The next morning I decided to see if the fish might be interested in something other than a Royal Wulff-type thing, so I went through my flies and pulled out a selection of crap to try that day.
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A bit later I saw Wayne, and he pointed out that my boots were starting to come apart.
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I walked into town and went into the local fly shop and asked the proprietor if he had any Aquaseal. He didn't, so he gave me a pair of rental boots instead.
No charge.
Didn't even ask for my name.
When I got back to the cabin, Wayne said he had another spot he wanted to check out, and asked me if I wanted to join him.
"You bet."
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Wayne caught fish.
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I caught nothing.
Wayne was feeling a bit under the weather, so after awhile he headed back to his place to rest.
I decided to do some more exploring on my own.
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I even caught some fish.
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That evening I took a walk past some of Mitch's favorite swimming holes.
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I ended up here...
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... and noticed that there were quite a few fish rising in the pool below the falls.
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I started casting, and with each cast I saw fish rise above my fly, or below my fly, or to the left of my fly, or to the right of my fly.
Often they rose no more than six inches away from the shitty-looking artificial drifting along at the end of my tippet.
It started getting darker, and then the bats came out, and I said to myself, "I'm just going to keep fishing this thing until I can't see it anymore."
I made two more casts and finally got a take.
It was a good sized fish, and in less than ten seconds it was gone.
I made a couple more casts, but couldn't see my fly, and when I reeled in I saw that the fish I lost had taken the fly with him.
By now it was quite dark, so I dug through my pack and pulled out a gift I'd received from BM.
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By the time I returned to the cabin, my wife was already asleep.
I changed out of my wet clothes, had a quick drink on the porch, and then called it a night myself.