Celebrating the essence of being “out there.”

By Mark Hollier

(A Sunfisher’s Diary)

It was a cool, crisp fall afternoon and the trees were blazing with autumn colors. This time of year puts me in a reflective mood. Nature is changing. The robust tapestry of spring and summer evolves into a colorful fall quilt that she pulls over herself for the big sleep of winter. Another season is passing. The colors are unbelievable. The cool, dry air carries the earthy smells of the fallen leaves and dry grass. There is a certain calm, undisturbed silence this time of year. A silence that helps us sense the changes that are coming.This quiet was broken by the crunch of leaves under my feet as I approached the first pool. The little spring-fed creek is shallow and low this time of year. Because of its diminutive nature, it only supports a healthy population of average size sunfish. That’s why I like it. It’s a beautiful place I call Three Weight Creek.  Crouched down, I peeked over a bunch of goldenrod blooms into the shallow, clear pool. As I raise my rod to do something I’ve done thousands of times before, I’m always a little nervous before the first cast of the day.

In spite of a poor cast, the little dry fly bounced off a tuft of grass on the bank and landed upright in the middle of the shady spot in the creek. A narrow shaft of sunlight beamed down on it through the leaves, illuminating its bright colors. It drifted slowly in the current looking like it was the king of the world. I could see the fly plainly as it strained against its thin tether, its hackles flaring like a rooster in a hen house. The water in the pool was only a few feet deep and very clear. This part of the creek bottom was lined with beautiful white sand glistening in the sun like miniature diamonds waiting for DeBeers to gather them up. I was crouched low on the bank holding my fly rod motionless as the leader unfurled on the water letting the fly move down stream toward the bank. Something else in the water was watching the fly. It was in the shadows, hard to make out, but I could feel its predatory presence. Using hunting skills perfected through millions of years of evolution, it was about to pounce. It eyes were focused on the prey but other, inward senses, monitored everything else around it.  Everything had to be perfect. I was scared to blink. Time seemed to be in slow motion. The fly drifted to within inches of the dark shape watching it, but nothing moved. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it was a small stick or rock. Was it my imagination? I was about to slightly wiggle the rod tip to make the fly “struggle” when the water exploded and the fly disappeared in a shower of silver droplets. A five inch bluegill had mauled my dry fly just like an alligator ambushes a deer while it’s drinking. I quickly landed and released the little rainbow of the south and he disappeared into the shadows trying to process what just happened.

That beautiful, wild sunfish had used its stalking and discernment skills to perfection….almost. It was not a game for him, like it was for me. For him, it was a deadly serious drama to stay alive. Each day he has to put his life on the line, using those skills, to get something to eat. While searching for a meal, he has to run the gauntlet of snakes, birds, turtles, raccoons and other fish trying to make a meal of him. Now, because of me, he adds insects to the list. I wonder if he ever has days where he plays games with his prey like I did with him. With most wild creatures it’s probably kill and eat and try to make it to the next day. That’s even true for the majority of us human creatures even now. Those who live for only tomorrow follow instincts that are probably part of our environmental problems. That and there’s just to damn many of us. I haven’t had to face that in my life so far. Fate dropped me in a pretty good place during a pretty good time. I was very lucky. It took me a while to realize that but I have since tried to make the best of it as often as possible. Over time, I think I have even figured what the “best of it” means and much of it is done with a fly rod.

