I’m recovering from Friday’s horizontal test of gravity (from a four-foot height, into 1 inch of water), and because I’m a horrific whiner when I’m hurt, rapid healing is a good thing.

I already detailed my Olympic-quality belly flop and the Wonderdog’s Assault on Burger King, and since this isn’t a big fishing report (it wasn’t a big fishing trip), I’ll simply upload a couple pictures and a few thoughts:

Wally the Wonderdog standing in my trout water

Wally the Wonderdog standing in my trout water

The Wondermistake

I bundled the Wonderdog and brought him along (it’s almost impossible to leave him home), but I shouldn’t have.

This little stream runs through some fairly Wonderdog-unfriendly terrain, and in fact, I fell while trying to find a Wonderdog-friendly route around a logjam.

Worse yet, the temperatures hovered around 90 degrees, and the all-black Wonderdog collects BTUs like the Republican Party collects presidential candidates, so more than once — having crawled up to a small pool on my hands and knees so as not to frighten the trout — I’d see Wally the Wonderdog swim right into the middle of it in an attempt to cool off.

I don’t necessarily measure the success or failure of a fishing trip in the numbers of fish caught, but I will cop to at least wanting to have a chance.

The Fly Rod

One thing I can say with some assurance; the Orvis Superfine Touch 8′ 4wt fly rod I’ve been testing is tough.

In the fall, it took almost as much of a beating as I did; I fully expected to end the day with a 5pc fly rod.

Instead, it’s still in four pieces.

Without getting all gushy and unmanly about it, I will say the Superfine Touch is a better small stream rod than I initially wanted to give it credit for.

More coming soon in the review.

The People

After I’d thoroughly mashed my left side, I was headed upcanyon, where I’d gain the road and hike back to the truck. I was bypassing the marginal water and only fishing the bigger pools — a form of pain-induced cherrypicking — when I stumbled out of the brush and into my favorite water on the whole creek.

And ran smack into a topless woman.

Well, not literally into her, but she and her boyfriend were enjoying the cold water, and basically, they were being all Euro and calm about nudity and I’m basically all Upstate New York about it, so it was an interesting few minutes trying to get Wally and their dog to stop sniffing each other and to get the hell up the creek without (dear god no) looking.

I think she was more amused than I was embarrassed (which frankly sums up a lot of my interactions with women over the years).

A small stream

Tight fly fishing, but a pretty small stream...

No fly fishing trip ever occurs without a few notable moments, but I remain astonished how much weirdness the Wonderdog and I can cram into a short, two-hour fly fishing sprint.

See you at the medicine cabinet, Tom Chandler.

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