Living in the San Francisco Bay Area years ago, the anticipation of a fishing getaway to the mountains brought the giddiness of a school kid just before summer vacation. Freedom, joy, adventure, escape: it had all the right elements to transport me to another, happier, state of existence. I timed my morning departures for 6:00 so I could be casting in a stream by 11:00, have a cold beer and lunch shortly thereafter, and spend the rest of the day swept up in the glimmer of light on water. Nightfall found me sleeping like a contented rock, with the promise of another magical day dawning with the morning light.
One definition of anticipation is the “feeling of excitement about something pleasant or exciting you know is going to happen.” Indeed, anticipation is an integral part of fly fishing. We may not know something pleasant or exciting is going to happen, but we certainly know the odds are good. We tie flies anticipating their success and buy gear needed to catch fish. With each cast, we are in a state of readiness for a strike. We say we are “going fishing,” really meaning we are leaving life as we know it for the promise of dreams realized, or just for badly needed down time. We anticipate both new waters and those that have become such a part of us we can often predict outcomes. The time of year, too, pulls at us, bringing dreams of our favorite seasons and fueling our anticipation as they approach.
For eighteen years, I’ve lived in the northern Sierra, where long winters require tolerance, skill, and creativity to endure. For me, there is no greater anticipation than spring, with melting snow, budding trees, soft, gentle breezes, and the halcyon days of summer to follow. I’m delighted to welcome the returning birds, butterflies, and lizards to our yard and the dancing little seasonal creek carrying melted snow into the year-round creek it feeds. It’s warm enough for the dogs to laze around on the back porch in the sun again. I start planning my vegetable garden and thinking about trout in earnest.
During the scary, dry February of this year, all the rivers and creeks were low — bony and exposed. The little creek that runs along our property was no exception, allowing me to hike upstream at a time I normally would have been unable to do so due to several feet of snow. One eerily mild day, I scaled a small hill above the creek where I had a view down into a shallow pool and had seen trout in the past, but never in the winter. I anticipated that I might just spy a fish down there and was thrilled to get a glimpse of one actively maneuvering its secret world, even more so when, as if on cue, it rose to a midge or some other minuscule morsel while I watched.
While finishing up this article in early April, I took a hike above a nearby creek and was eying a deep pool below, considering that it likely held trout, when I heard unusual sounds. I kept watching and was surprised to see the shiny head, big eyes, and snout of a huge river otter. I imagine it, too, considered the pool a likely source of fish. Suddenly, it must have seen me and swam downstream in a flash, its large, streamlined form in the shallow creek clearly visible. Whether by fishing or by observing, every season and scenario provides the opportunity to test our hunches, our intuitions, and add to our treasure of knowledge and experience.
Usually I’m on the water too early in the spring and am predictably skunked. But not always, and sometimes I get lucky even earlier. This February, I bought my first four-wheel-drive truck and decided to try it out on the road to a nearby lake at about fifty-two hundred feet. The road wasn’t plowed, and just passable due to the drought conditions, but challenging in a few deeper patches of snow. (As Jim Harrison suggested, life is better with a little bit of danger.) It seemed a long shot, but I put my fishing gear in the truck, “ just in case.” I arrived to find the lake lower than I’ve ever seen it and decided to make the hike to the far-receded water on the opposite shore. I did not expect at all to have my first cast met by a decisive take, which brought me a strong, sizeable rainbow. I caught and released two more, added a few snapped-off lures to my collection, and went home, reflecting on the unexpected and amazing adventure I had and concerned about the conditions that allowed it.
Some premature attempts to fish have not been so accommodating. One year, I drove around to another inlet of the lake as soon as the roads were clear, taking my dogs along. The spring runoff was still extremely high, but I reasoned that an inlet might be fishable from the bank. I arrived to find there was little to no access on foot: what I anticipated was not the reality. But I stubbornly persisted anyway, thrashing through some bushes to find a little slice of bank from which to cast. Throwing out a few sloppy, useless casts, I felt my female dog pawing my leg and looked down to see what I thought was a sticker in her eye. It turned out to be an old treble hook she had pierced her eyelid with while sniffing around in the bushes along the bank — what a mess. I took her back to the nearby campground, and unable to remove it without help, drove her to the vet for an unplanned, expensive surgery. Thankfully, she was fine. I realized then that sometimes my experience will be better without the dogs, as much as I love them, and that there can be consequences to barging ahead against one’s better judgment.