I moved slowly down the stream bank. I was approaching a fair size pool with shallow banks lined with small clusters of floating aquatic plants. The water deepened off the bank and the current slowed to almost nothing. There were no trees along the bank here, just tall grass with a lot of wildflowers. I like wildflowers. They make me feel like I’m in a good place. A place with a lot of wildflowers is a little nook in the ecosystem that is still doing ok. I crouched down and moved slowly along about eight feet from the waters edge. I could see some small sunfish cruising the edges leaving small wakes and making an occasional splashy rise as they sucked down the occasional bug falling off the grass into the water.  I stopped and tied on a small Henry’s Fork hopper. This is one of my favorite sunfish patterns. I stayed as low as I could, made one false cast, and then flipped the bug onto the water. It was only about a 15 foot cast with the leader and a few feet of fly line. Thank goodness for slow action fly rods. The fly landed with a splat near the opposite bank. Nothing happened. I thought it would bring an immediate take. I kept low behind the grass and let it slowly drift. Where were those small fish I had seen earlier? Then there was something. A dark shape was drifting towards the fly from shadows right on the drop off. I thought at first it was a small bass. As it drifted up and hovered beneath the fly I could see it was a very large sunfish, in the nine inch and above range. This one was easily in that class. I don’t catch many that big because the smaller fish seem to get to the fly first. Not this time. There wasn’t another fish around. It was just the two of us. The fly drifted out of the shade of the bank into the sunlight and the big fish turned and followed, hovering about two inches below the fly. Wow! The water was so clear it looked like the fish was floating in mid air. The colors on it were illuminated perfectly by the sunlight. She (anything so beautiful had to be female) had a bright orange belly with faint vertical stripes along her sides. There were wavy neon blue lines around her tiny mouth. The dark blue flap on her gill flap confirmed she was a bluegill. She was dark on top with fins that had a faint bluish color not unlike the color I see on tailing redfish. I had never gotten this good a look at a big bluegill as she stalked her prey. She was a pretty as any rainbow trout I’ve ever seen.

She was still inspecting the fly at close range. It looked like she was trying to smell it. Fish appeared in the fossil record about 400 million years ago and she was using every bit of those years of inherited instincts to critique that fly. It didn’t look like it was measuring up. She didn’t get that big by making bad decisions. Time was running out. I knew I had to do something to get a strike because she wouldn’t be hanging around much longer. I just barely wiggled the rod tip and made the hopper twitch. That was it. She faded away into the shadows almost like she was never there. In fact, if the water hadn’t been so clear I wouldn’t have known she was there at all. I sat there in the grass for a couple of minutes hoping she would come back up and I would get another cast. She never did.

For the next few hours I moved down the stream bank, staying low in the grass, working the hopper along the edges. I did very well. Short cast, splat the fly on water, twitch and a hooked fish on almost every throw. I caught and released a few dozen wild, beautiful, average size sunfish on my little three weight rod. Shadows were lengthening as the sun was setting. It was still and quiet with a hint of wood smoke in the air. The late evening light, with that soft yellow glow, filtered through the trees. There was a bare whisper of wind which felt cool and dry on my face. It was a day that would stay with me for a long time. The more I age the more I relish and appreciate days like this realizing they don’t happen often and they are not an endless supply.

Turning for the walk back to the car, I could hear the choruses of frogs celebrating the moonrise. I had fooled a number of fish today but it was the one I didn’t catch that I was thinking about the most. What went wrong? I think she was hungry but something about my bug caused caution to override hunger. Somewhere in her brain those neural networks, passed down from millions of ancestors, said ‘Nope, don’t take that one’. I would have loved to have been able to ask her why. Was it the wrong color or size?  Did it smell or move wrong? Not enough legs or too many legs? All those other sunfish thought it was yummy, but not you. The big ones think differently. I never will know, of course, but I have some ideas that I will try on the next trip.

Driving home that evening, the big, orange, autumn moon, hanging low in the sky, caused me to reflect on seasons changing and seasons to come. I must use them well, fishing more with a sense of wonder than a sense of purpose. My thoughts were also on that big, beautiful bluegill that I couldn’t catch. She reminded me that over the years my fly fishing and I had evolved to a different and higher level. It had become a game of how and not how many that is played on a field of beautiful seasons with an opponent that is cunning, challenging and deserves to be treated with a much respect.

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About the Author:
Mark “Tiger” Hollier is a native of south Louisiana born in Ville Platte. He grew up in Lafayette and graduated from the University of Louisiana - Lafayette with a degree in geology and is currently working as a petroleum geologist in Houston, Texas He spent his youth chasing sunfish in the bayous and ponds near his grandparents’ home in Washington, Louisiana. He now lives in Katy, Texas (near Houston) with his wife of 31 years, Nancy, and 3 cats and a dog. He is an accomplished fly tyer and was among the first certified casting instructors of the Federation of Fly Fishers. Every summer, he and his friend, Possum Foret, teach a fly fishing class for children at the New Iberia public library. These days, when he is not fly fishing for sunfish, this dedicated shallowist can be found stalking redfish with his coup stick on south Texas grass flats as pure as joy and thin as a whisper.