Monday, September 3, 2012

'Hoppers on my Mind

This morning I stopped briefly by the property where my children and I often fish the ponds, and now I can't get grasshoppers and poppers out of my mind. You see, Nathaniel had gone out there earlier with a friend -- not to fish but to do some yard work for the property owner. They were running weed eaters and bush axes along the edge of the pond, and from my vantage on the hill I could see splashes of grasshoppers that were fleeing the activity and landing in the drink.

I really had to return to writing fish stories at home, but I can't seem to keep myself from daydreaming a little about what would have happened if I'd slipped the canoe in the water and worked down that bank with a popping bug or a Rebel Bighopper. I didn't have a fly rod or an ultralight handy, and that probably is just as well. The curiosity might have gotten the best of me. And if I think it's hard for me to sit here at the computer wondering what the fish would have done, I can't imagine how hard it would have been for Nathaniel to have kept swinging that bush axe if I had been 30 feet in front of him catching the fish he was stirring up through his toils!

Maybe if the rain doesn't settle in to thick this afternoon...

No comments:

Post a Comment