Perhaps the moon was in the Seventh House and Jupiter aligned with Mars, but it was late afternoon and the folks I was guiding said they’d caught plenty of fish for one day. Gifted with an unexpected night off, I recalled a certain pool I’d discovered on the Pit River that offered reliable dry fly fishing just before dark. It was also my 50th birthday.
I kinda-sorta hoped there might be a chance to get in a little fishing around my birthday, so I’d slipped my 9-foot, 3-weight Scott G-Series into my vehicle, a rod I affectionately called “Excalibur.” It excelled at presenting tiny dry flies with almost impossible delicacy.
Thankfully, when I arrived no one else was fishing my spot. I could see another vehicle parked well below me, but as far as I could tell I had the place to myself. I took a moment to survey my surroundings.
There were small PMDs coming off of the water, and I counted 21 regularly rising fish. I lengthened my leader to 12 feet and dropped down to 6X, just in case. Then, even before I took my first cast, I detected an eerie feeling building in me like storm clouds on the horizon.
It was just too perfect, I thought to myself; my birthday, the unanticipated night off, the hatch, the rising fish. I halfway considered ditching fishing and finding a casino before my luck ran out, but I never did.
For over an hour, it seemed I could do no wrong. It was like some crazy reparation for every bad cast I’d ever made, every fish I’d put down, every time I ended up swimming the Pit River. I’d pick a rising fish, sort out where to stand, move into position without spooking anyone, and execute. I was so focused I don’t even remember donning my headlamp before losing that last little bit of light. But I was exasperated—there was one fish I simply could not get to take my fly.
All the others, 20 to be exact, came to hand in textbook fashion. How could it be that for 20 fish, I could do no wrong, but for that one fish, I could do nothing right? I targeted that trout numerous times from one angle and then another. I’d rest the fish every so often to work on one of its less-selective brethren but had to hang it up eventually for lack of light.
As I was approaching my car, someone called out, “Hey, is that Chip O’Brien?” It was a guide friend of mine I hadn’t seen in a while. When I extended my arm to shake his hand he slapped an ice-cold beer in it. What a classic evening.
To this day, I still think of that one fish I couldn’t catch, often while lying in bed in the dead of night. What could I have done differently? Could I let one selective fish ruin an otherwise perfect memory, or just accept that sometimes there just might be a touch of imperfection in perfection?
