Catches and Misses

"Gotcha!" I yelled to nobody.  As far as I knew, there wasn't another human within a quarter mile or so.  This can only mean one thing:  I've started talking to trout.  This particular one was connected to the other end of my fishing line.  I missed him (or her) a couple of times before I finally set the hook with decent timing.  The fish ran back at me after I pulled it away from the willow where I'm sure it wanted to hide.  My line went slack because I wasn't fast enough, so I was sure it had self-released when the tension was lost in the line.  In short order, the eight-inch brook trout was in hand and released.  Father's Day was shaping up nicely.  Much better, in fact, than the previous two days, where I'd only managed one little brown each day.  Those were short sessions with several brief hookups, but only one tally mark each day.  No worries.  We anglers can always formulate rationalization and tales of the ones that got away.  I don't mind them getting close and then escaping.  I prefer to identify the species, but I'm in it for the supplemental dopamine.


I had fun this past weekend.  I'd spent the two previous weekends brookie-hunting with my new Epic 686 (aka Monday.)  I mixed it up and fished Friday and Saturday with the 4-weight Butter Stick (aka Mellow Yellow.)  Then it got crazy and I grabbed the wife's Sage ONE 5-weight (aka Rebar) and overlined it with my Rio Gold WF6F.  To be discussed in later chapters...

The weekend weak-ended with disappointment as a husband, however.  Socializing, meal times, and other factors left us with only one window for my wife and I to fish together.  I had really only hoped for one thing from our last pre-summer weekend at the campground: a fish in her hands.  It was a hot day, the water was still mildly stained, and so we tried a couple of terrestrials.  I had one on, then lost it.  Then she made an exclamatory noise.  She'd seen her hopper disappear in a swirl of movement.  "Where'd it go?" she asked herself... "OH! Yeah, I'm supposed to do something now!"  Too late...  No other takers.

We stopped at one more place with two good fishy spots within 10 yards of each other.  I tied on an elk hair caddis for her,  but it was too small to see in the fading light.  It was replaced with a parachute Adams and she went to work casting exactly where I'd directed.  I got bored watching, and turned to the downstream eddy.  Two casts over the fast current onto the still water with my caddis... Fish on!  I walked upstream and showed the fish to her, and watched her expression melt from shock to contempt.  Sensing that the situation required an immediate remedy if I wished to avoid becoming a drowning victim, I walked her down to exactly where I had been standing and described what to do.  I then bravely walked away, scanning the bank that had given her no sign of life.  A rise.  A twenty foot cast... Missed!  Another... Gotcha!  Oh, crap!  I hope she doesn't see this!!!  I briskly hauled the nine-inch brown trout in and released it.  With much guilt, I looked over my shoulder.  She was still tossing her fly.

I approached, composed myself, and asked, "Anything?"

"Yeah, I had one on, but it released itself... I've had a couple of bites, but I think they're done here.  Me, too."  We were wet-wading in sandals and water shoes, so the feet were going from numb to numb-with-pain.  As we climbed out of the creek she asked, "Did you get anything up there?"

Instead of standing there in shocked silence, I should have sighed, shrugged, and muttered, "Nope."

I don't remember much after that...

(Just kidding.  Mrs. FA had a few choice words for me in jest, but no Fathers/Husbands were actually harmed in the true-life version of this tale.  She graciously accepted my apology, because she knew how badly I wanted her to catch something other than frostbite.)