Last week, Friday was gorgeous outside. Relatively speaking at least. The temperature peaked in the high 40*s during the day. Like most, I'm sure, I got the itch. I sat at work and day dreamed about the woods. About hiking. About fishing.
On Friday, I spent more time daydreaming than I did working. I kept checking the weather forecast for the weekend. Each time I checked it, the worse and worse the forecast started to looked. By the end of the day Friday, it was supposed to rain overnight and drop back down to the mid 30*s on Saturday and eventually snow.
I didn't care. I needed out of the house. I needed to blow some stink off.
It ended up raining on and off Friday night - just enough to bring the streams up a hair. It was chilly out though - low 30*s and raining/snowing/sleeting/misting when we woke up.
Ohwell. I wanted to fish. I NEEDED to fish.
Fast forward a few hours. The truck was packed. A plan was made. We set off for the Laurel Highlands to get an afternoon of hiking and fishing in. The day was over cast and chilly. As we climbed up to Laurel Summit, things got interesting.
By the time we reached the summit, you couldn't see more than a dozen yards or so in any direction.
Anyways, I had been eyeballing a small stream in Forbes State Forest for a while now that I wanted to fish. We reached the stream, it was barely a trickle even with the rain the night before.
In comes the back-up plan.
I've learned to always have a back up plan. No matter how much research you do or how much you stare at that topo map, you never know what you're really going to get into until you reach the stream. There's nothing more disappointing that reaching a stream and it not being what you had hoped it was then not having any idea what to do to save the trip.
I've learned this the hard way a few times. Spending a week planning out the perfect trip only to have it backfire. It sucks and you feel defeated. There's no other way to describe it.
Fortunately, I had a back up plan. Luckily, not more than 5 miles away, there is another stream that I had fished this summer a few times with success.
I'm not one to spot burn but this stream is far from a secret.
We parked the truck, geared up, then made the mile hike to the stream.
The flow was nice and water was gin clear. The water was ice cold though. My stream thermometer never broke 40*s.
I hiked about a 1/4 mile with out a single sign of any life in the
stream. All the spots I knew that held fish were lifeless on this cold
January day.
Eventually, I came across this little dude.
I hiked another quarter mile or so upstream with no luck. I'm not sure if it was the cold water or the fact that the air temperature had dropped 20* in less than 24 hours or a combination of both, but the fishing was slow.
Que the back up plan. Again.
Like most fishermen, I like to fish my way upstream. I had been doing this for the past hour or so no with no luck. This summer, I missed a few nice size brookies down stream of where I was currently fishing. I figured, "What the hell" and turned around to see if I could find these fish.
About this time, the snow started to fly.
As
soon as the snow started to fall, the fish seems to magically wake up. Its like a light switch was flipped. I managed to catch a few nice size brookies in the places I had missed
them this summer.
By the time we were done fishing, it had snowed a good inch or so and it wasn't showing any signs of stopping.
4:30 rolled around and we started the hike back up to the truck.
Fly fishing is no different than life. We all set goals. We all have expectations. We all sweat the little details. No matter how hard we think about it or how much time we spend trying to make it perfect, things sometimes just don't work out. Be it a job, a friendship, a fishing location, or whatever, things sometimes don't go as planned.
This is where it pays to have a back-up plan.
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