It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day in April (we get some of those in the Mountain West on occasion) when I went over to see my neighbor. We had a few other things to talk about, but as is usually the case in our conversations, the topic turned to fishing before very long. I told him how I’d been having some pretty good luck on the local streams lately, and he mentioned, as he has before, that he hasn’t caught a fish in nearly forever.
“Boy, you catch a lot of fish! You’ll have to take me with you some time.”
This wasn’t the first time Mel had mentioned it, but this time he seemed a little more serious, and the fishing had been awful good lately. And I was pretty tired of working and felt like I had ought to be fishing on a day like this.
“You want to go fishing? Let’s go. Let’s go right now. Got your stuff”?
“Really?” he asked. “You want to go right now? Yeah, let’s go!”
It took a little while for Mel to get his waders and rod together, then we drove into town to pick up his fishing license. I waited around and looked at the fly patterns in the back room of the old country store. We got out of there quick enough and drove over to a public fishing access site on the creek nearby. We had several hours to fish and the weather, while a bit breezy, was still great for fishing.
We got out on the creek. It had been a while for Mel, so I took him to one of my better fishing holes and set him up with some decent nymphs and a big strike indicator. I figured I would try my best to make it easy. I showed him how to drift the nymph through the hole where the fish were holding, caught a quick fish and backed away to observe.
“Man, this is great”, he said. We’d hardly even started fishing and Mel was ecstatic. “You know, this is what I moved out here for. I moved here for the fishing and I hardly get out and fish!”
His casting was great, but Mel was a little rusty on setting the hook after a strike. He’d figure it out, though.
After a while, I did what I usually do when I’m flyfishing with someone else on a stream and got antsy sitting around and watching. We planned out where we would fish and I made my way upstream after Mel got settled into his pool. He sure looked like he was having fun.
I caught a few nice rainbows and browns upstream. It was a beautiful, quiet, sunny day on the stream and it was great to wind down. I took my time and snapped a few pictures of some of the fish I caught.
I rejoined Mel and found out how his luck had been. He’d caught one fish, a small brown, and was as happy as could be. He’d gotten a great start to the season, and it sounded like he was excited about doing more fishing this year.
I usually like to fish alone or with someone with experience similar to mine, but sometimes it’s fun to take others out on the water, especially folks who haven’t been fishing for a while. Do you have that person who’s always talking about how they should get out fishing? Take the time to bring them along on your next trip. You won’t regret it.
Catch ya’ on the crick!
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