Too Damn Hot

Rich and I went up to Rainy Mountain early yesterday morning for some fly fishing time on a trout stream. The temperatures are cool in the mornings and we thought it would be nice to walk a trail and throw a line into the water during the five mile trek. And, it was. However, the fishing was slow and the trout just weren't interested in feeding...not with my fake morsels, anyway. I caught one trout. A beauty that was something over ten inches. As the day stretched into the noon hour, it was getting too damn hot to be stressing trout. So, we stopped fishing as we should for the sake and health of the trout. Yup, best to leave them alone when the sun is blaring down on the stream and the water is too hot to stress them with a tight line.

We got to the truck and broke down the gear and was eating a snack when I mentioned to Rich, "it would be nice to sit in a cool spot and have a cold beer, don't you think?" His reply was just what I expected, so we went down the mountain to the only restaurant on Rainy Mountain and had a cold one. Yeah, the beer was good and the 'people watching' even better. The place was full with people who had the same idea as us...mostly senior tourists it seemed to me, with a few locals having lunch, in a place holding a monopoly for casual dining. Well, for any kind of dining, actually.

It turns out, if we had skipped our stop at the restaurant, we could have saved ourselves about two hours of idling. On the drive home we found ourselves sitting dead still on the highway behind a couple of miles of other parked cars, just before we entered the city limits. Yeah, a car wreck. A bad one. And, we sat there for almost two hours before they allowed us to creep through the carnage of metal and plastic pieces of two vehicles...a big 'downer' to a good morning in the outdoors. Life. It can end unexpectedly for any of us. And, these events remind us of just that. A reminder. Enjoy the moment of each day. Smile. Be nice to others.

Gear: Winston WT 7' 2wt fly rod; Ross Colorado fly reel; Winston Energy fly line; Brodin landing net; Simms sling pack.