Time passes slowly in some ways when you are sitting on the banks of a stream panning for gold -–washing pan after pan in hopes of seeing that elusive flash of colour at the bottom.
The hours can also pass all too quickly when you are getting black sand (iron) and a bit of good colour.
Panning can be peaceful, satisfying, exciting, annoying, frustrating and hard on the back all at the same time. But each hour spent on the stream has its own reward.
Sometimes you are rewarded with a few flakes. Every time I get a small flake on the bottom of my pan, it’s like getting a two pound rainbow trout on my line – both are equally exciting. And, not that it has happened very often for me, but every now and then, when you see a small nugget in your pan, a clinker, well that’s when a person unwittingly finds themselves doing the Highland fling – or, at the very least, shouting for joy.
I may no longer be light on my feet, nor have I ever been much of a dancer, but I have enjoyed each and every hour spent by the side of a stream. I may not have gotten rich, but I have been rewarded.
No, those hours were not squandered, not by a long shot.
I have sat and listened to the water wash and roll and tumble over the rocks. I have watched deer come to the stream for a drink, unaware of my presence. I have watched a piece of bark drift by and pondered how far it has travelled and wondered how far it might yet make it before coming to its rest. I have enjoyed the peace and tranquility that comes with time on the water, and on those occasions when I have found no colour at all, I have still walked away from the stream more than content.
The other evening I was working a new stretch of the Moyer River. There were some fairly big rocks along its banks and some stretches with moderate to slow moving water. I never feel all that safe where the water is moving too fast. There were also a couple of pools that looked like they could possibly hold a few fish. But I was there to pan.
I dug at the base of a few large rocks and eventually started finding some black sand. Things looked promising. The problem was that just about when I found the black sand and my first small flake, I was digging deep enough for water to start seeping into my hole. It didn’t take long before I was soaking wet and filthy dirty. But then again that is part of the process.
I dug and panned for a couple of hours with only one more small flake to show for my efforts.
Sometimes you find gold, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you keep trying, sometimes you move on.
I was at the point where I was considering moving on, when my eye caught a momentary flash of colour in the pool of slow moving water just upstream of where I was panning. Colour is colour, I thought to myself.
I made my way back to the vehicle for my four-piece fly rod that is always in the back with all the other junk/stuff I cart around for no good reason other than I never seem to find the time the clean out the back of the vehicle.
There was a floating line on my reel so I tied on a Royal Wulff. On my third cast I felt a bump but no take. I retrieved my line and cast again about five or six feet ahead of where I figured I’d felt my bump. I let the line drift on the current a bit and was just about to mend my line when I felt the hit. I raised my rod high and set the hook. It was a little cutthroat trout not much more than 10 inches long. I released it back into the water and cast again. A few casts later I had another one. It was the same exact size – either the same fish or its twin brother. I continued casting for another half hour or so but had only one bump and no more takes.
I decided to call it an evening and packed both my panning and fishing gear. I tossed the whole works into the back.