Trout Lake Report: Real Time

Time passes, and another season is winding down. On windy days like this one I get the sense that the wind itself is blowing everything away. But one thing stays the same, whether at the beginning of the season or the end: the hunger for real time experience. Real time: the real thing, right now.

That was today. The lake is different, the colors are different, than they were in May or August. But they're different than they were yesterday, if we only had the ability to see it. So we carve out time from our busy lives to get on the water whenever we can. It may be a day, or just a few hours or even minutes. But when we're there, in the moment, none of that matters. It's not August, or October; it's simply now.

That's where the trout live, I believe. It may be the most important thing they give us, the opportunity to enter into their timeless existence. If just for a moment.... Yes, they may feel the urgency now to feed in preparation for the approaching cold. But that's a biological imperative, instinctive behavior that has nothing to do with any sense of the passage of time. It's simply what now requires. And they do what now requires, no matter the time of the season.


So today I fished, with no sense of desperation at the dwindling of the season. Soon I won't be on the lake anymore, not until next Spring. But today I was there.


So I played with my Boatman, and got a few bumps and pulls, but no hookup. By then I was at this shoreline where the Stimulator had worked its magic on the last trip, so I tied it on again and began casting it into the pocket water between the weed beds and the shoreline.

It worked its magic again. First this hefty Rainbow.

Then this big-shouldered Brown.

On down the weed beds this smaller Rainbow risked a quick take, in spite of its recent brush with death. That was then, this is now; and now is the time to eat. 

When the weed beds ran out I paddled out into the open lake dragging the Stimulator behind me.

There were fish there, too, like these. Not so big, but just as much in the moment.

So what is a "season" anyway? There was only today, and there will be other days, all of them the real thing, right now.