Rocky Ford Creek Report: You Have Time

The afternoon is like my kind of restaurant: no jacket required.

The creek is big and beautiful, and to your great delight the first violet-green swallows of the season are swooping over the water. You can hardly wait to get a fly out there.

Little light-colored mays are coming off, slowly but steadily. All you've ever read about PMD's says they don't hatch in February, but these are a good imitation. You tie on a little light may imitation of the imitation. It's not long before you catch a bright little fish.

You get more hits on twitchy strips and slow retrieves.

Then another hookup.

That gives you confidence, so you set up the tripod and camera and start another video. The fishing slows down. You try some different flies. Eventually you tie on a Lady McConnell. You get a take and a hookup. The fish jumps and you get it in the net. And it's all on video.

You keep rolling, but you can't hook another fish. You get hits but you miss them. Then you hook a good fish and it comes off. Then you miss some more fish.

You're convinced. There's a video jinx. You turn the camera off and get back to fishing for fishing's sake.

You tie on a deer hair comparadun style mayfly and cast it out. All the fish so far, caught and missed, had come to a strip or slow retrieve. Now, as you sometimes do to test the waters, you let the fly drift.

Up comes a big nose, the fly disappears, you time the set perfectly, and you're hooked into one of those prime Rocky Ford Rainbows. A gorgeous fish, and one of those moments that defines the fly fishing existence.

You think this fish would have looked good on video, but only if you could have gotten a close up of that big nose coming up out of the water. Then again, if the video had been on you probably wouldn't have caught this fish in the first place.

You leave the comparadun on and catch a couple more fish before evening.

At dusk you tie on a new muddler dry and see if you can get a fish to chase it down. You get some follows and bumps, but then the fish back off and the creek quiets.

You leave the mouse in your fly patch this time and call it a day.

Tomorrow will be another day, and it will be longer than today. The day after that will be even longer than tomorrow.

You have time.