In keeping with my kinder, gentler self, no fish were exploited (at least by camera) in the events that led to the writing of this post. Needless to say, one angler was verbally exploited for the bumbling buffoon (that’s buffoon, not baboon)  that he is.

My absolute favorite fly fishing contains at least one of the following elements: native cutthroat, a nice hatch (especially mayflies), surface-feeding fish, dry flies, moving water, and finesse casting.

Today, all six of these elements coalesced into an couple of hours of fishing.

A little bonus was the fact that I got to fish with one of the genuinely nice guys in the world. And we rode our motorcycles to the river. And the weather was perfect.

Every now and again, we all deserve one of these days, especially when it follows on the heels of just the opposite.

I anticipated Friday evening with a little bit of giddiness since I was heading to my favorite little stretch of homewater. I typically reserve that place for a time when it feels right to fish there. However, my wife’s family has a yearly camp that lasts for four days. This year my wife’s immediate family (parents and five sisters and their families) were in charge, and they chose my creek. There’s a different theme every year, and they decided to have this year’s camp centered on movies.

I try to avoid the whole thing like the plague. My wife used to be disappointed when I bowed out, but she’s getting to the point of talking about skipping it as well. They needed someone to play King Kong, and I thought I would offer my services. Kind of. In a sneaky, not really offering kind of way. You see, Dan and I had planned on fishing in Idaho on Friday, not too far away from his in-laws’ family reunion he would attend. I told my in-laws that if something happened and I wasn’t fishing that day, I’d love to help them out (knowing full well I was going fishing). Heh-heh-heh! Well, something happened and Dan pushed the fishing back a day to Saturday. And I had to eat my words.

Of course, I would go up a couple of hours early get in some good fishing, do my part, then head home. No problem, I could do that. The first part of the plan worked out pretty well—I got there early. It went down hill from there.

You can’t get 100 people (50 of them kids) camped on a pretty creek without all the little buggers relatives destroying utilizing the riparian zone on a hot day. My brother-in-law Danny (I know, I know, too many Dans to keep track of) and I walked a ways up river to get away from the mayhem wreaked on the water. I hooked into a nice 12″ Bonneville cutthroat, but lost him going over a small waterfall. After that the fish were quiet. Too quiet. Dan’s friend (and a cousin-in-law) Justin happened by around that time and mentioned that he saw a couple of guys with a shocker working a small feeder tributary earlier. I figured they were probably in the mainstem too, but I pressed on.

The hike was enjoyable, and it was nice to see the restoration work that had gone into closing down a road that paralleled the creek for a couple of miles. The riparian cover created from the work looked great, but the fish just weren’t showing themselves. I moved on leaving Danny behind. Which, in retrospect, was too bad, since he would have appreciated what happened shortly after we parted.

I rapidly moved upstream a half mile or so, looking for any trace of fish. While navigating the far bank, I stepped out of the creek to bypass a couple of rocks and sunk my right foot about 16″ into some mud that was part of a sloughing bank. It sucked me down pretty solidly, so I looked for a firm place to put my left foot to get the leverage I’d need to pull my right one free. I was about two feet above the water, which was only six inches deep and covering what looked like gravel—the perfect spot. I put my left foot toward the gravel, shifting my mass in that downward angle, preparing to meet something solid. It wasn’t. It was gravel, but it was covering a layer of the same mud my right foot was in.

I was already experiencing Newton’s First Law of Motion, and it was too late to change the vector. My right foot pulled free with a slurp as my left foot continued to sink. There was enough viscosity that I seemed to be in slow motion, aware of every riffle and seam in the water my face was moving toward. My right foot, free of the muck, seemed to provide enough momentum to speed up the process at the last second.

This creek is about eight feet wide and ten inches deep at the point of impact. I wasn’t worried about drowning. But I was worried about (and for those who have taken a dip a time or two, they know this thought) my fly rod. I flung it away from me, and forward. Into the fastest part of the water. Even though the creek isn’t big, it was still in spring spate, so it was moving at a pretty good clip.

There I was, face down in ten inches of water, muddy boots flung up and over my back in another successful replication of Newton’s First Law as my rod slipped away from me. I had no choice but to to crawl after the rod. Which I did and succeeded in capturing after a couple of feet, just on the brink of dropping over a lip of rocks. Actually, I grabbed the float line coming out of the reel. And pulled. Releasing a couple of feet of line as the rod in fact slipped over the edge. I flung myself one last time and gripped the butt of the reel seat at the last second.

While still in that preposterous position, my first thought was, Did anybody see me? I quickly glanced to see if Danny had made it up, or if some hikers were walking along the path. I was in the clear, so I extracted myself and laughed. That must have been a sight—a one-man Three Stooges routine.

I made my way to a large rock bathed in direct sunlight. I stripped off my shirt and spread it out to dry, then settled my butt into a nice groove in the rock and faced the sun. I shifted my hat over my eyes and relived the humiliation, but laughed again. I really didn’t need to worry about Danny seeing that, as I had seen him take a tumble in the water several times over the 20 years we’ve known each other. In fact, it probably would have done him good to see someone else take it in the shorts for a change.

As the sun inched closer to the ridge, I decided to head back for my movie star debut, where I would get a second helping of humiliation.

