If you’re not excited the first time you fish a stream, then consider checking yourself into the hospital for a brain scan.

Not knowing what’s around the next corner is a gift enjoyed only once on a stretch of water, and every yard of it should be savored.

After all, the next time you fish it, you’ll know it (well, at least you’ll remember the bits where you caught fish).

fly fishing a small stream

This day, I hauled out a rarely fished toy - a 7' 3wt Diamondglass. Big fun...

That the “new” stream in question is less than an hour from your house – a place you saw and wondered about, but never explored – is a bonus.

A big bonus.

New Stream, Same H2O

Of course, water obeys the same laws no matter where you go, so while the stream may be new to you, its stream hydraulics are pretty much hardwired into your brain.

Apparently the trout are hardwired too, because they eat the same Beetle Bug fly all the other small stream trout eat.

Rainbow trout

Big fish of the day (except for the really big fish of the day - see Wonderdog story below)

At times, the prehistoric beauty of the tiny canyon threatens to root you to the spot for fifteen minutes at a time.

Yet that sense of wonder is quickly replaced by the fly fisherman’s predatory response: there’s a seam, there’s a bucket, the trout will be here and there and there…

You get the picture.

Small Stream fly fishing

One of the least-fishable - put plenty photogenic - stretches.

I caught trout from almost every pool – the biggest maybe breaking the ten-inch mark – and found myself in a reasonable facsimile of heaven: gorgeous little stream, gorgeous little trout, gorgeous little (rugged) canyon.

With one tiny wrinkle.

Wally the Wonderdog – mostly recovered from his Brush With Death (it was nothing a quick $1K couldn’t fix) – tended to charge into the pools (cooling off and looking for trout) before I had a chance to fish them, which put a damper on the bite.

In one choice pool – which shaded to a deep, mysterious, emerald green in the middle – I got him to stand on a rock while I made a cast.

When a small stream shades to a dark, emerald green (a sign of depth), you never know what you're going to find...

Just as I lifted the Beetle Bug off the water, a fish swirled at it – a fish that moved an impressive of water.

The 12″ trout I’d been looking for?

I false cast three times off to the side, setting up mentally for what was sure to be the Big Fish Cast of The Day, and Wally the Wonderdog – ever alert for a chance to remind me his head is mostly bone – leapt off the rock and on top of the long-gone swirl.

The Wonderdog is capable of many things, but a clean, Olympic-style entry into the water isn’t one of them.

When 80 pounds of bone and gristle smack the surface, a lot of things happen, none of which are good for the fly fishing.

OK. I lost this one, but I know where that big fish lives.

And I’ll be back.

Wally the Wonderdog, post-dive

Wally the Wonderdog anxiously scanning for rising fish to chase

Upcanyon Calling

It had been a tough, largely sleepless week for both the Wonderdog and his owner, and while I would never publicly admit to weakness, it is possible we both hit the wall after a couple hours of climbing up and down boulders in the 90-degree heat.

So when we reached an impassable, rocky stretch that required more climbing than the Wonderdog clearly had left in him, we simply headed back to the truck.

I usually open the doors and give the interior of the truck a few minutes to cool down, and while I stood around and fed the Wonderdog hot-to-the-touch dog treats, I realized this was only the first step of the adventure.

An unfished (by me) half-mile of stream stretched out below me, and dog only knows how much fishable stream I’d find upcanyon.

In other words, I know where I’m going the next time I get an afternoon free.

See you on something new, Tom Chandler.

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