The Best Laid Plans

I can’t decide if fishing teaches me about life or if life teaches me about fishing. Perhaps it truly doesn’t matter, but at some point, we’ve all carefully crafted an immaculate plan that fell flat on its face. A couple years ago, I was fishing the Fryingpan River on a simply stunning July day and got my feet caught in some vines (they turned out to be from natural growing hops, which I thought was pretty cool) and I literally fell face first into the river. The water was fast and tailwater cold, but no humans saw me or my stunned expression of embarrassment, although I’m sure the birds had a cackle or two at my expense.

I’m a planner. My friends know I like to coordinate things months and even years in advance because I revel in having events to look forward to on the near, (or even distant) horizon. Being a planner also means I think I know what I’m talking about, but so often life, (and fishing) teach us quite the opposite.

Even on Sunday I was sure the water was too cold for rising fish so I carried two nymphing rods downstream with me and left my dry fly rod back at the truck. After a few minutes, I saw two solid fish rise and realized I had made a mistake. My plan was to fish what worked further upstream on Tuesday: Eggs, red annelids, leeches and small stoneflies.

Well, what worked five days prior got me absolutely nothing where I was fishing and I knew there were fish where I was casting. So much for being right about that. Plus, a friend of mine who will remain nameless to spare him the embarassment, fell in the river after about 5 minutes of fishing and if you haven’t read my Seasonal Fishing Tips Page yet, you’re not supposed to do that.

My point is we always know what we think we know, but fishing (and life) have a funny way of proving us wrong sometimes. Maybe that’s what so special about observing and listening to a river or learning a life lesson from someone we just met. We learn more when we’re wrong than when we’re right. The bug life is different down in Gypsum compared to Wolcott and maybe our friends/family do know a thing or two that we don’t know if we’d actually listen to them. Our best laid plans are always in our minds, but perhaps we need to “hear” the river (and our loved ones) more often.

I’m sure you’re wondering if I caught any fish on dry flies since I was wrong about everything else. I had to rerig one of my nymphing rods for dries and the good news is that I did catch a couple pretty, hard fighting Eagle River fish and I didn’t fall in the river.