Spring is like Christmas, before you know it the Redbud starts to pop and you realize Trout season is here and all the chores you promised you’d do remain unfinished. It’s a horrific marathon of nailing, mowing, plumbing, and painting, supplemented by moaning and Ben Gay. All this to avoid the “lump of coal” in your stocking when you announce your pending absence and trout pilgrimage.

Like you I learn the hard way and when you’re at altitude that lean whippet shows itself false as your legs wobble and your wind starts to sputter.

I ran the Little Stinking this weekend to see what changes the floods had wrought. Fish are starting to appear, the weeds are starting to grow on the newly scoured bottom, and every mile I crunch through means additional freeboard on the float tube.

That’s the part you forget each year – and you’re reminded of mortality on Opening Day. All them rainy Sunday’s watching football took last season’s lean predator and softened him up. Add a 3000 feet of elevation and waist high current and you’ll find out how soft, them Cheetos and dip you pounded during the Superbowl come back to haunt you.

I prep with the Little Stinking’s StairMaster, a 300 yard stretch of 30″ deep water, and if you can take the entire run midstream without pausing, you’re getting close to the shape needed for your Blueline creek.

I had a pocketful of streamers from the Gunfire Lake adventure, my little 5 weight groaned in protest but I managed to get all that lead airborne.

This is the Big Bass stretch, and the clay formations in midstream offer plenty of ambush points and shadow.

4X tippet and 20 turns of 2amp fuse wire is a really poor idea, I knew it was trouble when a large shadow detached itself from the clay bank and inhaled the “Angry Sunfish” I was twitching.

Two head shakes and the tippet parts – and while I curse myself for a fool, a five pound largemouth comes clear out of the water with Angelina fibers glittering in its jaw.

Both of us had forgotten all the painful lessons of last season; he hadn’t gnawed on “fake minnows” in six months – and I’d forgotten the hinge that develops with too fine a leader and too big a hook.

The sting of failure was shortlived, and while I was snapping my fly rod into 47 pieces and chewing my protruding lower lip – I realized that was a damp dollar bill circling slowly in the eddy with my running line.

Will wonders never cease?

I didn’t argue, I slipped the good fortune into a dry pocket and resolved to bring more flies next time.

Every trip is a worthy experience, even if you learn only what not to do. Most of the lessons and hard knocks of last season are forgotten, and that calf-searing-at-altitude hike you’re remembering fondly is because you forgot the numerous stops to blow…

You got about a month to get into fighting shape, Sluggo – now drop and give me twenty!

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