A great hood, smart cuffs and pockets in the right places. That’s what makes a good wading jacket. Let’s assume that any fishing coat worth considering is first waterproof. Now add in breathability. The price tag goes up, but so does the comfort level and the amount...
** NOTE: This is Part Six of a Troutbitten series on fly fishing for trout through the winter months. This will all read a little better if you back up and find Parts One, Two, Three, Four and Five. ** Every winter our rivers go through changes, and the trout follow...
** NOTE: This is Part Five of a Troutbitten series on fly fishing for trout through the winter months. You can find the whole Winter Fly Fishing Series here. ** Alright, so it’s the middle of winter, and it’s time for a gut check. How much do you really want to fish?...
** NOTE: This is Part Four of a Troutbitten series on fly fishing for trout through the winter months. This will all read a little better if you back up and find Parts One, Two and Three. I walked to the familiar counter and laid a bag of orange material...
Winter is a quiet ghost.
When he days are dark and at their coldest, the woods are barren — void of life, save for the chickadees and a few eager squirrels. Most of the mammals hunker down in burrows, inside hollowed out trees and underneath hemlock bows. You might miss all this if you don’t slow down, find a log and just sit for a while to listen to the silence. It’s different.
The forest is a widow in the winter wind.
Sawyer isn’t afraid of the cold. He’s like a polar bear in waders — doesn’t even wear gloves on his paws. And I don’t get guys like this. I don’t understand where their warmth comes from. Is it a higher tolerance for pain or a motor that just runs hotter than most? Who knows, but Sawyer’s always up for anything, and he’s fun to fish with.
The first batch of winter roads had people a little skittish on Tuesday morning. Even the plows and salt trucks showed some unusual caution. Later in the season, they’ll be cutting close lines and motoring at top speed, plows laid flat, shooting sparks with bare steel on rock. Before long, they’ll be in a mid-season rhythm. But at 7:30 am on Tuesday morning, the highway traffic formed a line behind the yellow diesel beasts, and everyone unanimously and silently agreed to be a little extra careful. So I was late.
When I finally stepped out of line and steered left onto the winding creek side road, I was eager to accelerate. So I took my new freedom with some aggression, pushing snow with my 4-wheel drive and generally driving the way a ten-year-old boy rides a sled. You gotta love fresh snow . . .
Finding these angles becomes intuitive. Without thinking much about it, I usually set myself up with the sun behind or to my side, avoiding the surface glare of direct light. As I fish upstream I might work left bank to right, moving perpendicular across the stream flow until I reach the right bank. Then I quickly wade left again, back to the left bank, to start over on the next line — like a classic Underwood typewriter printing out one sentence at a time, just to see into the water, see my fly or watch my sighter . . .
My article, "High Light -- Low Light," is over at Hatch Magazine. Here are a few excerpts..... -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- ... Finding the shady cracks that harbor resting and wary trout is a good challenge on bright days. Offering the flies to them in those small...
I paused at the fire pit with those thoughts, and then I moved on. Today was about memories; about beauty, about the scent of cold winter air in the woods, and about a perfect peace found only in loneliness . . .