Janus

 

It’s that time, to reflect on the year past, the highlights and low-lights, and to look forward to the year which is upon us.

A fair chunk of my 2009 was spent chasing sturgeon, hellbenders, catfish and carp, on the Missouri, on the Gasconade, and elsewhere, and that was a ridiculous amount of fun.  Watching 65 pound flatheads roll, or getting hit in the leg with flying asian carp, or catching a 20 inch salamander that’s a solid decade older than you.  I learned a lot.
I fished a fair bit, too, about a month and a half total.  Lots of time this spring spent on the Current River, during the big spring caddis hatches.  Wheat-colored bugs, about a size fourteen, which cluster over all the water and make even the bigger fish rise.  Several days there where I was well into the double digits.  Biggest fish was a seventeen inch brown.

The North Fork of the White River treated me well.  Late March was the first time I’d really fished it, and only the only time I’d been there previously was on a float trip in college.  I caught a fair number of smallmouth and goggle-eye in the upper stretch, then was stricken with an appendicitis and had to be rushed to the hospital in Springfield.  Good story. 

This time, though, I caught a half-dozen wild rainbows and a pair of pissed-off browns between fourteen and sixteen inches, as a blizzard of sooty-winged caddis buzzed along the stream, resting and laying masses of gelatinous green eggs on my waders.

I caught a channel catfish on a fly, the first time I’d done that.  Six pounds, out of my grandfather’s farm pond, on Easter.  On a white sex dungeon, the first time I’d used that fly, as well.

If there’s one thing I truly regret, it’s that I didn’t do enough smallmouth fishing.  I’ll have to mend that next year.  Part of it is that many of my favorite streams were trashed well into June after ice-storms and high winds had knocked down a ton of trees.  That should be remedied though, as long as our winter and spring isn’t too tough.  I did manage to make it out to the Maries in July, but only caught a scrappy ten inch spotted bass, and a handful of green sunfish and longears.

Wyoming and Montana, far and away, was the most fun I’ve ever had.  Two weeks to myself, and a week with some of my best friends and greatest fishing partners in Yellowstone National Park.  I caught my biggest fish of the season, a Yellowstone Cutthroat just a hair under 20 inches, thirty miles from anywhere in Wyoming.  For the first time in nearly a decade I fished west of the Continental Divide, and managed a native, pure-looking Westslope Cutthroat.  I caught a grayling in southwest Montana.  I caught my first fish out of Slough Creek.  I subsisted for nearly a week on a steady diet of brook trout, dark beer, and granola bars.  

I fished more wild trout water in the Ozarks than I ever have, and caught some gorgeous, if small, fish.  And I was alone, except for the otters and hawks and herons.  I went back to North Fork and caught more trout, including a brace of fifteen inch browns, and broke my lovely rod, Victoria.  I fished for stockers in lame urban creeks, and caught plenty of non-game species in a big spring branch.

But the new year also brings promise.  It’s currently eight degrees out, not to warm up until next weekend.  I’m dying to get back on the water.  There’s already a few trips planned, to the Meramec, to the Current, and back to the North Fork, perhaps with stops at some more small wild trout streams.

I want to visit Crane Creek, one of those places I should’ve fished by now but never have.  I want to try the warm-water arm of Thomas Hill Reservoir, for outsized crappie and hybrid striped bass.  I want to check out a few of the muskie lakes.  I need to build some more rods- definitely an eight weight, another five or six, and a dainty little two weight would be nice for small streams.  There’s rumblings of a trip to the salt in early March, but that’s far off on the horizon- Florida or Louisiana or Texas.  Perhaps back to the North Fork again late in that month.  And definitely more time this year on smallmouth waters, if and when I get the opportunity.  A job would be nice, regardless of how steady it is, and who knows, in a few months I may be in North Carolina, or Utah, or Oregon, or Arizona.  Plans may change.  That’s life.  It may not work out the way you thought it would, but it always works out.