I Get All the News I Need From Weather Forecast

It’s hardly unusual for someone to get up every morning and check the weather, much less an avid fly fisher waiting (largely in vain) for a cloudy, drizzly day.

I once wrote that I got all the daily news I needed from the weather report, and while it’s nowhere near true, it does indicate a set of priorities.

The local weather is a gimme, but I also check the weather forecast in places I’ve fished before, including Grand Lake (Maine), Townsend (TN), Ketchum, Medford and a few others.

It’s become so much a part of the routine that I don’t think twice about it.

Still, this morning I caught myself eying the 60 degree forecast for Townsend, and - knowing that the baetis hatches were running strong in the park - found myself standing behind a tree on the Little River, throwing a sidearm cast at a run filled with rising trout. (In my head anyway. No way I fly across the country without whining to my readers about it.)

I could wax about the power of the printed word and how someone else’s words can transport you to a place and time of your own experience, but it seems a little over the edge for two numbers and a “partly cloudy.” Still, every morning I check.

Between jobs, families and the general heading of “obligations,” we’re all more likely to put ourselves on a good trout stream in our heads than in reality.

All it really takes is a trigger, and the weather seems to be one of mine.

This morning Townsend’s forecast is 44/61 and partly cloudy, which puts me on the Little River, then sipping something warm and writing about it at all at the now-wireless coffeehouse frequented by the Internet-less Ian.

Ketchum’s at 13/35, which probably means icy guides, a baetis hatch on the Big Wood River, or maybe a red brassie fished in upstream in this shallow, rocky river that developers have sadly deprived of most of its woody, in-stream cover.

I can even pinpoint the run where I’d finish - the same place I landed a pair of very healthy rainbows the last time I fished there in February.

It’s the kind of idle mind game that a lot of us play, and it reminds me that I have strong recollections of fishing experiences dating back to the early 70s, but that I can’t remember most of the other crap that’s happened along the way.

(For example, most of those early trips involved riding bikes to places where we weren’t legally allowed to fish, but my mind’s forgotten the part where I’m breaking the law.)

I’m probably focused a little too much on the weather element of fly fishing. But that’s because I live near great fly fishing, yet can’t fish every day, and “decision by forecast” beats the flip of a coin.

Of course, if anyone actually uses a coin, I’d love to hear about it.

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