Mountain fly-fishing trip is a needed respite from heat

You would think that after living here for nearly 60 years heat wouldn’t bother me. Well, think again, because this recent heat wave has kept me inside and when that happens I get all grumpy.

I am sure studies have been done on how temperature affects attitudes, but I don’t need to research this because all it takes is 15 minutes on one of our major highways and you’ll encounter at least one case of road rage. I know it’s the heat.

Last week was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Not only was I grumpy — I didn’t even want to go fishing, and that says something. When it’s over 100 degrees in the shade, being out on the water is the next best thing to being in air-conditioned confines, but after two days out on the water I sweated out more water than I took in, even with drinking one bottle of water after another.

After that second trip, I decided I simply wasn’t going fishing until this heat broke, and that sent me spiraling down into a stupor.

Just when I thought I was becoming a Howard Hughes-style recluse, my phone rang. It was my buddy Don McCarthy asking if I wanted to head up to his place in the North Carolina mountains to do some fly fishing for trout. It took me all of 10 minutes to get packed and ready to go.

The very thought of dipping my feet in a cold mountain was like the excitement a junkie might feel if offered a free fix.

Since Don bought a house on top of a mountain outside Hendersonville four years ago, he and I — along with our common compadre, Will “Catfish” Thompson — make yearly fishing pilgrimages to the area. This time around, the invite couldn’t have come at a better time.

Though it was only intended to last three days, the very thought of being in cooler climes was enough to snap me out of my doldrums. Don had already headed out, so Will and I rode together and every hour along the way we watched the temperature fall a little bit at a time. Finally reaching the mountains, we opened all the windows in the car and it was pure bliss.

I went from being a total grump to being giddy, almost as if someone had dropped a furious weasel in my underpants.

We rose early the next morning to a breathtaking sunrise that revealed fog blanketing the valley below Don’s house and only the tips of mountains poking above the cool fog. We headed out with fly rods in hand.

Our first destination was the Davidson River in the Pisgah National Forest. We had fished this river before, but by going up on a Monday, we pretty much had the entire river to ourselves.

Even as I write this, I can feel the sensation as I first stepped into the river. None of us wore waders, just shorts and tennis shoes. The cold water was glorious and it took every bit of my willpower not to dive in to one of the deep pools.

I only use a fly rod fishing in the mountains, while Don and Will typically use spinning rods, but this time around we made a pact that only fly rods would be used. For years I had tried to convince my buds that fly rods were the only way to go, and though neither of them had much experience using them, they went for it.

Anybody who has used a fly rod for rainbow trout, brown trout and brook trout knows patience is the name of the game. Retying broken leaders or tippets with 2-pound test line is challenging even to me, much less novices. It’s like trying to thread a nearly invisible spiderweb through a pinprick-sized hole.

Depending on how many cups of coffee you had, it might take 30 seconds or 30 minutes to complete the task, but if you want to catch a lot of trout, it’s the only ticket in town.

I guess you are wondering if we caught fish. We crushed ’em! Don’s first trout on the fly was a huge brook trout and Will also nailed some nice rainbow and brown trout. All it took was that first trout on the fly and I know neither of them will ever go back to spinning rods.

We kept enough for a meal or two, moving from river to river, and it seemed that everywhere we went the fish were chewing and we were the only people around.

Back home now, that change in altitude has done wonders for my attitude. Hopefully this hot spell will dissipate soon, but at least I feel more like my old self — and if a relapse does come about, I know exactly where to go.

This story was originally published July 16, 2016 at 2:06 PM with the headline "Mountain fly-fishing trip is a needed respite from heat."