Rocky Ford Creek Report: Food for Thought

It was sunny and mild. I wore only two layers and was comfortable. I gravitated back to my favorite spot and settled in.

I cast one of the nymphs I tied the night before and began a slow retrieve. Almost immediately I had a hard grab just ten feet from the bank. I set, the fly came undone, and the momentum of the fish brought its head and shoulders out of the water. It sank out of sight. That was a good beginning.

I went back in. A few casts later there was another hard grab, and this time a hookup. I would show you a picture of it except that it was a smaller fish and I attempted to land it without the net. I had it in my hand for a couple of seconds, and then it flipped out of my grip, off the hook, and into the water.

It left me the fly and a scud it had recently consumed. Looking at them side by side, and remembering that hard take, I thought I had discovered the secret formula and the combination to the safe all in one. I went back to work with great expectations.

That, however, was that. I fished the nymphs rigorously for awhile with no further action. So I began to try the other flies I had tied the night before--unsuccessfully. As is so often the case, the slower the fishing the more absorbing it is. Before I knew it the afternoon light was slipping away.

I now put my hope on the evening feed. In past trips, once the sun is off the water and the light is waning, feeding activity has increased, and I have found fish willing to throw caution to the wind and slash at big stimulators or muddlers.

The feeding activity did increase. Fish were moving and waking and rising, and I got bumps and follows on a couple of different stimulators. But that one jacked up fish that slams the big fly never showed up.

So I went small. There had been a good hatch of midges all afternoon, and come evening I saw for the first time this year small pods of fish moving and rising together. But they were calm and methodical; no sign of a frenzy. And they ignored my flies. Even when I went even smaller on a lighter tippet.

Dusk settled over the water. I finally tied on that green-bodied nymph again, thinking that maybe I could end the day the way it began. I thought it was a good concept, but the fish didn't go for it.

So I started for the truck with Venus setting in the west and Jupiter rising in the east. I was remembering the one fish I caught, and feeling grateful.

But as I packed up I was also wondering why I caught it. Why then? Why that one and no others?

All the way home I was processing those questions, and more. It's what a slow day gives you: food for thought.

It will always be like that: when the fish won't eat we end up with plenty to chew on.

"Watching Sandhill Cranes" by William Stafford

Spirits among us have departed--friends,

relatives, neighbors: we can't find them.

If we search and call, the sky merely waits.

Then some day here come the cranes

planing in from cloud or mist--sharp,

lonely spears, awkwardly graceful.

They reach for the land; they stalk

the ploughed fields, not letting us near,

not quite our own, not quite the world's.

People go by and pull over to watch. They

peer and point and wonder. It is because

these travelers, these far wanderers,

plane down and yearn in a reaching

flight. They extend our life,

piercing through space to reappear

quietly, undeniably, where we are.

"Watching Sandhill Cranes" by William Stafford, from Even In Quiet Places. © Confluence Press, 1996.

Fly Tying: Rolling Fresh Dice

It was balmy around here today. It's even warmer at Rocky Ford Creek.

So I'm thinking about a trip very soon and got the bug to tie up a few flies especially for those Rocky Ford Rainbows.

Will they want to eat them? Don't know. But I sure like rolling fresh dice each time I'm there.

Looking for Robins

With apologies to those of you experiencing cold and snow, our weather has been mild and rainy. Rainy means overcast--continuous, perpetual overcast. Overcast means no sun, no moon, no stars--and no sun, no sun at all. Some might say it has been downright gloomy.This recent shot of Bass lake is typical. Beautiful, but, well, kind of gloomy.

So when I was downstairs in my office this afternoon and a shaft of sunlight suddenly splashed against the wall, I grabbed my point and shoot and dashed outside. Ah, what a lovely interlude.

I went back inside and kept my camera handy. Then, just before sunset, I went out again hoping for a little color. There was just a little.

And there was a hawk.

And then I heard a Robin chirping away down by the river, so I went down to find it.

This is the first Robin I've seen this year. I'll leave it to you to decide whether it's a sign of Spring or global warming. It seemed fat and healthy, and perhaps lonely. I saw no others, and no others answered its calls. At least this one will get the worm.

I was close to the river, so I went on down and took a few shots. It was going down until this most recent rain, which lasted four days straight. Now it's up again.

The forecast calls for a partly sunny day on Sunday, but clouds were rolling in again when I went inside. The rain is supposed to hold off for a few days, but it will be mostly cloudy. Daytime temperatures will hang around the mid-forties.

The weather at Rocky Ford Creek this week is supposed to be partly sunny with temperatures in the mid-to-upper-fifties. Guess I'll go down there and look for Robins.

Spatsizi by Todd Moen -- British Columbia Fishing

If you're a good boy, and save up your money, you might go to heaven some day.

flymage, winter 2015

Nice. Enter HERE.

Eat, Sleep, Fish, Issue 38, 02-2015

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You Might Be More Hip Than You Think

There is an artist, currently very hip, who goes by the name of Naturel.

He's very big on "maximalism," hip hop, and corporate sponsorship. This is not someone I would normally know about, but I learned about him through a niece who posted on Instagram some of his Instagram posts. Oh yeah, he's also big on Twitter and Instagram.

