Small Fish Are Cool Too.

I think a large part of many an angler's life is spent in search of the next "big" thing.  The next "big" hatch, secret Shangri-La stretch of water, or next big fish.  It's true, fly fishing folk are the kind of people with their heads always in the clouds, daydreaming about that next big steelhead, tarpon, salmon, or kyped out slob of a brown trout. 

We regale to each other, stories of that time on River X where we "slayed them," all on dries, and they were all big fish.  We are always in search of that next adventure or new piece of water.  We make big proclamations every year such as; "I'm definitely going to go to Silver Creek this summer" or "I'm not missing the Salmonfly hatch on the Big Hole this June."  Sometimes these prophecies come true, sometimes they don't, but at any rate, we never stop dreaming.

I digress.  The point I was out to make when I started writing this was that small fish in small water are cool too.  I mean, what if that next "big" thing happens to be that beautiful meadow on a tiny mountain stream a few miles up that bumpy dirt road?  

 

Often I find myself plotting on how, when, and where I'm going to catch more and bigger fish.  I spend money I don't have on food, gas, licenses, flies, and fixing flat tires in order to get to big famous rivers with their (if you read all those fly fishing magazine articles) supposedly never ending supply of big fish.  Don't get me wrong, I love a good adventure, and I REALLY love to catch large trout. Who doesn't after all? 

However no matter how many big fish I catch, and all the big rivers I fish, my first love will always be for throwing dry flies on small streams for beautiful, clean, and (mostly) small fish.  I can't really even explain why I love this kind of fishing so much.  All I know is that by the middle of July, all I want to do on my days off is grab my Tenkara rod, and run up the nearest trail into the mountains.  Small mountain stream fishing for me is like coming home, I feel like a kid again, it washes the dust of life away.  Plainly and simply,  I can never get enough of it. 

The small fish that are found in these mountain streams never cease to amaze me.  From the fiery red of a pure blooded cutthroat's slash, to the shocking Technicolor shades of a wild brookie, to the leopard spots of a wild rainbow, these fish are simply gorgeous.  Pure and wild.  Missing are the shredded fins, washed out colors, and beaten down bodies of a hatchery trout, or the ripped lipped, missing mandible, hooked-scarred-been-caught-100-times tailwater fish.  These small stream trout are fresh, bright, clean and 100 percent wild.  I'd rather catch one of these six inch fish than a 20 inch trout that looks like it's been through World War II any day.   

Folks that claim to be above catching small trout are okay with me.  Less competition for me, less pressure on the fish I love, I'm cool with that.  You can have your drift boats and big rivers when it's one hundred degrees outside at 2pm during those dog days of summer.  I'd rather be standing in an icy mountain stream catching six inch cutthroats, alone, unbothered and unencumbered. 

If your goal is to have your face up on the Slab of the Month page on Moldy Chum this may not be your kind of fishing.  If however you want to be alone and feel like a nine year old all day, this may be your thing.  Small fish are cool, and as I would argue, the most amazing of all.         

  

2013 - A Year in Pictures

2013 was a mighty fine year.  My wife and I bought a house, adopted a dog, I fulfilled the dream of becoming a fly fishing guide, and of course had some wonderful days on the water with friends and caught some beautiful fish. 

Here's looking to 2014 and another great year.  Below is my best an attempt at an end of year post.  I didn't feel like writing much so here is my year in pictures.



Spent many days exploring my home river.  The Bitterroot.

Did not let a broken finger keep me down.

Experienced some great hatches

Had some amazing days on the Mo' with friends

Floated the one and only Smith River.

Had a few stellar days of carp fishing.

Experienced many amazing Montana summer days.

Caught my first Steelhead on a fly.

Got to experience the incredible scenery and fishing in Hell's Canyon.

Looking forward to what 2014 has to offer.

Annual Post - Cape Solstice

The winter solstice.

 A day to reflect on your place in the world and the magic of the seasons.  Living in Montana we are fortunate to get to experience all four at their best.  Spring is full of life, rebirth, rain, hunting morels, and chasing the big hatches.  Summer days are, as Norman Maclean would say, are "arctic" in length.  Endless, beautiful, full of long hikes, beautiful fish and dry flies.  Fall is about golden leaves, hunting season, throwing streamers for big browns, and those fantastically crisp mornings.  Winter is snow, skiing, and catching up on everything you should have done when you were fishing the rest of the year! 

The winter solstice is always a much anticipated event, the start of the long journey towards spring.  In My Story as Told by Water, fly fisherman and author David James Duncan points out how sedentary things, mountains, forests, people, are truly the ones who migrate, travelling along with the equinoctial tilt of our planet.  It is in fact the creatures we consider migratory, that actually don't move at all.  The following is taken from Duncan's book.  

