Girls and Fish and Flies

My T caught the second fish of the day. In fact, she caught one of only about five fish brought in all day. I hooked two fish, but they spit out the fly before I could get them to land. It wasn’t the best day to catch fish, but it was a good day to go fishing.

Lake Margaret

Starting to get the hang of it...

T and I had a hard time finding Lake Margaret, but it did not bother us to be tooling around the black curves arching over the green hills, because we drove through some gorgeous rural Oregon. The sun took turns with the stratocumulus today, and everything was bursting in bloom with green backdrops. We dropped through Oregon City and continued on south out into the boonies. It’s a private lake, and not marked, which is why we had such a hard time finding it.

yellow line

The Healing Waters group showed up, as well as the volunteer experts who were there to teach us newbies how to fish. It didn’t take us too long to get it figured out, and I was grateful for Bill, the guy who worked with me today. Bill had never volunteered with the group before, and I had never fly fished, so we were a winning team.

I had hoped to try out one of the flies I tied, but never got around to it. Learning to cast actually requires a lot of concentration, and I spent several hours working on trying to get the line and my limbs all coordinated.

Bonding with the wildlife

My daughter enjoyed the trainer who worked with her as well – a man who had most of his experience teaching young people, so he was perfect to work with her. By the time we were shooed off the property, Miss T wasn’t very eager to go.

All our gear was donated, and lunch was free. What a great day put together for us by Disabled American Vets and Project Healing Waters.