There were spider webs in my wading boot, a cartoonish symbol of the first outing of the year.
The RG Quartzite Access on a weekday in March promised me open space and I had that little-boy anticipation feeling in my chest as I pulled in. No vehicles to make me think that anyone was on the upstream section, so I’d be alone. I strung the rod and a dry-dropper.
The “charm” of fishing may indeed be “the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope,” as Scottish author John Buchan shared over a hundred years ago. The first day of your new year is certainly that, a new perpetual series. So I watched my “firsts” of the year: first line guide missed, first missed fish, first lost fish, first netted fish AND my first rainbow and first brown. As the day rolled I received several reminders like why I use a wading staff, the complex beauty of a large eddy, and how a half mile walk eliminates any threat of a crowd. I was also reminded of something bigger – don’t forget to look up and around, the river life envelopes us as we stand in it. We become part of it when we join it, as Mirabai Starr wrote “The land and the sky, the ocean and the moon, behold us back.” I was reminded of the mental and spiritual dance I can have while fishing, blending deep thought with staring at a Chubby.
As I worked my way through a long deep riffle I spotted an unusual group of stickups upstream and eventually I made out a green plastic chair in a legs-up carcass position. Debris had anchored it and I pulled it from the water to the tip of the island and stood it there. I enjoy micro-litter pickup but this was another piece of trash too big to carry out – so after it dried, I sat to enjoy a Clif bar, watch ass-up duck foraging, and wave at rafters.
No big numbers to recount that day (netted fish, inches, or flies lost) but like any fishing outing of any length I eventually forgot all the “important” things that had kept me from fishing earlier this year. And the things that made me second-guess this outing even that morning.
— Bruce Scott, Director & Conservation Chair
