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Of all the things I love about fly fishing, one is the timely reminders you get about your true place in the universe. We like to think of ourselves as masters of our domain, so it can be a reality check to get outsmarted from time to time by a creature with no powers of reasoning and a brain the size of a pea. Such was the case last week with my journey to the Conejos. My fragile ego can only take so much of a battering, so I decided to head somewhere where I felt the odds might be a little more in my favor.
Small stream fishing is a lot of fun. The narrow confines of the stream bed, often with overhanging vegetation and debris, can make for some tight, technical casting. The fish avail themselves of any piece of water offering shelter from current and predator. They dart out, hitting their prey with remarkable speed, and scurry back to their lair often in the blink of an eye. It is easy to gain a tremendous respect for these little guys, particularly their ability to survive and thrive in such a harsh environment. Winters are longer at this altitude, spring run off reduces the amount of habitable river dramatically, and the summer growing season is short.
This combination of factors definitely increases the fishing fun factor. The fish generally find it hard to resist a well drifted fly, as they need to get as many square meals into a day as they can. Given the increased chance of tangling a fly or line on undergrowth, overgrowth and snags, I’ll usually fish a single dry fly – which is how they fish in heaven anyway, so I figure it’s good practice ;-) .
Fly fishing in New Zealand, where I was born and raised, it is too easy to get fixated on the size of the fish you catch. Sometimes you will get an eighteen inch fish on your line and get annoyed because you were trying to hook the big one next to it. Accordingly, if you are not careful, the success of your day can be measured against how big the fish was you caught. While many women may well smirk at this male obsession with size, there is nothing like a small stream to teach you that it is not the size of the fish that defines your manhood, but how much fun you have catching it that really sets the men apart from the boys.
And so a fun couple of hours was had. Honor was restored. For each fish I landed, at least a couple were too fast and wary for me. While the Arkansas River is too high yet to fish effectively, I’m pretty sure I’ll be heading to a couple more small, high mountain streams in the near future, there to remind myself that it is not the size or number of the catch that matters, but the privilege of being there in the first place.
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