Gray Reef at 5500 cfs

The runoff this year has been breaking records all over the state with snowpack averaging 215% over normal levels.  The water has been flowing over the dam at Gray Reef at 5500 cfs.  In my own previous experence, 4500 cfs was big water. In June the flows went up to 8000 cfs.  Most of the normal places I like to fish were inaccessible at this level of flow. There was no access to the island and even fishing the shore on either side was very difficult.  There was a midge hatch going on and they could not resist a black bodied  glass bead head pattern in size 22.  I was hooking up continually, landing more than a dozen fish over 20 inches. I took one 25" fish home to eat.

 

Slip indicator fishing.

Netting a rainbow that took a chironomid pattern. Photo Chris Knight

Old Flyfish@ mailing list friend Chris Knight passed through Northern CO in late July on a western roadtrip and we arranged to meet at one of the more famous plains lakes in North Park.  Chris and I have fished before in the early 1990's on Skaneateles Lake in upstate NY, mostly we've been email correspondents for a long time.  It was great to see him after many years and to catch up on the doings of other former (and some still current) @Flyfish members and it was a chance to fish a lake I've been wanting to fish for  a few years.

Chris with the ubiquitous fishing cigar.

A few years ago, at the University of Wyoming Flyfishing Symposium, I saw Jack Dennis give a talk about lake fishing.  He showed a video of Brian Chan demonstrating his rather technical methods of fishing chironomids that Chan and others have developed for lakes in British Columbia and eastern Washington.  The plains lakes here in WY and CO have incredible midge populations so the tactics should work here as well, though I  do not known of of anyone who has really figured out how to adapt Chan's methods for the local lakes (and neither did Jack Dennis when he gave his talk.)  Seeing the video Jack showed was impetus for me to buy the Spring Creek Pram I've been using for lake fishing since.

Admiring the effective slip indicator.

The basic technique is based on the slip indicator.   It allows the use of long leaders (30' or more); when you hook a fish, the indicator slides down the line to the fish so you can land them.  Imagine trying to land a fish if you have an indicator preventing you from bringing the fish in closer than 30'.  These long leaders can be necessary to get the fly down to the level where the fish are feeding.

These slip indicators are hard to find and hard to figure out.  In fact, it's been down right frustrating to find any concrete information on them at all.  Check out this video with Brian Chan that claims to show how to use them.  See if you can figure out how to rig one based on his description ( between 18 - 30 seconds in the video); I can't.  Joni, The Utah Fly Goddess has  the only really clear explanation of how to rig one of these that I've seen - it took me a long time to find this. Thank-you Joni.  She also sells them on her web-site.    If you don't know exactly what you're looking for it's hard to find.  Neither flyshop in Laramie has slip indicators nor does the fly shop at Gray reef.  The guys working in those shops "have heard of them" or "had some once" but don't have them now. On our way to the lake to meet Chris, we stopped at the North Park Anglers in Walden.  They had something called the plumbbobber].  It's not the same type of slip bobber Brian Chan or Joni use, but they did come with instructions and I stocked up on these overpriced bobbers in various sizes.

Chris called on the cell phone just as we stopped at the shop and said to "Hurry up!", that the Callibaetis were coming off and the fish were rising everywhere.  When we arrived, Chris was out in his float tube.

Dry fly purist Chris Knight.

  

The lake we were fishing is known for extraordinarily large brown trout and I was hoping to hook up with one. It took me quite a while to rig up and get the pram in the water, and by the time I did, the hatch was over. No matter, I'd come to fish midges deep. I rigged up with two midge pupa patterns hanging fourteen feet below the slip indicator, they were rigged with a small  split-shot to help them get down. I did manage to hook four fish and land three, all nice rainbows, but not the big brown I was looking for. They were all around 15"-17".  Garrett wandered down the bank and hooked up with a few similar sized rainbows, also on a midge pupa pattern fished deep.

It turns out that Chris is what is known as a dry fly purist; apparently he takes after Fredrick M. Halford.  There aren't many left. As far as I can tell, they mostly hang on the Henry's Fork at Harriman Ranch or on the Beaverkill in NY.  Chris had decided before heading west not to taint his tippet with a nymph of any kind.  One of his custom rods is inscribed "Death before strike indicators."  Chris' main objective for the trip was the small cutthroat streams (all apparently named Frenchman's Creek) in central Colorado and northern New Mexico.  I was sorry he wouldn't take the midge and slip bobber I offered and rig up to match the hatch, even if it was 14 feet below the surface. To each his own.
 
After lunch, Garrett took off in the pram.  Chris and I  fished until the wind came up in float tubes; no luck. Chris did catch a nice fish on a dry in the late afternoon after we moved over to the Michigan River to get out of the wind.

Garrett takes off in the pram, the fish are always bigger on the other side of the lake.

When Garrett got back he told us the story of the one that got away, a state record for sure.

Dredging for Winter Trout

Just back from Oregon, Garrett and I fished Gray Reef on the North Platte. Air temperatures around 28°F, it was overcast early and then cleared up in the late afternoon. We got on the water around noon and fished until the sun set. Amazingly, aside from some guys fishing from a drift boat below the boat ramp there was no one else there when we arrived. Downstream the river was slushy and not much farther down it was frozen. It looked like you might have been able to walk across the Platte four miles downstream at the Government Bridge access.  During the day a pair of fly fishermen showed up and then later a single angler came. None of them lasted too long. The single was throwing a Spey line. There were some duck hunters up on the impoundment.

