Haunted by "The One"

Yeah...You know what I'm talking about. The One! Or Many! The fish that makes you lose sleep at night! The fish that haunts you!

I can't remember a year go by that I didn't suffer defeat from a piscatorial kind. I can recall three within this very year and the most recent was just last week. I don't know what's worst, not knowing what the loss really was or trying to figure out how it could have been prevented. Regardless the experience is haunting me.

This years first account came early in the winter swinging flies in an icy cold stream. To add insult to this injury the location of the loss has defeated me in the past as well. It's a high percentage micro seam that when you get your fly to swing just right, hold on! On this day the take was so solid it felt like I snagged into the rocky bottom. Holding steady pressure something started to give and in the next second the explosion of a solid rainbow came leaping into the air and out came my fly. Only a glimpse still burns in my memory.
Over and over, what could I have done different!? I don't want to talk about it.

Another frame etched in memory occurred just a couple months ago on a warm water reservoir. I was enjoying a day of fly rod fishing for bass with great success I might add. Dropping a streamer into the depths of a boulder field I detected a tell tale tick. Upon hook-set, I knew right away I hooked into a good fish but it wasn't until I saw his bronze tiger striped flank that he was well above average. I held tight to him but he dove for the depths and somehow in that rocky underworld he managed to escape.
Like Houdini...How did he do it!? I checked my tippet and fly was still intact. Although I was happy he didn't get free only to deal with a hook in his mouth but at the same time mad knowing my system did not fail. Must of been me! But what could I have done different?

This most recent event was even witnessed. The setting, a pristine trout stream nowhere in Wyoming. Fishing a hopper and having a great day. Casting was good, fish where happy and looking up. A seam with a bubble line appeared up ahead and I stretched a cast to ride a downstream drift. Shortly into the drift the big brown appeared, as my guide put it, like the scene straight out of the movie Jaws. Almost in shock, I still remembered to set the hook but it was not meant to be. We briefly connected but it wasn't this brown's first rodeo. Back-stepping while stripping, I could never keep a tight line on him as he shot downstream and escaped my hook. What could I have done different!?

Is it skill or lack of. Is it luck. Is it fate. Although I never want to see a failed piece of the puzzle it's almost easier to accept knowing that there is something to blame. In all three of my accounts there was not an equipment failure.

Although scared for my next failure I must let passion drive me forward and not fear whatever the outcome is to be. Try and try again and success should be assured. Or will it! This is what haunts me!
The Tormented Angler

Greg Darling 

Gorge Fly Shop 

"Fly Fish the World with Us"

I'm Calling it a Sports Injury

Davis Lake, Oregon

So let’s go back to early June, when high in the Cascades, snow still lingers under tall pines and nighttime temps hover around 30 degrees. This is the Oregon we all love to play in: hot, sunny days followed by whiskey in your coffee as night settles in. I couldn’t resist the rumor that Davis Lake holds monster largemouth bass anymore than one of my buddies, no make that all of my buddies, can pass up a free beer. A huge 5000 acre fly fishing-only trophy bass lake that’s only a few hours’ drive is enough inspiration to have the truck fueled and ready weeks before the trip. But did I mention, that it was high in the mountains? So as we were enjoying 70 degree days, the lake was getting fresh, let’s call it bass-lethargic, snow.

Our local fly fishing bass expert (we will question his credentials later) kept reading his weather reports and proclaiming too cold, too cold, and too cold. I would reply too old, too old, and too old. I am getting too old waiting for this band of warmth that, by his calendar, would finally arrive sometime in late September. Ah, but using fishing logic I hatched a plan that would get us there now and if the fishing sucked, the plan would allow us to fish several other nearby lakes where huge brown trout lived like the Loch Ness Monster, seen by a few locals with grainy photos to back up their claims, but never really verified.

Good Morning Columbia River Bass

Columbia River Morning

I got out on the Columbia River last week with resident Bass Guide, Greg Darling. When he offered the invite I started to drool because well, the Columbia is so vastly beautiful, and I wanted to try something different. The thought of standing barefoot on the bow of a boat and casting and stripping flies to Small Mouth Bass warmed up my insides. Yes please, broaden my horizons! I get caught up in the same old things sometimes – chasing those species that just never seem to release you. Barbed. And although you learn something every day out there, the diameter of the learning pipe is so much wider when trying something new. Info just comes gushing in and you do your best to try to hold onto it all amid this refreshing new experience. Or how about this: Would it be fair to say that it’s good to start with a dry sponge sometimes?

