City Dad
12-24-2007, 03:56 PM
If there is one thing that I've learned from history, it's that I fail to learn from history. Today was a good example. Earlier in the week a trout fishing buddy of mine who, due to certain domestic realities, hasn't been able to get out much at all this year, called me up with news that he had a rare few hours of free time coming up on Christmas Eve. His idea was that we check out a stream we hadn't been on in a year to see how it has fared in the drought. Now, if I had taken any lessons from the past I would have simply said "what time" but since I am a thick-skulled, moron I replied "Hmm, I'll bet that water is still really low. Ya know, I had a great day down at Zuma last week..." Dumb.
For the newbies here; If you want to ensure a bad outing with another angler, go on and on about how good the fishing was at any given spot last week/month/year. Nothing has proven more true over the years and yet I forget this simple fact everytime I open my mouth. I sincerly thought I'd be doing my friend a favor by steering him away from fishing his favorite creek today, urging him instead to join me in flailing the frothing kelpshake that was the Pacific Ocean at Zuma beach this morning. Dumb.
Now, it was a beautiful morning, a full moon and rising sun bracketing the silver horizon... but the waves were not small... they were, in fact, much bigger than last week and in their faces could be seen dense clouds of shredded vegetation. It wasn't until then that somewhere in seldom accessed regions of my steamed-pudding mind a dim bulb flckered on for a moment. "Danm," I murmurred sheepishly "it was really good here last week."
We tied on tandem flies - one green, one rust - and did our best to cast while dodging waves and an alarming armada of drifting logs, two-by-fours and chunks of nail-studded ply-wood. This proved to be an excellent method of harvesting a salad from the sea. I discovered sepecies of aquatic plant life I never knew existed.
In the end I managed five jr. perchlets on a fly tied to immitate a MORF grub. My partner, a hardworking, devoted father deserving of a nice day off got the stripe - my Christmas gift to him.
I saw one corbina and half a dozen shovel nose. The corbina rocketed away as surprised at seeing me as I was seeing it. The shovel nose seemed more interested in rooting the bottom than in the strandge, wader-wearing animal above them and I was able to make a few casts to those fish and even got my fly in front of a couple. My offerings were ignored. Do they ever take artificials of any kind?
Anyhow, it was nice to get out... just not as nice as last week. Gotta remeber that on New Years day.
For the newbies here; If you want to ensure a bad outing with another angler, go on and on about how good the fishing was at any given spot last week/month/year. Nothing has proven more true over the years and yet I forget this simple fact everytime I open my mouth. I sincerly thought I'd be doing my friend a favor by steering him away from fishing his favorite creek today, urging him instead to join me in flailing the frothing kelpshake that was the Pacific Ocean at Zuma beach this morning. Dumb.
Now, it was a beautiful morning, a full moon and rising sun bracketing the silver horizon... but the waves were not small... they were, in fact, much bigger than last week and in their faces could be seen dense clouds of shredded vegetation. It wasn't until then that somewhere in seldom accessed regions of my steamed-pudding mind a dim bulb flckered on for a moment. "Danm," I murmurred sheepishly "it was really good here last week."
We tied on tandem flies - one green, one rust - and did our best to cast while dodging waves and an alarming armada of drifting logs, two-by-fours and chunks of nail-studded ply-wood. This proved to be an excellent method of harvesting a salad from the sea. I discovered sepecies of aquatic plant life I never knew existed.
In the end I managed five jr. perchlets on a fly tied to immitate a MORF grub. My partner, a hardworking, devoted father deserving of a nice day off got the stripe - my Christmas gift to him.
I saw one corbina and half a dozen shovel nose. The corbina rocketed away as surprised at seeing me as I was seeing it. The shovel nose seemed more interested in rooting the bottom than in the strandge, wader-wearing animal above them and I was able to make a few casts to those fish and even got my fly in front of a couple. My offerings were ignored. Do they ever take artificials of any kind?
Anyhow, it was nice to get out... just not as nice as last week. Gotta remeber that on New Years day.