Good Things Come To Those Who Wade

Maybe you could describe it as a shade of blue, maybe green, maybe a combination of both…if I were a person who saw color better then I probably could go to great depths talking about the subtle hues; truth is a am a fly fisherman…I believe that some people are born to do certain things, things of greatness, things that are mundane…but I won’t describe fly fishing in any way but majestic! That is why it is so hard to describe the color of the water, all 100 plus million gallons of it, that flows from Bennett Spring and serpentines its way over a waterfall, a dam, under three bridges and eventually joins with the Niangua River where it continues its journey northward through the great state of Missouri.

I was about waist deep in this mysteriously clear water this past week, all by myself, when I heard the shrill cry of a hawk…momentarily my fishing senses lapsed as I craned my neck upwards to find a large predatory bird screaming right at me, its wings were working against the 20 or so mile per hour wind that was flowing with the current as it cruised right over me at about 15 feet skyward. I snapped my head around and could see that it had lit some 100 yards behind me in one of the giant Sycamore trees that line the spring and have probably been there way back when Missouri was fighting with General Lee to try and become their own nation. As it sat there with the sun bearing down on the two of us it gave a wiggle and a shake and looked to be settling in for a long watch…my attention was drawn back to my task at hand as I felt a familiar tug on the other end of my fly line and quickly strip set to find that my lull in concentration had just cost me a trout.

OK…focus here, I told myself and I re-grouped, made a cross stream cast at about 45 degrees, let the line swing about 5 feet and started to slowly strip about five inches of line with my left hand…wait a second or two and another soft strip; this rhythm had taken me about half the morning to figure out. I started off the day too high in the water column, with too bright a fly and retrieving at a rate about twice as fast as I should have…but that is why I love to fish and specifically love to fly fish for trout. Each day is special, different, it has nuances that just simply would take too long to discuss in this short column but might very well find its way into a book somewhere down my journalistic road.

My black, size 10 wooly bugger was doing the trick as I had fooled about 10 wily trout in the first hour of legal fishing (the horn sounds at 7:30am in March). This slow, methodical and deliberate balance between rod, line and my own hard drive had just fooled yet another rainbow and I had stripped about half the 60 foot of line back in when my peripheral vision picked up a winged object struggling directly overhead…in the 45 seconds that it took me to strip in my excess line, make an accurate cast, strip and hook a fish…this raptor had swooped down on an unsuspecting trout of about 12 inches, snagged its prey and was doing its best wounded WWII fighter plane imitation as it struggled to gain altitude. Finally the great bird, fish in tow…made it to an overhanging limb about 50 yards downstream and proceeded to dive into its meal with the same ferociousness of a starving man at a buffet! This entire disturbance had once again taken my attention away from the fish that formerly had been on the end of my line; twice now this hawk and my lack of focus…had cost me a fish. Truth is I would have traded fifty fish for the show that I had just been privy to. Nature you see is a struggle, survival is what it is all about and while I was fishing, I wouldn’t be supporting a family this spring as would this spectacular bird. I came to a complete stop, right there amidst the flowing beauty that was rushing all around me…it hit me, I had just witnessed what I so often teach my kids at school…life is indeed a cycle and you have to dig in and be tough, usually when you feel like your back is up against the wall there is a way out and it starts with grit and hard work. Maybe this is way too deep a conversation for the nature scene I had a front row seat for but all too often we have simply become soft and if we had to grow a garden or hunt or fish to feed our families…then we too would have to hone our skills like this hawk, if not we wouldn’t be around long.

Apparently good things to come to those who wade (pun intended). You might not be a fly fisherman wading down a beautiful stream but I can assure that nature has lots of lessons to teach if you will do but one thing…get up and get moving, head out on a walk, rent a kayak for a day, frankly it doesn’t matter what you do…it just matters that you do. Give nature a try this spring and you might agree that together we can all Enjoy the Great Outdoors.