Garrett was fishing the Beulah 10'6" 7/8 switch rod I got him for Christmas with the matching Elixer line (with no head) and a 12 foot leader, with an indicator, an AB splitshot and a green leech pattern as the main fly and various others for the dropper. He was hooking up all day on the leech pattern, landing around eight fish. I was fishing my Sage 9' 8 weight RPLX with a floating line and a 10 foot leader with an indicator, one or two number 4 split shot and midge patterns. I didn't do as well as he did (as usual) but I did hook up with four fish and landed one; a rainbow about seventeen inches.

The weeds were bad, worse than I remember seeing there. Apparently there was an issue with the dam this fall and the normal yearly flush did not occur. I'm sure the guides and flyshops will deny it but it seems to both of us that the average size of the fish has decreased significantly in the past couple of years. An average size fish below the dam used to measure around twenty inches and often larger; now the average size seems to be more between sixteen and eighteen inches. Garrett did not land one fish that he thought was over eighteen and mine certainly was closer to seventeen inches. Obviously these are beautiful fish and would be considered big most anywhere else, but the average sizes are not as large as they once were. All the hype about Gray Reef being the Big Fish destination in the lower 48 might have something to do with it. In warmer weather the run below the dam is lined with fishermen, five or six to a side, all day every weekend.

I've always though of the reef as a small fly tailwater and have been successful with midge patterns.  Garrett's success using the leech pattern has me thinking about that.  My hookups all came on a size 20 or smaller red midge larva pattern;  a bit of red thread on the hook with a rib of red wire.  My current theory is this: when the fish turned on for about an hour or so around two, they were happy to take my tiny offering.  At the other times, with the near freezing water and their sluggish metabolisms the bigger fly, fished slower and deeper, was just enough more appealing for them to take.  I came home and tied up some leech patterns.

Winter Steelheading in Oregon

                                                     Ox Bow Park on Christmas eve.

The lushness of the western Oregon forests never fails to impress me.  It is a landscape colored in deep greens and blues, a topography of flowing water and dripping dark forests, the fecundity of the terroir is palpable.   I have images of thick green ferns under snow, moss covered firs and cedars and a river of fog flowing along the Sandy River on Christmas eve at dusk.  This is country where fishing for steelhead is still possible; not perhaps as it once was, but still possible. Though the native sea run rainbows have been pressured and have been nearly driven to extinction, thanks to significant conservation efforts there are fishable populations of hatchery fish and growing numbers of wild fish.  Steelhead migrate upriver at dusk, at night and at dawn they typically hold in deeper runs and pools.  A good rain or upstream melt will color the water and deepen the shallower rapids and will bring the fish up. They know this without knowing. They will hold downstream of their home tributaries, below the gravel bars at the mouth, in deeper water, waiting for the water to rise.

Winter steelhead fishing is cold hard work.  Wading deep into the icy flow, cold hands and cold damp feet, negotiating slippery rocky stream beds, iced guides and casting over and over again to cover the water,  concentrating on every cast and  focusing intently on every drift, watching and hoping for a sign of a take.  In winter the flies must get down into the run and inevitably hang up on grasses and waterlogged limbs invisible from the surface. You find the right depth by fishing deep enough to snag the bottom (and perhaps to loose a beautiful fly) and then try to back off a bit. 

Before this trip I (re)established my presence on the Spey pages forum.  I'd joined this internet discussion before leaving for Scotland in 2008 but did not, I do not believe, post any message.  This time I asked for advice in a thread I titled Christmas Steelhead in Oregon.  I asked what rivers to fish near Portland, what flies to tie, and any other advice.  The response from that community was extraordinarily generous.  I was told that the Sandy River and the Clackamas are very close to Portland and should fish well at that time, that the Trask, Wilson and Kilchis are coastal rivers that flow into Tillamook bay and will also hold late December winter run fish. I had generous invitations to fish the Deschutes near Maupin and the Rogue in southern Oregon.   Those rivers were much farther from Portland than we were able to justify traveling when there was so much unexplored (by us) fishing so close.

Local knowledge is precious. Ultimately, that's what people pay for when they hire a guide. Aside from the obligatory ghillie that assisted me on the Tweed in Scotland, I've never hired a guide.  Not for climbing in the Alps, not for fishing nor for hunting. I was advised by more than one correspondent on the Spey pages to "shell out", to hire a guide. It was not bad advice though for me it negates a significant part of the point of the endeavor; to figure it out. It may seem to be a petty point of pride to have never hired a guide, but I am a hopeless autodidact.

December 26th:  Garrett, Sarah and I fished the Sandy River at Ox Bow park. I had scouted it out on Christmas eve with Jasper and had some sense of the river there.   I was fishing, as I rarely do, my Scott 14' 9 weight ARC Spey rod. I was casting a Loop long-belly line (the only one I own) with a 14' fast sinking tip and three feet of 14 lb. flurocarbon tippet and with various flies attached. I am a passable, though never great, fly caster.  Spey casting is newer for me and although I believe I was fishing the water well, it was not particularly pretty.  I was having trouble turning over the sink tip and I shortend it up about 18" that night, the change made a significant difference in my casting the next day.  Garrett was fishing his new Beulah 10' 6" 7/8 switch rod with Elixir line and a 10' RIO sinking leader.  Sarah was fishing her traditional Temple Fork 9' 8 weight with split shot, and a Thingamabob strike indicator.