I have dabbled in this fishery before. But being too busy with the Trout and Steelhead scene has left me little time to branch out. As it turns out, this big old river that runs by town, the Columbia - one of the largest drainage ditches in the world – is home to a few Bass. Well maybe more than a few and maybe home to some really large Bass at that. Oh yeah Greg, I would love to. You bet.

From Distant Shores

We always welcome emails from our customers - especially when there is a photo of our favorite creature included!  Here is a note from one of our valued customers, Bruce Jordan, who seemed to have his hands full during a recent, tropical adventure.

Hi Lyndsey,
Just wanted to thank you very much for your assistance with my rod repair. I received it in the mail a few weeks ago but have not had a chance to reply to you. It arrived in good condition and am waiting for a chance to use it.

I have sent through a photo of myself on Christmas Island with a golden trevally which I caught on my Loomis rod. I caught over 150 bonefish in the week with the rod and was very impressed with it hence my wanting to replace/repair it.

Kind Regards,
Bruce Jordan

 
Stunning. Thank you Bruce!

I Dream of The Henry's Fork

My mind wanders back the meandering wake to that glassy water where the fish lay. And the bugs that hover there, long enough to hold off the mouths and the end of it all. I spent many hours there on my bum, my legs crossed, scanning the water for Mayfly regattas and spent wings collapsing.

Often the road there, would take me over Teton Pass and into that fertile country that lay to the west of the spires. Falling and twisting down into the green valley… Even through cracked glass, I could often make out the distant bulges of the Centennial and the Lemhi Ranges whose collisions rise over seventy miles distant. Windows down, there is bluegrass picking and wind throughout the cab of the truck. And best to stay alert on this twisted trail that winds though fields of potatoes and barley.

There are scattered heaps of rusted machinery by the side of the road. A too-ripe shack with no glass has the words “Cold Beer” peeling from its side. Little white houses and red barns with white trim are swallowed by the swaying prairie as the road continues on to the ancient caldera that is Island Park, Idaho. It is still my most favorite path to travel.

Passing over the bridge out of Ashton, Idaho, I get my first whiff of her – that unmistakable cool, buggy scent of wet earth and moving water. And there she be, still moving – rippling and smoothing her way towards the Snake’s other half and then onward; further until she fills with Steelhead and Salmon that come home from the sea.

To speak of origins: A rain drop meets Yellowstone and slithers down into the earth. It finds another and grows and finds more and strength becomes her and the water it flows clean and cold through a labyrinth of volcanic rock that came stone a million years before. And at the end of her underground path, out of the side of a modest hill on the western flank of the park, she is unveiled: streaming from the earth she is uncovered; she is beautiful, distinguished, banded, and witnesses tell it so.

The Henry’s Fork of the Snake River begins where Buffalo roam. Could a drop be more fortunate? How about me, could I be more fortunate to wade into her arms or sit on her banks and watch the clouds pass over? This is where my mind flows. When the present loses character, I drift upstream between the crests of a widening wake that may start with a nose.

A friend took me here long ago. We drank beer while watching the river and he told me that if I can catch fish here, then I could catch fish anywhere. I remember being anxious at the possibility of casting line as we continued to sit and watch. I grew restless that day, waiting. More sips of beer and salami slices down our hatches among chatter of bugs and rise forms and how best to approach a ripple that would hopefully ripple once more.

Cutthroat Country

Our friends at SIMMS are shining the spotlight on a serious issue facing Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout. In partnership with Trout Unlimited, The Yellowstone Park Foundation and The Outdoor Blogger Network, these dedicated folks are working to preserve this coveted, native species who are struggling to survive in the very waters of their birthplace: Yellowstone National Park. The following piece is a submission for the Blogger Tour 2012 Writing Competition, which hopes to raise awareness and resources for the survival of balance, and the Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout.

Stepping from the pavement into the caldron of this fine, vast country, it is as it was when the world was flat and the edge loomed distant. A buffalo roams where the buffalo roamed and the boiling spray erupts and falls and tumbles from all that stone much like it did back before the days of disguise. Out there in that country among mountains that tower over pine, rivers, lakes and bubbling mud, one needn’t rely on history to stand before raw, unedited earth.

Yellowstone. It’s not a mirage. Teddy stood there below the arch in 1903 and maybe he said, “Sorry, you best take your asteroids elsewhere.” And so we do. We lob them about when we can, where we can and they strike and sever, but not here, on this wild, honest island in the breast of America. Please, not here.

