Nebraska II

A man and his dog.

Our second day was overcast and cooler, better for the dogs but it turned out not to be as good for us with the birds.  We hunted walkin areas closer to where we were staying.  We saw birds but both of us were not shooting well.  Birds we'd have easily killed just the day before we could not connect with if our lives depended on it.  we jumped hens and more hens, and the roosters we saw mostly flushed wild.  Erdos' shoulder was so bad, I left him in the room while we hunted in the morning and then only hunted him very briefly in the afternoon after Carlos left.

An ocean of grass.

Walking pheasant cover is physically tiring.  It's a lot like walking in snow, the thick grasses force you to lift your feet high and offer substantial resistance to legs moving forward. A large walkin area in Nebraska can be a whole section (a square mile) though most are smaller.  Still, in a days hunting we end up walking miles and the dogs who quarter back and forth in front of us cover at least five times as much distance.

The rich colors are astounding.

In some ways, driving around Nebraska is a little like stepping back into the 1960's.  The following scene of an abandoned motel and an antique car was rather striking though not atypical.

I thought this might be an Edsel but now think it's a 1961 Chrysler New Yorker.

Henry's Fork of the Snake

Gerry back on the Fork after a 45 year absence.

Gerry and I decided a real fishing road-trip would be a good idea in late July and, by dog, we did it.

Gerry flew into Denver and I picked him up and drove us up to Laramie. The next morning we drove from Laramie up to Jackson Hole where we ate dinner on the porch at Calico in Wilson.  The Snake in Jackson was high and muddy. We drove up and over Teton pass into Idaho spending the night in Driggs. 

We were on the Henry's Fork above Harriman State Park the next morning.   Gerry had spent his youth fishing the Yellowstone area rivers with his parents: the Henry's Fork, the Madison and the Firehole was their summer home.  For many years they camped for a month and more along the Madison where Quake lake now is.  The lake was formed by a massive earthquake on July 17, 1959.  After the devastating quake they continued to fish the Yellowstone area for a few years but eventually refocused their fishing efforts to trout in lakes in British Columbia.  Gerry had not been back since.

Even though the reputation of the Henry's Fork is not what it once was, it is still a major destination for an international crowd and even with regular reports of poor fishing it is still crowded.

Instructions for "proper release" in English, Japanese, French and Spanish.

The fishing on the Fork is tough and technical.  We arrived on the water a bit late after a leisurely drive up from Driggs and then spent too much time in Lawson's old shop obtaining Idaho Fishing Licenses and some flies.  There were a few PMD's coming off as we walked down river and it looked promising, there were a few Caddis too. But that action turned off shortly after we arrived and neither of us hooked up, nor did we see anyone else hook up.

For me, fishing is not a competitive sport, at least not the way I practice it.  But even so, when I'm not catching fish and no-one else seems to be either, it provides some evidence that it may not be that I am doing everything wrong -- it may be that the fishing is just tough.  

The author in full fishing regalia.

 The evening hatch was more exciting.  We spotted a very large trout methodically rising behind a rock on the far bank. We waded across the river to work the fish.  There were a few other fish feeding as well. We took turns casting to that large riser for more than an hour.  We did not put him down, but neither could we interest him in any of our offerings.  There were sporadic small flurries of BWO's and Flavs hatching through the evening.  At one point I left Gerry to work the large bank riser. I waded out to try a pod of smaller fish working the main current.  I drifted my fly downstream to them and, with most of a flyline out on the water, I hooked up. I lost what was optimistically a 14" rainbow when it jumped. For me, and for Gerry, this spot and stalk style of dry fly fishing is perhaps the most enjoyable of all  and even though we did not hook up we both had a great evening.  In the fly shop the next day we were told that our large fish was probably taking Flav emergers. We both stocked up on a few.

The next morning we fished a mostly non-existent morning hatch to no avail.   We tried float-tubing Henry's Lake -- Gerry's first time out in a tube -- but the wind came up and we caught nothing.  We tried fishing down river at the takeout above Mesa falls, but caught nothing.

On Henry's Lake before the wind came up.

We did work that same fish for a second evening, this time armed with the magic Flav emergers.  Unfortunately, two oblivious blokes walked down the path along the top of the bank just where we were working the fish and put it down!

 That pretty much did it for us on the Henry's Fork, we'd been skunked and we decided to cut our losses and head to the Madison the next day.

On the Wind River

"Catching fish is undeniably a pleasure, and I'd rather do it than not, but there is a pleasure too in fishing, the savor of pure possibility always on the brink of realizing itself - or not - and the attraction of fishing has much to do with the keenness of  expectation and desire urged against the uncertain and the unpredictable."   

                                     Ted Leeson, The Habit of Rivers, Lyons and Buford, 1994

Two large rainbows.

Driving to Cody for the weekend we got to the Wind River at Boysen State Park about an hour before the sun dropped behind the canyon walls. This was not really a fishing trip but I'd carried my gear. After getting suited up for winter fishing and rigging my rod and tying on some small midge patterns I only had about a half hour left before the sun fell behind the canyon rim. Once the sun was gone I was blind as far as sight fishing was concerned.

These two fish would move out of the main current into a back eddy. In the photo above they are facing downriver, heads into a small upstream eddy. This kind of lie often presents one of the trickiest situations for getting a good drag-free drift. I was optimistic that I'd hook-up, but my optimism was unwarranted.

Wind River just below Boysen Reservoir

The east slope of the Wind River mountains is the source of the eponymous river.  After flowing east it turns north at the Boysen reservoir. Downstream from Boysen the Wind River flows onto the Wind River reservation dropping into a deep canyon which is about 12 miles long.  The river becomes the Big Horn at the Wedding of the Waters, just past the end of the canyon. It  flows north through Thermopolis WY and into Montana merging with the Yellowstone and eventually the Missouri.  The canyon part of the river is known for seriously large brown trout.  As I understand it, one guide has the rights from the tribe to float the canyon and charges a premium.  I'm told it's worth it. You need a permit from the tribe to fish on reservation waters. The canyon is famous for its rattlesnakes.

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On Sunday we stopped again at Boysen on our way back south.  The weather was not nearly as pleasant; it was snowing and heavily overcast so sight fishing was out of the question.  Overcast weather is by no means bad fisherman's weather; most anglers would claim the opposite, but a snowy March day in Wyoming can be biting cold.  I fished for a bit more than an hour while P read in the truck and though I never got cold I never caught a fish either. I briefly spoke to a young local hotshot (who wasn't catching anything either) and he told me to tie on a pink sow bug, or a Ray Charles midge.  I didn't know the Ray Charles pattern  but looked it up when I got home; it's another sow bug pattern. I did tie on a pink sow bug, I always carry a few in my nymph box.

Sow bug soft hackle: tied and photographed by the author.

A sow bug is an aquatic crustacean, an Isopod. The pink sow-bug soft hackle pattern is popular on the Big Horn tailwater below Yellowtail dam. That's 100 miles or so north (downriver) of where I was fishing. I find it interesting because I've never seen that pink sow bug pattern used anywhere except on the Big Horn and it really does work magic there.   I have to wonder if there is an entomological basis for using the pattern on the Wind River or if its use there is a cultural artifact, having migrated upstream. 

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I've admired the beautiful section of river below Boysen Reservoir before but had never fished it.  Although I didn't hook up I learned quite a bit about the river there. There is a large body of common fishing knowledge but river knowledge is local knowledge. It takes time to learn about the habits of a river and each river has its own particular habits.