We got to Ox Bow park, paid our five dollars, and started  fishing at about 9AM.  It was a late start, but we'd been delayed buying licenses at Walmart since no one there could recall their passwords for the online system.   There were plenty of other fishermen on the river already but we only saw one steelhead landed, at around noon.  It was plucked out of the head of a long run by a guy using a baitcasting setup. He and his two partners had the same rig: a  bobber, some weight and  and a yarn "sandworm" for a lure which they drifted down the run. The fish itself was a nice hatchery fish and provided clear evidence that fish were in the river. We fished with increased focus and intensity after seeing it caught.  The baitcasters kept fishing the same drifts at the head of the pool. I moved below them casting and stepping down the run swinging flies. I was hopeful on every swing but I had no hookup. We fished until around 1PM when my feet felt like they were about to fall off from the cold.  We warmed ourselves in the truck and ate some lunch. In the afternoon we fished another long run further upstream.   Garrett had a solid tug at the tail of a pool but the fish was not hooked.  I had none.

That evening I received a call from a friend of my sister's who guides for winter steelhead in the Portland area.  Aaron spends his summers guiding for salmon and steelhead in Yakutat, Alaska. Hobo Fishing is the name of his winter guiding service.  He asked what we were looking for and I told him that we were swing flies on Spey rods. He said that the Sandy might well be the best place around for that kind of fishing; but he also said he'd done well on Eagle Creek that day. If we wanted to catch a steelhead he advised us to head there the next morning.  Eagle creek was too small for Spey rods  but we had traditional fly rods with us as well.

December 27th:  Eagle Creek is a tributary of the Clackamas.  It is a smaller stream that flows through a dense forest of cedar and fir.  You can wade across the stream in many places, it is not Spey casting water.  With good prospects for fish (and based on Garrett and Sarah's enthusiasm) we headed there the next day.  There were heavy low clouds and fog and I anticipated rain all morning though it never did.

Fishing a small run upstream from the park I was startled when a steelhead darted out of the depths of the pool into the shallows near my feet when the movement of my cast spooked it.  Steelhead are so large they appear out of place in such small water.  Whenever I have seen them move like that I am astounded by their speed and how snakelike their movement is. They swim with their entire bodies not their tails.  Once, on the Trinity, I watched a steelhead  from above, looking down from a high embankment at the head of a pool.  It was late afternoon and he was preparing to negotiate a shallow rapid.  He moved back and forth across the base of the white water, dropping back into the green pool below then coming  up again and zipping back and forth and back and forth like the shuttle on a weaving machine.  To steelhead, with their speed and grace of movement, the scale of the river is far different from my own perception of it, stumbling a step at a time downstream on slick rocks.

Upstream, Garrett had hooked a good fish on a cream colored egg pattern drifted below a log and through the tail of a nice pool.  The fish exploded out of the water and took him downstream a hundred yards and halfway back up to the pool where he'd started before Garrett managed to bring it to hand.  Its missing adipose fin marked it a hatchery fish and we kept it.   Through no want of trying Sarah and I did not hook up.

In the late afternoon we drove down to a parking area just upstream from the confluence of  Eagle Creek and the Clakamas.  Garrett and I rigged our Spey gear and hiked down to the river with Eagle creek flowing toward the sea on our right. As we studied a large pool near the mouth Garrett commented that his fish, the fish he'd caught that morning, had rested in that pool.  He said that catching a steelhead in a pool was like having caught one out of every pool downstream in the river.  A thought connecting the fish to a thread of water all the way back to the sea and back in time to its birth.

We waded out a gravel bar to an island and fished a long run down the far side on the mainstem of the river.  The water ran fast and deep on the far side of the run against a sheer cliff.   A house was perched on the top of the cliff. It had large windows facing west overlooking the river.  Every time my cast failed to unroll out into the run I flinched at the thought of being watched from above. The fast sinking tip did turn over better missing a foot and a half of its original length. We walked across the island and fished the channel on the west side.  Deer sign was everywhere.  At dusk, standing cold and waist deep in a near perfect long deep run, a large fish porpoised twenty yards below my fly.  Adrenaline surged and I fished intensely until it was too dark to see. By now Garrett was back at the truck with Sarah. Walking out alone, I lost the trial and stumbled upstream through a marsh along the creek.
 
That night, Garrett expertly baked two thirds of his fish in copious amounts of  butter, lemon salt and pepper.  It fed nine people at a dinner party at my daughter's house. Two nights later it fed another two people, non-strict vegetarians who nevertheless would not eat the elk stew I'd prepared.

December 28th: Garrett and Sarah could not fish and I was not able to get away until mid-afternoon.   Though I needed more time on the water with Spey rod in hand, I had concocted a theory that needed testing. My theory was pieced together from bits and fragments of information, some freely given and and some leaked along the edges of stories told.  Though perhaps misguided and certainly idiosyncratic, I applied a kind of personal hermeneutics of piscatorial narrative; an attempt to read a truer underlying meaning.  My theory as premised on a casual comment "... eleven miles upstream ...".   A comment that the story teller later seemed to want to retract.  Really, I believe he thought better of giving more details thinking I'd get lost. Though he declined to say more when I asked, he generously offered to take me there himself.  I was  unable to go with him so I tried to piece it together for myself. Eleven miles measured on a map. But which fork? Topography provided a probable answer.  From fragments of a half told story I'd constructed in my own mind a kind of steelhead Eden. A small creek flowing through a narrow canyon strewn with house-sized boulders guarding pristine deep green pools, each pool holding wild steelhead.

