As much as I love fishing for Great Lakes steelhead, there are times when I really do interrogate myself: am I insane?!? This morning was a perfect example. With ice veritably inside my fingers and more than two hours' deep freeze on my toes, having as yet caught nothing, chipping ice off my (inactive) guides and watching a lake that was still far too choppy to be fished comfortably - not to mention the dozen or so other asylum escapees, only one of whom was regularly being restored to sanity by having his float pulled down by yet another steelhead ; do you see what I'm getting at? If anyone ever forced me to endure such hardships, as my father once said, it would be called "torture." I must be freaking crazy.
Ducks and geese? Did I get up at 5:30am to look at ducks and geese? We could all have waited til later in the day, when the temperature got better, to meet like this! Surely, there must be some fish around?
The water everywhere, except closest to home, was either low and clear or low and clearing. In all, I visited five tributaries today, and it was only the last one that offered me a chance at redemption. As usual, it was rather an after-thought. Oh well, I guess I'll take a gander at the back yard creek before I head home. (Get it? "gander" I kill myself!)
The fish were small, but lovely, specimens and they both ensure that I won't go fishless in 2008. Truly, the phrase "eastern Ontario tributaries" should serve as the equivalent to "feast or famine." And there are times on these rivers that the intervals between fish are so long as to make one wonder if there are any fish left at all, or will I ever get another, or more à propos "can I turn my brain back on, now?"
p.-
