March – In Like a Lion

As I sit here at my desk, Sunday March 4^th, I have to think back to just a couple days ago when I was watching the radar Friday afternoon and trying to get a good picture on what might happen in the afternoon hours. I was concerned with where we might be in the spectrum of getting our RBB students on the bus and home during what looked like might prove to be a bad situation.

Being a golf coach for 10 years and having a good understanding of weather has helped me get a good perspective on where storms might just roll; I use the word might here because we all know that Mother Nature is in control. As the radar looped over and over on my computer I finally could see that while we would probably get a storm…most of the worst weather was going to stay to our south. My student teacher was worried herself and finally I made a statement that it looked like one thunder cell in particular was looking ominous and my guess is that it would cause trouble somewhere along a line from north of Louisville to Jasper…somewhere in that corridor it would probably get rough. Now hindsight is 20/20 and we all know that one of our small Hoosier towns to our south did get the brunt of what has been called an F-4 tornado; just 2% of all tornadoes ever reach this intensity and my heart sank later Friday night as I watched the Weather Channel and found out that the un-thinkable had indeed happened in Henryville, Indiana.

I know this little town because many years ago I decided I would turn off on highway 160 and see some of the “country” on a return trip from Louisville where I was playing volleyball. I can still remember how curvy the road was and how it reminded me more of western Kentucky than it did of southern Indiana. I can only imagine the devastation that this community has went through and my heart broke as I saw the local Elementary school and heard the principal telling the TV viewers how they had kids’ partway on buses and had to rush them back into the school to take safety. God was certainly with them as there were no fatalities at the school even though across the street a bus had been ‘placed’ into a home!

If the old idiom “In like a lion and out like a lamb” holds true then we should ease into April in about a month….let’s hope so. Either way Saturday, March 3^rd found me up early and on my way to visit my mom who has been in and out of the hospital for a few weeks and then off to a stream about 45 minutes south to try my hand at float tube fishing for Smallmouth and Spotted bass in a section of the creek that gets slow and deep. I decided to use my float tube because the water is high at this point in the year and wading into this deep section is not only difficult but not too safe.

After I packed my tube down into the creek I put on my entire fly fishing garb and pushed off into the stream. Now I will point out that float tubes shouldn’t be used in flowing water but this section of the creek is more like a languid lake and I could kick against the flow of the stream quite easily. I was fishing my trusty Cabela’s TQR rod, 5’6” in length and a perfect choice for this small creek due to its many overhead obstructions. I had also tied two new half and half flies in all yellow with medium lead eyes for weight. It didn’t take long for the action to begin as I had a tap on my fly on my 5^th casts…experience has taught me to leave the fly alone and just like many times before a chunky little Spotted Bass came back and engulfed the yellow fly; I set the hook with a stiff upward jerk of my 4 weight rod and my first fish was on my line.

I won’t say the action was hot but over the next two hours I landed eight nice fish; three were beautiful Smallmouths and five were Spotted or Kentucky Bass. Both bass differ from the ever popular Largemouth variety by their physical appearance; smallies have horizontal stripes and spotted bass have a blotchy or spotty pattern that runs down their lateral lines…both also have a jaw that begins in front of the eye, a largemouth’s jaw will begin behind its eye.

The highlight of the morning came about an hour in. I made a long cast down the middle of the creek and decided to just let the fly settle all the way down to the bottom. I then started lightly jigging, up and down…trying to entice a fish to follow and attack. I had almost retrieved the fly back to my tube when I saw a flash from below and felt the jab on my fly line; I snapped my rod tip straight up and felt weight and for a second thought I had snagged when the fish pulled me across stream towards the middle. I only had about six feet of orange fly line out at this point and decided to just hold tight…a few seconds passed and I reached into the cool clear water and lipped an 18 inch spotted bass. Much like smallies, Kentucky’s don’t grow as large as their popular cousins and this was a very nice fish…especially for a relatively small creek. I snapped several photos and watched as this beauty swam quickly back down to it’s environ. What a morning…as I drifted back, slowly down to my takeout I had time to reflect and throw out a few prayers for those Hoosiers not enjoying this crisp March morning but instead cleaning up and mourning the loss of loved ones. As your March moves towards April…don’t miss the opportunity to venture out and Enjoy the Great Outdoors.