It was a cockamamy idea I know, to give up a perfectly good afternoon of steelhead fishing to confirm or refute a shaky theory formed of whole cloth.  To indicate my state of mind I'll simply mention that I almost did not make the trek, not because the idea was so far fetched or because I doubted I could find this place, but because it was going to be just too easy, something like shooting fish in a barrel. In the end I just wanted to see this imagined place, and besides Penelope wanted to hike and Erdos needed to get out in the woods for a good long run before the two day drive home.

We drove up high, far above the stream and into the snow on the mountain above the canyon. The road was marked as dirt on the map but was a sheet of ice. We found what I thought must be the old forest road I was looking for, one of many, and I parked the truck.  It would be no more than two miles, steep downhill all the way.  The narrow spacing of the lines on the topo map made me wonder if we could even find our way into the bottom of the canyon.  Were upstream above a waterfall?  We headed downhill through old clear cuts covered in heavy in snow. There were bobcat, fox, deer and elk tracks. We crossed man tracks too, impressions of large boots in the snow that seemed to confirm that someone else knew what I suspected.  Not far down, the man tracks disappeared.  The abandoned logging roads connecting clearcuts that we'd followed ended at a wall of dense forest. We stepped into the trees, dropping down a steep ridge into the tangled bottom of the canyon.  The rushing water we so clearly heard below us on our way down through the ferns and towering firs turned out to be a tiny brook.  No more than a foot wide, it  flowed down to merge with the main creek below.  We were almost there, but descending further we became hopelessly brush bound in thick alders.  By now there was less than an hour til sunset, certainly no time to fish should we even get there and the hike back up was going to be hard.  Reluctantly, we turned and climbed out of that deep narrow canyon, back up to the truck parked on the icy road high above.  My theory remains unrefuted.

  *                   *                   *

Once correspondent on the Spey pages wrote: Catching a winter steelhead during any three-day window is a daunting challenge even for resident veterans.  Even though I did not land a steelhead or even hook one brielfy,  by my reckoning the trip was by no means unsuccessful.  I'll call it a good try for winter steelhead in northeastern Oregon.  I expect to build on the knowledge gained from these experiences fishing these waters many more times over the years.  Thanks go to Aaron and to too many of the members of the Spey pages to mention, all freely provided specific and useful information that made the trip a success.

Wild Browns

Good fishing access is tightly held. And really, all good fishing and hunting spots should remain secret; or so I was told by the riflemaker in town when, a few years ago, I pointed out a number of grouse coverts on the map for him and his British visitor (Paul Roberts the well known rifle and shotgun fitter). Well mostly, grouse are where you find them and I didn't give much away hoping for a free fitting. But fishing access is far more limited and unless the spot is already world famous it is best to be discreet. I won't mention location or even the name of the river.

There often is a story (which may or may not be true) that goes with a good spot and which is designed to keep people away. In my experience, the stories are often mostly true: rattlesnakes; dangerous roads; long walks and difficult access; Grizzly bears; mosquitoes; elusive fish and even stories of the crowds of fishermen are all told. For this spot it is the mosquitoes. This is a particularly bad mosquito year all over the northern Rockies because of all the rain we've had. One old timer told me that the mosquitoes haven't been this bad since the 60s. On this river the mosquitoes are always bad, and in a bad year the swarms are just plain absurd. You have to be hardcore to fish with the swarms we encountered. I wore a mosquito headnet most of the time and liberal and frequent applications of deet at least kept them from biting much.


This river has wild brown trout (Salmo Trutta) A fish is wild if they are naturally spawned in the lake or river where they live. A fish is native if they're indigenous; they've always lived in the watershed and were introduced by some natural mechanism. The brown trout was introduced into North America in 1883 from Germany; von Behr Browns. Apparently the introduction was a controversy then and the introduced fish can still controversial be controversial. They displace native fish and there is something that is, well, not quite natural about them. But regarding the introduction of German browns to North America, in 1913 Theodore Gordon wrote that "Many of us can remember how poor our sport was before the first of the brown trout came in." A wild fish may not necessarily be native, but in a river where the environment and bug life is right they provide fantastic sport.

The two most distinctive things about wild fish is their fight and their colors. Trout in heavily fished tailwaters like the the North Platte, the San Juan and the Bighorn may grow to gargantuan sizes but they have all been caught many times before and tend to "learn" to just give in. Wild fish are outraged by the hook. And the colors are spectacular. These particular fish had a distinctive blue spot on the side of the head which you can see in the photos if you click to enlarge them.


I fished with Garrett and Matt. Hoping for some top water action on dryflies I rigged my Winston 9' 4wt rod. You can wade across this stream at the head and tail of most runs and the Winston is a nice size and weight rod to fish it. The rod carries an old Orvis Battenkill Mark III reel made by Hardy in England. It has the spring and pawl drag system so it sings when a fish runs. I'd forgotten what a pleasure it is to cast this rod and to control a running fish by palming the rim of the spool.

