I’ve found a couple of interesting articles and a book (I purchased and am waiting for) related to my cruelty piece. Until then:

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The first fly tied on while gut-deep in the lotic tumble is a gambit I hope pays off. Minutes ago, shaking my way through a bankful of dogwoods to the water, clouds of caddis  puffed in dizzying numbers then quickly resettled in the red branches.

Two feet off the far bank, three feet behind the defense of a large rock, the water bulges and dimples. With my failing sight looking into the rising sun, all is silhouette and sparkles—the bulge and dimple a trick of current and light?

A caddis to match those on the bank would seem the best opening move, but no caddis flit over the water yet. I move into the current, water inching higher with each step as I try to get close enough to see the pocket water behind the rock and what I now verify as an unmistakable bulge.

I shift from one round, slick rock to another hoping for a better view but only succeed in teetering my right arm into the water allowing a momentary surge of river over my wader tops.

From the lower angle in the water relative to the bulge a tiny sail shadows against the glint, then pirouettes out of sight. Another hoists up. Then several more. Hatching PMDs? A small ring forms among the eight or so flies lined up like so many defenseless pawns getting picked off one by one.

Using the disappearing flies as my opening gambit, I tie on a CDC comparadun emerger. A second rock, closer to me by four feet, creates a three feet wide chute between the two rocks. My line would bisect this chute with a straightaway cast giving me little to no drag-free drift.

The current comes from my right. The fish is slightly below me currentwise and 13 feet away. The pocket water contains about ten square feet of water between the rises and the rock with no discernible back eddying.

I make a couple of false casts a few feet ahead of the rock to measure the length of the line. I let the fifth cast edge back toward the pocket then set the fly down on the seam of the current where it yanks down river. The water puckers again and another fly slips away.

I shake the line out and repeat the false casts, paying out an extra foot of line. This time the fly lands on the back edge of the rock. I quickly flick a roll cast over the top of the rock and reach the nine foot rod out and up, lifting the slack line off the rock. I strip in a little line keeping everything from fly to tip as tight as possible.

I switch the rod to the left hand, slowly moving the tip downriver until the fly makes a nearly imperceptible skitter a few inches closer to the fish. In the subtle current it naturally makes its way closer still.

I jitterbug my feet around the rock I’m on until I can switch the rod back to my right hand just as the fly drifts within his window. Four inches below the fly a bulge forms and slides toward my fly, cracking the water into two jaws closing on the imitation. I lift the rod tip setting the hook and lifting his head momentarily above water where his cutthroat flashes at me.

He bulldozes into the pocket then moves toward the chute, nose downriver. I check his run and he turns upriver and shoots the gap between the rocks, circling the far rock. Showing some cuttbow tendencies he makes a spastic leap and throws the fly—in one deft move he escapes.

I’m resigned to the fact that this game is finished. I tip my hat to the winner, then gather myself and head upstream for the next match.