A Fly Fishing Report From a Small Stream (or, Cue the Thunder)

The last couple seasons I’ve been on a small stream jag; given the choice between big water and small water, the trickles have won out over the torrents. And why not?

Odds are you’ll bump into fewer fly fishermen, see more wild stuff, and – without anyone watching except the wildlife – get to stalk and cast (it better be accurately) at fish that may not have seen a fly this season.

On the flip, the trout are smaller, the mosquitoes more aggressive, hero-pic opportunities largely absent, the travel longer, the roads worse, and the odds of being stranded where no one will find you much, much higher.

Naturally, that adds to the romance.

That’s why – on a Friday where I could have headed almost anywhere – I found myself bouncing over a series of rutted, washed out roads, wondering if I was supposed to turn left two identical-looking dirt roads back.

I was taking miles off the life of my truck (and years off the functional life of my lower spine), and I wasn’t even sure I was headed in the right direction.

It’s in those moments that you can turn back – proving that you’re possessed of common sense – and go fish the water you know how to find.

Fortunately, I’m not over-afflicted with that common sense stuff.

The Small Stream Post (Sans Pictures)

Because I planned to take many, many photographs of my small alpine stream trip, I made a point of charging both camera batteries, and promptly left the whole mess sitting by the charger.

I’ve already mentioned that the Underground’s Pentax Optio W10 – the target of much abuse the last couple years – was suffering.

Actually, it’s dieing.

It’s no longer waterproof and the batteries – one of which used to offer plenty of juice for a long day on the river – now fail a couple hours in (necessitating the charge of the second battery, which isn’t part of the pre-trip routine).

So it got left at home.

Sorry kids.

One of the benefits of a screwup like this is that I now have a reason to go back and try again.

The Fishing

Though this particular stretch of water is a spring creek, it’s still subject to runoff. It was running clear but high when I arrived, nicely illustrating that idea that we expect things to always be the last way we saw them.

I’ve never fished this stream quite this early in the year, and now I know why.

Still, it goes on the pile of useful information we accumulate over time: Fish Stream Y in the spring, then Stream X in the summer.

It wasn’t great fly fishing, but I was skulking along a small, alpine meadow spring creek, and while the bite wasn’t great (on dries), I did manage to scrape up ten or so grabs, and landed six brown trout that oddly enough all fell into the 10″-11″ size.

One brown trout would feature the intense red spots that make the species so attractive, while the next was faded, and the next featured a metallic golden hue.

The variation is both intriguing and puzzling; are these the genetic remnants of different stockings (I don’t believe this creek is stocked any more)? Or just natural variation?

My ultimate “watch this” meadow stream cast and drift – the one I learned from watching local legend Joe Kimsey fish a small creek – didn’t work (shockingly).

It’s the one where you cast barely upstream of an undercut bank, and keep just enough tension on the line to bounce the fly off the individual blades of grass. (Note to Undergrounders: Always go fishing with tricky old guys, and always take notes.)

My bites came from the calmer, slower-moving ambush water in the middle of the runs – the kind of places usually holding smaller trout.

And as further proof of the perverse nature of fish and fly fishermen, I didn’t see a single bug on the water, but saw a bunch of ants on the banks.

Naturally, the ant patterns didn’t buy a single bite, yet the smaller attractor dries did. (Next time, I’ll fish a creek where everything makes sense.)

It’s Like Thunder, Like Lightning

After a couple hours spent covering a fair amount of water (my small-stream default when I’m by myself), I stopped to take stock.

It was raining (it had been raining on and off). It was dark and cloudy, and the fishing was getting harder instead of easier.

Time to try something else – a technique explained to me by another tricky angler – where you tie on a big, rubberlegs nymph and then dangle it right in front of the deeper undercut banks.

It’s a low percentage gig, but it can net you the biggest brown trout in the admittedly small creek.

Yet when I reached for the fly box, things suddenly got very bright, and then very loud.

My hand stopped.

A bolt of lightning had struck the ridge farther up the meadow, and given the time interval between the flash and the sound, it was less than two miles away.

It’s in those moments – when adrenaline enters your system as if some overbearing gland had turned on a fire hose of the stuff – that you’re acutely aware that you’re not a Master of the Universe (the default perspective for most of us), but more an expendable, temporary organic construct.

In other words, run.

The Great Egress

Thunderstorms had been rolling through the area for a couple days (a relatively rare occurrence up here). And once or twice, I’d heard the very far off rumble of thunder far to the north.

Still, I was in a small alpine valley with very high, very steep sides, and the storm kinda snuck up on me.

The danger was minimal, but somebody forgot to tell the reptilian part of my brain that fears loud noises, the dark, the rustling of things I can’t see in the woods, and sudden flaming death from the heavens.

Abandoning the attempt at a big fish wasn’t a hard decision, and yes, it’s possible I moved at slightly above my normal pace on the way back to the truck, which I was pretty damned careful not to overshoot.

On the way out – safely insulated by four rubber tires – it occurred to me the thunderstorm was impressive as hell, with big swirly, dramatic clouds and everything that went with them. I wondered how the Brown trout – so reluctant to rise this day – perceived the thunderstorm from beneath the surface of the water.

See you on the small stream, Tom Chandler.