As a beginning angler, unexpected fishing results can be especially rewarding. Of course, there was the anticipation and excitement of even learning how to catch a fish, then catching many fish, then larger or more challenging fish. Every experience sharpens your intuition and increases your confidence, if not also increasing your humility. Years ago, I explored Lake Davis as a diversion during a Thanksgiving family trip. It was very cold out and windy, but I had a feeling. I bundled up in layers, waded out, cast Woolly Buggers with no one else around, and caught some very large, feisty rainbows happy to oblige me under a frigid, gray sky. I felt like I hit the jackpot, who knew you could catch fish at Thanksgiving? I also caught a very bad cold, but I thought it was worth the experience.
Keen anglers always have their feelers out — their nose to the wind, their eyes on the birds, the sky, the water. I’ve reasoned that certain conditions constitute justifiable reasons to take time off work, and fortunately, I had a manager who understood — not an angler, but a skier who knew the pull of certain weather conditions and also took days off accordingly. At such times, we often return to our favorite, special places, such as one I stumbled across on the North Fork of the Feather River, where a short footpath leads to a tiny Shangri-la. Nestled beneath a shady canopy are a small gravel beach, sitting rocks, and wild blackberries cascading into a trout-filled pool. I have spent many summer days tucked away there, catching trout, eating blackberries with my lunch, enjoying a cold beer, and counting my blessings.
Not having prior knowledge of a fishery is fun, too, because whatever happens is a surprise. After just a few casts, my one outing to Eagle Lake resulted in unexpectedly hooking a huge trout that towed my brother and me in our canoe for about twenty minutes until it changed direction and we lost it. All I had was my trusty 5-weight, and I was completely at a loss as to how to try to land this large a fish. I obviously will need bigger gear and more knowledge to return to that amazing fishery. My luck hasn’t been so great on other first attempts: Baum Lake and the Fall River come to mind.
Anticipating the opening of trout season includes what has become a special birthday tradition for me, since the year I hiked into a local summer swimming hole with my son on May 3. We took along fly rods, “ just in case.” He tried a few casts, got just a look from what appeared to be a large trout, and took a break. I drifted my trusty size 14 Poxyback Nymph through the riffle, which flowed into a drop that I reasoned was a likely lie for a bigger fish. My hunch was answered by a large, strong, brilliant rainbow. Since then, I’ve returned to that little pool on my birthday and most years have caught a large rainbow — one year, a big brown — which is about the best gift I could imagine. When I haven’t been greeted by a fish on the end of my line, I’ve soaked up the presummer stillness and beauty of the place, joined by lizards, frogs, and birds and surrounded by wildflower-adorned cliffs.
Beyond spring and summer, my anticipation ramps up to the magical season of fall, which offers its own surprises.
One late October afternoon, fishing the inlet to a lake, I kept hearing a “Ffffffttt” sound I couldn’t identify. Perplexed, I looked, listened, wondered, and then realized it was the sound of twenty-inch brown trout launching their heft completely airborne, such that you could hear their tails accelerating them upward, followed by their big belly flop splash, like killer whales. I know it sounds unlikely, but I do think that’s what it was. Actually catching these marvel lunkers on tiny dry flies was just frosting on the cake.
There are the unexpected things that happen that aren’t so magical: hooking a bat while fishing the evening hatch, falling in the water, getting the car stuck on a dirt road that shouldn’t have been attempted, twisting an ankle, forgetting the lunch, leaving gear behind, surprising rattlesnakes and mama bears, or driving off with your rod on top of the car and seeing it get run over by another car. These just add to the adventures and also help us to anticipate mishaps in the future. I no longer fish far upstream from our property since encountering the bear and her cub in a remote clearing there. The rod gets put away first thing upon returning to the car, no matter how thirsty I am. Once the bats show up, I’m done.
Perhaps the deepest sense of anticipation for me is that of leaving my critical, worrying, nagging self and arriving at who I become as a fly fisher. I feel the relief of transitioning to the me who is quite simply happy, delighted, and sometimes so content that I feel my time on earth could end and I’d consider I’d had a good run. Those “I could die moments” for me include casting to rising trout in water reflecting a sunset so brilliant I was surrounded by a psychedelic pink and orange lake and sky beneath a rising moon, with not another soul around, save a lone eagle. I reflect on the old adage that happiness is someone to love, something to do, and something to look forward to. Fly fishing and relating to nature provide us an endless supply of the last two. This spring, I’m anticipating summer adventures, with and without my dogs, to both new and familiar waters. I’m dreaming of mayflies rising high and falling above the creek on June mornings. Warming in the sun with friends, sipping wine in the company of bright yellow swallowtails, visiting tanagers, and orange tiger lilies bending over the creek. Evening canoe rides alongside ospreys, eagles, and rising trout. That feeling of waking up like a kid on their first day of summer vacation. And as always, a few surprises.
