Shielded by a bush, rod pointed behind me, I knee-crawled up to the bank of the stream, hunched down, carefully poked my head around the branches, and watched every brown trout in the pool scatter.
Instantly.
This, I realized, was going to be harder than I thought.
The Old Small Stream Ain’t What It Used To Be
It turns out life happens even while we’re somewhere else (who knew), and in this case, Stream Y – so happy to give up its brown trout in the spring and summer – turned miserly as winter closed in.
Going down in flames, but classy - a Phillipson Bamboo Fly Rod makes even failure pretty
As I watched a half-dozen small-stream trout disappear (as if they’d been beamed up to the Enterprise), I realized the snow was falling again, so instead of simply being cold and fishless, I was about to become cold, fishless, and wet.
If that sounds as good to you as it does to me, then this may just be your blog post.
As The Options Narrow…
With the general trout season about to close, I thought about flogging the McCloud, but frankly – with fly fishermen reporting catches of big trout on big dries – it seemed a little obvious.
You know, too normal.
And besides, the same pair of small streams I’d been fishing all year beckoned; I’d never fished either stream this late in the year, and I wondered what was happening at altitude.
Were the brown trout spawning? Were bugs hatching? Would streamers work? After a couple storms, were some of the dirt roads even passable?
(Answers: Not really, no, not in my hands, mostly)
Stream Y - the last look this year
In truth, I’ve been on a small stream jag the last couple seasons, and I found little reason to stop now.
If you’re happy catching 7″-10″ trout in the summer, why not in the fall?
Which is how I found myself crawling around in the mud and leftover corn snow, wondering how the hell I was going to catch a trout when I couldn’t even get close enough to properly spook them?
Normally, this is the moment when I drag out the camera and take pictures, figuring the fishing isn’t going to get any worse while I’m being artsy, and it might just get better.
Sadly, I’d cheated myself of even that escape; I’d left my digital camera at home, and was reduced to taking pictures with my low-quality (and definitely non-waterproof) cell phone camera.
I forget, so you suffer. That’s symmetry for you.
The Part Where I Make Excuses
No fly fishing trip is complete with an exhaustive list of excuses reasons why the fishermen failed/succeeded in the face of overwhelming odds, and here’s mine:
- The riffles and current tongues that provided overhead cover (and plenty of bites) earlier in the year were largely vacant; the brown trout had moved to slower (and clearer, and tougher) stretches of water.
- The leaves on the bushes and trees were gone (depriving me of cover), and the water was low, so the trout were spooky. Damned spooky.
- I didn’t see a single bug or terrestrial, so the trout simply weren’t looking up.
- The brown trout were spawning/had spawned/were about to spawn, and were uninterested in feeding
- The water was extremely cold and hurt my hands, so I was happy I didn’t catch many fish
Ultimately, two deranged very smart brown trout fell victim to my cunning presentations, and while I’d love to suggest I solved the spookiness problem through some kind of Darwinian adaptation, the truth is less impressive: I just made longer casts.
(I didn’t say I was proud of it or anything, but it worked.)
Of course, there is a Big Fish story lurking here somewhere – a monster in the 11″ range which zipped out of a log jam, grabbed the black rubberlegs streamer I was dangling, and ran right back – wrapping me up and breaking me off in the process.
Other blogs talk about big fish - but we show you exactly where they live...
When you’re down, it seems even the trout know to kick you.
Lucky To Be Here
That said, I felt lucky to get what I got. In one sense, I was lucky to be there; it was sleeting when I arrived, but by noon it had grown colder, and by two, it was snowing.
When I finally left, I wondered if this was the storm that would close the road.
Even if it doesn’t, the next one might.
One the drive out, the truck skidded and slipped on dirt road, and I figured I might be the last fly fisherman to spook those trout until June or even July of next year.
Once, I entertained thoughts of skiing into this stream and fishing it long before others could get there, but the distances are daunting. And hell, I’m not even sure if the roads to the road are plowed.
Soon (very soon), the meadows will fill with snow, and they’ll stay that way for better than half the year, and the trout will go on about their lives largely untroubled – until one day the snow melts and a strange shape looms above them, waving a long, skinny stick.
If the romance of that escapes you, then check for a pulse.
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