Fly Fishing a Tiny Stream: Life Recedes a Little at the Underground

There are days when you go fishing for fish, and there are days you fish for the fishing, and sometimes you don’t know which you’re seeking until you’re actually on the river.

Yesterday evening - in the grip of some irritating work details - I found myself headed for a stretch of water where the rocks were big, the rock-hopping hard, and the trout very small.

There I’d meet the absolute minimum of humanity (which was sort of the point).

Tiny flows, little trout, zero civilized veneer.

The beauty of fly fishing is that life recedes; at some point it becomes just you, some water, and a few trout, who may or may not have any interest in what you’re doing.

That’s a far simpler equation than what you experience in your everyday life, and it might explain the hold this sport has over some of us.

At this time of year, small-stream trout are spooky; the low water levels mean they’re extremely vulnerable to predators, and the “wander up to a bubbling run and catch a trout” stuff that worked in the spring is a sure-fire recipe for an unslimed fly by late August.

Two things I like: Parachute Hare’s Ears and classic fly reels.

My two best fish came on casts made from my knees - casts you’d normally say were far too long for a small stream.

Since I made them and caught the trout (a pair of 7″ fish - big for this tiny stream), it’s a story that nicely illustrates the relativity of phrases like “too long.”

Small freestone streams tend to strip away all of fly fishing’s civilized artifice; you do what you have to catch fish, and sometimes that means duck walking behind a boulder and dapping the fly from the tip of your $500 fly rod.

In other cases it means making long casts from your knees, and the trout judge whether you got it right or wrong - not some writer sitting in an office a continent away.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

fly fishing, fishing, small stream, trout

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