I've made a new friend who has terminal esophageal-liver cancer. I heard about his predicament from another friend who mentioned that he enjoyed fishing, so I knocked on his door, introduced myself, and told him that I lived in the neighborhood, had a boat, and was looking for someone who could go fishing with me during the day. He was excited about the idea, so we have hooked up three times, fishing at our local reservoirs with slight success: We were skunked once, and caught one fish each on the other two outings. It really didn't matter much to either of us, we enjoyed getting to know each other and just being out fishing.
Well, the friend who told me about Marty (the fellow with cancer) is a contractor, who back in the real estate gravy days built a beautiful cabin on forty acres of mountain land in northern Utah. It is located above Logan Canyon, a beautiful canyon created by the Logan River, which is one of Utah's top 10 fly fishing streams. The property had a natural spring on it, so he dug out a pond and stocked it with 400 Rainbow trout, which have now grown to an average size of 15 to 18 inches. He is new to fly fishng, and he wanted to take me and Marty out to fish on his pond. He said, "Maybe you can show me some flies that will catch these fish". I thought maybe I could. It was a perfect day, calm, with temperatures in the 80's. We had a pleasant 1 hour drive to get there. First we took a tour of the large beautiful log cabin, then drove down to the pond, which was located in a treeless meadow. It was beautiful clear spring water, with a green, plant covered bottom and full of fish. Instead of bolting from the shore, they flocked to us when we arrived, anticipating being fed. I thought to myself "Gee, the challenge here will be NOT catching fish", and I was right. Doug showed me a bunch of flies he had bought, and asked which one I thought he should use. I suggested a size 16 bead head pheasant tail he had. He was skeptical, since it was so small. I told him to just cast it out, strip it back slowly and hang on. Of course it worked, he was soon hauling in a fish every cast. Marty wanted to fish on top, and showed me his flies. His box was full of old style wet flies with mallard duck wings, but he had a size 16 Adams. I tied it on his line (Marty has lost feeling in his fingers because of chemo treatments) and HE was soon hauling in fish. I decided to try to NOT catch fish. I tied on a large Cherynoble Ant and cast as far away as I could from the main school. Fish would slam it when it hit, but the thing had so much foam on it that I couldn't set the hook. So I tried an Air Head, a Gary LaFontaine fly made from packaging foam. That was a good no fish catcher. I tried several other outlandish flies in my box, and was pleasantly surprised to find out it was possible to not catch fish in this pond. But now the pressure was on. I was the supposed expert, and the only one not catching fishing. So tied on an Adams with a BHPT dropper, and of course started catching fish on every cast. After about 10 fish I was bored. Now, I have had a day on Yellowstone Lake where I was hauling in a beautiful, wild Cutthroat on every cast, and never got tired of doing it! Ditto for Strawberry reservoir, where on one cold spring day, I was fishing the ice edges in my pontoon boat and literally couldn't keep fish off my line. If I was untangling my stripped line and my wooly bugger was dangling in the water, a fish would grab it before I could get the line untangled. Why was it so much fun? Because on most days, you are thrilled if you hook into one or two fish each hour! Ying and Yang. Not catching fish is as important to the sport as catching them. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "VFB Mail" group. To post to this group, send email to vfb-mail@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to vfb-mail-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/vfb-mail?hl=en VFB Mail is sponsored by Line's End Inc at http://www.linesend.com
