Reoccuring fishing dreams

[travbass2 0]

Last night I had a dream again that I wanted to share with yall. Anyone else dream about past fishing trips that they dream about again and again or is it just me??

This is it.

 

I'm sitting on the boat in the Pamlico Sound in eastern NC, watching the sun set below the horizon. The slick calm waters are glazed orange from the sun sinking below the cypress and pines off in the distance. We are the only boat in sight and have baits soaking on the bottom, waiting for a passing drum.

 

This is how it always starts but the conversation between my good friend and I sometimes changes a little, but we still land a few nice drum and then the consistant part of the dream kicks in again...

 

The moon is full and high in the sky. We have been running in the cool, August night air and come off plane and ease into the outskirts of a shallow, protected bay. My buddy cuts the engine and we coast into the shallows. My eyes finally adjust to the semi darkness that was hindered by the nav lights. Black out conditions on the boat are called for in this case. Tarpon are up in the shallows, rolling and casually feeding on frantic schools of mullet. I look off towards the direction of the moon, over the Sound and am entranced by the little ripples from the breeze as the moonlight dances on the water. I hear a slurp off to my opposite side that jerks my head around to attention. I see the spot where it had just come up and zero in on my target. I drop my fly into the water beside me and strip off enough line to fire a shot off at the fish. One false cast and the fly lands with a muted splash several feet ahead of where the fish was, hoping it is where he will be. I pull on the line, making a small wake as if my fly were another mullet trying to flee the scene. The tarpon sees the dark fly, turns on it, and sucks it in. 1 one thousand, 2 one thousand, 3 one thousand and I set that hook for all that 9wt can handle. In a flash, that 65lb tarpon breaks the surface in slow motion, clears the water, and slams back in, breaking the quiet solitude of the shallow bay. Other tarpon spook off the flat, but this one is hooked up. I clear my line just in time for the fish to head for the open water, doing head shaking jumps along the way. It might have jumped seven times, but it seemed like a thousand. It headed for the open water, right where the moon was hanging over. With each jump, the water sparkled, and sometimes in my dream, the droplets fall in slow motion.

 

I fight the tarpon under the moonlight, it's head thrashing and making shorter and shorter runs until it can run no more. It is beside the boat and to keep from scaring it, we turn on a green headlamp (I discovered years ago that a green light seems to spook the fish even less than a red one) and keep the fish in the water. My fly is lodged securely in the side of it's mouth. I pop it out with some pliers and hold the tarpon by the tail. The fish is still powerful even in it's exhausted state. The engine fires up and we idle on into the Sound, holding the fish into the current. Finally the tarpon lets me know it is ready to go by smacking my hand against the boat a few times and I release my grip. I can still see that tail sink below the surface and it disappears from sight.

 

Sometimes that's it. Other times, I dream about the ride back to the dock, and even less frequently, the turn around trip we made a few hours later for a break of dawn tarpon trip with clients. Usually when that happens, I wake up on the ride to the daytime tarpon grounds a good 30 miles from the dock, but the meat of the dream, the moonlight tarpon fishing is always the same, because that is how it happened in real life.

I sure miss those days.

 

How about you guys? Yall have dreams about past fishing trips more than once?

[mwtroubum 0]

Man I thought I was the only one...must be suffering from some weird disease...LOL... seriously though, the wife claims I am sick, because all I think about is fly fishing, I look at just about anything and it relates to fly fishing some how some way, like the Nike stripe....a Quill wing perhaps...lol I did read about being totally consumed by fly fishing...it was either a Nick Lyons book or the Curtis Creek Manefesto (excellent)....oh well...no u are not alone in dreaming about actual trips, etc.

[Chase Creek 0]

I dream about work. I think it's time to retire.

[Peterjay 0]

Sounds vaguely familiar, but in my dreams, the sharks get the fish, the boat sinks, I have to dodge a hail of gunfire to get back to the car, which immediately catches fire, and when I finally come crawling into my house, it's empty because the dogs have eaten the furniture and my wife has run off with my ex-wife, which is OK, since George W. Bush has been managing my finances and the oil companies have foreclosed on the house, and I end up living on dumpster scraps in a cardboard box down by the pier. I can't be sure, but I think it's either a case of overexposure to TV news or maybe it's all this nicotine gum I've been chewing.

[Hot Tuna 0]

PJ...I hear albies might still be around the Pipe. Go out and give yourself a counseling session!

All the best,

Hot Tuna

[Peterjay 0]

LOL thanks for the tip HT - looks like I'm gonna be too busy unpacking to get much fishing done for the next couple of weeks. By the time I get out there, all that's gonna be left is stripers in the Thames and sea-run browns in the XXXXXXXX. You never know though - I've seen albies around the pipe in Dec. Once we get this move done the nightmares should subside. Feels great to be going home again.

[purolohi kalastaja 0]

It's not recurring, but I had a strange dream the other night. I was rigging up my 8wt with some pretty stout leader and tippet, tying on one of those "corn" flies riffleriversteelheadslayer mentioned some time ago in a post about roping deer, all while sitting in my treestand. I was getting ready to "match the hatch" on the farm on which I used to deer hunt.

 

I woke up feeling so conflicted.... Do I hunt deer or go fishing??? :hyst:

[mwtroubum 0]

:dunno: It is possible too do both..lol I got the deer hunting outta the way...now, back to the fishing. I did have the ultimate day a few years ago, a deer in the morning and a steelhead that same afternoon, had to drive by the river to register the deer LOL :yahoo: