SILVER CREEK DIARY
When three people in a 24 hour period, one of them someone you're paying $90 dollars an hour to for such sage advice, tell you you are burnt out, exhausted, and need to take a week off and go fishing, you tend not to fight it too hard.
So, on wednesday, 9/19, alone, with my trusty VDub van fully gassed, oiled, filled with rods and float tubes, and enough caffeine and nicotine in the form of Pepsi, coffee, and cigars to last the 10 hour drive, I point it's nose east and whisper the magic words into its steering wheel, "Silver Creek, GO!". Nothing
like a week of easy, relaxing, classic spring creek fishing over stupid trout to recharge the ole batteries. Ha!
Day 1 - Before heading down to the Conservancy water, I make the obligatory stop at Silver Creek Outfitters to get the local up-to-date scoop, get a license, and buy some of the current hot flies. The word is a little brown something hatching around 10:00 AM, maybe some Tricos, a red quill hatch, and maybe some Callebaetis spinners. I spend over forty dollars on the "right" flies, size 22, beautiful little duckwing no-hackle duns. On the basis of eight years experience I can say this shop has the most perfectly tied flies I have ever seen. Unfortunately, they are often necessary. The salesman also tries to sell me some of another type of dun, some sub-subspecies of the one I already had a dozen of. I can't see any difference with a magnifying glass. Throwing caution to the wind, I decline, hoping the fish really can't see any better than I. Now that I'm 45, that may no longer be quite the assumption it used to be.
After signing in at the Conservancy building, I decide to try the upper wading water I have never fished before. The threeother fishermen who are also starting out are heading that way, so I hope they know something I don't.
Descending the hill on the well worn trail, I step in at the first turnout. A number of fish are rising in front of me, but most of them are obviously dinks. Just to prove it, I snap off the fly on the first rise on the first cast, and have to re-tie the whole leader again. By that time, the hatch is on and fishare rising everywhere. Shoals of them. All seemingly about 7 inches long. After catching a few to convince myself I'm not misreading the riseforms, I begin wading down the middle of the creek, trying to spot bigger fish. I finally spy an obvious head nodding regularly in a shadow along the bank, and work him until I get him,
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