Stir-crazy angler takes first trip of new year

I’ve got a bad case of the Shack Nasties.

With a slight change in the weather I ventured out Wednesday and Thursday, March 5 and 6.

First I scouted a couple of little blue lines. No good. Still too much ice and snow for solid footing.

Since I am nursing a rotator cuff injury and my right pinky toe still aches from when I cleverly slammed it into the furniture two months ago, I am not in the mood for adventurous wading.

That left the Blackberry.

At one spot the shelf ice was still in effect. It was theoretically fishable but I kept going to Beckley Furnace, where the big pool beneath the dam was clear.

I pounded it hard, starting with junk flies such as squirmy worms and brightly-colored mops.

Then I got cute with a double-nymph rig: a little black stone on a dropper and a Bread and Butter nymph with a tungsten head on point to drag the whole thing down into the depths.

I managed two bumps. One could have been a hangup but I’m counting it as a bump.

Downstream below the second, smaller dam the shelf ice presented serious challenges.

There’s really only one way to get rid of shelf ice besides waiting for it to melt.

That is to stand on it and break it.

This is an excellent way to break up shelf ice.

It is also an excellent way to sprain or break an ankle.

Maybe it’s old age creeping up on me, but somehow I am not inclined to take the chance.

Imagine really banging yourself up mere weeks before fishing starts in earnest, and then sitting sullenly in a dark room watching old Filipino horror movies as the broken or sprained element heals while outside trout are merrily gobbling up bugs after the long winter.

Thursday I went further afield. Furnace Brook in Cornwall, always an early season favorite, was roaring after the inch-plus of rain we got Wednesday night.

That left Macedonia Brook in Kent, which was actually fishable above the waterfall.

I probed that for a couple hours with a Tenkara rod and a series of darkish nymphs that could be mistaken for an early black stonefly.

Or just something to eat. I doubt any holdover trout in there are all that picky about the menu.

I managed to tickle precisely one small brown trout.

In fact I messed with that little guy for about an hour.

It went like this:

Cast. Drift into strike zone. Lift out before fly gets stuck in brush buildup. Watch bemusedly as little brown trout pecks at nymph on the way up.

Cast three or four more times with no result. Sit on rock. Ponder the infinite. Consider changing fly. Conclude it makes no difference. Watch passenger car slither around on muddy dirt road.

After 10 minutes of this, drift nymph into strike zone and miss fish again. Sit back down on boulder…

Standard operating procedure in these cases is to say, “Oh well. At least it was nice to get out.”

This is baloney. It was cold and windy and nobody with any sense would go out and stand in cold water just for the sake of getting out of the house.

But…

I didn’t injure myself. My waders didn’t leak. I was wondering if I could get an orthotic insert into the wader boot without problems. I could.

I didn’t break or lose any equipment other than a black conehead Wooly Bugger, size 8, which was claimed by the tree that is sticking into the Beckley pool.

And I didn’t get stuck in the mud on the seriously gooey Macedonia State Park road.

So this initial salvo of the 2025 campaign goes in the win column.