The weather forecast was for relatively mild weather. That is to say that the promise of 18 degrees, with cloud and intermittent showers had turned into a prediction of 24 degrees and partial sun.
When we stepped into the river I waited for the clear mountain water to soak through my wading boots and make contact, and when it did, I was perturbed. It felt like a bath tub, and that was a little after eight in the morning. At the first run I put a thermometer under the surface and asked Neil to guess the temperature. He was wrong. It was 22 degrees C ! (71F!)
The river flowed in beguilingly clean riffles over stones in a gallimaufry of colours and shapes, dancing before our eyes. Our delicate dry flies danced in the breeze on the water surface above that. Well, one of the two did. Neil was not fishing a nymph on the point, since he said it makes his parachute dry float like a school bus, rather than something wearing a tutu. I realised he was right, but the morning heat had rendered my mind foggy, so my school bus stayed on.
The early runs were devoid of fish. Or perhaps just devoid of active or feeding fish. I don’t know . I didn’t spook any fish. I don’t think Neil did either. And in that heat, and under that bright sky, we weren’t in the least surprised. As the morning got underway I found myself choosing to wade across the river in the deepest spots to get as wet as I could. I also found myself trying to set my camera ISO lower, and the speed faster to retain a low f stop, but it was too bright to achieve those blurred background shots. But with the polariser on, the landscapes were coming up pretty.
The pictures were to bely the fact that we were suffering an oppressive heat. I raised a fish on the dry, but it seemed to push the fly away with its nose, and there was never any contact. Neil landed one on his dancing dry, and he and I had a few more porpoise over the fly without ever feeling them. I had one on, which put a bend in the rod, but threw the fly when it jumped. They were few, and far between. When we had them go at the fly and miss, I rather felt it was the best thing that could have happened. They suffered no stress, and we could live on the dreams of those speckled diamonds coming up out of a hole and arching fleetingly over our dry flies.
Between them I tried to sit on a rock to watch Neil fish a good pool, where he was sure to catch a fish, I thought. The plan was to get some action pictures. The hot rock I sat on burnt my backside through my longs, so I climbed back into the river to cool off and mindlessly fling a fly into the pockets.
It some point I found a spring. A small bubbling cauldron of water coming up out of the ground on a sandbar near a boulder. I thought I had stumbled on a source of cool water, so I quickly took a water temperature. A cauldron indeed! I could barely believe it. I measured the main river too, and found it to be the same. As Neil came up past me I asked him to guess, and he declined to answer this time. Twenty Five!
I sat on a rock, and told Neil I wasn’t feeling too strong. He said he felt the same. I had drunk so much water that I thought I might have flushed out all the electrytes in my body. I had developed a headache. I found a tube of condensed milk in my vest and devoured that, hoping a sugar rush might save me.
A short while later, as I plumbed a deep hole beneath tumbling white water, the rumbling thunder of earlier finally produced some cold raindrops. I reveled at their arrival, the sting of their pelting a shear luxury, helping to alleviate the heat which was now trapped in under a dome of heavy cloud. I waded in under a rock overhang beside the pool, let off a few shots of the valley above and then buried the camera in a waterproof bag in my pack.
The truck was just around the corner, and the storm was gathering some anger, so I skipped the last pool, and set about taking my rig down, and getting my boots off. The ever-committed Neil tried the last pool just in front of me, but I managed to lure him off the water….got him to see the senselessness of it….by waggling a bottle of very cold beer in the air. It worked. It was a mighty fine beer that. One of the best I’ve had I think.
Today is beautifully cool, with a hushing breeze and drifting cloud. We picked the wrong day for fishing. I blame the weather forecasters. But I enjoyed the photographic opportunities. These days are never wasted.