Posts tagged: cutthroat trout

Montana Road Trip 2009: Fly Fishing Tiny Alpine Meadows for 100 Year-Old Mussels?

July 20, 2009, by 13 comments

It’s tempting to say you leave a little piece of you behind every time you fish someplace beautiful, but only a mad poet would buy it – unless, of course, you actually did leave something behind.

Lately, we’ve conducted a small stream festival here on the Underground, and on the Montana Road Trip 2009, that wasn’t about to change.

If you're into beauty and wild trout, not a bad place to be...

The tiny meadow stream carefully not mentioned by name here was one we fly fished last year, and the fly fishing was the same small stream festival I remembered from 12 months ago.

The trout were still small – though we eked out a handful in the 11″-12″ range – and the fishing itself was something even a purist could love.

To the uninitiated, it would seem easy; the casts are short, the flies are floating, and the takes a little greedy.

Then again, the fish are spooky, the casting needs to be accurate to the inch, and the drifts surprisingly difficult.

Cutthroat trout go drab in the water, but neon in the sunlight.

And yes, there are more fly eating shrubs, trees and grasses than trout, so the price for a bad cast might be more than a few choice swear words.

Even when retrieving a snagged fly, you step carefully on this stream; it’s home to a rare freshwater mussel (the Western Pearlshell) that can live in excess of 100 years.

And yes, grinding a small colony of 70 year-old mussels into oblivion under your wading boot is not the memory you want to take from a day of fly fishing.

Western Pearlshell Mussels? These could have been here since WWI

It’s more than an “ooops” moment.

The (Uncelebrated) Grand Slam

Oddly – in the middle of cutthroat country – I found myself the owner of a Grand Slam: I caught a brown trout, a couple Brook trout, and many Westslope Cutthroats.

Brookie spots. Proof of a Grand slam - and too many non-natives?

In some instances, that’s cause for celebration – but only you’re not concerned about finding so many non-natives in a tiny alpine meadow creek. If [Name Redacted] and I go back, we’re packing a cooler and taking the Brookies and brown trout home for dinner.

Finding a brown trout this far up a cutthroat stream made our biologist friend sigh.

Catch and release has become something of a religion among fly fishermen, but sometimes the natives need a hand, and while the Brookie is still the Official Char of the Trout Underground, they simply don’t belong everywhere.

Plus they’re good to eat.

The Other Fishermen

Any time you stumble on a rarely fished stream, you assume complete and total ownership of it (at least in your head).

It may flow through public land and a (barely) drivable dirt road may cross it, but it’s yours, damnit.

So when you find a group of campers – including some who might even be fishermen – at the confluence of your tiny creek and the larger creek it feeds, you’re forgiven if your first thought is streak your face with mud, crawl down there through the brush, and go all Rambo on their camp.

It’s possible I accidentally vocalized some of that thinking, and [Name Redacted] gently reminded me I was standing on public land, and that the knee-high grasses on our tiny meadow stream looked undisturbed.

I mean, what fishermen wastes his time on a tiny meadow stream when a bigger version – with presumably bigger fish – runs right nearby?

Fair enough. Given all the trouble and worry that human greed has caused over the last 18 months, it’s refreshing to realize that wanton greed sometimes works in our favor.

Too small to be interesting? Nahhh...

Later – farther up the meadow – we’d stumble across a part of the meadow ripped up by ATV tracks (which also plowed through the stream at one point, which brought out that Rambo thing again), and sometimes you wonder why hopping on an otherwise useful ATV causes some people to immediately lose 30+ IQ points.

Enough said.

The Paragraph Where It Gets Mortal

Regular readers will recall my father’s death more than a year ago, despite the passage of time, a couple vials of his ashes sit perched on the shelf.

In truth, I didn’t know what to do with them.

My father was a big, gentle, quiet guy who took better care of us than he did himself – a guy who didn’t spend a lot of time “recreating” because that’s simply not what responsible, depression-era men did.

I’ve discovered you don’t get over a parent’s death as much as try to make peace with it, and while time and distance grant you a certain serenity, they don’t insulate you from the random thoughts that surprise you along the way.