The fish were not feeding on the top though there was variously, a caddis hatch, some blue winged olives sporadically coming off, an occasional hefty yellow bodied yellow winged mayfly (size 14) and a spinner fall. We all three ended up fishing nymphs and I had my best luck with a cased caddis pattern of my own design. The center feathers of a golden pheasant tail are spotted and when wrapped on a hook are a perfect imitation of caddis cases from this particular stream. A small green head and this fly is an expressive but virtually exact imitation of the naturals clinging to every rock.

A rather violent thunderstorm blew in and we huddled under willows beside the stream in the downpour while the lighting crashed around us. We were on the edge of the storm. the main body passed upstream from us. After the storm blew over a rainbow appeared in the east we continued to fish, each of us catching a few more. But the runoff from the violent storm quickly colored the stream a deep muddy red until you could not see the bottom in four inches of water. We decided to head home. Sadly this happened just as a rather prolific spinner fall was getting underway. All-in-all I caught a dozen wild brown trout. They were all at least 14" with the largest just under 20", a very good afternoon of fishing.

Jackson WY, Snake River

Took Peter, a colleague and visitor from Scotland, to Jackson for the weekend and Garrett and Sarah met us there too. Garrett and I got out to fish the Snake for a few hours. It was overcast and warm with the occasional view to north to the Tetons clearing enough for a nice view. The fishing was not great, we each caught a whitefish, not the big trouts were were hoping for. There was a small hatch of midges, I took my fish on a Griffith's Gnat and Garrett fished small nymphs.

We drove home Easter Sunday by heading north through the park and then down to Dubois and through Lander where we had lunch. East of Lander, at Sweetwater Station. is a rather amazing bookstore variously know as Mad Dog and The Pilgrim Books and the Sweetwater Book Barn. I've passed it before but it was never open. A faded sign out front on the highway says "Fresh Eggs Old Books". Rather amazing bookshop and worth a visit. After we left I was rather disappointed to realize I did not take any photos inside ... next time.

Green River Trip

The Green River, just across the Utah border and below the Flaming Gorge dam, is reputed to have more fish per mile than any other stream in North America. I see numbers as high as 15,000 "catchable" trout per mile for the seven or eight miles of river below the dam. The average sizes are 14 - 18 inches and there are browns, rainbows and less commonly, cutthroat trout. Browns and rainbows dominate with the brown trout perhaps holding a slight majority over rainbows. Most of the fish so clearly visible from the bank are browns; rainbows are still holding in the deeper runs in this pre-spawn period.

Garrett and I fished on Thursday and Friday. It's a bit less that four hours drive from Laramie and we were on the river at 11 having left town just before 7AM. Thursday we fished the upper section just below the dam. The trail down to the river from the upper parking lot is rather spectacular here. With a flow of around 750 cfs the river is wadeable and it is just barely possible for me to cross at certain points. The photo above shows a drift boat passing by as we walked down the trail to the river. We wade fish from the bank and I have never hired a guide. For me, figuring out the fishing is what it is about.

We hooked up with small midge patterns (size 22 gray bodied RS2's and WD40's were hot) and, although we were hoping for a hatch of blue winged olives (Baetis), we saw none. As the day warmed (to maybe around 55°F) the midge hatch came on stronger and some fish started rising so I switched to a dry fly. A size 22 thread midge with a wrap of hackle, no wings or tails, gray body. I did catch one nice brown on the dry fly and hooked up with two more that I did not land on the tiny drys. The water in the Green is just crystal clear and sight fishing is the norm. In almost any good spot you may see ten or more fish lined up along the bank. To sight fish to them you move into position to avoid unnatural drag on the fly from intervening currents and to get the best drift, and cast hoping not to put the fish down. If you have the wrong fly, it will not work. All of these fish have been caught many times each and are highly selective feeders. I caught eight to ten fish all between 13" - 16" and Garrett may have caught twice as many. Garrett fished subsurface midge patterns and caught more fish than I did but I do love to watch a trout rise and take a dry. He was fishing the edges of the deeper and faster runs and hooked up with more rainbows than browns. I concentrated on slower shallower water sight fishing to mostly brown trout. Reflecting on the days fishing I realized that the Baetis hatch was more likely further downstream where the icy water had a chance to warm a bit.

We spent the night in an overpriced room at the Flaming Gorge Resort (discounted winter rates) and ate dinner at the restaurant there sharing a table with a couple of fly fishermen from California. They'd fished the Provo before coming up to the Green and ran into heavy Baetis hatches there. Frank is the flyfishing guy at the Western Sport Shop in San Rafael. It is one of the last great mom and pop outdoor stores in the country with a nice selection of rifles, shotguns, top quality fishing equipment and a really nice selection of new, used and rare sporting books.


Friday morning we drove down to Little Hole parking lot which is seven miles downstream from the dam. Later in the season, this parking lot can get full but there were only three other cars there when we arrived around 9:30 or so. We walked past fish rising in the long flats up to where there is a bit of broken water. We started hooking up on the same gray bodied RS2's and WD40's. Garrett fished that same rig all day long and I believe he must have caught more fish than anyone else on the river that day. He must have caught 30 trout the largest being about 19" or 20" and most being 14" - 16". I caught only a third as many but concentrated on fishing the dry fly. It was a warmer day with temperatures as high as 60°F, though it chilled down when the clouds blocked the sun. Being Friday, there were a lot more fisherman out on the river.

