“Of course it would be on my last cast.”

He muttered this primarily to himself. He was also aware that he was muttering those and other, more  colorful, sentiments to any startled woodland creatures in the immediate vicinity. That is if they all hadn’t vacated the entire valley from the noise he had quickly stirred up. Hanging there, stinging from  hip to armpit, he hesitated to move again and disturb the silence. One can’t offend the squirrels, grouse, and toads.

It had been a relatively normal day of fly fishing. A pleasant drive. Fine weather. Willing trout. In some ways, it was a banner day of fly fishing. A greasy fast food breakfast that satisfied without causing gastrointestinal discomfort. A full parking lot; a parking lot full of hikers – not other anglers. These are the kinds of days one expects when blocking off a calendar square for fly fishing.

The drive was only an hours, but the hike in took about the same amount of time. Just go a little farther. Once you get there, hike for five more minutes. That patient penance might not yield significantly better fishing. But it is a discipline that he had developed over years of wanting one more cast. Looking at the next pool, peering around the next bend, he always wished  he would have started farther upstream. “A little farther, then five more minutes,” was his hike-in motto.

The tumbling mountain river was one of his usual destinations. It is about as small as rivers can be. In the tighter sections it is about as big as creeks can be. The map calls it a stream and dispenses with any need for debate.  Irrespective of nomenclature, the brook trout find it quite appealing. Deep plunge pools and long glides under cratered rocks provide plenty of cover. Fooling these opportunistic fish is rarely the equation that needs solving. Finding the trigonometry that gives your cast, presentation, and fly the trajectory to even get it near the fish is this kind of stream’s arithmetic.

His day started with dry flies. A parachute mongrel of his own creation caught plenty of plump trout. After a few deeper, faster holes, the allure of a streamer was too seductive to pass up. There is virtue in fishing dry flies as long as the angler is satisfied with his quarry. But how often is vice entertained when hypotheticals cast doubt on that satisfaction. And how easy is that temptation given in to when marabou looks oh so lifelike.

Larger fish did come to hand. “Maybe I could be a better dry fly fisher,” he said out loud, “but I don’t think I have to be.”

Many bends farther and at least five more hours later, he was still catching fish. The streamside trail had all but disappeared and the sounds of occasional hikers  up the ridge hadn’t been heard for a while. Daylight wasn’t truly fading. In the deep mountain valleys, dusk seems to last twice as long. He was pushing  past where he had fished before. Curiosity compelled; trout confirmed.

There comes a time when a last cast needs to be made. He had a habit of announcing it verbally. “Alright. Last cast,” was as much a statement of personal accountability as it was superstition. Rarely did it matter. Last cast was basically the first cast in a sequence of last casts. This last cast was announced overlooking a pool that was pitch black in the depths and bold aqua on the edges.

A large boulder marked the back of the pool. Either side was a steep dirt wall with pine  trunks angled slightly over the water. He struggled to find a place to cast that would afford him a view of his fly and a vantage point for playing the fish he knew was down there.  The only real option, aside from approaching the pool from upstream (which would not do, as it was nearly a dozen feet up), was to drop down between the boulder and the side of the streambank.

“Well, if it going to be my last cast I guess I should make it count.”

---

To be continued next week on Casting Across…