His images are arresting, and graphically sharp and competent, if perhaps largely derivative.

But take a look at this, one of the walls of his first solo exhibit. Notice anything?

How about in this picture of a couple of hip hop artists whose names I don't know. Do you see it?

Yeah, here it is. A fancy fly!

I looked it up. It's from a larger work called "A'lure."

Who would have thought it? Just goes to show, fly fishing is everywhere.

 And watch out: you might be more hip than you think.

"The Coyote" by Alan Feldman

If you stripped a dog of its social eagerness,

gave it a loping indifference to human presence

and starved it, you’d have a coyote,

stalking like a shadow among the garbage cans

at the top of Pearl Street, near the Fine Arts Work Center.

We’re heading back to our car through a fine mist,

the streetlights haloing amid the black trees,

and we stop, watching him appear and disappear

gaunt as a Giacometti. He’s nothing

like a dog bounding into the street.

Does he care if this is a street?-or just a hard place

under his paws. Ever since childhood

I’ve tried to be alert to what people are up to,

but why not see the coyote’s point of view?-

how he prefers to ignore them,

following his own track through the darkness.

"The Coyote" by Alan Feldman from Immortality. © University of Wisconsin Press, 2015. 

Rocky Ford Creek Report: First Trip of February

I drive back south into the ice age landscape of Rocky Ford Creek. The last leg takes you through glacial rubble to the creek tucked in at the base of the ancient moraine ridge.

It's the first trip of February. Like the glass half full or half empty, February is either the last month of Winter or the first month of Spring, depending on your attitude.

For me it's the latter, a month of nascent beginnings. Perhaps that's because it's the month of my birth. The birthstone is amethyst, the "stone of royalty," representing "power."

I prefer to think of it as the power of life to overcome darkness and death. Life has been doing that all winter long, but now, this month, you can begin to witness it in the shifting of the light, hear it in the modulation of bird songs, and feel it in the exhalation of the waking earth.

There are more ducks on the water. Red-winged blackbirds are still singing, and meadowlarks outdo them, trilling their hearts out. Crows and ravens call out to the world from high overhead, and a Great blue heron cronks from somewhere deep in the cattails.

I fish hard, throwing a variety of flies, topwater and subsurface. Countless times fish respond with everything just short of a hookup. It's one of those days that feels like reading a good book: you just keep turning the pages eager to find out how the story will end.

Meanwhile the breeze pushes the clouds over the ridge like an aerial glacier, and the long-missed sun bathes the earth with color.

And with that an amethyst trout comes up under my drifting stimulator and attempts to make off with it.

It isn't long--or it doesn't seem long--before the sun sinks behind a new encroaching bank of clouds, and the sky itself takes on an amethyst hue.

I fish awhile longer, hoping for the ending of the story in which I catch another large trout. But I have already reached the end of the story. I make my way through the cattails back to the truck.

It's almost dark by the time I'm ready to go. I'm gratified to observe that it's almost 6 o'clock. Somehow, all at once, I have received the gift of an extra hour on the water.

I drive through the glacial plain toward the highway that will take me home. Ahead of me Venus glitters brilliantly in the western sky, and above it, like a pale shadow, Mars.

Turning north at the highway I'm suddenly aware of a bright glow over the ridge to my right. I drive on until I reach the parking area at Dry Falls, the deep hole in the ground made by the monumental waterfall created when an ancient ice dam gave way, draining a Montana-sized inland sea right through where I'm standing, forming the Grand Coulee.

I get out of the truck to watch for a moment as the full moon rises over the city of Grand Coulee, accompanied by the largest planet of them all, Jupiter.

The February full moon, in native american tradition, is called the Snow Moon, because of the heavy snows that can come without warning at this time of winter; or the Hunger Moon, because of the difficulty of hunting in the deep snows, and the depletion of other food stores after a long winter.

It could snow tomorrow (it's supposed to rain) and by this time of the long winter my stores of patience are giving way to cabin fever. But I'd still prefer--and that's why I'd prefer--to think of this full moon as the First Full Moon of Spring.

"February" by Margaret Atwood

"Snowy" by Vicky Mount

Winter. Time to eat fat

and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,

a black fur sausage with yellow

Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries

to get onto my head. It’s his

way of telling whether or not I’m dead.

If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am

He’ll think of something. He settles

on my chest, breathing his breath

of burped-up meat and musty sofas,

purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,

not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,

declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,

which are what will finish us off

in the long run. Some cat owners around here

should snip a few testicles. If we wise

hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,

or eat our young, like sharks.

But it’s love that does us in. Over and over

again, He shoots, he scores! and famine

crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing

eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits

thirty below, and pollution pours

out of our chimneys to keep us warm.

February, month of despair,

with a skewered heart in the centre.

I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries

with a splash of vinegar.

Cat, enough of your greedy whining

and your small pink bumhole.

Off my face! You’re the life principle,

more or less, so get going

on a little optimism around here.

Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.

Margaret Atwood, “February” from Morning in the Burned House. Copyright © 1995 by Margaret Atwood.