A Father, A Daughter And A River

Opening Day

So the season did not start out as expected.  Ailments, home commitments and weather all being a factor.  However as they say, things do have a way of working out and what once seemed horrible and without reason  is now but a distant memory.  Good found it's way.

A cancelled trip a week ago with my good friend Gray had now become a trip this week with my nineteen year old daughter.  A college freshmen, we had been apart for most of the last nine months and we had missed time together. When she asked if we could fly fishing together I knew things had worked  this way for a reason.  Just the two of us alone in the woods for two day on two of my favorite rivers. What more could I ask for.

A nights ride up to our cabin in the woods followed by a good nights rest. Breakfast came early the following morning. Eggs, hashbrowns and whole wheat toast the order of the day.  A forty five minute ride to the river followed where we suited up and  on the water by 10am. A near perfect morning with partial clouds and air temperatures in the low 50's. Water flows were ideal at 300cfs and water quality and clarity were good  making it easy to wade.
During the  morning we concentrated on the deeper pools and slower, softer slicks where we found healthy browns and rainbows on princes, stones and olive caddis nymphs.  Being a state trophy river  the fish ranged from 16" to our biggest, a 20" rainbow.  By early afternoon we had landed seven fish and lost three including a very large rainbow that jumped twice then headed down river  spitting the fly.  Around  1pm high  cloud cover developed followed by the darker lower clouds.  You could feel the weather changing by the minute as a low was pushing through,  the air temperature dropping  ten degrees in ten minutes as the wind picked up and the rumble of thunder could heard in the distance.  When a cold rain began, the fishing shut down.  We fished another half hour then cold and wet, we scrambled to break down our gear and headed home to warm for the haven of a warm fire.


Day 2

A chilly night lent itself to a good sleep. I awoke at 5am to bright skies and high pressure. By 7am the thermometer read 52*. A beautiful day in Vermont on another beautiful Vermont river.  The flows had been ideal on yesterdays river to our south however this river was another creature, a larger more powerful freestone river where naturally producing wild trout prevailed.. With flows running at 1,100cfs,  I knew our ability to safely wade and access crucial locations might be limited and was right.  When we arrived we found the water higher than what we had hoped.  It was moving and it was still cold.  We had our work cut out for us.  For two hours that morning we focused on fishing the upper reaches of the river nymphing tandem rigs with little success. As beautiful as the river and its holding places of trout appeared we just had a sense that we had arrived  a week or two premature.  Around 11:30 we came to a bend in the river where the main current runs straight and hard before smashing into a 75' ledge rock wall and pushing the water east that creates a  beautiful and very large and  deep pool.  I switched over to  my sinking line and a big olive and tan streamer pattern. Within minutes I felt the soft lethargic short strikes of a trout. Two casts again, then nothing.  What may have been curious below the waters surface was no longer. An hour later we fished a similar pool and felt another short strike but again no fish.
It was now 1pm and I realized it had been almost 4 hours on this river without a fish. I watched my daughter. I wondered what was going through that head of hers and recalled my days at her age and the excitement of it all.  I could see her  patience was now waning and that the  lack of action was taking its toll and draining her interest. But still she continued to fish never once complaining. Around 2pm, the wind began to pick up more steadily as if whispering to me that it was time to go.  We called out to my daughter and we hiked out. This would not be the day of a wild trout. But I'd  had a marvelous time.  And as we made our way home,  she asked me when we could fish again, I knew so did she.