The Hope in a Brook Trout

At left, an over-hackled Hornberg. This is tied on a 12 2XL dry fly hook.

I will use this fly and its cousins in the Catskills here in a couple weeks. I can't wait to try them out.

They are truly unfaithful Hornbergs. I do however like them.

We'll see what the brook trout say, It's the only way to be sure.



Season opens here for me next Saturday. I am camping for trout. I spent this evening assembling the camping gear.

I'm at the cusp of spring with dogwoods starting to bloom, the daffodils in the yard up through a new layer of mulch, and much of the world unchanged from my boyhood.

Chaos. Distrust. Dislike. Hatred. Dissent.

We say these words but they're inadequate. We're animals. We're vicious animals.

Mind, we bite.

There ought to be a billboard out in space warning potential visitors of the fact.

What I enjoy is the promise of the new season. I look forward to solitude and companionship on the water both. I look forward to another summer of campfires, fine scotch, and a pipe. I look forward to the brook trout in my net because it is always a surprise when I manage to land a trout. Every time: a surprise.

What we talk about when we talk about the trout.

For me, it's the hope that I never stop being amazed by the little things as unimportant as a fish in the net and that in the end, I might see past other things that I think are important but which in fact are not.

I know the joy of trout in my net and that the whole operation from the cast, to the hook up, to the stumbling play of the fish to just within my reach is the same emotional base as with the women in my life I've come to love.

It makes me think the whole art of catching was the fish's idea: an incredibly absurd perspective.

No reasoned creature would sacrifice itself in sport just to give a moment's happiness to another not knowing if the end was the frying pan, or a release back into the stream.



I've been tying.

A nice little #16 fat body flymph in olive.
 

 Another olive this time wire-wrapped and wearing dry fly hackle.

A sparse olive passing for a Hendrickson (waxed and thus my light changed significantly) also wire wrapped but with the hackle of a north country spider.











May all your trout be fat and happy.

Prost.