President's Journal March 2006
Wednesday, 01 March 2006, 11:20 p.m. CST
Where to fish?
One of the great pleasures in fishing over the years is having "home waters." You know, that body of water, still or flowing, that you know very well. You've fished it many times, in many conditions, and arriving beside it has the same happy feeling as visiting a close, long-term friend: you're happy to be there, and you want to see how he's doing.
You know where the fish are (or at least should be), you know how to approach them, and you know what flies tend to work at different times of year. When you take a friend there, you know which pool is the "beginners pool" to start them on, and you will make an informed recommendation on what kind of rig and fly to start with.
Of course, things are different every time you go there, but that's part of the mystique, part of the pleasure of fishing your "home" waters. The fish may or may not be where they are "supposed" to be; the "clockwork" hatch may or may not come off as planned; the bright sun, or high pressure, or whatever, may have put the fish down, or conversely, the cloudy, drizzly, stalled low-pressure front may have encouraged the fish to put on the feed bag.
Whatever the conditions are, you will be comparing them to that existing bank of knowledge inside your head. Each visit allows you to expand that knowledge, adding to and deepening your understanding of that particular little ecosystem.
Of course, there can be a down-side to intimate knowledge of a watershed, particularly if you are the newbie fishing with someone else on his home water. First-and-foremost is the "boring geezer" syndrome: "Back in ought-six, when I started fishing here, the fish were bigger, there were more fish, the water ran clearer, no one else fished here, and even the sun shone brighter!" Another classic is the "You shoulda been here last week" line. You're getting skunked, and your host is telling you how easy the water can be... Yeah, right!
The process of gaining personal knowledge about a particular water can be boring, frustrating, irritating, and... finally, satisfying.
You visit the water for the first time, alone, and there is either a road running along the stream, or a ring road around the lake, and the first question you have is: Where to start? You don't know, so you take a guess, and wade in. No visible activity, so you tie on a favorite fly, and after 15 minutes of casting, nothing. Is it your fly? Tippet too thick? Wrong technique? Wrong place on the lake/stream? Who knows? So you change something and try again. Still no luck? Change something else and continue. Nothing. Are you in the right place? You wade out and move upstream. Or should it be downstream? West end of the lake? Upwind? Downwind? New spot, back in, fruitless casts, change flies, change tippets... Eventually, you get antsy, nothing is working, and you start questioning your knowledge, skills, intuition, guardian angel, the meaning of life... ARE THERE ANY FISH IN THIS #*@&$%! LAKE? Eventually, after several visits, you start to figure out the whats and wheres and hows of the water, and it does get easier. Maybe not "easy", but "easier."
Well, we may not be able to help with long-term feelings of fishing inadequacy, but Game and Parks is at least going to help us by answering the last question: Where are the fish?
Join us this month for the semi-annual NGPC Lake Outlook presentation.
Lee