If it’s Monday…

Fishing plans with my friend Steve fell through again this week. He’s helping his mother move out of her house and it is cutting into valuable fishing time. He left me a text message, encouraging me to go over to the money hole and give him a report, and I accommodated. I wasn’t crazy about going alone. In fact, I had this mild sense of foreboding. I’d be up there alone, and, well, things can happen.

The picture is from the new hole, the one I wrote about two weeks ago. I hit it before going to our favorite spot. The sun was hot today and the plan was to fish in the shade for a few hours, and when the sun started to touch the top of the mountains, I’d move to the money hole, for it would then be shaded.

While the new hole looks promising, the jury is still out. Steve came up the day after we had been before, and while he saw a couple fish, they were not biting. I saw a lot of smolt (little fish), and caught a couple small trout, yet the big ones evaded me.

On a scale of one to ten, a day spent fishing without catching anything is at worst a six. Yet, there are things that can happen to bring that number down, like getting your rigging caught up in a tree branch out of reach. That will knock it down a bit. And when your new rig gets hung up underwater on a big rock and won’t come loose, that’ll bring it down to a five. And when in the process of trying to unsnag said rig, you hold the $150 fishing rod that your Dear Wife gave you for your birthday in such a manner that when sufficient pressure is put upon the base of the rod it snaps, the day is no more than a three for sure.

Oddly enough, I did not get upset. I just took a couple more pictures, gathered up my gear and headed back over the mountain toward home. And when I could again get phone service, I left a message for Steve. I didn’t tell him that I think the new hole is haunted.