Too nice a day to be stuck in the office, Sunny and calm with no rain and mild temperatures. There’s very few of these days left in the year. I sloughed off work and headed south.
The leaves are all off the trees and I wondered where they went. The beaver built a new dam, even incorporating some of the cedar logs tossed off the hillside into the creek by forestry crews last winter. The dam put three or four inches of water up over the gravel bar; it couldn’t have been there long, the gravel was still clean. It backed up water over a spot I like, a little hole you can see from the road but isn’t much to look at, just a small depression in an otherwise long, shallow, monotonous riffle- but it was usually good for a fish in the dead of winter.
People ask why I keep coming. I keep coming because it’s different every time.
Little fish would slash ravenously at the small terrestrial I tied on, almost batting it away instead of taking it as food. The shiner I connected with was big-headed and skinny, I wondered if it was a one-off or if months of low water was beginning to show.
The outside bend. 