I felt very rusty. I was missing even simple casts, and truly recognized I wasn't tuned in when I snagged my back-cast on the very same branch for 3 (nearly consecutive) casts.
Luckily the water levels were perfect. Fish were holding mostly in the deeper runs, nearly always on the foam line. The surface was nicely roiled, so that it was actually tough to spook them. I caught two nice fish on the first run, the first on an early dark stone fly.
Surprisingly, today was about memories of fishing as much as fishing. I've fished this stream so many times that I know virtually every pocket. But unusually, the stream evoked more complex memories: not simply of the structure, but memories of fishing them.
Today I remembered the first fish I caught on this stream, when I recognized the undercut bank where they'd been holding. It was an early summer day, hot, perhaps a dozen years ago. I'd fished the steam a couple of times earlier, but had been skunked. That day, I remember being pleasantly surprised when two nice wild brownies took my tan elk hair caddis, skated past the bank. It seemed so simple after the repeated frustrations of my previous outings. And from that point forward, I've usually alway caught fish there.
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