Walk Off Homer

The weather was warm, and the sun high, as my buddy Tyler and I headed to an unfamiliar stream along the eastern shore of Maryland. Stocker territory. Our descent to the stream brought us to a slow run of water filled with hundreds of suckers. Smack dab in the middle of them all was a lone palomino, completely out of place. Two other rainbows and a brown rounded out the moving ball of fish. We took turns trying to entice the trout to a variety of flies. Our sight fishing efforts proved futile and we left those few trout in search of others. Tyler found success throwing a small olive streamer in a deep eddy, landing two small rainbows. I flailed, tossing a double nymph rig in the channel feeding the hole. On the way back, we stopped for another look at the palomino that had kicked our butts an hour earlier. I slowly changed flies, made a downstream dead drift to find success. The body language of the palomino was significantly different as he arched slowly upwards making a move on the fly. A short while longer, I gently cradled twelve inches of bright orange in my hand. My lone fish of the short sojourn was a walk off homer.