Tap Teel (Random Thoughts While Fishing Alone For Five Days Straight)

Words and Photos: Copi Vojta

I constantly triple and quadruple guess my morning fishing decision. I should have gone upstream. I should have driven back to that one spot where that fish hammered my streamer. I should have stayed in the sleeping bag. I heard my mother once tell me not to should on myself, but I didn’t listen.

There’s nothing like a good gink spooging … you know when you open the bottle and heat and elevation has gotten the best of it and blesses your fingertips and fly with 100 times the recommended amount?

I used up an entire tube of Chap-Stick and, at the end, realized that that shit doesn’t even work. It’s a big scam.

Watching birds pick a mayfly off the surface of the water is just as cool as watching a fish do it.

Fishing in snake country adds a great element of adrenaline and surprise.

My senses bloom with the desert rain.

What color is sagebrush?

Apples are delicious. They’re also a great treat on the walk back to the truck after catching plenty of land-locked steelhead on little nymphs.

Could you imagine the horrendous feeling of opening a bag of top ramen that is missing the flavor packet?

On the water closest to camp: camp water, campy ass schwag water, campfrogwater, also known as, don’t get stuck fishing it for too long, or let your friends see you do it.

Flyfishing bonus activities: swimming, napping, train spotting, finding random stuff (full bottles of gink floating in a back eddy and measure nets in the damp grass).

Fishing a streamer with a beer in the other hand is an acquired skill.

I think I get high holed by Jesus all of the time.

Note to self: get to know rivers better than I know myself.

Railroad tracks are a great fishing ally, but they really need to align the ties to match my gait.

There is a noble duty to giving those well-fished, beat up flies with rust peppered hooks one last dance on the end of your tippet. They work.