So my boss is leaving to host a trip to the Bahamas tomorrow morning, while the rest of us fly shop grunts are left with a front moving in, predicted to drop between 5" and 8" of snow on our already old-stricken central Ohio area. The one spring creek in the area, often very good this time of year, is flowing down to a trickle. The northerns are late and for good reason; their swamps are all frozen over. Totally unfishable. 

It's a fine time for a few sorrow beers and some fly tying as the storm moves in. The beer is good, being cheap, substance-less, and very cold; they are more than reminiscent of those same beers applied at the tailgate after a good day of running the creek under summer's heat, when the oxygenated water seems ready to boil and the black bass are hungry and full of rage. There's nothing wrong with winter, so long as the creeks keep fishing, and I know that I have it good here in the Midwest. We can fish year-round in Ohio, more or less -- at least, that's what we tell ourselves when there's water in the steelhead streams and the smallmouth and pike are beginning to spawn, when an angler may take his pick of quarry basically anywhere in the state. I realize that the vaunted Western streams are more or less shut out for long stretches of the year, and that many a wistful angler there gazes hopelessly on swollen stream. I realize that I'm lucky to live here, with so much fishing within a relatively easy drive. 

But the wind has begun to taunt me, and that dull ache behind my temple tells me that the snow is minutes away. It probably won't dump eight inches, but it could keep the fishing off for the next several weeks, which is nearly as bad. 

At least there will be melt to bring the steelhead streams up. At least the pike will be truly ready to roll when everything loosens up. And at least I'll be ready -- so ready -- for a season that is to warmwater anglers what September is to uplanders and rut monkeys.

Here's to full flyboxes and slime to come, warm beer and cool creeks for all of us. Good luck, everybody.

regards,

David