Don't try this at Home....Ever

I had been fishing the usual tricky water of the Harriet Lake area, right where the river drains into the lake. It hadn’t been very productive. Scanning the river, I suddenly saw a trout rise. It looked like a nice fish, and it was feeding on dry flies. I was extremely excited, until a slight problem ensued. There was no way to get to the other side of the river. I tried double hauling with my 7 foot Fred Meyer starter fly rod, but that just escalated things. The big trout was still feeding, and I needed to get to the other side. Forcing myself through the stinging nettles along the shoreline, I found a log that jutted out across the stream. Maybe, I thought, just maybe, it could work. I walked across the slippery log until I realized that it did not extend to the island that I was hoping on getting to. It stopped about six feet from the shore, and about three feet off the water. The bank, tantalizingly close, had a steep drop off that was a five foot deep hole with fast, rushing currents. I considered just walking back. I had reached about halfway back up the log when the part of a teenager’s brain that is in charge of rational decision making fizzed out and I went sailing across the water, rod in hand. I didn’t make it. I was roughly deposited down the hole and shot across the bottom as my waders filled with ice cold water. Frantically flailing with my arms to reach the shore, I grabbed a rock and was able to hang on right before a ten foot drop off. I could have sworn I saw a couple browns giggling as I was swept by. Gasping for breath, I hauled myself out of the water, stumbled across the island to the other side of the river, and tied on a Royal Wulff (strangely enough, I did not lose my fly box in the process). I then made a perfect cast clear to the other side of the river, right under the tree I saw the big fish feeding. As my fly drifted, a beautiful wild brown slurped my fly and I was in fisherman’s heaven as the golden brown fish fought against my limber fly rod.

It came off at the first jump.

Me trying to find a way to get out of there.