Sometimes, I just like a picture - for no reason. Ok?

It’s too late to drag dad along on my adventures – some of which he would have enjoyed – but I am perfectly capable of depositing a few of his ashes in a tiny meadow stream, which links to a bigger freestone stream, which runs to a much bigger stream, which flows eventually to the Clarks Fork, which flows eventually to the Columbia River, which ultimately flows into the ocean.

That he might someday occupy the whole of the Columbia Basin watershed puts a smile on my face.

It also makes sense that a small part of my quiet, patient father now occupies a stream populated by freshwater mussels – which may have been quietly doing whatever mussels do since before he was born.

A thought like that grants an almost totemic power to things like small streams and ashes, and you ignore the wonderful symmetry of it at all your own peril.

If there’s a moral here, maybe it’s this: maybe the mad poets among us know something we don’t.

A tiny, grassy, Montana meadow stream - a good place to hang out for a while.

More Montana

The Underground’s Montana Road Trip 2009 took a turn for the stormy after [Name Redacted] and I returned from our small stream odyssey, but that’s fodder for my next post.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

Inner Landscape, Montana Meadow Stream

Sometimes you love an image, but don't know where to put it. This belongs here.

Montana Road Trip 2009: Fly Fishing a Small Cutthroat Trout Stream

July 11, 2009, by 8 comments

With two days of the Bitterroot River behind us, [name redacted] and I switched gears, heading for a pair of small, cutthroat-trout laced waters.

The Undergrounders know of my consuming love for the little trickles, and revisiting a couple favorites from last year’s Montana road trip didn’t involve a lot of arm twisting.

Name Redacted on his way to the stream.

That storm clouds were gathering when we arrived didn’t matter – after two days of bigger water, I hit this little stream like a racehorse breaking from the gate.

Then again, I seem to have a thing with storms, and this trip was no exception; seconds after I caught a 15.5″ cutthroat (a great big fish for a stream this size), a lightning bolt struck a ridge a couple miles away, and [name redacted] and I found ourselves moving rapidly back to the truck.

A distressingly poor picture of my 15.5" cutthroat trout

Not only was the cutthroat the biggest I’d caught, but it was also the most colorful – a stunning mix of reds, oranges, yellows and colors I can’t quite identify.

You know that colors fade quickly underwater, but emotionally, you can’t quite grasp the idea that these trout actually are that wildly colorful.

The neon-painted cutthroats nicely echoed the wildflowers, which – due to a cool, wet spring – were now carpeting vast swatches of meadow.

Take these, add several other colors & species, then multiply by thousands of acres.

In fact, the blooms mimicking the shape of an elephant’s head were almost as intriguing as the cutthroat trout (maybe if they would eat a parachute):

They're mind-numblingly complex, and yes, they really do like like elephant heads.

Then again, sometimes you simply get too wrapped up in the fly fishing to notice:

In a turnabout for the Underground, I'm fly fishing, he's shooting (photo by name redacted)

The Fly Fishing Itself

This is a remote stretch of stream that doesn’t get fished much, but you won’t catch a lot of trout by looming over the water and waving your 8′ long arm around – even if that long arm is a gorgeously impregnated 8′ 5wt Phillipson Peerless bamboo fly rod.

Trout, it turns out, don’t respect a brand name fly rod.

[Name redacted] fished the 8.5′ 4wt Diamondglass he bought only days after fishing mine on last year’s Montana Road Trip, suggesting he’s a fast learner.

Even better, [name redacted] knows this stream (and cutthroats) well, and after the storm passed, we managed hook a sizable number of Westslope cutthroats – mostly on caddis dries.

Name Redacted didn't catch a trout this cast, but the next...

In a foolish attempt to find the real truth about the waterproof nature (or lack thereof) of Underground’s Official Point and Shoot digital camera, we went for an underwater photo:

He's not all that happy, but he did get to go home in a few seconds.

The bad news? The camera really isn’t waterproof any more.

