Great White Sharks Suffer a Couple of Orcas

Science Alert 

Nice Rainbow River Fishing

Finally, I'm beginning to get the hang of the fall & winter river fishing. This past fall I caught a couple in November, and a couple of years before that in October, an 18-inch rainbow broke the connection between my wooly bugger and fly rod. October a year ago I missed some hits on flies. But such incidents are virtually daily routine for the guys who know how to do it. While I've caught trout left and right during the spring, I've managed to get out some during the fall and winter of recent years, and though I missed the hit from a small brown two winters ago, there's been precious little action.

The main thing is that I've been true to my intent. I've been telling myself I'm going to get out on the rivers during the winter for a few years or more, and though I haven't since November this year, getting out today was a move I would expect of myself. When you stay true to what amounts to a deep desire--no matter what convenient living would have you do otherwise to keep you safe from such passion--the likelihood is that its objective will succeed. And that is to catch trout.

For two years now, I've had boot-foot, 600-grain thinsulate, neoprene Hisea waders, and though my feet and calves felt the chill, the waders did the job for nearly an hour-and-a-half spent in the water. I fished a stretch of river I might have fished on two other occasions, once with my son around 2006 for smallmouths (we got skunked), and once in 2017 with a friend when we caught lots of springtime rainbows. First, I waded downstream more than a hundred yards, hoping to find a hole.

I never did. The water might have been six feet deep. Four or five feet at least, but probably no more than that. I retrieved repeatedly, twitching a black maribou jig, until I felt sure of exploring upstream. There I found an interesting eddy, feeling disappointed in its shallows, too. Trout like holes this time of year. There was a nice riffle upstream that I would fish carefully during the spring, but I shunned it and cast directly downstream where the eddy gets lost and the river's main current begins to pick up the slack.

I felt this was a nice transition in the course of things. Not very deep but I was telling myself even four feet might do. A fisherman can make a fool of himself. I had already told myself I needed to get home and work on a cabinet for my wife. And to think a fish might be where you're casting now despite need to be elsewhere can be no more than an empty wish. And why act on the like? Ever? Because sometimes the feeling you get in relation to a spot you choose to test out is "spot" on. Especially after you've eliminated water, after you've parsed it down to what is, perhaps, the best possibility. 

I felt no more than a little nick and set the hook. The rainbow fought hard. Sixteen-and-a-half inches--no giant, but a nice fish. 

I never took another cast. I got home and got the work done.