Fly-fishing's just a breeze?

The breeze has been more of a hindrance to fly-fishing than this week’s showers ever were. It’s been blowing consistently in the 10 to 15 mph range out of the East-Northeast. The creek we’re fishing flows East to West. Most of the time today we’ve been “casting” into the wind. We can get the fly line to turn over and cut into the wind but the 9 foot+ leader is a different story. The wind pushes it around as if we aren’t even here.

looking downsteam on Timber Coulee creek

Photo by J. Harrington

The afternoon is bringing intermittent sunshine peeking through the clouds. Frogs, red-winged blackbirds, Baltimore orioles, bluebirds and some kind of sparrow are all singing, chirruping, croaking, peeping,…. We can almost see the leaves on the hillsides growing. It’s all a treat and delightful and charming, but we can’t buy a fish. Then again, we are getting back into practice with all the challenges of lines, leaders, flies, casts, wind, spooky fish and indeterminate hatches. We once again are recalling how fly-fishing, in years past, drove us to study zen. The diminution of a sense of control is exasperating, but true. We can but deal with and accept what is right there that we are experience moment by moment. Wasn’t it Nietzsche who wrote “what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger?”

looking upstream on Timber Coulee creek

Photo by J. Harrington

All in all we’re having more fun than today’s posting would lead you to believe. It’s sort of like getting one’s sea legs back after time on land, or vice versa. The weather, other than the wind, has been more cooperative than we anticipated. The fishing has been, for the most part, fine. Now, about the catching…. The tree limb that grabbed our fly a while ago gave it back without breaking it. We're still working on hooking the first fish of the season.

[NOTE: this was posted a few days after it was written. We neglected to bring the cord that would let us transfer pictures from the camera to the computer.]

May

By Jonathan Galassi

The backyard apple tree gets sad so soon,

takes on a used-up, feather-duster look

within a week.

The ivy’s spring reconnaissance campaign

sends red feelers out and up and down

to find the sun.

Ivy from last summer clogs the pool,

brewing a loamy, wormy, tea-leaf mulch

soft to the touch

and rank with interface of rut and rot.

The month after the month they say is cruel

is and is not.

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