Sunday, January 15, 2017

Karma, It May Catch You In The Tail.....

            Hello all and thanks for checking in at the O’Grady Fly Fishing Adventures. I have spent this week trying to figure out how I could pair the incredible National Championship game and fly fishing into a blog but today’s trip to the water had some Karma of its own. Now, I want to start by stating that this story may be a little hypocritical and I in no way claim to be the etiquette police, but I think after all I have seen over the last sixteen years on this river, I have a pretty good idea of the space needed between anglers. Yep I know there are a few that would disagree, and I’m sure I have pushed the envelope but this story kind of cracks me up.
            The story starts last November on a sunny, Sunday afternoon. I was working my way back to the car and I looked up and saw one of my favorite fall runs open. As I neared it I looked up and noticed someone power walking toward the run but was still quite a ways away. I was only a few feet away so I stepped in and started casting. The guy huffed and stepped into the river about fifteen feet up from me. I could hear the angry cast and he kept eyeballing me after every fish I caught. He walked around me and told me I was in a good spot and started casting just below me. I caught a few more and then a blog follower came up to me and introduced himself. We stood there for just a minute talking and the guy walked up to me and asked, “hey boss, are you done with that spot?” I was a little flabbergasted and just walked away. A few weeks later I had a guide trip out and I knew it was going to be a busy day. I took my clients up to Apples and found out that the Pueblo Renegades had an outing that day and three of their members were already working the weir. We stepped in above them and I got my clients going. After a short time, I noticed this guy walking toward us and I recognized him as “the boss” guy. Once again, I was blown away when he moved within ten feet of my client and within twenty feet of the Renegades. Danny showed up and all we could do was laugh and shake or heads.
            With the snow in this morning, I decided it would be a good day to go fishing. On the way to the river a good friend of mine called and asked if we could meet up. Now in order to protect the not so innocent, I will not use his name and for the rest of this blog I will refer to him as MF (my friend). We got to the water at around 10:30 and I saw that the run I wanted to fish had a couple of bait guys on one side and a fly fisher on the other. I went a couple of runs up and began fishing. After about a half an hour I noticed that the bait guys were leaving but I didn’t feel like it was Kosher to go fish it from the other side directly across from the fly fisher. Soon after that, MF showed up and I looked down and someone snuck in across from the original fly fisher. Now it was far from the worst etiquette I had seen on the river, but I felt annoyed because I knew that run was shot for the day. MF made a comment that we should go down and yell at him and we laughed it off and headed up river. We ran into Richie and Alex and Richie had just landed a beautiful seventeen incher. Richie headed back down to hook up with Alex so me and MF jumped into the weir. We caught a few small fish and then a nice one and I thought we had the weir pretty well covered. I looked up and saw the guy from down river checking out the weir we were fishing. He huffed and walked up river and after two casts he came back down, walked out on the weir and said to MF “Hey Boss, mind if I fish here”? Wow, I hadn’t heard that voice in a month now I was really annoyed, he then casted right where we were fishing. Now here is where it gets a little funny. He hooked a fish and it seemed like he was taking way too long to fight the fish and while overplaying it, his leg slipped into the river(he wasn’t wearing waders), and I felt myself giggling. I didn’t want to say anything that I would regret so I said come on MF, let’s take off. As I was crossing, I heard the guy ask MF to take his picture and I got a little louder saying “come on MF, let’s go”. Well MF snapped the pic and then made it up the bank and I asked him where the tough guy attitude went and why did he take that guys pic. MF laughed and said zoom is a great thing. He went on to say that he zoomed in on the tail of the fish where the hook was fully lodged. Was it Karma? I'm not sure but MF you are my hero and you made my day.
            As for the river conditions, we are now solidly set into January conditions. As you all know January is not my favorite time of the year, but this year we are seeing some pretty good window fishing. What I mean by that is that there seems to be window of about an hour slot in the A.M. that will fish fish well and then its slim pickens until the last hour of the day when it picks up again. My fish today were caught in the mouth on a size 22 New Moon. As always, Connell, Cat, Winston, MF, and The Drift Fly Shop want to thank you for reading….. 






                                       MF fighting a fish.


                           
                                         Richie and Alex .




1 comment:

  1. MF looks very familiar. In fact, I think he is my MF too! Great blog Boss!

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