One should carefully approach the trout stream and objectively read the water before tying on a fly, stepping into the current, or making a cast.
The alternative is to assume that what has worked for you before will work again this time. The latter is my inevitable default. Particularly when I’m feeling pressured to catch a fish, empiricism goes out the window in favor of some cross between stubbornness and superstition. The worst thing about that option is how stinking effective it is. It is just that kind of positive reinforcement that encourages bad habits.
For nearly twenty years, I’ve had a bad habit when fishing the Letort Spring Run outside of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. After visiting it a handful of times as a neophyte fly angler in my teen years with middling results, I sought answers. I had just moved to the area and wanted to crack the code. A local fly shop proprietor handed me two flies: a cress bug and a Shenk’s White Minnow. “If you can’t catch them on these, you can’t catch them at all.” Inspiring.
I did catch trout on cress bugs. And I did become quite adept at taking rising fish with midges and imitations of the smattering of hatches the Letort produced. But Shenk’s White Minnow was the well-publicized cypher that opened the creek up to me. More appropriately, my clumsily tied woolly bugger/white minnow hybrid did just enough to catch a few big brown trout.
So for nearly twenty years, in the absence of mayflies flitting about the water’s surface I’ve tied on my bastardized version of Ed Shenk’s streamer. If I park at one lot, my first cast is to one particular hole. If I park at the other lot, I cast in a specific place. From there, I followed a well-choreographed angling flowchart. Even after moving away, the ruts developed from four- and five-day fishing weeks on the Letort are hard to steer out of.
(Be sure to read the first part of this story here.)
Standing over the tailgate, I slipped the metal rings of the Flea’s reel seat over the foot of an Orvis CFO. Spooled up with 4-weight line, I hoped that this little click-and-pawl would balance my short fiberglass rod well. Running the line through the guides (a simple task on a rod just shy of six feet), I knew precisely which fly I was going to tie on. There was no question. Nine out of ten times I’d tie on the minnow. With an Ed Shenk rod? Doing anything different would be insane.
But a weighted streamer is not the best fly for working out how a fly rod performs. After a few terribly ugly casts, most of which tearing up vegetation behind me, I opted for a small terrestrial. I hadn’t seen any hoppers or ants, but I did have some Shenk’s crickets that may very well imbue the rod with some kind of benign trout magic.
The short rod is a legitimate casting tool. It was a joy to use. Quickly, it’s significance faded away as the Letort’s puzzling currents and spooky trout occupied my mind. Although probably better suited for a 5-weight, the stout glass blank whipped tight loops and carried more than enough line for any and all casts on a small spring creek.
Over the course of the next few hours, I think I made any and all casts. A few fish made quick inspections, but the majority either bolted before my out of practice eyes could point them out or were in totally different places. It was frustrating. I really wanted to tie a poetic bow on this spur-of-the-moment nostalgic fishing trip.
It was hot, humid, and it began to rain.
Standing under the canopy of a dense willow tree, I made the hard decision to call it a day on the Letort. I would head to another local creek, one I had success on hours before picking up the new rod. It wouldn’t be the same as using a rod Ed built to catch a fish on the Letort. But it would still be good.
I began to walk back to my car. “One more cast,” I said out loud. Just one more.