This fat brownie couldn’t resist my streamer on a high-water day on the East Branch in 2003. That’s guide Wayne Aldridge holding the net (although any fool can see that that fish is going nowhere until I release my kung-fu anal “bota grip.” PETA advocates and other close observers will please note that this gal is smiling appropriately).

Lindie and Brian and I paid a call at Cairn’s Pool on the way home from WBA Saturday. It was crowded, but the late-afternoon sun played off the bottom very nicely in the deep spots and everything shown sparkly green (kinda like the depths of an Easter basket before you knew those marshmallow peeps caused goiter). Anyway, I flailed my joystick vigorously for a while, stolidly hewing to a gnawing insight that Real Men Prefer Dry Flies. I abused a bunch of caddis imitations, then some brown drakes floated by and I tied on one of those. It was a forlorn hope, riding high above the chilly Beaverkill, but it did provoke two rises that I failed to convert. A fellow angler 30 feet away (have you noticed how everybody at Cairn’s is 30 feet away?) was conducting a clinic using nymphs. He’d fling-drift-flick, fling-drift-flick over and over in the riffle at the head of the pool and, in the space of an hour, pulled out a half-dozen healthy ‘bows, including one that measured nineteen inches. He made it look so easy and devil-may-care. Cowden, a weak sister when it comes to piscine temptations, quickly followed the guy’s example and started catching fish. Linden, fishing closer to me, fussed about his caddis flies for a while, probably just trying to humor me. (He’s good that way.) But eventually we all capitulated. No sooner than I’d replaced my big #10 slate drake — as beautiful a Catskill schooner as you’d ever want to see! — with yet another dull bead-head pheasant-tail submarine, I got two strikes in rapid succession and squandered them both. Rotten bluidy karma!

When the urgency to take a leak ashore seemed as good an excuse as any to pack it in, I hollered farewell from the bank and headed home, officially skunked for the trip. Kinda reminds me of dating, actually.

Hmmm. Maybe there’s a story idea there somewhere. Oh, well. At least my license is good for another year.