Earth made her and makes her still. She carves her rock and milks her young and sinks her teeth into shuddering necks. Her wolves howl in the night. She catches fire and burns and burns. Her baby bear slips in mud and her buffalo sway their big brown heads. Waterfalls plunging and geysers gushing and canyons gouging and somewhere, a trout lifts an eye to a fluttering Caddis Fly. She is beautiful because Earth made her and makes her still.

A spotted head breaches during late evening glow. Her throat is marked of the sun. There, in the eddy swirl it glints through meandering flow, in a meadow, where it is her place to toil. And it is her place to sleep and waken.

We cannot compete with her creative might. She has no motives. Her craftsmanship is no less than that which drifts down an imagination. And this place is one of her masterpieces, free of our ornaments - our things that surround us, that we build around us, and the stuff that we use and discard into a ditch or a hole or a forest or an ocean. But we are stroked by grand artistry, ourselves. We are the Indian Paintbrush, the ripple on the cool mountain stream. We are these, at least. But we take because we know how to take… so well, we’ve learned to take from high above our perch, like staring out from atop Mount Washburn but failing to notice the green valley floor and the white Elk speckling below.

Into the big ole puzzle we go but there is just something, something about nature that makes us jam our pieces into places that just don’t seem to fit. We press and pinch and jam and sometimes we tear parts up, throw them away, or we just lay our pieces on top and grab for another and before we know it, the puzzle looks as if it was never even started. And we may never even know that there is a need for this fitting together if not for one little quality that for some magical reason we came to find: A conscience. Is this our savior? Could we keep on, could our world keep on without it? Can it balance our prowess on the upward end of the see-saw?

Step into Yellowstone and celebrate your conscience. It’s there in the spacious air. It’s everywhere in the valleys and the spouting earth. It drifts over chasms and falls and washes up upon silty shores. It thumps in the chests of the hunter and the hunted.

"The Gorge"

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"Fly Fish the World with Us"

The Deschutes River Salmon Fly Hatch

Deschutes Salmon Dry Fly Kit

On the bank by the river you kick your boot off and shake it upside down. Sweat drips into your eye; you have done it again: put on too many layers of clothing. A pebble drops out of your boot and into the grass. You draw your laces tight, secure the gravel guard in its rightful position and start to undress there beside the riffle. There are splotches of blue overhead and an upstream breeze cools the ring around your armpit. A flat chunk of basalt under your bum, an osprey peeps and the shadows crawl across the sage.

Sighing, you recall the words half spoken in the kitchen - Not loud but loud enough to ignite the broken dish in the sink and the yelling and the door slam. Weeds in the garden and crawling up the white fence post. You sat staring at the sunny sides on the plate for a long while before finding your fly rod where you had set it out with your gear bag the night before. Pesky words… Where were you when I needed you most? Hiding in my flybox?

Deep breath, you stare out to the river’s edge wondering of flamboyant hypes of hatches, of trout and the nature of chronic relationships. The surface of the river is dancing but there are no signs, no spotted snouts or flittering flies– just movement but you know it’s just a cover, like a face. A fine poker player - this river this day.

Casting and Head Scratching for Carp

One of my greatest hair pulling events from last season occurred while trying to entice a carp to the fly. There was a giant pod of fish cruising a shallow, Columbia River inlet mere feet off the bow of the boat. Over the course of an hour I had managed just two distinct follows/rejections. I tried different patterns, angles and presentations, but still, I could not hook one. Ranging in size from 5-25 lbs, I could only dream later what this connection would have felt like.

Talking with folks about patterns and techniques is always interesting… “The cruisers sometimes eat, the sunning-themselves- fish never eat, but the tailing feeders will normally eat”

They’ll inhale small nymphs, crawdads and bugger patterns and occasionally a dry. One particular man I have spoken with likes to find a Mulberry Tree and cast little mulberry patterns to fish that are sipping the fallen from the surface!

What a dynamic fish!

Local angler and buddy, Dan Pierce of Hood River was kind enough to share a few shots from a recent outing. If it has scales and eyeballs, Dan is there.

Got a handful today on the Crazydad.  The fish were caught in a slough off the main stem, and I really only had luck presenting the fly when they were facing away from me. When I was able to put the fly 3-5 inches away from their face on one side or the other they jumped all over it. But if it was directly in front of their face the paid no attention, shrugged their shoulders and swam away. Only one of the fish was actively feeding and the other fish were either slow cruising or staying still next to some cover. I haven't been able to figure out why some take the fly, I think if they aren't eating at the time it is just a reaction stroke, but the fly has to surprise them but not spook them.

Like Nigel from Spinal Tap said "It is a fine line between clever and stupid".

I really hope to find some out on the main river this year, as I think their fight will be magnified tenfold.
-Dan

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