In the fly-fishing classic The Habit of Rivers, Ted Leeson glimpses this journey when he looks up from his home river at departing Canada geese.  He writes,

As the recognition of autumn comes suddenly, in a moment, so one day you first hear the geese....Bound for the south, these birds seem to me a strange point of fixity...for in a sense they don't move at all.  They take to altitudes to stay in one place, not migrating, but hovering, while the equinoctial tilting of the earth rocks the poles back and forth beneath them.  The geese remain, an index of what used to be where, and of what will return again.  Their seasonal appearance denotes your passing, not their own.

Duncan writes the next passage after noting the sudden change after the first cold snap of the year.  If you live in the Rockies you know the one I'm talking about.  The day when fall suddenly gives way to winter, when that stream you were fishing days or weeks before suddenly has the appearance of an immovable solid.  It is on these kinds of days that you realize that you are indeed the one migrating.

Returning home from these surroundings, I found that our house, too sat differently upon the land.  The log walls were no longer anchored to solid ground: they cut through the axial stream like a ship's prow. I'd step indoors with a sense of climbing aboard, make tea, sit at the window, watch the mountain world plunge, shiplike, through the slow equinoctial flow.  Winter solstice became not a date on the calendar but a destination: something to sail toward, then around, the way schooners used to round Capes Horn and Good Hope.  When my daughters climbed in my lap, I couldn't contain my wonder.

"We're moving!" I told them. "The house, the mountains, the whole world is sailing. Can you feel it?"

 They gazed gravely at the mountains, then nodded with such serenity is seemed they'd always known.  And on we glided, deep into winter, out around Cape Solstice, then straight on back toward spring.

Sailing Onwards, Towards Spring.

Duncan, David James (2001). Tilt. My Story As Told By Water: Confessions, Druidic Rants, Reflections,    Bird-Watchings, Fish-Stalkings, Visions, Songs and Prayers Reflecting Light, From Living Rivers, In the Age of the Industrial Dark. (pp. 57-60).  New York, NY. Sierra Club Books.       

 

Grayling

Grayling are awesome.  In a year when most of our western Montana rivers are running perilously low and "hoot owl" restrictions have been stifling our fishing activities for the better part of a month, getting up in the mountains is that much more appealing.  I like to make the hike to a local grayling filled lake at least once a year, I don't always make it but I try.

 

If you've never fished for grayling it's worth a try.  Grayling have an unnatural enthusiasm for dry flies and I never get tired of watching them rocket out of 6 feet of water to smash a dry fly.  When I arrived at said lake yesterday, cruising fish were gently sipping midges off the surface of the water.  What do I do?  Throw on a huge red Turk's Tarantula of course.  Match the hatch?  Grayling don't care about that.     

Freshwater sailfish.



Now you see him.

Now you don't.

Technical

Wake up.  Slam the coffee.  On the water at first light.  You arrive at the river hoping a few things pan out.  If it's calm, the sun is shining, and the water has something to it resembling clarity, you know you have a chance.  In this game, to be successful, everything has to work out just right.  Once the rod is strung, the real task begins, find a feeding fish, stalk it, get in position, make a pinpoint cast, perfect presentation, and hope that the fish eats the fly.

The fish are big.  You are sight fishing.  This is likely as technical as freshwater fly fishing gets.  No, this ain't trout fishing.  You probably guessed it, we're talking about carp here. 

These fish are technical

Dawn Patrol

Carp seem to be all the rage these days among a certain group of anglers.  There's a good reason for it as I have discovered.  They are big, strong, spooky as all get out, and are usually extremely picky about what they put in their mouths.  Not easy, but definitely rewarding fishing.  As I've read, carp have the some of the best abilities to detect sound and vibration of any freshwater fish.  They are also equipped with a formidable sense of smell.  Try throwing a freshly tied and cemented fly at them and see what happens!  You probably won't like the results.  Since these formative experiences, I've stopped cementing all my carp flies.  Sunscreen on your hands?  Bugspray?  Better not touch that fly.  If you do, all you may see for the next few hours is the quick snap of a spooked carp blasting away from your fly acompanied by a sudden startling SPLOOSH!  All you will be left with is a cloud of silt and more than a few yards of empty water.

Yes.  These fish are technical.  

There's no sure thing with carp fishing.  Best laid plans can be torn asunder by an unexpected windstorm, rain, hail, or host of other meteorological disasters  inevitably bound to hit the wide open prairie at any moment.  After all, there's nothing between you and the arctic circle save for a few wheat fields and a few Canadians.  This year, incessant surprise thunderstorms muddied the waters for what seemed to be weeks at a time making fishing tough.  

When I went out, I would spot a fish or two gently tailing in several inches of water, and take great care getting into position as to not spook it. By the time I did get into range, often the fish would be nowhere to be seen.  Likely he slid off into slightly deeper water but you would have no idea as to where or in what direction.  Blind casting for carp in muddy water you soon learn, is pretty much a waste of time.   