Still, it only fogged up for a little while, but camera problems are starting to appear with distressing frequency. Tomorrow’s “fishing a tiny meadow stream” report suffers from a distressing lack of photographs due to battery issues – but you’ll still want to tune in.

For now, we’re back at home, I’ve got one more day to report (this on a tiny meadow stream some of you will recognize from last year’s report), and we may be headed to Georgetown Lake in pursuit of bigger trout (and fewer aching knees).

I think the Montana Road Trip 2009 is finding its stride, and while I’m sore from all the walking, climbing, wading, driving and sleeping on the ground, I’m willing to do more – willing to make the big sacrifices for my readership.

Wipe the tears of pity from your eyes, Undergrounders. We’re going back in.

See you somewhere in Montana, Tom Chandler.

The Montana Fly Fishing Road Trip Continues: Last Casts, and a Gripping Action Sequence

July 15, 2008, by 15 comments

Ok, so fly fishing the small meadow stream in my last post was stellar: the trout were bigger than expected, the surroundings prettier than anyone could want, and reclining in the warm, tall grass (“resting our casting arms” as I recall) might have become the highlight of the trip.

Fly fishing a small Montana trout stream
Could our next fly fishing adventure possibly measure up to this one?

Later, we discovered we’d walked right by a bed of peculiar, high-altitude freshwater mussels that live upwards of 100 years, and that a small pack of wolves had taken up residence in the area.

Frankly, I wish I’d seen both (the wolves from a greater distance than the mussels), but both get filed under the heading of “things I didn’t know about, but wish I had when it would have mattered” (yes, I do regret too).

After we’d walked around the meadow back to our ridgeline camp site (no mosquitoes), we sat and watched the sun go down.

a good sized trout stream
The Underground goes all artsy on you.

Because [name redacted] and I aren’t exactly shy about sharing opinions, we dissected the state of fly fishing, the world, the environment and even fly rods (perhaps the most contentious subject).

The discussion was as lively as the day’s fly fishing.

Then the day ended, we went to sleep, and dawn broke, and on a whim, we headed back to the creek we fished a couple days before, reasoning the waters would have fallen, and – yes – the fishing would be even better (apparently I do greed well too).

We expected a triumphant return to the site of our earlier small stream adventure, and on one count, we were rewarded.

Sadly, that count didn’t include as many big trout.

We did catch plenty of Westslope Cutthroats, but the stream had fallen farther than expected, and while the trout weren’t really along the banks, they weren’t all that aggressive in the seams either.


A rare image of the Underground (courtesy [name redacted])

[Name redacted] suggested it had something to do with the trout repositioning themselves in the falling water, taking a day off to fight it out for the better lies, but I cared little.

The fly fishing was still damned good, and the only event marring the adventure was [name redacted]‘s plunge into the river after a rock shifted under him, banging both his knee and his reel.

As he fell, I could tell it was going to hurt a lot, but I’d also just hooked a small trout, which meant I had a difficult decision to make: do I help my friend so he lives another day (live, damnit live!), or do I land the trout?

small cutthroat trout

Given that my heart is pure – so I have the strength of ten men – I managed to do both.

The Gimp Laughs Last

Of course, the lord giveth, and the lord taketh away, and in the “giveth” column, [name redacted] chose to sit on the bank and let his knee recover a bit, and promptly caught 12 trout from one seam (two of which went 12” or so) without so much as moving his ass an inch.


A Nettrout – my favorite.

If you’re like me, you can’t abide showoffs on the river (except when it’s me), so I fished my way upriver. Today’s rod of choice was an 8′ 5wt Diamondglass rod that’s very sweet to cast (though it grows a little less so when it becomes windy).

It was built for me by good friend (Rich Margiotta), a fact which adds considerably to the rod’s already-considerable charms.

I was more than nine days into the Montana Road Trip, and I think my hyper-web-accelerated internal time clock was finally adjusting to the more human pace the outdoors tends to impose on you if given half a chance.

