It
was a glorious day for our last on the river.
We'd fished through the morning happily but uneventfully, seeing rises
primarily from small fish. We hooked and
landed a few of these to validate our sharpened skills and choices of flies,
but we'd hoped to see some larger heads break the surface. Few flies were in evidence: a smattering of
Pale Morning Duns, a few flying ants, a caddis here and there, but not enough
of anything to get the larger fish looking up regularly. It mattered not. The sky was clear, the air relatively still,
and we were happy simply to be in the mountains and in the West and on this
big, wonderful, glass-smooth river again.
By about 11:30 all surface action had apparently ceased, so
we decided to walk back upstream to the car and take a lunch break. My wife had indicated an interest in driving
up to see a portion of a cutting horse competition that was taking place twelve
miles north. I, on the other hand, had
no plans to leave the river on the last day of trout fishing I was likely to
have for some time.
We enjoyed the lovely weather as we sat near the river savoring
our sandwiches and talking about the wonderful time we'd had over the previous
six days. It had been Norma's inaugural
fly fishing venture, and she'd thoroughly enjoyed it. No small thanks were due to the excellent
guide she'd had the first day of our trip, who had used humor, skill, and
sensitivity to help her overcome her initial apprehension about wading and had
shown her how to spot big fish and approach them strategically. A similarly-skilled friend built on this
foundation on our second day when we floated a section of the river, and he
oriented her to the skills and mechanics required to drift a nymph, sense a
take, fish a dropper rig, and land a fish.
She took several fish that day, but more importantly, she found the
entire experience absorbing and enjoyable. Her enjoyment thrilled me as I had
hoped to be able to introduce her to this very important part of my life for
years. I was hopeful we would share an
enjoyment of fly fishing for many years in the future.
Norma had fished hard and fished well through the morning,
but with nothing much happening with the fishing she figured a two-hour break
to visit the cutting horse competition was not going to cause her to miss much
action during the typically slow early afternoon hours. She also said, "I'll leave you to fish
in peace for a while. Then you won't
have to worry about whether I'm in the right place or fishing the right
fly." While I'd thoroughly enjoyed
our time together on the river, the prospect of a couple of hours of focused
fishing was not unwelcome, and I was silently grateful for the opportunity. At about 1:00, she drove off to the north,
and I walked south, back to the river.
As I looked downriver, I could see that my preferred
location about five hundred yards downstream was occupied by a couple of other
anglers. With the weather so lovely and
few flies around to stimulate the fish, the prospect of a longer walk along the
river was not unpleasant, so watching the water with one eye and the trail
through the meadow with the other, I set out to find solitude and, I hoped,
rising fish.
A few minutes later, when I was about sixty yards upstream
of the closest angler, a small disturbance on the surface about fifty feet from
shore caught my eye, so I stopped and watched and waited. About thirty seconds later, a substantial nose
broke the surface gently in the unmistakable deliberate riseform of a large trout.
About twenty seconds later it came
again, and about a half minute later, again.
Knowing the closest angler was not aware of my presence and
knowing I would not be disturbing his fishing, I slipped into the river as
quietly as I could about twenty feet above the fish and began easing my way
into casting range. The fish continued
to rise, steadily and contentedly, moving a substantial amount of water each
time it rose. The Pale Morning Dun
emerger which I'd finished that morning was still attached to my 6X
tippet. I checked the knot as I waded,
never taking my eyes off the fish's lie.
Satisfied the knot was sound and the tippet unabraded, I began stripping
line. I paused about thirty feet from the fish and ten feet upstream of its
feeding location. The rises continued,
as steadily and smoothly as before.
Before making my first cast, I checked my watch to see how
much time I'd have to work the fish before Norma was scheduled to return, at
3:00. It was 1:20.
A few Pale Morning Duns were still hatching. I'd see an occasional flying black ant. A brown-bodied caddis would occasionally
flutter from the streamside brush and fall into the water. Most of these were eaten by small fish making
splashy rises. One angler had come into
the river about a hundred yards above me since I'd first spotted the fish. There were now two fishermen and a guide
working the bay about seventy yards downstream and across the river. I could see another handful of anglers over
the next eight hundred yards. The fish
continued to feed, its big head even more impressive now that I was so close.
I made the first cast with the emerger, and it dragged
almost immediately. The fish rose to
take another natural after the fly dragged, so I knew I hadn't spooked it. The next cast drifted well and was ignored,
as was the next and the next. The fish's
mouth was visible on each rise, so I knew it was eating from the surface or
perhaps just barely in the film. I tried
to determine if it was taking duns but could not be sure. After watching for a while, I decided to try
a dun imitation anyway.
