Shakespeare and I Gone Fish’n
3/22/2021
Bait the hook well, the fish will bite
-Much Ado About Nothing
Shakespeare and I went into the Allegheny National Forest in search of trout. It took some time but we came across buckets of trout holding steady in a deeper stretch of water. They were all looking upstream as if they were ready to run a marathon waiting for the sound of the starting pistol. It was like finding pots of gold at the end of a rainbow. Only thing was we can play with them as long as we wanted but couldn’t take any home and had to release them. (No Leprechauns were to be found.)
It wasn’t as quick and easy catching them as one would expect. It wasn’t like fishing with a magnet in a kids carnival fish pond. Let’s face it gold isn’t attracted to a magnet and if the fish aren’t hungry they just won’t bite. It is in years of fishing for rainbows and experimenting that I found fresh rainbows like the color red. My first choice than was to tease them with a San Juan Worm. It took a little more coaxing getting flexible Shakespeare to hook the fooled fish but with quickness and a little more effort we were doing well with the San Juan.
There was another fellow who had found the buckets of fish also and was catching a few across crick from me. When he left I waded over to where he stood. I had much more room and definitely a better drift. Also there were trout up ahead of me that I couldn’t reach on the side of the crick I first started on. Once the fish no longer wanted the San Juan I switched over to a Black stonefly and Picket Pin. Besides catching rainbows I started to catch brown trout also.
I stayed in the same spot and caught trout after trout. It was if I was a food cart vendor in the middle of the town square feeding hungry tourist. Some might think how much of a challenge or fun could it be catching these stocked trout? My thought was why search down stream to catch the same stocked trout when they were right in front of me? Let’s face it, I still had to present a buggy looking treat with a good presentation to get one to sample.
After they decided to quit accepting my offering I decided to just switch over to a common tied Gold Ribbed Hare’s Ear for the last half hour. Well, there were still some trout left, without sore lips, that wanted to sample my latest offering.
The time spent had to end sometime and we had plenty of fun for a few hours smoking cigars, catching fish and enjoyed being out on this beautiful Monday.
Back at the truck I changed out of my fishing clothes and picked a fatty cigar out of my traveling humidor. I lit the stogie with my Romeo y Julieta lighter and enjoyed my drive home.
It was another good day in the ANF this time with my friend Shakespeare.
While others fish with craft for great opinion,
I, with great truth, catch meer simplicity.~Troilus and Cressida
~doubletaper
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