The casts were falling pretty much where I wanted, the fish were eating the dry (not quite as often as I wanted, but that’s almost always the case), and the whole event had acquired a bit of a dreamlike quality.

fly fishing a small Montana trout stream
That’s me. That’s beautiful. (courtesy [name redacted])

It’s in those rare moments of fly fishing grace that you realize that this sport is actually pretty damned cool, and while many define the sport by what’s happening on the waters that see a couple dozen drift boats every day, that might be more a commercial perspective than a sporting one.

I sat on that for a bit, and [name redacted] walked up and asked to borrow the camera.

The Image Maven

I’d taken damn few pictures so far, and was frankly relieved when I didn’t have to worry about stocking the thing with images.

Of course, that’s how we ended up with rare photographs of me in my own fly fishing blog, including a Gripping Series of Photographs So Graphic, That Small Children and the Weak of Heart May Want to Look Away.

Well. Sorta.

[Name redacted] did a nice job of shooting me while I cast at an inside seam (see “That’s Me” photo above), but he showed his Peckinpah-esque cinematic chops when he recorded me hooking and losing the Big Cutthroat Trout of the Day:


A 14″-15″ cutthroat eats, and I set. Hey, this is eas… uh oh…


The skid mark moment when the trout heads downstream and starts kicking my ass.


It’s all knee-deep riffles below; brilliantly, I try to steer the trout into a seam…


Which doesn’t work. He gets off, while I gaze longingly (with an empty net)

OK, maybe it wasn’t exactly Drama In Real Life stuff. Maybe it wasn’t even that exciting from a fishing perspective, but I’ll bet someone could add a soundtrack (Don’t Get Fooled Again by The Who) and give it a little vibration, eh?

Beginning of the End

I’ve got one more wrap-up post planned for the Underground’s Montana Fly Fishing Road Trip, including a few odds-and-ends photos that didn’t fit anywhere else.

Though I’ve written several long posts on the trip, it’s humbling to realize that so much went unsaid and un-photographed.

Then again, we are not video recorders with legs, and if you could experience the fullness of a fly fishing trip on the Internet, then you wouldn’t need all those expensive fly rods or waders.

More to come from Montana. See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

Bonus Graphic: a “Wordle” word cloud graphic of the report.

Wordle word cloud of this post

The Montana Fly Fishing Road Trip Continues: This Time an Even Smaller Stream

July 12, 2008, by 18 comments

When we last left our heroes, we were wallowing in the big, trouty playpen that is Montana.

We’d fished a stream for surprisingly good-sized cutthroat trout, and then headed home to reprovision – and run a little bluelining exercise on [name redacted]‘s topo maps.

Thanks to my benefactor’s Mad Map Skillz, the next morning found us staring at a small stream which – and read this part carefully – may not have been fished this year.

If that doesn’t make the hair on your neck stand up, you’re either not a fly fisherman, or you’re dead.

Fly fishing a small Montana meadow stream
It looks small, but fished big. And don’t even ask.

The tiny meadow stretch was the prototypical killer small stream.

Deeper-than-expected water, undercut banks, and overhanging vegetation meant trout had plenty of places to hide. And food had plenty of places to grow.

The result?

Plenty of Westslope Cutthroat trout – and even a few Official Char of the Trout Underground (brookies):

Westlslope cutthroat trout caught fly fishing Montana

Brook trout caught fly fishing Montana

The trout weren’t picky, but neither were they stupid.

Like most meadow streams, stealth trumped fly selection, and the ability roll an accurate cast off the rod tip was far more important than tippet size.

And sneaking was good too (it almost always is).

Phillipson 8' 5wt bamboo fly rod

My 8′ 5wt Phillipson bamboo fly rod sometimes felt almost perfect for the job – it’s damned accurate, and throws just the leader with grace.

But it sometimes seemed a little strong for 8″ trout.

Then an 11″ cutthroat would grab the fly and run for a root-studded undercut bank, and suddenly, the rod seemed entirely perfect for the gig (today’s lesson in relative perfectionism).

Meanwhile, [name redacted] had once again latched onto my 8.5′ Diamondglass 4wt, and demonstrated its capacity for this kind of work by landing the day’s winning trout in both the “Length” and “Best Use of Color” categories:

Cutthroat trout
14 inches? We’re not sure, but he’s damned pretty.

