Another Rotten Day in Paradise

Did you ever have one of those days….

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63 degrees at 10 am. Blue skies, clear water and the hope of lots of fish. Paradise. I stopped at a bend of the river I hadn’t fished before. It had a nice choppy run, good current seams, a deep pool and tail out. Perfect. Even the start was good. Three fish in 5 casts. Then I decide to take the picture above. It wasn’t anything special, but I was trying out a polarizer filter and wanted to see how it worked on the stream. But I couldn’t see well through my polarized glasses and the polarized filter so I dropped my glasses on their lanyard, took the picture and reached for my sunglasses.

Except my sunglasses weren’t on their lanyard.

I looked down in disbelief. The lanyard hung in its normal spot around my neck, but the little plastic loops were empty. I scoured the river bottom, but I was standing in brisk current. No telling how fast and far the glasses would drift. So I scooted to the shore and deposited my rod and camera and went searching in vane for the missing glasses.

Now if these had been $6.00 Walmart glasses, I would have said, “No problemo. Fish on.” I knew I had two pairs of spare polarized glasses in my rig. But these were Maui Jim prescription glasses I got just ten months ago. After fifteen minutes, I felt pretty discouraged. I took my rod and camera up to the road and deposited them safely. I shrugged out of my vest and grabbed a spare set of polarized glasses. I spent two hours plodding back and forth between where I lost them and the next slow stretch that I figured might stop them.

No luck.

Although that was the worst part of the day it didn’t really improve all that much as it wore on.

I fell three times – but only once in the water.

Later, I forgot to clip my hat on my vest, so a gust of wind blew it into the water just as a car stopped to watch. I’m sure they had a good laugh as I staggered after it, determined not to lose anything else.

I was casting to a nice hole only to snag a low hanging limb. I decided to break off instead of sacrificing the hole. On my first cast re-rigging, I snagged the next limb down. So I crossed the stream, freed my fly and retrieved the first fly.

Still moving up-stream, I worked my way up a riffle, saving the honey spot till last. Just as I got there, three guys in pontoon boats floated through it at five minute intervals.

At the end of the day I saw a nice fish porpoising in that impossible-to-reach type of lie. Across the river, between two current streams, right at a narrow bend. I spent 45 minutes trying to fool him. To no avail. It was time to quit.

I climbed out of the river and made my way up to the road to find the temperature was now 84 degrees and I had a mile and a half walk to my car.

Did you ever have one of those days…