Mountains and Fresh Water

I'm catching my breath.

Yesterday morning, I woke before sunrise and met some people from the New Hampshire Flickr Group to climb Pack Monadnock and take photos at first light.

The dew point hovered at the temperature and we had fog and billowy clouds rolling over us until 7:30 or so when sunlight started to shine through.



After this, four of us went for breakfast in Peterborough before I returned home and went to church. At church, a cousin asked me if I would go fly fishing at dusk at Waterloom Pond. I smiled, sure.

After church, I went to Concord, NH for a meetup at Bagel Works where 18 of us from the photography club are hanging printed, framed works. After eating a quick meal at Subway, we left.

When I returned home, I sat down for a minute to breath and I nearly fell asleep. But I took my fly fishing gear with me and went to the pond and the story begins...

We wade into knee-deep water and the lines start whistling through the air as our flies softly plop onto the water. The sun is a few degrees above the horizon and casts glorious colors into the sky and reflected in the dark water.



'Just wait, Tim. Last night, I was here and when these moths hatch, the fish go crazy! But we have to wait for the sun to go way down before it starts.'

We fish. I catch a variety of sunfish, perch, and shad (we think).

Fish start to surface. Their mouths break the surface of the water.

'See those wings floating by on the surface of the water?' My cousin points out to me. 'That's a moth that is hatching and flying for the first time.'

I start seeing the wings pointing straight to the sky. And the fish rise close to the hatchling moths. The circle of life is tight tonight.

Men in a boat across the pond struggle to start their motor, running it intermittently while the darkness deepens.

Faint colors continue to paint the sky and the reflected water as we see fish surfacing to eat bugs.

We continue to catch fish. I land a small, large-mouth bass.

The pond empties of everyone else yet we wait as the nighttime envelops us, our lines whistling through the air as we drop the flies where the fish are.

Finally, the magical hour starts and fish all through the pond start surfacing as we see hatch circles and corresponding fish going for the new moths.

Beautiful.