The last day of any fishing trip usually has a quiet desperation to it. An expiration date tends to put things into focus. Sometimes the fish can smell that despera-tion on you as easily as the morning biscuit musk you left all over your first fly of the day. I think the fish can also smell when you’ve beaten them up for three days straight and, like a true Arkansas hog, you’re back at the trough for more. That’s the only way to explain my sudden and persistent case of the yips. Three days of being on my game has left my hook set complacent. As we float yet another stretch of prime water, I make yet another cast at yet another juicy bank shaded by head-high branches. The take is one of those that only result when a fly is placed by chance directly on the nose of a brown trout on station—the fish hits it in pure reac-tion as soon as it lays down on the water. Yesterday I would’ve stuck him. Today I come up with air. “Fish of the trip,” hurls into my back from someone in the boat. “Yeah, I know,” is the only thing I can say, the size of that white maw now burned into my consciousness. Any other trip, on any other river, my reaction may have very well been a blind burning rage followed by days of deep, dark, soul-crushing depression. But at this moment, devoid of malice and self-hatred, I realize the underlying beauty of the Ozarks, its rivers and the folks who ply them. The whole communal trout scene brimming with hospitality can be explained by the pure Buddhist understanding of nirvana—knowing that the White River is your fishery. This world-class, wild brown trout factory normalizes wild brown trout expectations that otherwise live in the deepest, dark-est fish dreams we only admit to ourselves when the lights are out and the rest of the family is in bed. If you live and play in trout heaven, it’s easy to tolerate life’s minor inconveniences and foibles. A thought comes, too ridiculous to say out loud in anyone else’s presence. I hear someone else impersonating me, “We’ll get the next one, and hell I’m good even if we don’t.” Then I realize I’m the one saying it. LEFT This brown politely sipped a hopper fly in spite of the very impolite cast that delivered it. Photo: Dave Fason THE FLYFISH JOURNAL 049
The Flyfish Journal The Flyfish Journal 13.4: Page 49
