It was rainy, it was cold, the river bank was no place for a 65 year old.
Those words kept going through my mind, to the tune of a John Prine song – something about the missing years in the life of one of the most influential men in the history of human kind.
It wasn’t actually raining, but it had rained the entire day and night prior, and everything was wet and slippery and cold and miserable.
My fingers were cold. I had a hard time even tying my flies onto the leader. My nose was cold too. A mist hung over the water. It followed each twist and turn of the river like the wispy remnants of a giant shed snake skin. I found myself wishing that I drank coffee. My mind began to wander. I thought about recipes for pies that I want to enter in the annual pie baking contest they have at the mall come next spring.
Pie and coffee in a nice warm restaurant.
As the morning wore on, the mist gave way to even more bleak and greyer skies. Before long, it began to rain. The morning, if not the whole day seemed to hold little promise.
I kept asking myself, “how did I get talked into going fishing in such crummy weather.”
Not that I haven’t fished in the rain many times before, it’s just that the cold seemed to be sucking the spirit out of me. Maybe it was the price I would have to pay for having a nice bright, shiny steelhead giving me the fight of a lifetime. One hit, one fish and it would all be worth it.
Day one of my four-day fishing trip was cold and miserable. Not one hit. Fish one, anglers nothing.
Day two was no better and day three showed no sign of the rain and drizzle letting up.
By the morning of day four, I didn’t even want to get out of bed. This wasn’t the fishing trip I had hoped and planned for.
I sat in the passenger seat, waiting as Cory said goodbye to his wife and dogs, in that order. The weather was supposed to break but it was too foggy to tell. All I could do was have faith and believe that this would be the day.
An hour on the river and the sky above began to clear. The heat of the sun felt good as it wrapped itself around me like a wool blanket. Its rays were like warm, strong fingers that massaged my aching muscles. I soon felt like my whole being was charged with anticipation. I felt renewed and ready, able and willing to take on any fish that took my fly. Any moment and a steelhead would strike. I could feel it in my very bones.
An hour went by and nothing. Another hour, nothing. My spirits were sill high and I just knew that any minute, the waters would explode and I would be calling out “fish on.”
That did not happen, however. At the end of five days it was fish five, anglers nothing.
So why did I put myself through it all – the cold, wet miserable hours out there, with nothing to show for it? I guess because things might have turned out different. I might have caught my steelhead, maybe even two or three. I just might have had the fight of my life, or maybe Cory might have caught the biggest steelhead he will ever catch in his whole lifetime and I would have been there to witness it.
Maybe at lot of things. Because, you see, in fishing it’s the prospect of catching fish, maybe even that special fish, that makes it all worthwhile.
So even though I didn’t catch anything this time, there’s always the next time. It’s the price one has to pay – the price that really does make it all worthwhile.