A dozen good drifts with the Pale Morning Dun were
ignored. I switched back to a different
emerger pattern, this one with woodduck flank tail, a pheasant tail abdomen, a
Pale Morning Dun-colored thorax and a CDC wing clump. On the third drift, the big fish bulged under
the fly, but did not take. Ah! Reinforcement at last. Subsequent drifts with the same pattern met
with no acceptance or even acknowledgment, yet the fish continued to feed on
whatever natural insects it chose. My
watch now said 1:55
I brought the fly in and hung it in the keeper and studied
the surface of the river. The size-18,
yellow-green, PMD duns continued
to hatch but not in great quantity.
Occasionally I'd see a tiny olive Pseudocloeon dun, about a size-26, but
with only one or two appearing within the scope of my vision each minute, I
didn't think there were enough of these to interest the fish. Knowing the vagaries of current would often
channel food only into very specific areas, it occurred to me the fish could be
feeding on something that was coming into its lane but not drifting into
mine. While I was musing, the big
trout's rises continued unabated.
I concluded some rusty spinners might possibly be coming
into the fish's lane and tied on an imitation in size-18 that had produced many
times before. Several good drifts met
with no reaction at all. A size-20
spinner produced no better. At this
point the wind began to blow, for the first time that day. It was now 2:20, and my fish, as I'd begun to
think of it, continued to rise steadily about every twenty to thirty seconds.
I waited for the wind gusts to settle a bit, then, thinking
perhaps the wind was blowing terrestrials onto the surface, I tried in succession
a black ant, a cinnamon ant, a beetle, a flying black ant, a hopper, and a hopper
with a pheasant tail nymph dropper. I
fished each offering carefully and thoroughly, but each met with disinterest
from the big rainbow, which nonetheless continued to rise very consistently to
naturals. It was now a little after
3:00.
I took a break from casting and looked around. By now, all the people I had seen on the
river when I began casting to the fish had departed, and I was alone. Visible insect activity was minimal, even
less than when I had started. The wind
was now steady at ten to fifteen miles per hour, moving slightly up- and
across-stream from behind me. I noted
with a somewhat bewildered interest there were no small fish rising, but in a
radius of about fifty yards from where I stood I could spot a half-dozen
obviously large fish feeding steadily in the silky currents, similar to the way
my friend was feeding just in front of me.
What were they eating?
Casting in the freshened wind had become an interesting
challenge. Getting the line out was no
problem because of the quartering tailwind.
Placing the fly accurately and drag-free in the fish's feeding lane was
another story. Being left-handed, I was
forced to use a backhand stroke, holding the rod tip high at the finish of the
cast and allowing the line to carry upstream, riding the wind, while the fly
and then the leader settled gently into the lane. At first this approach was awkward, resulting
in several inaccurate or dragging drifts, but after about ten minutes it seemed
more or less natural and actually quite easy, as I'd now approached to within
about twenty-five feet of the fish. No
matter the proximity; the big head kept appearing in front of me in a very
regular rhythm. I had gotten into a
prime position to cast to the fish, and I hadn't moved in so long that I was
able to control the distance of each successive cast by simply keeping the line
tight under my rod hand without ever adding or subtracting line to the cast.
The wind had apparently influenced the fish's feeding
behavior, as it now was rising in an elongated elliptical lane about eight feet
long and two feet wide. At the start of
a typical sequence, the head would break water just above a small eddy. The next rise would be four feet above that,
the next four feet further upstream, the next three or four feet down and
a foot or so closer to me, then back at
the starting point. Twice, when the wind
blew in fierce gusts, the fish went down for three minutes, at which point I
got panicky.
After these disappearances,
the fish continued to feed without apparent reluctance through each succeeding
gust. It was now 3:30.
The wind had also blown in a few clouds, and as these
obscured the bright sun, I saw a few Flavilinea begin to emerge, their much
higher wings making them easy to distinguish from the PMDs. "Ah hah," I thought, "maybe a
change in diet!" On went the Flavilinea
emerger, and the battle was renewed.
Several minutes of nothing followed.
A Flav dun elicited more nothing.
By now, Norma had returned from the cutting horse
competition, donned her waders, rerigged her rod, walked down the trail and was
standing on the streambank behind me. I
told her what had been going on and invited her to come by and watch my friend
perform. She waded out and stood near me
briefly, then spotted a few big risers upstream and across from my position and
began wading over to get within casting distance and to give them a try. It was now about 4:00, and my fish was still feeding
in the same maddeningly regular rhythm.
In frustration, I went back to the PMD
dun again and fished it as well and carefully as I could for another fifteen
minutes. I had no reaction except the
pleasure of seeing the big fish continue to eat. I tried the ant again briefly, because I
continued to see the little critters occasionally flying over the water. Nothing again. "Well, maybe a caddis," I thought,
even though I'd not seen the fish come to a caddis all afternoon. Despite good drifts, my fish seemed to ignore
the caddis even more emphatically than my prior offerings, although I knew
intellectually this was impossible.
