Fly Fishing Clause

Yes Santa is a fly fisherman, for we believers it isn't often that you run into Santa Clause on the Maple river this time of year. I guess I just got lucky. There he was, St. Nick, 7 foot / two piece rod, 5 weight floating line, fingering through his fly box. Gosh he takes good care of himself, he hasn't aged a day in my entire life. I usually don't bring up a persons work for obvious reasons, but that's all he could talk about. So I took the opportunity to ask some pretty forward questions...Santa is the proverbial "Lump of Coal" to be handed out in large numbers this year? Are the Scrooges of the world even more so? Are the planets political leaders who are flirting with war on his naughty list? Santa had some revealing answers.
Quickly I changed the subject to defuse his concerns over the upcoming holiday. Mr. Claus, I explained, tighten up your loop in the over head cast and shorten it up a little. Lay it on the water hard. Get it down to the trout. I checked his fly box out. I told him to skip the "Christmas Island" streamer, it was more of a saltwater fly. I suggested to Mr. Claus, try a Clouser (no relation) Red & White streamer, that candy cane look really works this time of year. Now Nick relax, strip in your floating line slow, quartering the fly across the river in a gentle down stream drift. The trout hit lightly. They are hard to detect until you try to retrieve your streamer, then all heck breaks loose.
The few hours I spent with him, I will say he is indeed a jolly old soul.  Every time he laughed his wadders shook like a bowl full of jelly. I only lasted a few hours in the stream due to the extreme cold.  Last year's Christmas fleece I got from him just wasn't that warm...of course I wasn't going to tell him that. However, his heavy red wool ensemble looked warm on him all day. As we parted he had one very important request for me..."If you see Mrs. Claus, don't tell her we were fishing on the river"! Oh don't worry, I replied, that's an unwritten law.
On the way home I thought, whoa, Nick you better watch out. I'm telling you why. That will get you a lump of coal for sure...so be good for goodness sake!

---