When you tell folks that you came all the way out to the middle of the prairie in eastern Montana to fly fish for carp you get a whole bevy of interesting responses.  All the way from the mild interest to annoyance, to just plain disgust.  Folks give you quizzical looks, stare in disbelief, or ask "What are ya fishin' for?"  Sometimes all you get is a laugh and a headshake.  

As one gentleman put it when I told him what I was doing, "Fly fishin' for carp!? well ain't that somethin'."     

I think it is. 

Sometimes Even a Blind Squirrel Finds a few Acorns

Did I mention carp can be tough quarry?  Just as you feel like you got a handle on them, these fish quickly humble you.  One day I had double digit hookups in the 2 hours I fished.  All right I thought, I got this figured out.  That success was followed by three straight skunk-fests.  Nice.

To get these fish to eat requires a pinpoint cast at 30 plus feet.  Landing the fly close enough to the fish to get his interest but as to not spook him.  Then you have to detect the take, and this is not often an easy thing.  Sometimes a tailing fish will turn on the fly, sometimes if you are lucky, you will see the fish suck it in.  Often however, all you notice is a brief quiver, flick of the tail, sudden pause, repositioning, or other oddity that alerts you that the fish has eaten something.  Many times it's not your fly but when it is...  

Hold on.  

The Hybrid (courtesy of John at Carp on the Fly) Strikes Back

Trout fishing has got nothin' on this.  Well, at least not very often.  My hardest day of dry fly fishing for trout would equate to about an average day of carping.  Though this perception can, in large part, I suppose be contributed to how lousy a carp fishermen I am.  I tell you what though, carping sure makes you a better, more patient, stealthy trout fishermen.

I'm no expert, but the one thing I've learned is...  These fish are technical

Go get yourself some.  Go ahead.  Do it. 

Perfection

What's your definition of perfection?  Mine is...

Standing in a mountain stream.

Tenkara rod in hand.

My favorite dry fly

Best friend alongside 

Catching some of the most beautiful trout in the world. 

Perfection

Beaver Believer - Part 2

The long awaited sequel to Beaver Believer Part 1, and the epic mediocre final chapter to my first Beaverhead River trip.

 

Gettin' Down in Brown Town.

Day 2.5 started right where day 1.5 left off.  Early.  Melo-Shelo, the early riser he is, got us (well me) up early for some pre-breakfast nymphing by the dam.  A size 20 flashback PT was the winner of the morning.  Hooking a fish on that size of bug is one thing, landing it is a whole different proposition.  We hooked, fought, and mostly lost a slew of good fish.  I tell ya, when your whole world is a big, big fish, and then that fish is gone, it's one heck of a surreal feeling.  It seems like you go through all the stages of grief in about 15 seconds.  And you know what?  Norman Maclean was right, you do remember that fish forever.  When I think about it I can still vividly remember the incredible fish from my childhood.  My first steelhead, my first bull trout over 24 inches, my first Deschutes Redside Rainbow on a Salmonfly.  It's like it just happened.  I can recall these moments better than I can what I ate yesterday, or what shirt I was wearing.  Fishing for me is an elevated state of being, your whole consciousness is trained on one single goal, one single task.  Convincing a fish to eat.  I haven't found any other activity yet in life that demands as much singular attention, focus and dedication.        

 

I'm Seeing Stars........ And Some Random People.

Wow, I really went off on a tangent on that last paragraph.  Okay, back to the recap.  You know It's really hard to take a picture when you are alone!  Does anyone else have this problem?     

The Awkward Solo Picture Attempt

Adam, feeling the love.

Okay, back to the recap, really.  After a solid breakfast of bacon, bacon, eggs, and more bacon, the crew began to part ways.  I took to venturing off on a solo mission to find one last good fish.  The day went pretty much like this.  Landing a bunch of average trout and getting rocked by a bunch of above average fish.

Miracles happen though.  Once in a while.  A few of my friends had decided to float that day and had passed me about a half hour earlier in their raft while I was wade fishing.  I continued fishing downstream and happened to bump into them as they were anchored up working a great looking run.  I had my flies dragging in the current, in a 6 inch riffle, as I walked towards them and as I went to cast to avoid hanging on the bottom, I hooked something solid.  The solid object quickly turned and started smoking downstream, I played it off like I had planned the whole thing.  Not really...  We landed the fish directly in front of their raft, my best fish of the day.  Total dumb luck.  Glad they had a net.   

My Fish of the Trip.  No Skill Included.

At that point, I figured I had burned up any and all fish Karma I had up until that point built up.  I reeled in, packed it up, and hit the road for home.  No use trying to top that series of events.

Beaverhead River, I'll be back.  You can bet on that. 


Rollin' Home.