The Year in Review: Guiding the South Platte 2016

What a busy year of guiding!  I am so grateful we had fabulous fishing on the South Platte, from the Dream Stream, down to 11 mile canyon, Cheesman Canyon and down through Deckers,  to provide fulfilling fly fishing experiences to fabulous clients.

I was most impressed with the willingness of folks to “get out” and fly-fish; many for the first time. As a guide of almost 30 years, and an educator of 31 years, I think it is healthy for us, both kids and adults, at least at times, to find our way to a river.  We need a break from the madness of our culture and the madness of our lives. Too many of us remain “stuck” on our couches, and rarely encounter nature.

How wonderful it was to take many folks fly-fishing who were looking for a reprieve.  On the river, we talked about why the fish took the fly on one cast but not another, and countless other questions we might encounter, while dealing with an ever changing set of conditions on the river.  We also talked about life.  I remember many great conversations with folks about hopes and dreams, along with some heartache that is also often a part of life.  These intense feelings often have a way of surfacing like the emerging mayflies and perhaps the river is the best place to talk of such things.

As we casted in the river, my clients were willing to consider what would increase our chances of catching a fish. We tried to consider every variable under the sun; from accurate casting, to proper drift and the right fly, to knowing how to play a fish once hooked. We constantly problem solved. Sometimes we solved the problem and caught a fish and sometimes we did not.

We often considered psychological factors. Does it help to stay positive and hopeful? Did it help to believe we were going to hook a fish? Did it help to pray? It was so exciting and rich for me to stand with folks in the river and together, while working on fly-fishing technique to contemplate these questions which, at the same time, are probably also the bigger questions of life.  

And then how almost magical it was, even when we might have been doing everything less than perfect, and we couldn’t see a fish within the stretch of water we were fishing, and I, even as a guide was not very hopeful, a large fish found its way onto the line and was suddenly pulling out line.

Perhaps, in that moment, we were “receiving the river’s grace,” and we caught something and took home something that could never be counted, measured, or photographed.

What a great season of guiding and catching the immeasurable.