My Perfect Day

Everyone has a different version of their perfect day. Mr. Webster defines perfect as being entirely without fault or defect…or satisfying all requirements. I’m good with either and recently while in Missouri I had ‘my’ perfect day…a caveat, might not be yours, but it certainly was mine.

Let’s just say that every day has a chance at being perfect when a couple things happen; first I get to spend time with my gal Vickie…and of course, there is some fishing involved! Thus was the case on Saturday, June 30 of this year. Seems like another factor that tends to help is the weather and I am a not a hot weather guy; the weather on my perfect day was a crisp 78…with bluebird skies overhead, wow!

I slipped out of the camper at around 6:30am and eased into my fly tying chair…and proceeded to tie a few flies…oh, not just any fly, but a size 2/0 streamer that I hoped would appear tasty to the smallmouth that were lurking in the Niangua River. A couple nice flies later Vickie came out with a scrumptious plate of scrambled eggs, sausage, cinnamon bagel and the icing on the cake…fresh mango! No argument from me, I gobbled it down and enjoyed each and every bite (I also knew it would be a long time before I made it back to the camper).

I slid my Voyager atop my Suburban and the two of us made our way about 8 miles south of Bennet and followed a ‘cow trail’ down into the Ozarks to an access point on the Niangua. A few quick pumps of air later… I and my boat were on the water heading back to camp. I might not be able to accurately describe how beautiful it was to be on the water, fly rod in hand, blue skies overhead, nature everywhere…and NO time schedule to meet; just me, the river and Smallies to be caught…part 2 of my perfect day is a check.

I hadn’t gone more than a half mile when the current accelerated and slipped through a cut in the woods; when we exited and the water slowed, there before me was a stretch of water that screamed big fish. I hopped out and stood between the seat and the foot rest on the Voyager, stripped out about 30 feet of line from my 5 weight TQR rod and made a cast across the current. I made an upstream mend and then waited for the line to become taught…when I saw a flash and instinctively strip set my fly…nothing, what? This can’t be…then in a matter of a second I saw and felt the return ambush…once again I strip set and there on the other end of my line was a 15 inch Ozark stick of dynamite! All I could really do was hold on and hope that my knots would hold. No exaggeration or hyperbole needed…between the current and a large, wild smallie, my rod hand throbbed with the pull of the fish as it raced downstream. If you have ever tussled with a trophy fish you know that you don’t breath until you have lipped the creature…and a minute or two later I eased a very bronze fish up close to my leg, reached down and hoisted it up out of the water!

I would love to say that the above scenario was re-created over and over…while I did catch a number of smallies on my 8 mile trek back to Bennet, there were none as big or as strong. That didn’t detract from the trip north…I won’t be able to describe all the wildlife I saw along the way, but my favorite was a trio of young river otters that decided to bob and weave their way beside me for about one hundred yards…it was a very special part of my perfect day.

In an effort to save space…I will fast-forward to Bennet and 6pm where I was able to land about a dozen nice rainbow trout in a little over an hour…all on one of my very own hand-tied bitch creek nymphs. Of the dozen or so trout, several were in the 15 inch range and just added a bit of icing to my already special fishing day.

My perfect day ended with a nice meal eaten peacefully with my gal Vickie and a couple of Walton’s shows from the end of season 7. You might be thinking that this is pretty simple…you bet! That is what makes it so sweet…so, it is my hope that you will find that ‘perfect day’, whatever it might be…and I hope that it too involves nature, water, fishing and being with the one you love…all while Enjoying the Great Outdoors.