Had the day off due to a last minute cancellation on a big group trip, so I got to be the one that gets paid the cancellation fee for a change. Got lots of stuff around the shop done and a little more straightening up in the v-room.
Decided that I'd run out to the Gallatin this evening and give the old bamboo a chuck or two as I am yet to put the thing together and that's just a waste. Jones and I made a quick jaunt up the canyon and made a few casts and got a few fish. It was anticlimactic.
I had grand visions of catching a fish on my first cast on a dry fly with the Oreti. Well, it was about 87 cast later while swinging a soft hackle when I finally hooked into one. Nothing huge, but still the first on the only bamboo rod I've ever fished.
After working up with a dry with no luck, I asked Chris for a nymph that I could swing. Presumably it's ok to swing a soft hackle with a bamboo rod. I get the idea that the thingamabobber might not be so cool on this rod. It would handle it, but I think even I'd feel a little guilty. So, a swinging I went and a few fish were caught.
It's amazing how much I think and feel when standing in that water. Memories of trying to fish the Gallatin on a roadtrip with my family when I was 10 or 12 came back to me. Thoughts of the old man on the Waikia that walked up behind me one summer eve in NZ. The feeling of newness everywhere.
You can only do things for the first time once. The older I get, the more I appreciate that simple fact. In the last 3 days, I've seen my first fish of the year on a hopper, got the first fish on the Yellowstone (post-runoff) and caught my fisrt fish on a bamboo rod. Not bad.
And at the end of it all, the friendships made along the way are what it's really all about.
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