I have been fishing for most of my life. As a young boy it was all new and I would run and fish as much water as I could fit in the time that I was out. As time progressed there came the time for more gear, endless magazines on the subject of fly fishing and that desire to fish fast and cover all the water possible. Then I discovered the small stream and it was here that I learned to see and how to fish.
The small stream caused me to slow down, to check it all out but at a pace where it showed me what I had missed in those early years and the never ending vigor of youth. I was not a speed demon when I would walk along a blue line, sometimes taking far to much time fishing a run or plunge pool. I enjoyed this slow pace.
It has been a year or so where that slow pace has changed to an even slower one. The issues of boulders and high banks have gotten bigger and higher. This has made me a better angler for now every fish is a absolute stunning trophy. It's a statement that is hard to make for a person who has lived a beautiful life along the streams...but it is so true.
Perhaps I would have missed this in my fast youthful days. Now I stop and gaze upon it and wonder what the person who put it there was thinking.
Boulder laden stream. I'll find a flat spot and have at it. Three flies, a half hour, and several types of presentations....
and then the reward. A wild brown. Born in the stream to fend for himself. There are no feeding times here, only times when food presents itself. How about two thumbs up for this guy.
A featherwing streamer tied to represent a brown trout in his first year of life.
