Photo by Sam Larson
When I pull into a parking spot, when I finally see the stretch of river that speaks to me, I tend to lose my calm. The tailgate opens, my gear tumbles out, and I’m lost in trying to do three things at once, to get my waders on, pack my gear, and string my rod.
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Photo by Sam Larson
The first conversations before rigging up are a spell, something to conjure up a best-case scenario. We want dry fly fishing. We’d accept swinging wets. We’ll nymph if that’s what the day offers, but we won’t go home and brag about it.
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Photo by Sam Larson
I’ve decided that this is the year I finally crack the whole carp thing. I’ve done the reading, I’ve looked at the maps, and I am ready to go all in. At least until runoff is over and all of the trout water opens up. But until then, it’s carp for me.
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Photo by Sam Larson
Above me, in stair-stepping pools of tea-colored water the river continues climbing towards the Continental Divide, a minor riverine extravagance below the greater extravagances of the mountains that chivvy and shove the shoreline back and forth between their feet.
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Photo by Sam Larson
My summers are littered with the trips that I don’t take, all the adventures that never came off or made it out of the planning stages.
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Photo by Sam Larson
Things even out over time. When you lose something in a river (barring a fly rod, of course. You’re going in after the fly rod.) it’s simply left your hands to wind up in another’s.
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Photo by Sam Larson
The rainbow trout wouldn’t start swimming again.
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That last sip of gas station coffee goes down smooth. It’s almost entirely hazelnut flavored creamer at this point, and little more than lukewarm, but I am loving it.
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Fishing along the Boulder Creek Path
Photo by Sam Larson
There’s no real gray area about fishing in town. You tend to either love it (well, maybe be ok with it. Love is a strong term), or you hate it. It’s a difficult position to find yourself in, knowing that you may have great fishing in town but that the surroundings definitely won’t be the pristine river environment that you prefer on the weekends.
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Photo by Jeff Stutsman
The honest truth about this fly is that I stole the pattern from Jeff, who either invented it or modified it, I can’t remember. I contributed almost nothing to the development of this pattern, except for the name, the erroneous pedigree, and the verbal abuse I offered up to Jeff whenever he was catching fish on it and I wasn’t.
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Photo by Jeff Stutsman
When I picked up a Western rod again I told myself that I’d be willing to settle for bare competence.
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Photo by Sam Larson
By the time I return to the cabin I am dead tired. It’s all I can do to get my boots and waders off, gulp down some food, and then collapse into the bed, a mess of sweat, mosquito bites, and sunscreen. I caught fish despite myself, and a full day’s worth of jumping brookies fills my head, individual fish blurring into a long montage of strikes and releases.
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You’d found an unconvincing, fifteen-year-old report that there were golden trout in the lake, so after dinner, you hike down to the shoreline where you see intermittent rises blinking like radar pings.
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“Just wait,” another angler called without looking away from their indicator. “In another two hours there’ll be forty-five, maybe fifty people standing here.” And so it goes on Joe Wright Reservoir, where the inlet is off-limits until July 1st, and the grayling spawn draws crowds of anglers eager to stand shoulder-to-shoulder while a veritable herd of fish stampedes upstream, deep in the throes of piscine lust.
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It’s the kind of place where, if you start early enough—bringing well-bagged peanut butter sandwiches and full water bottles—you won’t have to leave the water until it’s almost too dark to find the cabin again. On days like this, a small group of anglers can catch so many trout between them that good-natured competition quickly gives way to gleeful confusion.
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The waterfalls on the Big South fork of the Poudre River
Photo by Sam Larson
I’ve just fallen into the river. Perched one-footed on top of a slick rock and trying to cast into the deep part of the pool was too much for my boot’s aging tread. I’ve just splashed, magnificently, inelegantly, completely, into neck deep water. A quick, gasping lunge towards the bank and I toss my rod into the willows, rip open my chest pack, and throw my phone onto the grass.
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