Fooling Around

When you get to be a certain age (don’t ask me when), catching a bunch of fish becomes less important than it once was -- though you do want to catch some trout when fishing. Instead, you start to observe your surroundings, and sometimes you want to do things differently, just to fool around. During the past couple years, I have sometimes deviated from my usual fishing habits, just for the heck of it.

Though I have not tried the popular new method of nymph-fishing called Euro nymphing, which its proponents say allows them to vacuum a stream bottom of trout, I have occasionally lengthened my leaders and have used heavy nymphs to get to trout on the bottoms of deep pools. This has allowed me to capture trout I may not have fooled in previous years. However, the extra weight results in more hang-ups than I previously endured. This has pretty much sent me back to my usual methods and flies for nymphing in order to lose fewer flies. I still generally catch enough trout to make me happy. Whenever possible, I’d rather fish with dry flies anyhow.

I have done most of my fooling around with fly rods. There are about 20 fly rods stashed in my fly-tying room. For many years I used only two or three of them for all of my fly-fishing. Though Donna has suggested I get rid of some, that has not happened. However, her suggestion has registered with me, and I have been extracting seldom-used rods from their cases and have been fishing with them. This past spring it was a necessity. While jockeying around while trying to photograph a large, lovely brown trout, I managed to step on a favorite rod, crunching its butt section. It took two months to get replaced. During the interval, I rigged up an expensive rod I’ve rarely used. It heaved flies for long distances. However, when I managed to latch onto large trout while using this rod, I discovered it was pretty wimpy in forcing the action; so I dug out several other old rods so I could “give ‘em [trout] the butt.”

I’ve also alternated rods while “crick” fishing. Instead of constantly using my old small-stream stand-by, I have been using some exquisitely crafted split bamboo fly rods on small streams. One that cost me two weeks’ salary 50 years ago casts like a war club. Another that I bought a couple years ago casts like my favorite.

It’s been fun fooling around with several different fly-fishing methods and rods.