After hundreds of casts, dozens of holes, and double-digit miles, I caught the best trout right next to the parking lot. Add to all that the fact that I had no business being ready to fish. Why did it happen the way that it did?

I don’t know. But I’ve caught enough fish in quasi-ironic circumstances like this to just be content.

What do I mean by “quasi-ironic circumstances like this”? Well, note the hyperbole in the first sentence of the article. What I was trying to communicate was that I had been fishing all day. A lot. Miles and miles and hours and hours into the wilderness of New England, and I had caught a handful of decent fish. I was content: bright, sizeable brook trout had come to hand earlier in the day. It was a great way to spend an unseasonably warm fall morning.

The fish weren’t coming that easily. After a summer of fast and furious dry fly action, a few cold snaps will bring you back to angling reality. Trout are trout. Even small stream mountain brook trout are trout (char, but… you know). They have a biological flowchart which dictates when they’ll rise to dry flies. Water temperature, flow rate, sunlight, and a host of other variables have much more bearing on these fish than my ability to pick the right fly. Plus, I have to pick the right fly. Then place it in the right place.

Stated like that, fly fishing is simple. But it isn’t always easy.

After a few hours I started to figure out the fish. I got their location, behavior, and fly preference as close to dialed in as was reasonable. It is safe to say that I was working harder than I usually do on streams like this. (It was a seven out of ten on the difficulty scale. Usually, this river is about a three.) What I had anticipated to be a recharge through a lot of fish day turned into a rewarding results of overcoming challenges day. Six in one, essentially.

It was a good day. Again: content.

So why was I still in my wading boots? Why was my rod still rigged up? I had a backpack with dry shoes and a rod case… right on my back. Perhaps because of urgency I neglected to pack everything up. Perhaps. More likely I was subconsciously banking on another angling opportunity. I know me. The likelihood of getting everything out again was slim. Even though I was somewhat in a hurry, deep in the inner recesses of my mind I wanted to catch another fish.

But I could have fooled me. I was hauling down that trail. Even in wading boots I was making good time. And I did have someplace to be. Every pool and bend looked good but not great. There is no such thing as this will just take a minute in fly fishing. You have to get into the water, pull off line, change the fly and/or add floatant, cast. Cast at least ten times. Catch a fish? Well there might be another. Realize it is time to leave. Then deal with gear; the whole thing in reverse. A little slower, naturally. Consequently, I was exercising a modicum of restraint. This was made easier by the aforementioned good/not great metric.

Then, I came across a bridge. Halfway over the small tributary I said out loud “you should always fish under a bridge.” The water seemed shallow and the creek was quite skinny. But like I said, you should always fish under a bridge. So all I did was unhook my fly from the hook keeper and drop it down the six or so feet into the creek. I jigged the fly upwards once when the trout hit. It seemed big, but I thought it was just relative to the tiny trickle I had caught it in – the tiny bridge it had been sitting under.

A little fight later, and I was holding a broad and colored-up brook trout. It wasn’t a trophy, but it was truly a large fish for the river. Over a foot, toothy-jawed, and a thick paddle tail. It was probably an example of the biggest, most mature that brook trout get in the system. It had probably achieved this status by being flexible and willing to hang out in places like culverts. Sure enough, as soon as I released the fish it disappeared into the small stream. That was the biggest surprise of  the whole ordeal.

It was in some ways anticlimactic. All the hard work up in the mountains, and then the biggest and objectively best fish comes in a flippant drop of the fly? Again, I’ve caught enough fish in quasi-ironic circumstances like this to just be content. This brook trout, right next to the parking lot, made my day. Fish, caught like this  on days like this, make fly fishing.