It was sunny during Bryn’s lunchtime walk to the park. Despite the slight chill, snowdrops, crocuses, and daffodils proudly sunned themselves while hazel and birch joyfully flaunted healthy blankets of catkins. The blackbird’s song and deafening sparrow fight reflected this late winter/almost spring afternoon rather perfectly. Bryn sniffed at the air and began his usual hunt for squirrels, uninterested in whatever this fool was so excited about.
Undoubtedly, the usual ‘surprise’ frost will descend moments before the trout season starts in only one week. A ‘joke’ I’ve seen played annually for many years. Maybe it’s just the cynic in me, but after spending Sunday evening reviewing past years’ fishing diaries in readiness/eagerness for the oncoming trout season, it’ll no doubt be cold. As it always is. More likely, it’s the result of spending winter in the warm, as I rarely fish outside of trout season anymore, instead getting softer over the winter months, my body more focused on fat reserves and enjoying the warm (and wine), then shocked in March when it’s rapidly required to toughen again as I spend every available spring, summer, and autumn day as close to the environs of trout as possible.
Regardless of what the day brings, it will soon be trout season again, and all will be right once more. We’ll fish dry flies and hopefully dance the dance. If we don’t, hey, we’ll sit in a patch of sunny grass, drink a beer and smoke a cigar, chew the fat, so to speak, and put our respective worlds to rights, all the while watching the dippers do a better job than us, no doubt, but we’ll smile, deliriously and without question, as the river whispers her magic song as she bubbles and riffles by.
