Good News TJ!

After the easy striper fishing of last week - lots and lots of silly fish jumping on my flies - and with today being so bloody warm, it was time to venture to the Culvert for the first time this new season. I kissed my wife and kids, strung up the ol' floating line, grabbed some other detritus and headed to the sound. Ready for the first dry shrimp action of this merciful spring season.

I was half way there when I realized I'd forgotten the lovely box of shrimp flies I've painstakingly tied throughout winter. Sod it - there was a white muddler Andy had tied years' back hooked above the vanity light in my car. It would do.

I forgot my cigar cutter and lighter, but never mind. I tied on the muddler in the half light; so what if the headlamp in my other pants would've been handy. Snipping off the tag end with my teeth (no clippers) and, oopsie, wrong tag. Take II and the fly was firmly retied to the inappropriate 8lb test that had been on my floater since the last steel trip with Zakur. No biggie. It'd do.

English Jonny makes his way to The Culvert.

The tide - high at 7.20 at the local point - was still pulling north through the Culvert when I arrived. So I mounted a high rock and began to cast to the slacker water when, on only my second back cast, I hooked the power line behind. A hard pull separated everything: no fly, no line, all gone. The lights went out in adjacent houses. That muddler was a powerful pattern, right enough.

Before I could shut my car keys inside, break my new rod, or slice off a digit I peered into the bank-side rocks and looked for the first grass shrimp of the year; perhaps the first wee crab; a silverside; anything.

And there you have it, Andy. Not one set of shrimpy eyes did I see. Nothing. It's late, you see. Just like you planned it.

Jonny