Fishing story - The fish that wouldn't be caught

I have never seen so many fish and caught nothing before. Standing on the bank of a river some ten or so metres wide looking at a shoal of fish some five or six metres long from beginning to end, just short of a metre wide and solid with fish. From some about the length of my forearm with fingers extended to others as long as my arm (and bigger) in about seven feet of clear water.

Well we cast wet and dry flies all over that damn shoal all afternoon. Drifted flies downstream over their very noses. Nothing. My brother in law lost two lures and I lost one. Did we catch a thing? No.

We saw these fish jumping out of the water and taking the occasional Caterpillar that dropped down onto the water from the trees, we saw them arguing amongst themselves causing sudden flurries in the water as they squabbled for a place in the tightly packed shoal but they just weren't biting.

Brother in law, who is an experienced fly fisherman, was frustrated by the whole experience. I was surprised to say the least and commented that I'd never seen so many fish in one small pool as that and come away with so little.

Later on, we stood and watched from a bridge as another fly fisherman made fruitless cast after fruitless cast onto a big shoal of metre size grandaddy fish. Personally, I reckon we'd just picked the wrong time of day. Hunting and fishing are dawn and dusk activities when the game is most active. To add insult to injury, when we looked in our fishing licence guide, we found that we couldn't have taken any fish home anyway until October 15th. Damn, these regulations are complicated!

We went home empty handed so it was Pork for supper, not Salmon. Still good though.