Defining success

There are days when you get to redefine what success is. Yesterday we were skunked. Nothing so much as close to our flies. But that's not the story. Recently, we've given up the usual known spots, the ones where we go and the fishing is a known rhythm. The past 2 weeks we've gone exploring a little bit. We've had a good run of finding some neat spots and a couple of real gems. Yesterday we headed out, walked a mile in to a stream. We wanted to check out a tiny little tributary to that stream and see what we could see. At the start of the day I told Amelia the day would either be boom or bust. After thinking a minute I offered a possibility of maybe something down the middle. We walked up the main stream to where the tiny spring creek came in.

It looked perfect, though a little small for some. Not for us. We walked a little upstream and found the first beaverdam. Deep, crystal clear, blue - green water so typical of spring creeks in our area. We watched a spell and decided to slowly walk upstream. After 20 minutes we covered 100m of shoreline, looking into the depths. Finally, we saw a 25 - 27", FAT male brown cruising downstream, past us. We were in heavy cover and had no chance to cast and watched it swim away. We continued up. We got to the head of the pond and heard a wake of a rise. And again. So, we walked down and around and did the run over again. Amelia got on the other side of the pond where we could cast, I set up the video camera just in case. A smaller trout rose a couple of times and the wind picked up - that was that. No fish.

We moved upstream on the tiny trickle No water was more than waist deep all the way up, and we methodically walked and looked for 5km. No wintering habitat, no fish. So be it.

Was the day a bust? No. We certainly found a place to go try a hand at a 7 pound brown. Perhaps a couple of smaller ones. Was it a great day? For fishing, no. For finding a new spot, for sighting fish in a crystal clear pond, yes. Was it a successful day? You bet. I was able to give this one a 2 out of 10 rating on my map of places to visit. A low rating, but a place to keep in the back of my mind to visit on a day when conditions will be good, with a few bugs to entice the fish to the surface... maybe even a late evening mouse event. Will I flock to the creek every week? No. That's why it is on my map with a low rating. Last week's spring creeks are on my map with a high rating - a place to go any old time to enjoy some good fish. All are on the map for different reasons, each representative of a successful recky tour, with a different notation of what to expect.