We hopscotched each other up the meadow, picking out landmarks for starting points, and waiting for the lower angler to catch up.

We enjoyed plenty of trout, perfect weather, and – due to the utter lack of trampled grass, trails, boot prints, trash or other signs of humanity — the odd feeling that this little meadow stream hadn’t been fished this year.

True? False? We can’t say for sure, but the notion’s almost overwhelmingly romantic.

fly fishing a small Montana trout creek
Looks grueling, eh?

After we’d fished the entire length of the meadow – and stripped several dry flies almost down to bare hook – we set up camp on a windy ridge overlooking a bigger stream, where we fished the next day.

I’ll post that report in a couple days. But stay tuned; I’ve got something interesting in the works for the Undergrounders…

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

Fly fishing a Montana meadow stream

The Montana Road Trip Continues: Small Stream Day in Montana

July 10, 2008, by 5 comments

After three hectic days speed-floating Rock Creek and a couple days catching way more fish than god intended on Georgetown Lake, [name redacted] and I were ready for something a bit more… genteel.

Or pristine. That sounds suitably elitist.
Fly fishing a small Montana trout stream
Acting on a tip from a biologist friend, [name redacted] and I headed for a creek reputed to hold Westslope Cutthroats that might – just might – be a little bigger than the water would suggest.

I like tips like that.

They suggest good fish, but are couched in terms that embrace the small stream reality, which is pretty scenery, challenging casting, and (typically) smaller trout.

Pink elephant flowers
These blooms looked like little pink elephant heads.

It’s not as if big trout are required, but I’m still human, and all things being even, I’ll fish the stream with the bigger trout (rumored bigger trout), especially if it’s not trashed, overrun with fishermen, or flows through a superfund site.

In this case, [name redacted]‘s tip proved accurate.

Within 20 minutes, he’d landed a cutthroat in the 15”-16” range (that’s a good range). By the time we finished, we’d landed several in the 11”-13” range, and popped another approaching the first fish in size.

Westslope cutthroat trout
An average picture of an above-average 12″ trout

Plus lots of little ones. Really, really pretty little ones.

And to do it, we were forced to throw dry flies on a jewel-like, largely unspoiled, uncrowded stream.

(Cry for me, Undergrounders.)

Fly selection wasn’t critical, but fly placement was. Everything from a Golden Stone to a Beetle Bug caught trout, but only if the fly was carefully placed in the slower water near the bank.

The creek was still swollen with runoff, and the trout hadn’t yet filled the mid-stream slots.

Fly fishing a small Montana trout stream
Fishing a trout stream from a patch of wildflowers? It was a hard, hard day.

No matter; accurate casting was needed, but frankly – after a couple days on the “heave it for distance” lake, accuracy was fun. Damned fun, especially when you’re holding something sweet in your hand – in this case an 8′ 5wt Phillipson Peerless.

It’s a rod [name redacted] described as being nothing more than “pure fly rod – no bells, whistles, hinges, technology, or stupidity.”

I took that as a compliment, and like most Phillipsons, the rod did its job beautifully.

Meanwhile, [name redacted] – who owns plenty of really nice fly rods – latched onto my 8.5′ 4wt Diamondglass, fishing it the next three stream days (he said it was a great rod, and in a bitter, cynical fashion I told him “of course it’s a great rod – it was discontinued late last year”).

neck slashes on a cutthroat trout
How do we know it’s a Cutthroat?

Spending a day on a small stream – especially a productive small stream – does things for your mental state that lakes and fast-moving drift trips simply can’t.

The weather was warm and sunny and breezy, and I felt like I could lay down in the tall grass and wait for the day to start over and fish it again.

