Favorite Photo - 2024

I was on a solitary fishing trip, this fall, to one of my favorite streams when I walked into the shadow of a huge ponderosa tree and looked behind me. The bright sun was poking through the fall leaves of the trees about the point where the river bends to the left and then cascades down the mountain. As I was standing there between two steep mountain sides, I put my rod down so I could pull out a water bottle for a drink. Instead, I slipped my phone camera out of my pocket and took a photo of what was facing me. Yeah, it became my favorite photo of the year.

The fall day was calm, with a perfect 68 degree temp. A little more sun than I like, but as the day went into the afternoon it became partly cloudy with the trout being more active. After landing a few wild browns, I decided to relocate over on a tributary stream and hike a bit up the mountain and see what kind of trout action I could find. The two hours on the little stream was a bit of heaven while landing both browns and bows, using a classic rod and reel seemingly made for just for this particular day.

Yes, I was the only one on the stream and it was perfect, with a calming silence only broken by the sound of the riffles of water rushing down the mountain side. There was another sound that would break into my senses, the sudden loud splashes of water when wild trout would crash on top of my dry fly. The photo below is a good memory of a perfect day in the outdoors, and why I love fly fishing.