Hope or Insanity

Inadvertently in December I had planned a meeting for this Friday morning in Morganton. How could I have possibly known that the Arctic grip my southern mountains had been under for over a month would loosen that very day, with a hopeful forecast of sunny and sixty degrees. How could I have known that my meeting would go spectacularly and at noon I would have a fly rod in my trunk and be wide open to hit Wilson Creek. OK, maybe I did put my gear in the trunk the night before, but never the less, it looked like the fish gods were smiling.

Ice lined the boulders of the gorge section and flat shallow pools boasted massive thick sheets in the deep shadows where the sun couldn't penetrate and the nip in the air reminded me that it was still January. As I pulled off at the ancient mill ruins two old piscators, complete with cigars walked by me. I stopped and rolled down the window, "Gents, how are you today?" "You don't look like your goin fishin, look like your supposed to be on a sales call." He responded. I smiled, "you haven't seen what's in the trunk" we chuckled as I eased by. The location and nature of the large stream with easy casting and not much need to wade around makes this delayed harvest on Wilson a veritable mecca for the more senior or otherwise unoccupied immobile casters of Western NC. And they were out in force.

They say hope springs eternal and they also define insanity as doing the same thing and expecting a different result. I'll let you decide which applies. The fish seemed to be stacked up in the big deep pools and I spent most the afternoon at one deep hole watching nice trout swim around my various bottom bouncing offerings avoiding them with disdain. It doesn't take much of that before you stop "fishing" and start hypothesizing why the fish aren't biting while you switch flies and techniques. "Waters just too cold" came the answer from a big rock above me in a distinct country accent which belied the decked out fishing gear. So we chatted and lamented our luck and analyzed the reasons we hadn't caught anything. I was surprised when he told me these fish were acting like the bull trout he'd fished for in Idaho. "Oh yeah, where abouts in Idaho?" Big Creek was the response. I was simultaneously surprised and disappointed. I didn't think Big Creek was that well known, certainly didn't expect to run into someone on Wilson Creek who'd been there. Come to find out he's got a place out there and has fished it many times. His favorite section is below monument where the river snakes back and forth a lot. He also said people float it and that we could float the whole thing down to the middle fork. Camp at the confluence and then you'd float the middle fork out about 20miles to a take out.

So, the day wasn't a total loss and I admit that I'm insane, I've never caught a fish in January, probably February either, but I'll probably try again next year when the weather clears a bit and the corner office feels more like a coffin. In fact I'm already trying to justify going tomorrow. Maybe insanity springs eternal.

The Winter Maliase

Consulting my fishing journal, I have fished 4 times on New Years Day. Pablo can testify of one resolute trip to the Smith River in VA where our directions stated, "put in just past the empty mirror factory." We duly froze our empty creoles off. Every trip has yielded the same result- nada. Yet every Christmas Vacation would end with me pining to get out of the house and away from the traditional Christmas morass. This year I had the 'xact same pine, "I've been off work for 7 days and haven't wet a line". My father seemed to sense my doldrums and asked if I wanted to go fishing the day we got home. Boy how I wanted to go. But the temp was forecast for a biting 40 degrees with a Jack Daniels stiff wind and I foresaw a replay of years past save the added bonus of my 70 year old father's freezing hands clutching his new spinning setup while chunking a spinner endlessly through a probably fishless pool while I sloggged around up stream, drifting egg patterns to finicky if existent planters. So maybe I am gaining some wisdom. Instead of chalking up New Years skunk number 5, I took the trash out and felt that wind cut clear to the bone and slunk back into my easy chair by the gas logs and dreamed of my future trout adventures just a few months into this new decade.