Knuckleballs.......

  When I was a kid I remember almost every night going to my backyard and playing catch with either the football or the baseball until my dad’s shoulder would get sore. When it was the baseball he would start with the lob then pick up the speed and then move to the curve and the knuckle ball, oh he loved to throw the knuckler and laugh.  There were a few professional knuckleballers in those days but with low def tv, I never really could figure out what the big deal was about the knuckleball.  The pitch really seemed to disappear from pro baseball but in 1995 Tim Wakefield brought the knuckler back to the big leagues. TV was much better in the nineties and you could watch the seams of the ball float in and then the ball would dart one way or another. The pitches were only coming in at around seventy miles per hour and with the high def cameras you could watch the batters eyes bulge up and they would swing with a mighty rip. It was hard to believe but the batters that normally could hit a fast ball 450 feet would spin out and sometime even fall down they were so out of balance. It all made sense, a well thrown knuckleball made a professional batter look a little like someone trying to catch a bumblebee with chopsticks. Now every now and then the ball would begin to rotate and it would be the pitchers eyes that bulged, the hitter would grin, tee off and hit the ball into the next county. It sure was an interesting game when Wakefield was on the mound.

  I fished with an old friend today and the river felt a little like it was throwing knuckleballs at us all day long. The higher flows made wading extremely difficult, the wind made mending at times nearly impossible and the clouds made spotting fish very difficult. With that being said, there were moments when the ball began to rotate just enough and we were licking our chops. I don’t remember the last time I didn’t get a single fish to the net in a day but I’m sure my great friends and family will remind me of this day for a while. I think I hooked six fish today and had several quality battles but in the end I probably looked like those baffled power hitters that would corkscrew themselves into the ground. My friend Mitch got one good fish to the net that looked like it was around 18inches or so and he was bettered by several more as well.

  When we first got to the river today the title that went through my head for this evening’s blog was “ Going, Going…Gone”, but after spending the day on the river I really felt like knuckleballs was much more appropriate. Fishing is anything but easy but can definitely be done. I was as stubborn as those power hitters facing Wakefield and so I really didn’t adjust very much today. With the fish moving closer to the banks it would have been a great day to move back to the dry dropper techniques. Throwing the indicators over the heads of the fish I could see was putting the fish down, but I didn’t care, I wanted the homer. Also it’s a great time to watch the back eddies and the side channels for the solo fish. And with the higher flows, think of all the big stuff that is getting flushed into the river, maybe it’s even time to put on a( oh I can’t say it) a S** J*** W***. There you should be able to figure that out without me actually writing it. If you are really fiending to get on the river, look for wide flat water and you will probably run into a bunch of smaller fish drilling the surface. I ran into Eddie this afternoon and he sheepishly told me he landed a few of those small ones today and remember a single is way better than a few of the K’s I took today.

    Another option now for your fishing cravings can be to start looking at the nearby lakes. San Isabel has been open for a while, and Wahatoya, North, Spinney and Antero are not too far away. If you do get out on the river PLEASE, PLEASE be very careful wading, the water is powerful!!! As always, Connell, Cat, Winston, Phil Niekro, and The Drift Fly Shop want to thank you for reading……..

The One and Only....