Montana trout stream and wildflowers

Naturally, I didn’t do exactly that, but I did fish another small stream. That report’s coming soon to an Underground near you.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler

The Underground’s Back: Fly Fishing Road Trip Reports Coming Soon

July 9, 2008, by 6 comments

The Trout Underground’s Montana fly fishing road trip ended, but not before we discovered several small streams jammed with cutthroat and brook trout. Fishing reports coming soon…

Read more →

The Underground’s Montana Road Trip Continues to Rock Creek

July 5, 2008, by 5 comments

Montana’s Rock Creek is hardly a secret, which is why you’re seeing its name in print (don’t expect similar treatment of upcoming locations).

Rock Creek, Montana
Rock Creek from the “Hogback” overview. Lots of stones – and trout.

The first stop on the Underground’s Tour of Montana’s Fishy Fleshpots, my fly fishing host [name redacted] and I arrived on Saturday for the last three days in the drift boat season.

Last three days?

On July 1, drift boats are banned from Rock Creek (flows are typically too low to comfortably float anyway), and the river becomes a playground for wading fly fishermen.

Rock Creek, Montana
Yes Undergrounders, the wildflowers are out. You almost don’t need trout.

While I was just in time for the end of the drift season, I should have been several weeks too late for the stoneflies.

Helpfully, a late winter intervened in my favor, and the salmon flies and Golden Stones were out in force (given all the “you should have been here last week” stories I’ve heard, I’m accepting this as my due).

Rock Creek Stone flies
The stoneflies were late — good news for me.

In simplest terms, we arrived in big bug heaven.

[name redacted] and I broke out our big bug fly boxes, argued that the other guy’s patterns were obvious crap, loaded [name redacted]‘s small Santiam Drifter, and pushed off.

Small drifter, Rock CreekI wasn’t really ready for what followed.

Rock Creek flows like the government spends. It was the fastest float I’ve ever experienced, and there were few places to pull over and take a breather.

And while you wanted to drop the big Golden Stone dries right next to the willows and overhanging branches, breaking off a fly meant missing a hundred yards of good trout water – a heartbreaking thought even now.

God help you if you broke off a chunk of leader.

The result was an ongoing exercise in Risk Assesment; bigger trout would come to tougher casts, but no trout were caught if you were tying on a fly and the bank wizzed by.

While the bite varied over the three days, it was almost always good, often crossing the line into great.

Browns by the dozens jumped our dries (mostly Golden Stones as the Salmon Flies weren’t working as well).

Golden Stonefly pattern
Other patterns worked better, but the Stimulators worked (and floated) well.

In one side channel, we stopped and I caught my first pure strain West Slope Cutthroat, though it turns out the things are hard to hold and we didn’t get a picture.

Most of the fish we caught were Browns, the biggest of which might have pushed 16”.

A fair number of Cuttbow hybrids also made an appearance in the net, though true Cutts were rare.

Neither [name redacted] or I are exactly fish counters, but I’d guess our best day resulted in several dozen hookups (and a bunch of misses).

Fly Fishing Rock Creek, Montana
[Name redacted] and a rare cast delivered outside the drift boat.

The pace of the float was intimidatingly fast; I took damned few pictures on the water, unwilling to sacrifice a shot at prime holding water (I’m greedy that way).

And nobody was surprised to hear we’d broken a rod setting the hook into a big Brown Trout. Manly stuff, but not unusual given that Rock Creek claims a couple drift boats and rafts every season.


These things were big enough to skewer and eat (we didn’t).

It’s a nice place to fish, but don’t show up thinking you’ll learn to row on the river. You’ll mostly learn to hit things.

The Camping Comedy Twins

We camped at the Stony Creek Campground, were we lived through the Harrowing Blown Radiator Hose Nightmare and also found trip mascot Stony: a roadkilled, dehydrated snake.

The Rock Creek Radiator Hose Nightmare
When a whole day’s float is at stake, you fix stuff.

It’s frightening to contemplate, but [name redacted] and I share a similar sense of humor, so the off-river time passed quickly.

In short order, we solved the fly fishing industry’s woes, heaped piles of scorn on those responsible for our environmental troubles, speculated as to Martha Stewart’s sexual potential, and yeah – managed to squeeze in a little talk about fly rods and bugs.


Trip Mascot Stony. Say “Hi” to everyone, Stony.

