It always nice when business and fishing plans cooperate. Before this last bout of heavy rains, I had a meeting awfully close to a favorite small stream. By early afternoon I was doing my best Clark Kent transformation in a Panera Bread parking lot, shedding a shirt and tie for waders and a 3-weight fly rod.
There were small blue-winged olives coming off the water when I arrived. The dry-dropper setup already rigged from my last small stream trip was all I needed. A little pheasant tail nymph fished under a Stimulator drew strikes at nearly every pool I knelt beside. It was great connecting to some beautiful trout, taking in the fresh air, and seeing signs of spring emerging all over the place.
A great outing was almost completely erased by my clumsiness, however. Later that night my father called and said that someone had found my camera bag. WTF, my camera bag is missing??? In my haste to get home for dinner, I must have left the waterproof bag, along with its contents of a DSLR and GoPro, back at the parking spot. Thankfully my fishing license was inside and a passerby with a good heart had found it. He looked up my last name in the white pages and dialed my parents house, leaving his name and phone number. We connected the following day and I picked up the bag on his front porch, leaving a thank you note and some hand-tied trout flies in its place.
If you are reading this Pat, thank you! I am a lucky man and will be paying it forward and then some.
A great outing was almost completely erased by my clumsiness, however. Later that night my father called and said that someone had found my camera bag. WTF, my camera bag is missing??? In my haste to get home for dinner, I must have left the waterproof bag, along with its contents of a DSLR and GoPro, back at the parking spot. Thankfully my fishing license was inside and a passerby with a good heart had found it. He looked up my last name in the white pages and dialed my parents house, leaving his name and phone number. We connected the following day and I picked up the bag on his front porch, leaving a thank you note and some hand-tied trout flies in its place.
If you are reading this Pat, thank you! I am a lucky man and will be paying it forward and then some.
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