Perhaps it was my lack of faith in the fraud. Similarly, a caddis emerger pattern passed
over the lie as though unseen. Whatever
the fish was eating did not pass unseen as the big head continued to appear on
schedule.
Norma called to me periodically to tell me about the rises
of big fish she was seeing, and I periodically reiterated that I was "not
going to leave this fish until it is hooked or I at least raise it or I pass
out from exhaustion." It was now
4:30, and the last possibility seemed most likely. That the fish had not stopped feeding through
this entire three-plus hour episode was both maddening and rewarding. Either the fish was focused on eating with a
concentration that I'd seldom seen, or I was fishing pretty effectively to have
not put the fish down. I had not really
tried to estimate the fish's size simply because I knew it was big. Now, because my casting was not producing any
action, I spent a couple of minutes trying to gauge the fish's length.
The fish was easily in the class of what I call
"second-and-a-half" fish on this river.
That is, it takes about a second and a half
from the time the fish's nose breaks water in a deliberate rise until the tail
shows and disappears. This would put the
fish safely in the twenty-inch category.
Well, if I ever got it to take, we'd have some fun! Lord knows, we were having plenty of time to
get to know one another.
I put the fly back in the keeper and started going through
the fly boxes. As I was going through
the rows thinking, "Tried that; tried that; tried that, too; nope, he
didn't like that; won't even bother with that; that didn't work; I think he
chuckled at that," I noticed a PMD
emerger that for whatever reason I had not tried. This one was tied with a
brown Antron tail, Pale Morning Dun-colored body and thorax and a little tuft
of grey poly yarn for an emergent wing.
As I began knotting the pattern to the leader, I was thinking,
"What the hell. Might as well let
him ignore this one too." I also
noted as I was tying on the fly that I should change my tippet, because by now
it was only about eighteen inches long --not much shock-absorbing power
there. But, as I often (stupidly) do, I
didn't bother to do what my mind was telling me to do. While I was preparing the latest offering,
the fish continued to rise at the same three-rise-per-minute rate that it had
been using for most of the afternoon. It
was about 4:45.
The first cast was pitiful, and the little emerger dragged
almost immediately after hitting the water.
I waited a moment or two for a gust to blow through, then pitched
again. The second cast dropped just a
bit outside the lane but began to float without drag, so I let it
continue. As the fly approached the
eddy, the fish rose and ate the fly as if it had been waiting all afternoon for
just this morsel. I raised the tip, and on feeling the pressure the fish
quickly peeled off about thirty feet of line, jumped heavily, and fell back
with an impressive splash. I could not
help but note it was 4:50, three-and-a half hours since I'd made the first cast
to the fish.
I yelled to Norma that the game was on, but my elation with
the take turned quickly to doubt as I thought of my truncated tippet and the
probability that a brain cramp was going to cost me yet another big fish.
It would be a lot of literary fun now to describe an epic
battle with many leaps and much reel music, but because I knew the shortened 6X
tippet wouldn't stand much pounding, I simply chased that fish all over the
section of river he decided to play in, as quickly as a 270-pound, 57-year old
male can chase a cavorting rainbow that is in much better physical shape than
he is. I never let the fish get much
more than that initial forty or so feet of line off the reel, and contrary to
many fish I've hooked in this river, this one let me stay more or less in
control. Can a trout show sympathy? Or possibly empathy?
A combination of side pressure and holding its head up out
of the weeds had the fish in the net relatively swiftly. Measured against the handle of my
catch-and-release net, the rainbow came to a very fat and respectable
twenty-two inches. I slipped out the
fly, released the fish, clipped the fly from the ridiculously short tippet and
stuck it in the brim of my hat (where it remains to this day), then wound line
and leader onto the reel. My day was
full, and it had been completely satisfying.
With a silly grin on my face, I began slowly wading
upstream to where Norma was fishing when she suddenly turned and smiled and
yelled down to me, "Okay, you finally got that one. Now there's another really big fish up here
rising right behind this eddy. Do you
want to try for him or should I?"
Hearing that kind of enthusiasm coming from my new recruit
and seeing the warm and happy look on her face made me grin. I realized in the course of a week we, as a
couple, had probably assembled the components of a new scenario that we would happily
replay together many times, and I was delighted to find that even after
thirty-six years of marriage we could find a new game to play together.
Don't mis out on the special fly patterns present by Eric Peper that accompanies
the article. The patterns can be found by clicking on the following
Link
Photo courtesy of Larry Solomon