Comments: The day was warm and muggy, and the evening much the same, but scattered rain and shifting winds portended cooler weather. I was two miles upstream of the old absent bridge above Amherst. The winds quieted shortly after I arrived, and I started by down-and-quarter streaming a chartreuse artesian along a new 25 foot tree lodged in one of my favorite bends (should be a lunker lair before long), to no avail. There were a few small tikes rising on some minute midges, or perhaps the occasional small light Mays that I never got a good look at, but I think the calm air badly affected my throwing arm, and several cannon-ball deliveries failed to stir them to comply with my wishes. I took a stroll on up stream. The fish were glad for the quiet.
The water was not as high as I expected, given the recent heavy rains, but flow was nevertheless good. At about 2030 I saw the first Hex. lumbering away from the suface. It was like bird watching. I continued nymphing the tight little run I was on, but probably missed some strikes because I couldn't keep from scanning around, looking into the late, low angle glare of the sun, looking for more of the behemoth bugs. That's what I thought, anyway, seeing as how nothing wound up on the line.
When I saw the next two hexhogs flapping up I moved up to the flat deep water, by the big boulders, under the dark tunnel of trees. A cow in the pasture across the bog to the west was in fine basso profundo form, and I thought she might even be more excited than I. Fish were coming to now. Several sounded small, one or two made denser splashes. They were all at the very edges of the water, seemingly in the muddy fringes, which suprised me. The more tempting rises were under some light branches, and my casting was now in shape, and aided by the headroom of the truly large white pines, and the breadth of the river here, around 20 feet.
It was now that I discovered that the fly box in which my Hex. models reside was not in my vest. I think it's in the back of buddy Mac's Jeep. I laughed a bit clench-jawed, and tied on the biggest White Wulff I had. The fish above me under the brush, and below me, on the dark side of the big rock preferred the real deal. The hatch was accelerating now, big fluttering wings in my face, and the patient big fish were joining the feast. Above my head it souded like a not too distant ovation of continuous applause, as the flies enjoyed their brief frenetic gathering.
Before they started raining down I switched over to the only other choice big enough, among the flies I had with me, a red quill spinner. You'll not be surprised at this point to learn that I also found myself a quarter-mile from the headlamp that was sitting in the back of my truck. It was something of a miracle that I was able to thread the eye of the spinner, holding it up to the faded western sky to see, and I resolved to, if need be, simply watch the spectacle. I'm not used to blind casting to the soud of unseen rises, but I was liking it. Now there were rises within scant feet of me, but it was easier, and a lot more fun to throw long, and feel the tensing of the rod, and hear the whistle of the obscured line pass in the dark.
Aim was random, and irrelevant. There were flies littering the water, in a funerary float. I was lifting the line off the water with every cast, as there was a constant slurping. Then I lifted, and the sweet weight fought back. I laughed out loud, and hauled in as the fish came straight at me, looking to see what lout had interupted it's gorge. She passed me by and ran down stream until she was on the reel. A blind, healthy fight ensued, and when she conceded, I was priveleged to see a 16 inch fish I assumed was a brown. but I couldn't rightly tell you.
I didn't bother to cast again. A dozen carcasses on every square foot of water turned the surface a faint pale white, and the fish were sinking into the sated darkness. I walked out thinking about novice luck, and being an interloper on a cycle of life/death that has spun since the glaciers were in these parts. I've only ever seen two Hex. hatches. Are they all this intense?
daniel lucas dmlucas@wctc.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------------