Being there: an early start with just the river for company

I’d not been out for a couple of weeks. Life had got busy in the usual way. Work and the warm weather meant I’d stayed away. During those weeks I’d thought about fishing often, usually at inconvenient moments: sitting in traffic, halfway through meetings. Funny how the mind drifts toward rivers when it’s tied up elsewhere.

When I finally got the chance to head out, I arrived earlier than necessary. There’s something comforting about that first walk to the water. The world still waking up. Blackbirds making a racket in the hedges. For a short time, the day belongs to me.

Learning the value of standing still

The river itself was low and clear.

I spent the first half hour just watching.

That’s one of the things fishing teaches us, though many of us spend years trying to ignore it: sometimes the best thing you can do is stand still.

A trout rose beneath an overhanging branch on the far bank. Not confidently. More a quiet sip than a splashy take. I waited. Another rise came a few feet upstream. Then nothing for several minutes.

The temptation, of course, is always to rush. To change flies repeatedly. To force the moment.

A patient approach to a rising fish

Instead, I sat down on the bank and drank coffee from a flask that was still too hot.

Eventually I tied on a small CDC emerger more from instinct than cleverness and worked my way carefully into position. The cast landed better than expected, dropping just above the branch. The fly drifted naturally for a couple of feet before disappearing in the gentlest rise imaginable.

For a second, everything paused and I set.

Then the fish bolted downstream.

More than just the size of the trout

It was a large trout. But size rarely tells the whole story, does it? In that moment, standing knee-deep in cold water, rod bent against the current, sunlight breaking through the trees, it felt like the only fish in the world.

I stayed another two hours and caught nothing else.

And honestly, it didn’t matter.

Because sometimes the real reward isn’t measured in numbers. Sometimes it’s simply being there.