Springtime’s A-Coming Up On the Divide

About three weeks ago I got bit by the trout bug. Don’t get me wrong, the thought of trout or trout adjacent things will cross my mind daily, without fail. But I mean I really started thinking about trout. As in every hour or so I would catch myself drifting into a dreamlike state where I’m standing knee deep in my favorite stream surrounded by towering evergreens with a fiberglass fly rod in hand. Leaving thoughts like these go unchecked for too long can make an otherwise sane man go stir crazy. But the streams in those dreams are both closed by law and inaccessible due to snow for the next few months. I needed to find a cure.

So I did things to keep my hands busy and mind focused on the season ahead. There’s always flies to be tied, for example. Whipping up a few elk hair caddis or parachute adams is a therapeutic evening activity. Tying three flies in a session is the sweet spot for me. I like tying in threes for the consistency aspect and at an unhurried pace they will typically take me about an album’s length of time to complete, give or take a few tracks.

And of course, the trips aren’t going to plan themselves. This is one of my favorite offseason activities. There’s a certain clarity found in the anticipation of trips when you’re removed from the ability to partake in said trips. Perhaps last year a certain trip never panned out, but this year I’m going to make certain that it happens. I started making itineraries for trips as ambitious as a weeklong trout fueled adventure with Dean (tentatively slated for 2024) to others as small as figuring out if the tiny blue line that flows through the forest on my workplace’s property holds trout or not (I’m convinced that it does).

Reading can both soothe and further irritate the itch. High quality stuff, like essays published by The Drake magazine, never fail to offer up fresh perspectives and validate that I’m not alone in my offseason longings. I recently picked up a copy of The Optimist: A Case For the Fly Fishing Life by David Coggins at a local bookstore. It’s an excellent read about specific skills and virtues that the author attributes to the pursuit of various species on the fly.

All of these things help to subside the nostalgia of trips past and the anticipation of trips to come. But nothing can substitute the real thing, no matter the season.

This past Saturday, a patch of warm weather and a day free of prior obligations aligned, allowing for Jill and I to make a day trip to a mountain stream in the Cascades. This is one of the few in western Washington that is both open and accessible year-round. I’ve fished this stream a few times last winter and although it is home to some fantastic looking stretches of water, I have yet to catch a trout on it. Although I’ve only ever run into one other fly angler, I’m certain that it receives heavy pressure due to its ease of accessibility and proximity to Seattle. But regardless of any shortcomings that this stream may possess, it offers a rare opportunity for some bona fide winter mountain stream fly fishing.

Jill and I spent the morning hiking a nearby peak. The conditions were sublime and we enjoyed a lunch with a view at the summit before returning down. Afterwards, I fished a stretch of enticing looking water near the trailhead. Donning the waders and stringing up the trusty Orvis 4wt again was a welcome feeling, as was stepping back into a freestone trout stream for the first time since October. I began by fishing a series of nymphs under an indicator through some deeper runs.

I’ve learned that having a song playing through your mind throughout the course of a trip can be a delightful experience. No headphones or speakers, but just the running of a single track on an internal loop and chewing on it for a couple of hours. Perhaps it helps out with the timing of casting in some way, maybe it doesn’t. This can be any song, but in my experience it is usually a folk or bluegrass tune. It isn’t something that can be forced or preplanned, but on the best of trips it can provide a blissful backtrack as you slip into a mindful flow state. This was one of those trips; the particular track being “Up on the Divide” by the bluegrass group, Mighty Poplar. It’s a beautiful tune that features the forward looking refrain “and the springtime’s a-coming up on the divide”.

Eventually I swapped the nymph rig for a single dry fly, a small blue wing olive mayfly imitation. I spotted a few solitary bugs landing on the water’s surface but there were no sign of surface takers. I knew that switching to a dry meant drastically decreasing my odds of a trout, but that mattered little. I was enjoying myself and I just wanted to feel the lightness of a small dry fly landing delicately on the water again. I worked my way upstream, slowly, until I came across a rock that looked perfect for sitting on. I pulled the small journal from my sling pack and wrote down some reflections on the day.

We’ve officially reached the spring equinox. With each passing day, winter’s grasp loosens a bit. The snowpack will melt and temporarily turn small mountain streams into raging rivers. This spells bad news for fly fisherman but it is a necessary part of nature’s rhythm, supplying life blood to our precious water sources. The roaring echo of runoff will eventually subside and give way to a comforting babble. In due time we will be knee deep in our beloved streams once again, with a fresh song in our heads and our hearts. Springtime’s a-coming up on the divide.