Monday, April 27, 2009

Put The Secret to the Test

Now here's somethin' funny… I went fishin' on Saturday, April 25th, with my fishin' partner up on the Crooked River. Well, okay, THAT'S not very funny… but watch the relationship of this story to this "Law of Attraction" nonsense and, well, just play along. And if you missed it, read the previous post about "The Secret." This will make a lot more sense.

First off, I'm not that nuts about fishin' on the Crooked. Its very turbid water somehow subtracts from the overall feel of "trout fishing." Trout water should be CLEAR and CLEAN. But whatever. Point is, I don't look forward to fishing out there like I do the Fall River. In fact, you could say that I always have a negative thoughts about going out there. I've been skunked out there a lot… either that or all we catch are whitefish or a few very small trout. Whitefish just don't cut it. Catching one whitefish is only slightly better than not catching anything. Just slightly.

So, get this… on this occasion, my fishin' partner had been talkin' down the Crooked for the past week. He's got buddies that say the fishing's really been pretty bad there lately, with rumors of really low fish counts and that sort of thing. So why did go there? Well, we just decided not to take everyone's word for it, that we should find out for ourselves. And even though it's not my favorite place to fish, I'm willing to give it a try. But here's the key: I was expecting to do very poorly today. I was expecting to see no fish, get no strikes, I was expecting to get skunked. Now I ask you… how much more negative can you get?

Do you see this coming? Is this a good build-up? He, he.

So we met at Big Bend, right below Bowman Dam. Now for more negativity: We immediately noticed that the water was very high in the river. This compounded my negative expectations because the fishing is always much more difficult (if not completely hopeless) when the water is high. This is another reason why I love the Fall River… the level never changes. So we got wadered up and scampered down to a familiar hole. Within five minutes my partner had hooked a fish. Now for more negativity: He's playin' this fish and, well, from where I stood it seemed like it was acting more like a whitefish. Pulling deep, no acrobatics. And there are some big whiteys in the Crooked. So I'm thinkin' "Probably a whitefish… couldn't possibly be a trout, fishing's supposed to be lousy today!" but I kept watching and soon it was clear that, no, he had a beautiful rainbow on, about 17 inches. He landed the fish and we both admired it and then he handed the spot over to me and within another 10 minutes or so, I'd hooked another respectable rainbow, although probably only about 15 inches long. We each caught several fish in that hole, I had one on just for an instant that I'm sure would have approached twenty inches… He lept out of the water just after I set the hook and tossed the hook. Beautiful fish. I caught, oh, 6 or 7 fish there… the smallest was probably 12 inches… the biggest might've gone 16 inches. Then we moved upstream and found a broad flat filled with rising trout… I had fish swirling around me everywhere. I had several strikes that I missed, but also hooked and landed three more trout, this time on dry flies (and you don't get many opportunities to use dry flies on the Crooked!)

So what's the moral of the story? Well, in spite of my multiple, compounded "negative thoughts" about how that day would go, I had what is probably my second best day ever on the Crooked River. And if this Law of Attraction stuff had any merit at all, I would have gotten skunked because that's what I expected.

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