Around 2PM I saw two Blue Winged Olives hatch and the fish got very active. I believe they were taking Baetis nymphs. Garrett was fishing a deeper run below a wide riffle and was catching fish one after another, still fishing his underwater rig with a pair of grey bodied midge imitations. Fishermen walking upstream along the trail on the east bank would stop and watch him. Throughout the day we only rarely saw other fishermen into a fish so his productivity was rather astounding. I finally gave up on the drys after pricking and missing a beautiful rainbow who came up for my crippled Blue Winged Olive pattern in a perfect porpoising rise.

There's nothing like success. I switched to Garrett's rig and started hooking up right away. Missed landing two fish and then landed a nice rainbow. We were near waist deep in the middle of the river and with both of us hooking up we started to attract other fishermen to the run with us. By now it was around 4PM and a second flotilla of drift boats was coming through so it was a socially active scene. I hooked to another rainbow and after a rather extended fight, this one swam between my legs and was holding up under a shelf on a large rock. Rod in one hand and net in the other he swam up and went back between my legs again and against the submerged rock. Trying to move away from the rock I stumbled and gently rolled backwards as I netted the trout. The water temperature was around 40°F. It flowed down over the back of my waders and the icy cold water running down my legs was rather stunning. I released the trout and waded out laughing and cursing. I haven't fallen in a river while fishing for about 14 years. Last time was mid-winter while steelhead fishing on the Salmon River in upstate NY fishing with Peter McDonald. Garrett and I walked back to the truck and dry clothes which were a bit less than a mile downstream It would have been just fine, but I did manage to briefly dunk my camera which now does not work.

Snake River, Jackson Hole

Arrived in Jackson in the afternoon. Just enough time to walk around a bit and grab a bite before heading to the town ski trail along the Snake. The parking lot is on the east side of the bridge crossing the Snake river on the road to Wilson. It is a dog party place; We skied from about 4:30 until almost 6 and people were out in force on a warm evening walking their dogs. The trail has a track and is groomed for skate skiing too. Lots of joggers. Saw three moose. The ski up the river is just shy of two miles one way. Further up river is protected winter range for elk and moose.

When we arrived there were a couple of fly fishermen working the water on a little side stream of the snake just about the bridge. They said they were killing 'em on midges.

The Tetons are magnificent. Dave Pearson and I climbed the Grand Teton in 1993 (or was it 1992?) We arrived in Jackson in late June and there still was way too much snow. We had planned on doing the Direct Exum Ridge, but it was heavily iced and so we did the Owen Spalding route instead. At the Upper Saddle we ran into a guy who was soloing who asked if he could tag along on our rope, which we agreed to. Clouds were scudding by and as we exited the icy cracks to the summit they intensified. I lead up (still roped) to the summit first. And then I felt something on the top of my head, like some one gently scratching my scalp, but through my hat. And then I hear a bit of a humming sound. I realized that I was about to be hit bu lightening. I yelled down to Dave and Georgia I was coming down. I tossed the ice axe and rand down the snowfield off the top to a small rock ledge real quick, stacked some rope under me and crouched down. We were not hit and after the cloud passed we all three dashed to the summit. A few minutes later the same cloud passed over Mt Moran and let loose with many lightening strikes. We only stayed on the summit long enough to snap a photo and then got back down as fast a possible to avoid the next cloud which was approaching fast.


The Tetons are an amazing place.

Proper Impetus

Datus Proper was a retired Foreign Service officer who wrote What the Trout Said: About the Design of Trout Flies and Other Mysteries, one of the best books ever published on fly tying. That's saying something since fly fishing and fly tying literature are some of the earliest books published in the English language. The Treatyse of Fysshynge with an Angle, attributed to Dame Juliana Berners, was published as part of the second edition of The Boke of St. Albans in 1496.

Sometime in the late 1980's, browsing the shelves in the Ben Franklin Bookshop in Nyack NY, I ran across a copy of Proper's Pheasants of the Mind: A Hunter's Search for a Mythic Bird; until I held it n my hand, I did not know it existed. I did know that beside his fly tying book, Proper had written a travel book about Portugal but I was completely unaware of his bird hunting book and, in a real way, it changed my life.  It was reading Proper's Pheasant book that was the impetus for me to buy a shotgun and hunt game birds; for fly tying materials and to eat wild meat.

As far as I can tell, aside from a blurred and tiny reproduction of the same image, the photograph above may be the only  photograph  of Datus Proper on the web. I photographed the back flap of his Designing Trout flies to get it.

Datus Proper died on July 27 in 2003 while fishing near his home in Montana at age 69. It was a kind of freak fishing accident; fishing with a friend, but alone at the moment, he apparently fell, hit his head on a rock and drowned in shallow water. He had an erudite appreciation of sporting traditions, fine firearms, hunting dogs, good cooking and fine food. Although I never met him myself I miss him.

North Platte at Grey Reef

Fished the North Platte at Grey Reef with Garrett on Sunday. The weather was supposed to provide spring like temperatures, forecast to get as high as 62°F. Garrett and I have fished at Grey reef a number of times and typically know how to catch fish there. I caught a 27" rainbow there years ago and on Sunday I hooked three and landed two around 18" and Garrett hooked four and landed three. One of his was huge, estimated at 25". He kept a measured 21 1/2" fish at the end of the day and the one he released was significantly larger. The photo above is of the larger fish. These fish proved to be redemption for our failure earlier this month on the South Platte at Deckers Colorado.

