The transformation from the previous morning as astounding. The water was a clear, tranquil trickle flowing well below the high water marks, exposing gravel bars on both sides of the river. My fishing site of the previous morning was three feet out of water. I could have, if healthy, thought of wading across the river but the possibility of being caught on the far side when the water started coming up was sobering. Jesse was downstream from me, rod bent into a fish. I fished around a riffle and behind some boulders but caught nothing. Jesse's rod was arced into a fish every time I looked up. Finally I moved down to his position to see what he was using. He was standing on a gravel bar where the current from two flows came together from a 45 degree split, forming a deep channel beneath the standing wave of the joining point. "Let your fly sweep right where the two current come together," he said. "I've already caught 12 fish just standing here". He stepped out of the slot to unhook the latest fish. I cast out and let the fly swing around. Given the currents and the downstream presentation, there was really nothing to do either right or wrong; the fly was inevitably going to the joining point. Immediately a fish struck and was on. I stepped slowly off the point as I played my fish, and Jesse cast in underneath me and hooked up again for a double. I was into a fish again before Jesse landed his, and he before I landed mine, and so it went for more than an hour as we both giggled like kids at the craziness of it. We stopped counting at 42 fish, by which time we were both getting tired of the repetitousness of the cast, the short dragging wait, and the constancy of the size of the fish. But it felt good this early in the year, before even the general opening, to have sated up on fish. By then it was nearly noon, and signs of life stirred reluctantly back at the camp. As I slowly climbed the bank, I realized something had changed. For the first time in three weeks I felt no weaker than I had the day before. Just exactly the same as the day before. Reaching the top of the bank, I looked back at the hole to see if I could see any fish, and realized the gravel bar was under water again. The river was rising, and within 15 minutes the set up of bar and colliding currents was simply a single, downstream run. That afternon as we drove home I felt good for reasons I hardly dared to trust, so I settled on it being that sense of having hit the best of the river for a short moment, one of those crazy concentrated moments of abundace.
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