TWO DAYS BEFORE THEIR COMING TO GET ME, HAHA HEEHEE

It's fifty degrees in South Carolina, but only 42 on the big lake.  Add a slight wind and the 42 in the woods feels like only six degrees over freezing and it's cold.  The places where we fish still have some ice, but the edges are free and the morning may produce fish or at least perhaps the last glimpse of the sinking ice cover.  This is when we want to be on the water, just after ice out.  The warmer water is pushed to the surface by the falling ice creating the temperature inversion.  The forage and predatory fish follow the warmth to the surface for the first time since late fall.

The boat still lies on shore where we left her a year ago.  This is "Putt" which appears to have wintered over without harm, and a clean motor that actually starts on the third or fourth pull.  Life is good.

Often we have some of our best success is within 500 yards of the house and it is that area I intend to work. 

This morning, like most, I choose to use a tandem hook Red Grey Ghost streamer fly tied on 20 feet of six pound leader that is all but invisible under water.  I let out the full fly line, about 120 feet, as I slowly pull away from shore.  The fly is meant to represent a small fish called a smelt, which is one of the primary forage fish in Lake Winnepasaukee.

 

This particular morning I was right and was doing exactly what the fish Gods had planned.  While slowly moving past the summer house or gazebo on the point, a salmon of modest size strikes my offering.  I have tried impart the feeling of that electric second on a light fly rod when the fish hits.  That feeling of a sharply powerful pull on the line. An immediately jumping fish.  An electric impact to the nervous system is the only term which pays respect to what the salmon is doing at the end of that line.

A fish that can run fifty yards in a split second, dive 30 yards in equal time, and jump clear of the water 3 or 4 times often does not  allow the end result as seen above.  But the satisfaction of being "Mano e mano" with a wild being,  in a secluded environment, alone with your own thoughts, and uncluttered by the mundane,  is simply priceless.