Grey Reef is one of the hottest fishing spots in the west and we were not alone fishing there, though it was not crowded by Grey Reef standards. American Angler magazine called it the number one big fish destination in the world. That kind of publicity tends to attract some people. Most of the license plates are WY and CO and there was one from NY. Typically, the fishing is rather technical and it is another situation where tiny flies mostly rule the day. All of the fish I hooked up with took a size 22 or smaller fly. I talked to a few other anglers, none of them hooked up at all. Streamers are also reported to work, but I've never tried them myself.

The day was beautiful if a bit colder than expected. When the clouds cleared off in the afternoon the colors in the river were extraordinary and the day warmed up to around 52°F. There was even a few moments around 2 PM when the midges started coming off, though the hatch didn't last long enough to bring the fish up.

Flows were around 550 CFS which is about as low as it gets. Flows can be as high as 2000 CFS. In higher flows, the rocks where the photos above were taken are spots where we have caught good fish. The river has a dramatically different character with these vastly different flows.

I forgot my camera and the photos shown here were taken with Fuji disposable cameras with prints written to a CD. The photos are not the quality I get with the Canon G9 but they are not bad.

Winter Fly Fishing

I fished the South Platte River near Deckers Colorado with Garrett yesterday. The fishing itself wasn't great, but winter flyfishing is always an adventure. Someone once said that fly fishing was the best excuse for standing around in rivers. Standing around in a river in a gentle snow fall is even better. And if there is the expectation of catching a big trout, all the better.

Deckers is not such an easy place to get to. Last time I was there was in the late 70's to climb with Don Hamilton. We climbed at Turkey Rocks for a few days after a disastrous trip to the Bugaboos in British Columbia. We'd backed off the NE Ridge of Bugaboo Spire, a beautiful route put up by a bunch of older Gunkies in 1958. We were traveling in my little Subaru and, rather than drive home to NY from the Bugs, Don said, "Let's go climb at Turkey Rocks." I didn't even know where it was. "Colorado, not to far." We arrived in South Platte about twenty hours later. It is to far. There was no one there then. We hadn't seen anyone else for days when, walking along the base of rocks looking for a climb, we heard familiar voices. It was Ivan Rezucha and Annie, friends from the Gunks. A casual hello was exchanged and we didn't see them again until we were back at the Gunks.

During winter, the fish are mostly eating midges (Chironomids). These are mosquito sized aquatic insects and for these educated fish to take a fly, it has to be a damn good imitation. If you are lucky (we weren't) there is a short hatch of these insects during the warmest part of the day and if the fish key in on them, you have a chance to actually catch one on a very tiny dry fly. Mostly, if fish aren't rising, you fish a pair of imitations of the larval form underwater. The classic midge imitation is the South Platte Brassie which is just a bit of fine copper wire wrapped around a very small hook, maybe with a tuft of some dubbing wrapped on the head to represent the hard and gills. I fished yesterday with a size 22 metalic bodied green midge and a larger size 20 brassie as the dropper. I was using two #6 split shots about a foot above the flies to get them down into the little troughs where the winter fish are most likely to be. The size 20 brassie was a monster in comparison.


We fished hard for about three or four hours and neither of us managed to raise a fish. We did see some other anglers, and Garrett talked to one local after seeing him hook, land and release one decent, but not extraordinary sized fish. His advice, "Go home."

Encampment River Wilderness

Pen, Erdos, Mary and Warren and I backpacked down the 16 mile Encampment River trail from Hog Park to the BLM campground just outside Encampment. The trail follows the river as it drops through a canyon out into the Platte River valley. We hiked downriver about seven miles the first afternoon, starting out at about 1:30 and arriving at a camp site at around 6:30. The upper section of the trail has a lot of up and down with the trail climbing high up the hillsides above many of the cliffs that plunge down right into the water. Other times, it follows close to the river on a narrow track. We all probably wanted to stop hiking around 5:30, but there was no place to pitch a tent in the steep sided canyon.

Fish was on the menu for dinner and so I broke out the fly rod and managed to catch a beautiful wild brown and a brookie to add to the larder. There is certainly a different aspect to fishing when there are hungry people expecting you to catch dinner. The river up here is fast flowing and not overly rich in aquatic insect life. I did find a few caddis cases under rocks on the river bottom and there were a few recently shed stonefly exoskeletons dried onto rocks above waterline. I managed to catch the fish on a caddis imitation. After trying a few different flies, including watching two fish rise to, follow and then reject a rather large (size 10) caddis imitation, I ended up doing best with a smaller (size 14) tan Goddard caddis.

Mary and Warren did the menu planning and food shopping including wine selection. This included cleaning the trout and cooking them wrapped in foil with butter, salt, pepper and some chopped celery. Trout, risotto, and a couple of liter boxes of French Rabbit Pinot Noir followed by brownies made for an outstanding meal.

Erdos has never been backpacking and I don't believe he's ever slept in a tent before. At one point as darkness fell, he headed up to the trail and back toward the car, stopping to look back and no doubt wondering what the hell we were up to. By the time we got into the tent, he was tired enough that he pretty quickly abandoned his scepticism about the whole thing. He easily runs 4 times the distance we walk and I'm sure that in total this was an eighty mile run for him. He is beat today.

