Hot air balloons and the white fly hatch

I have a grab bag of fishing thoughts today. This is a tactic frequently employed by award-winning fishing columnists to disguise the fact that there really isn’t much to write about.Item: The other night, in the middle of the famous Housatonic River white fly hatch, I managed to avoid catching a single fish.The white flies were all over the place, including my personal ear- and nasal-type areas. I had a White Wulff dry fly, coated not only with silicone gel but some highly recommended powder stuff called “Frog’s Fanny.” On a dropper I had a white spinner, which represents the white fly when it is tired, wet and discouraged. The smallmouth were feeding merrily — on everything except my Frog Fannied flies.To add insult to injury, someone was giving a fishing lesson upstream. As it got darker, and the splashing of feeding fish increased (along with my frustration), I kept hearing shouts of triumph.“Oooh! ““That’s a nice fish!”“What the —”(That last remark was mine.)Getting skunked during this particular hatch requires real expertise.I did get a nice smallie earlier, before these people showed up and caught all my fish. This one took a big streamer tied to resemble a little brown trout. Oddly enogh, the fly is called a Little Brown Trout.Item: Over the weekend I traveled to Quechee, Vt., for my uncle’s 90th birthday. I toyed with the idea of bringing a rod, just in case, but abandoned it on the theory there would not be enough time. This was not accurate. A modest bit of research would have revealed that the Quechee Inn is across the street from the Ottaquechee River, a waterway that merits the adjective “fabled” in guidebooks. Thirty seconds on the computer would have also informed me that this hostelry has a fly-fishing guiding outfit attached. It was therefore entirely possible to get up at the crack of dawn Sunday and walk the arduous 50 yards from the driveway to the river and have at it for a couple of hours.But no.I did, however, discover Dewey Pond, also located conveniently across the street, where there are handy benches for groggy travelers to sit with morning coffee and think about things, such as, “What is that strange hissing sound?”Traffic on the road behind me was light but audible. I kept hearing a sound like gas escaping, and then after a while a car would come by.Somewhere in the middle of the second cup of coffee, it dawned on me that there was no discernible relationship between the hissing sound and the cars.Being a trained observer, I then looked up.And beheld a hot-air balloon.The sound I heard was that of the gas jet that keeps the thing aloft.Personally, the idea of getting into what amounts to a large picnic basket with a giant bomb on top and floating around at great heights does not thrill me, but from the ground it is an impressive sight.It would have been better if I had been casting to rising fish when the balloon went by.But, as the Great White Fly Night of Skunkitation also demonstrates, you can’t have everything. Especially in fly-fishing.