A short story about two fat guys in canoes, praying on the weather, teasing
some fish. Don't bother reading if you only like that small stream/hike up
a freakin' mountain kinda story.

Timmy and Jimmy and I all decided that we had to go fishing today. Jimmy
and I have been fishing the same pond the first week of April for a really
long time. We've known each other for 30 something years (and we're
starting to look used, you know?) We've taken occasional long breaks for
traveling time, family life, etc., but we always come back for this
tradition. Not the least reason being that it's his birthday week, and the
day out includes a bottle of Tequila to enhance (or make) the occasion.

It's way too early to be fishing here in Western Mass. Jim called me at 10
and told me it was snowing in Belchertown where we planning to go, so I
ducked out on that plan. Besides, he had to go to a 'meeting' at 3, so not
only was he planning on splitting early, but he wouldn't be up for the
alcohol, so f* him, we'll make it up later.

So I called TimJ and we decided to meet up at my 'secret pond'.

The weather was not bad at noon - almost warm at 45 degrees, no real wind,
occasionally a hint of sun. Tim showed up with his brand new red canoe, and
I was looking forward to seeing how he could handle it solo. Not bad!
Aside from almost sinking himself in the 40 degree water once, and paddling
for 10 minutes with an anchor down.

Fishing is mostly what we expected for so early in the season. We started
to see some tan caddis coming off, and I noticed Tim staying put in an area
that is choked by weeds in the summer, and when I paddled over I saw the
rising fish he was intrigued by. I ditched the damsel nymph I had been
trolling and put on a tan snowshoe caddis. Every couple of minutes there
would be another caddis skittering on the surface and eventually something
would snatch it. I cast my caddis out and let it wriggle on the waves.
Occasionally I'd twitch it under and wait as it bobbed back up. I was
getting ready to flip it back upwind, turned my back on the fly, loaded the
rod, and fish on. It turned out to be a 12+ inch stocked rainbow, nicely
colored. A few minutes later, we both had fish on. Tim's wrapped the line
around a submerged entangler, and I brought the most beautiful pumpkinseed
to hand. I've caught a lot of pumpkinseeds in my time (after all, it's been
a *lot* of time), but this was the biggest I've seen, and outrageously
colored. The belly was a fluorescent yellow, extremely bright. As usual
when something like that happens, I became elated because I "had the right
fly" and now I would start slaying them, but as usual, it turned out to be
random chance and not a trend. That was the end of catching for the day.
At around 4 the sky darkened, and the wind came up and it got cold enough to
force us off the water.

As a capper. we found out that the bar next to the pond has Stella Artois on
tap now and we finished off a few to finish off a good day out.

--Stan