Day 2: After breakfast, we packed and started down canyon. The photo shows us ready to take off on day 2, a bit tired but happy. The nine miles out from the camp site to the end of the trail were harder than I'd expected they'd be. The upper section of the trail is mostly forested with the trail running through the trees. About six or seven miles upstream from the lower end the terrain opens up into steep and rocky sage country with few trees except the cottonwoods, aspens and willows just along the river. The sun was brutal. I don't know how hot it was, but it must have been near ninety if not more. In the last five miles, much of the river itself runs across private land with the trail up on the south bank separated from the river by barbed wire fences. For the last two miles or so the far bank is intermittently clustered with small cabins and trailers.

Sixteen miles later, happy, tired and achy, we got back to the car parked at the camp site just at 1:30. Exactly twentyfour hours after we'd left the top end. Warren and I drove up to get my truck, a drive of about 30 miles, mostly on dirt roads, only to realize I'd left the keys in my pack! Argh. Pen and Mary made the second trip up and back, this time with the keys and actually returning with the truck.

This hike is on a great trail along a beautiful wilderness river. We saw maybe ten other folks the entire time (all but two were fishing), and those were mostly concentrated at either end. Next time, we think we'll take three days to allow more fishing time and to generally allow for a more leisurely trip.

Twin Buttes and Hattie in the Pram

The Laramie Plains lakes are pothole lakes west of town. I dropped the pram into Twin Buttes on July 4 and fished for an hour or so catching nothing. It was midday (the only time I could get out) but still, based on last years fishing, it was rather unusual to have caught nothing. The water levels at Twin Buttes are low, but Lake Hattie is virtually disappearing! Fished Hattie on Sunday the 6th from about 7:30 'till noon. There were a few 4th of July campers along the shore but really, it was virtually abandoned compared to previous years. The gas prices ($4.00/gal), voracious mosquitoes, West Nile virus, and the low water levels are taking their toll. It was great. Not one jet ski in sight! It was challenging to find a place to launch the boat. The water level is another ten feet lower this year. After launching I rowed to the far side, trolling along the way. I ended up in an amazing caddis hatch, only to discover that while I had a spool with the floating line on it, I'd left the reel body for that spool in the truck. Oh well, I anchored and fished to rising fish all around me without any luck. My Goddard caddis would float on a long leader on the intermediate line I was fishing for a few minutes, and then it'd go under, I'd pull in and cast to another riser. Seeing the hatch, the rising fish and the wild mustangs coming down to the lake for a drink made the fishless trip far from boring. And then the wind came up. I was trolling off the far bank thinking I'd better head back toward the truck, when I hooked up with a good sized rainbow that nearly pulled the rod out of the boat and then jumped. I dropped the anchor and almost immediately, he broke me off in the weeds. As the wind picked up even further, I put on my rain jacket and life vest and motored back across the lake in some good winds across the oncoming waves getting splashed with spray.

North Platte River -- Gray Reef

Drove to Gray Reef on the North Platte river with Jefferson Snider and Garrett to fish for the big ones. Gray Reef is a small Bureau of Reclamation (BLM) dam on the river about a mile below the larger dam which creates the Alcova Reservoir. The fish bunch up below the dam, and there are some real big ones in there. The largest trout I've ever caught was caught under that dam about 15 years ago and went 27". Not sure why, but I haven't fished there much since. Part of it is the landscape, it really is a reclamation site in the high desert though after spending five months in Scotland, the contrast of the desolate high western landscape with the wet Scottish highlands somehow made this look better to me than it has before.


Jeff, Garrett and I were hooking up a lot throughout the day. I only landed four, but hooked up with another eight or ten that straightened my hooks, broke me off, or just managed to rub the hook out in the weeds and rocks on the bottom. The fish we caught were all rainbows or cutbows in the 18" - 24" class and, unlike fish in some other western tailwaters, were strong fighters. The place is crowded. Many guys were not hooking up at all, a few were doing as well as we were, and in the early evening, there were a couple of men, standing in the best spots just below the dam, who hooked up consistently. The guys who don't hook up are invariably fishing bigger flies that the fly shops seem to push.

Garrett (in photo with a fish on) had the place wired and we started catching fish right away. This is tailwater flyfishing with small, tiny tiny tiny flies. The rig is either two size 22 or 24 midge patterns (there were midges swarming the banks) or possibly a rig with the upper midge swapped out with a size 12 or 14 red rock worm pattern. Black glass beadhead or silver beadhead midges were really hot. So the entire rig is a 9 foot leader, down to one or two size 6 splitshots, a foot or two below that a size 22 midge, and another 18" below that another midge on the point. (If you click on the photo of the fish above, you can see one of the flies hooked in trout's mouth.) We all used a new style of strike indicator which seemed to work really well. A kind of little round rubber bobber with a tab and a small grommet on the tab. Not sure what this thing is called, I've never seem 'em before, but they have them at the flyshop at the turn-off to Gray Reef. Garrett had used them before steelhead fishing in Northern CA.

It makes for a long day from Laramie (and I'm 25 miles further on) with a bit more than five hours of driving together with seven hours of fishing in the hot sun, but it is a great day if you don't mind crowds and want to hookup (and sometimes catch) lots of big fish.