Fishball

Dates: November 15, 2009
Location: Brule
Air temp: 40s
Water temp: ?
Hatches: ?
Fish landed: 0

Present members of the Fly Anglers Guild :|: Upper Midwest Chapter, for this outing were:

Xan
Fruit Booter


As a football fan and an upper Midwestern fisherman, sometimes one is faced with tough choices. As the inland season is ending, the NFL season is just getting underway. You've waited nearly 8 months filled with sports garbage (NBA, NHL, college sports, Cincinnati Reds, etc...), carefully assembled fantasy teams, watched reruns of the '98 QB Challenge (Jim Harbaugh! Woo!) and anything else on the NFL Network, and sat through countless hours of dipshit prognosticators picking assholes like the Rams as their sleeper teams. Sure, river conditions at that point are generally shitty, but you know you won't have another chance at trout for 5 brutal months. However, this availability of addictions isn't a bad dilemma to have.

Once the inland season is over, however, you're still not out of the woods (pun mildly intended). Hunting is still in the picture, but most importantly, steelhead closer. As fate would have it, this year's closer happened to fall on the day my favorite team was coming to town. However, my favorite team is the Lions, so fuck them, I went fishing.

Booter and I decided to go for a Brule Blitz (pun not intended). Drive out early Sunday morning, fish, drive home near dusk. We didn't need to be on the river at first light, but we were concerned about losing all the good spots to the early birds. Sure enough, the parking area at our usual haunt looked like a used car lot. So, we drove to a new spot and were lucky enough to find only one car.

What followed next was your typical Brule day. We flogged lots of good looking water, lost a ton of flies, ate sandwiches by the car, talked to people that had hooked a steelie or two, caught some small bows (Boot did, I got skunked), and enjoyed a beautiful sunny day out in the middle of nowhere. Hundreds of miles away, the Lions played like the Lions, and all was right with the world (except for not catching any goddammed steelhead).