopping right behind me as I caught a hybrid right along a little gravel access road. He sat, watched me land it, snap its photo and release it. Then just started up his car and drove off without a word. And a day spent catching little longeared sunfish on a dry fly. Each one making you stare at it like you've never seen one before, they are that beautiful. Building a rope ladder to reach an unreachable fishing hole. And like the year before chasing the great white carp on a fly rod without catching it. You see this one place I fish has some carp mixed in the population that look white compared to all the others you see and every year I make big plans and tie special flies to catch one. But like always it eludes me. But it's the fish we don't catch that keep us coming back isn't it?
Three times (If I remember right) I caught a nice channel cat right at dark on nights I was camping out and kept it for supper. Wrapped in foil and cooked over the campfire it was feast for the gods. And every time setting there by the fire cooking the fish, I remember, like I always do, a similar time in the rockies when my cooking fish drew in a martin that kept circling camp and rising up on its haunches to sniff the air.
This year one of my favorite places seemed a bit empty. The previous year a group of three boys and a girl were almost always there. Fishing, wading, building fires, swimming, just killing time in that way you could back when your young and summer seems like it will last forever. I must have seen them twenty or thirty times. Having the type of summer you only see in movies anymore. Now they are gone, the entire year passed without them. Off to start new lives, new schools, new jobs, new families I imagine. That piece of river felt a bit deserted and I kept finding myself looking for something whenever I went there.
Now its down to tying flies and making jigs and dreaming of spring. Oh of course I'll throw on every bit of clothing I own and try to tempt some saugfish but deep down we all know that's not the same. And I'll try to get out and catch that first hybrid, that first smallmouth of the year in a couple weeks. Looking down into that clear empty looking winter river, even while I'm fishing, part of me is wishing it was spring...
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