One of my favorite Neil Young songs opens with the line “Comes a time when you’re drifting, comes a time when you settle down …”. I guess I’m still in the drifting stage of life, still excited by the pull of exploring new blue lines on a topo map, eager to find what’s around the next bend of the stream and the anticipation of what could happen with just one more cast at the end of a day. I’ll stick with the drifting as long and hard as I can until that “time to settle down” becomes the only option left. Looking out my window as I tie flies this evening I still see a lot of snow in the woods, but the lines of deer and fox tracks are growing misshapen every day as they slowly melt and fade away with warmer days. Soon there will be spring peepers singing in the evenings, trout lilies blooming in the low places, Quill Gordons, Hendricksons and Blue Quills hatching in the warmth of the afternoon and a pair of aging eyes watching for the first rises of a trout to break the quiet of a pool’s surface. There are some familiar places to call on, a bucket list of new water to explore this year, a supply of fresh flies ready to go, and the tireless eagerness to keep on drifting. There comes a time. Till next week…. www.ramsayflies.com
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