Fly Fishing As a Leisure Activity
Let me describe what I see (at least in my imagination) while I’m spending my leisure time. The sky glows with the light, painting the desert landscape with brilliant colors and stark contrast. This sky frames the experience of fishing on a river in the northern part of the state of New Mexico Fly Fishing. The river flows beneath this sky, winding through red and beige sandstone cliffs. Willow, sage, and rabbit brush fill its valley. Mule deer drink its water. Ducks and geese, gulls and sandpipers feed in its current and along its banks. This light, this sky these cliffs, and this wildlife brought Georgia O’Keeffe to this area to paint and inspired D.H. Lawrence to write. And although some insist that anglers com here for the incredibly big trout, it wouldn’t be difficult to make a case for the lure that is the rivers setting. Great trout streams are frequently wrapped in grandeur.
I’ve fished this river a lot and this day is no different than many others with one exception. Although it is November, it is a pleasantly warm on the river. We have been blessed with a long Indian Summer and the dry fly-fishing remains superb even as the days grow noticeably shorter. The hatches of summer are gone, as are the grasshoppers, but the midges come off every morning and evening, and around midday the lovely Baetis mayflies of autumn emerge from their nymphal shucks and float like so many tiny sloops, swept along by the complex currents.
This day and the first cast are no different than usual. The cast goes into the broken water of the riffle, the fly drifts above the place where a shiny snout has sipped a mayfly just second before. The fish rises, and takes the fly, feeling its bite runs off downstream. As my line runs from my spool and the backing appears, I apply pressure to the exposed rim of the spool to slow the fish down, only to feel the fly come free as the hook straightens from the strain.
There I stand, a good fish gone with only myself to blame; however I am now a part of the river, adrenaline pumping, expectation filling every cell of my body, attuned to my surroundings, alive and ready to fish. Such is the experience of fishing with a fly, and I love it.