Lost Flies

Sometime toward the end of my first year living here in Colorado I met and fell in love with a woman. I remember it being sometime in the fall when we met. She was tall and beautiful…and wanted to learn to fly fish. We dated only briefly, but plenty long enough for me to pass on almost everything I knew about trout and rivers and flies. She was an apt pupil at first, but stubborn. Once she had learned the basics she would no longer take direction from me. But I was head over heels. And she was as hungry to fish as I have ever been, so all I was left to do was bring her along on every fishing trip I took. I would even plan my trips with the idea of exposing her to more and more completely different types of fishing. Furthering her education. We would drive hours to try out tail waters, explore remote prairie lakes…even chase pike and bass. And carp, too. She would always pretend to turn her nose up at carp, but could put a stalk and hurtin’ on a pod of feeding carp like few people I have ever met. But, like I said…we only dated briefly. She must have grown bored of me. I never did know for sure. That was years ago. And I haven’t even seen her in passing in a long time. But she still fishes a lot. I am positive she still haunts the same waters we used to always fish together. Every so often I find suspiciously familiar footprints along my favorite mud flats. And at least once a season I will make a poor back cast into an overhanging branch…only to find that my flies are not the only ones hung in the tree. Sure, they could be anyone’s flies, but I recognize these ones. They are the same type of flies that I have always liked to fish in these pools. And they are rigged the same way she learned to rig them. I just know they are hers. And I always pluck them out of the branches and save them…just in case she ever wants them back.


If you liked this, read: Rods Lost to Ladies