Trout Fishing with Better to Come

A couple of weeks ago I told myself getting out just one day this month will be sufficient, as busy as I am. Last I fished here at Round Valley, early in February, something took a big shiner and nearly all the line off my spool by the time I got to the rod, my 11-foot steelhead noodle rod that has better casting reach. That fish has the shiner in it's gullet! I readied for the fight with a nice laker. Nothing there. It took a hundred yards of line or more, but stripped the shiner from the hook.

So I imagined today would be the day to make up for the loss, and fellow writer Jim Stabile had informed me lakers get caught from shore in March. My experience is hardly informed in all respects, so to get word on the possibility helped. Dave, photographed above talking to Fred, told me laker action has been spotty, but they've been around, just as he's been fishing here every chance he gets all winter. A young man came from around the bend and showed me the Rapala he twitched on the surface to catch two browns! He said they were only about 11 inches, so I take it the Round Valley Trout Association has already stocked the small browns as planned, which we hope grow large and healthy.

I had got to Behr's and the shop is closed Tuesdays. I knew that from last year, and yet I didn't even think of reminding myself by a quick internet check. I phoned Fred to tell him I would go to Flemington and hoped they have shiners. I still haven't advanced to a mobile device, relying yet on a flip phone, so I had no way of finding out. Besides asking Fred to check.

"I'm 10 minutes from Efinger's," Fred said. Turned out he was at Vosseller Avenue just when I called, so he picked up a dozen large in a bucket with an aerator from his car.

The outing began in wind and chilly, cloudy weather, but it ended in very mild, calm sunshine. It's been a hell of a winter for me; my mood's been awful for most of it since November, but I've been very productive at getting things done anyhow. So long as you're getting ahead, it doesn't matter how you feel, since it's all but inevitable reward will come. With enough to deal with as is, a number of things went wrong since the River Styx ice fishing outing, costly and just what I needed to load on after going pretty far south anyway, so getting out and experiencing the only world that never really fails--the natural world that doesn't give a damn about us, is what it is, and will be whatever it is no matter what we do to it--reminded me of much better days to come.