Late Hatch

They came off late.

The sulphurs;  Like the flurry of ideas here as I attempt justice in the writing, they swarmed the river after I had thought they would or possibly could show.  At the edge of the day's fading light, the sun melded with the overcast slate and they somehow appeared, with the street lamps, in unison.

The family of dad, uncle, and two boys, fishing bait, had had enough.  They waved their goodbyes in broken English.  They had caught nothing but stomped to me quietly, the boys did, as the fly took a small brown.  A sullen feeling across me that wished one of those boys had held the bouncing rod.  Maybe next time.  Off they went with the last of the natural light.  And on came the yellow bugs with big wings.  They flicker through the sky as the trout sip and salute them.

It's been a year since this fishing nirvana occurred last, yet here they are, different than I remembered, later too, but here just the same.  The questions enveloped my head from which fly was perfect for the top to which fly would fool the big flash at the bottom, two feet in front of me and sweeping the crumbs off of the riverbed floor.  She had been flashing at me for an hour and a half like a lady of the night who had a phantom sense about her.  Was she really there?  An answer I would not find.  Suitable, I thought.  Back to the fish on the top.

From 8:36 pm, if I had to guess well, to 9:15, I took trout one after the other.  Some slashed within feet, some across the stream.  They all sent fast and pulsating vibrations through the rod to the arm of the angler.  The arm sent signals to the mouth.  The smile, big and wide and shit eating, did not dissipate until the business of the next day.

There is nothing better for the soul than a late hatch that one thought may never come at all.