You never know what you’ll encounter at streamside.
Winter 2025
By Steve Hudson
Photos by Jimmy Jacobs
In colder climes, like Wisconsin, spring isn’t here yet. As it turns out, one of my kids lives up in Wisconsin now, up there in the frozen north country. He called me yesterday and said they had 8 inches of snow the night before.
“So, to celebrate spring, I rode my bike to work,” he added. “In the snow!”
Rode his bike – to work – in the snow.
“Yeah,” he continued. “I only slipped once.”
I worry about that child sometimes. But then he’s an academic, a teacher of college, and he’s not yet 40 years old. Sub-40 academics can be interesting people.
Me? I was an academic once, too, so I understand. But I’m over 40. I don’t have to do that kind of thing anymore.
So, what do I do to celebrate spring? Well, I darn sure don’t ride bikes in the snow.
Instead, I go fishing.
For many years, one of my favorite ways to celebrate the arrival of spring has been to pick up the fly rod and find some water to explore. It doesn’t really matter if I catch anything. It’s more about the initiation of a new season and all of that. So, I’ll round up a rod and set out to spend a few hours wading around in a creek somewhere, throwing a tiny little fly to fish who, I hoped, would respond favorably. It was always fun and always therapeutic. And it still is.
So that’s how I find myself standing knee-deep in Amicalola Creek, not far from Dawsonville. It’s spring, and that means that it’s caddis season too. All over the region, in streams far and wide, there will be caddisflies.
An Elkhair Caddis pattern.
How many will there be?
“Zillions of them,” I hope, half aloud. “That’s what I’m waiting for!”
I grabbed hold of a streamside limb as I was easing into the river, and as I did hundreds of little gray caddisflies went a-fluttering out over the water. Some of them crash-landed into the flow, and that was all it took to wake up a couple of nearby fish. I saw the strikes as the fish rose to the flies. It was going to be a good day.
Sometimes, when caddis season comes, I’ll fish with dry flies to imitate those unfortunate adults which end up in the drink. I like a size 14 or size 16 gray Elkhair Caddis, and I carry plenty of them in my box this time of year.
Other times I’ll use a beadhead soft-hackle emerger, a subsurface fly which suggests the “emerging” form of the insect. My favorite version has an iridescent dubbed body and a hackle made from a mottled hen feather, again in size 14 or 16, with a brass or tungsten bead head to help it sink. It’s often more effective than the dry.
And sometimes I’ll even fish the two together in a dry/dropper rig, the high-floating Elkhair Caddis dry tied on about two feet above the subsurface emerger. The dry acts like a strike indicator, letting me know when a fish takes the unseen emerger – but sometimes the dry fly picks up fish too. Once in a while I’ll even get a double – two trout at once, once on each fly. Those are days to talk about for a long, long time.
Anyway, as it turned out, the trout were definitely in a caddis kind of mood. I caught fish on the dry as well as on the dropper, though there were no doubles that day. But there were plenty of singles, and all was good.
I fished for a couple of hours, and by the time my watch said I had to go, I had landed more than I deserved. It had been a good start to spring, a very good start indeed.
Climbing out of the creek, I walked a few yards to a good sitting spot. Pleasantly tired, I decided to plop down there by the creek for a few more minutes before heading back to the truck. I like to do that, because sometimes you’ll see a lot if you just sit by a creek and watch things.
What I didn’t know was that I was about to see Mavis and Lem.
I heard tires squeal somewhere down the road, and then here comes Mavis, driving like, well, yeah. I know her name was Mavis because that’s what Lem called her when they pulled up next to my truck a moment later, and I know his name was Lem because that’s what Mavis called him when she told him to hurry up and “get out of the dang car.” We outdoor journalist types are highly trained when it comes to the art of observation, you know. We don’t miss a thing.
Anyway, Mavis got out of the car and walked the three yards to the edge of the gravel parking spot. The creek was right below her.
“Hey Lem!” she hollered. “Lem, you got to come see this. It’s just beautiful!”
The scene was “beautiful!”
Lem climbed out of the car too, bringing with him a can of beer. He walked up beside Mavis and popped the top and took a long, slow drink.
“Beautiful sure enough. Mavis, where’s that durned camera?”
Mavis turned back to the car, rummaged in the back seat for a moment, and finally emerged with a small camera, an old-school one, the kind that used film.
“Hey mister,” she said to me. “You mind taking our picture?”
She fiddled with the camera for a second and then handed it to me as Lem took another pull on his beer. Then she grabbed Lem by the hand and pulled him to his feet and said, “Smile!”
The camera went click. Lem took a long last drink. Then he crumpled the can and folded it in two and, winding up like a major league pitcher, threw it toward the water. But he messed up the throw and the can bobbled more than soared, bouncing off a branch (sending more caddisflies fluttering away in terror) before at last landing in the water with a shallow little splash. It bobbed there for a few seconds, carried by the current, but then it sank out of sight in an eddy behind a rock about a yard from the bank.
“Beautiful!” Mavis said again, turning now to walk back the way she had come. She climbed back behind the wheel. “I’m sure glad we took that picture,” she hollered through the half-open window. “You’re glad, too, aren’t you, Lem?”
Lem reached the car and climbed in too, and then Mavis cranked it up and kicked the beast into gear. Gravel flew from the tires as they swerved back onto the pavement.
Yep, you’ll see a lot if you sit and watch a river.
Steve Hudson is a freelance outdoor writer, book author and award-winning member of the Georgia Outdoor Writers Association. Steve makes his home in Roswell. Contact him at aa4bw@comcast.net.