The culinary highlight of the trip (the lowlight comes in a later report) was [name redacted]‘s Dutch Oven Pork Chops, which combined simple ingredients into unbelievably tasty camp food, all cooked in a single pot.

Why it didn’t attract bears and other wild animals amazes me still (when we cooked it at our next stop, fly fishermen poured out of the woodwork looking for a free meal).

Hantavirus warning sign
Meet your campground — and its friendly inhabitants.

Despite the great fishing, we broke camp and moved onto our next stop; Georgetown Lake.

You’ll hear about those adventures (including a new entry in the Ultimate Hot Dog Wars) when I get them written.

Lots of interesting pictures too (the lake moves considerably slower than Rock Creek).

Rock Creek, Montana (side channel)
A side channel; sometimes these fished better than the river.

Until next time, see you in Montana, Tom Chandler.

Chasing Hatches on the Rogue: Wonder What We Found?

February 11, 2008, by 7 comments

An Upper Rogue March Brown

Sometimes winter fishing is great drama. Other times, you get in the drift boat and just soak up the sun, which feels pretty damned good in the middle of a snowy winter.

I won’t cop to being lazy as much as relaxed; I sporadically fished a dry fly but Dave Roberts and I were both looking for the midday hatches; BWOs early with a chance for some March Browns later.

So we drifted along, caught up on life — which has gotten a little more complicated for both of us lately — and stuffed our faces with great big deli sandwiches (get the spicy mustard), and argued about the proper side of the fly reel for the handle.

He says left-reelers are at best misguided (at worst, we’re limp-wristed, wrong-sided, overly sensitive writer types who are bad for the sport).

I say right-reelers are uneducated, unevolved apes who need right-mounted handles because their leftside knuckles are worn away from dragging on the ground.

robertsrowing
The knuckle-dragger himself; now guiding and tying custom flies fulltime.

With that settled, we got down to the serious discussions of fly patterns, and now that he’s guiding and tying flies pretty much fulltime, he showed me a couple of really pretty March Brown patterns we were hoping to test.

thramerflyrod Right on cue, the BWOs started coming off, but with our #1 slot occupied, we headed downriver a bit to a spot that Dave — despite fishing this river constantly for more than two decades — really only found last year (that’s a lesson in something, but I was too lazy to decipher it).

Initially, the trout weren’t much on the rafts of BWOs that went by, but you could say they took note of the March Browns that started popping at the end of BWO hatch.

It’s really too early for the March Browns, but they were hatching lightly last time I made it up, and this time — only a few weeks ahead of schedule — the hatch was stronger.

Maybe they couldn’t wait to see the sun either.

More Fly Fishing

With the fish chasing March Browns, we fell into our usual program. Outside of a few hero casts, we were just a couple of kids insisting the other take the next shot then trash talking each other when we missed the fish.

You don’t keep track in moments like that, so all I can say is we caught a fair number of trout, including a pair of cutthroats (now the Official Trout of the Dave Roberts Web Site).

My biggest was a 14 incher, and Dave hooked something large that immediately ran deep and wrapped him up on the bottom.

Clouds kept moving in, shielding the sun and reminding us we were still in the deep of winter, and once the hatch ended, the river acquired the steely glint that suggested the bite was finished.

Turns out it was, but we weren’t far from the take-out ramp and a truck heater.

rogueelk 
Elk looking for a little snow-free forage.

For the gear-minded among you, Roberts fished a Raine Upper Sac Special (8′ 5wt), and I — feeling kinda basic — went with an 8.5′ Thramer PX (similar to a Granger/Phillipson 8.5′ rod) and an old Heddon reel (a copy of the Hardy Lightweights).

In keeping with the unhurried pace of the day, I think I changed flies exactly once (yes, Dave’s March Brown patterns do work).

Of course, that’s my take on the day. Now that Dave is posting his own fishing reports, you can compare the two entries and decide for yourself. It’s interesting to read his take on the same day (even if he is an unevolved, knuckle-dragging, right-hand-reeling ape).

See you some Winter day, Tom Chandler.