My King Kong gig was for the “Universal Studios Tour” put on at dusk, in which the clan would wander around the camp area to view some prearranged movie sets and movie stars. I was to be in a “cage” (cardboard) where the tourists could only see my hairy hands and hear me grunting and rattling the cage. As they progressed on the tour I would make my “escape” only to jump out at the tourists when they came back past the wrecked cage at the end of the tour.

Arriving back at camp from my little water escapade with wet shorts and underwear, I needed to change. Luckily I brought an extra pair of pants, which I planned on changing into anyhow since after the sun drops the temps quickly follow. But I wasn’t planning on getting wet, so I didn’t bring any underwear. No big deal, I’d wear pants sans Hanes.

The King Kong costume was hot and made of some itchy material. In my role I needed to jump around and scare the kids in a gorilla-like fashion. Which I did with gusto. I failed to take a belt with me, and the gorilla-like activity worked the pants down to an uncomfortable position with regards to the nether regions and the chaffing material of the costume. At which point I was reduced to a half-gorilla stoop holding up pants no one else could see lest I give the little kiddies something even more frightening to behold. I returned to my house about midnight, a skunked and humbled man.

At 7:00 the next morning I met with Ken at his house. We fished together last year on Cinnamon Creek, and I remembered what a great time he seemed to have and how eager he was to learn, so I was excited to get on the river with him again. Reports of the river we were going to (herein dubbed “Chalkstream”) had been favorable, so I was doubly excited to go. Top it off with the fact that Ken has a motorcycle and he wanted to ride his bike to the river, and I was bursting at the seams because I was ready for a ride (with the cruddy weather we’d had, there hadn’t been much riding).

It’s approximately 100 miles from my house to Chalkstream. The ride was incredible, with temps in the low 50′s and a rolling countryside bursting with green. The sun, slanting low in the early morning hours, gave it that golden glow photographers love. We planned on meeting Dan and Coach at the river at 8:30, but we didn’t make it until 9:10, enjoying every minute of the ride. Since by the time we got there Dan and Coach had already taken off for some fishing, Ken and I headed across country downriver.

I wish I had my camera, but my wife took the point and shoot with her camping and my dSLR would have taken too much space in my saddlebags, already stuffed with fishing gear. The sun, bright blue skies with puffy clouds, green meadows, clear water with river grass snaking through it…it begged for a pastoral composition or three.

As we readied to cross the river, I saw a rise-ring: it was an excellent sign. I cast to it a couple of times, but nothing came to my #16 PMD. We crossed, headed over a hill (only to find out later that Dan and Coach were just then heading upriver along the bank, out of our sight on top of the hill), then to the water. An angler was downstream and around the bend, so I figured we’d head to an area I’d almost always had success at.

As we stepped into the river, I saw the air above the water thick with mayflies. Not the midwest kind of thick that is picked up by radar, but the Idaho kind of thick that is plenty enough for me. I heard the splashy rises of several fish and looked over the water at rise-rings floating past. The apex of fly fishing for me: rising trout and a slurry of bugs.

I eased toward the center of a river that is atypical for this part of the country. Our usual rivers and creeks are rough and tumble with lots of elevation loss, plunge pools, pockets, riffles—water far fro its destination but eager to get there anyhow. This river is what I picture the chalkstreams of the UK and the spring creeks of the upper Midwest, Pennsylvania and New York must be like.

There is very little structure from rocks. The riverbed is mostly gravel, with some silt thrown in. The gravel gets channeled, and weed beds get thick and ropey. A few riffles and ripples form here and there, most of that hydrology caused by the gravel channels and weeds, but it has hot springs in several places too, adding bubbles and current. But the majority of the surface is smooth.

Except on days when the river is pocked with rises from hungry fish gorging themselves on a thick mayfly hatch.

There were splashy rises from smaller fish, head-dorsal-tail rises from medium fish and pucker rises from the big ones. This wasn’t a Henry’s Fork phenomenon, with hundreds of fish marring the surface, but there were a good twenty or so I could see a hundred feet in either direction of us. It had been a long time since I experienced a good hatch. It got to the point that Dan and I made a special trip to Silver Creek last year just to catch the Green Drake hatch, but ended up missing them by about 20 hours.

My PMD flicked back and forth over the surface and fluttered upriver. It drifted down toward a steady sipper, then carried past him. The next cast did the same. The third cast sent the float line over the fish’s head, and he disappeared. I targeted another riser. And then noticed that Ken wasn’t around. (I tend to get a little focused while fishing, and hadn’t really picked up on the fact that he wasn’t near me in the water.) I looked back toward the shore and there he was, fiddling with his rod.

“I broke the cap off the reel seat last year when I fell in. I thought I glued it back together, but I can’t keep the reel on,” he said.

I offered to trade him rods or switch off my rod so he could get in on the action. “Nah, you fish, I’ll be okay,” he said. (I should have been a little more aggressive at switching rods, but I’ve learned you don’t press too hard with a guy who’s 6′-3″ and 250 lbs.) He worked his way into the water and tried to hold on to the reel and rod with his right hand and cast. It was a bit clumsy, especially for someone who was new to such wide open casting (last year’s excursion was in tight quarters with no room to get full casts in). I suggested he hold the reel in the left hand and work the rod with the right. And again suggested to exchange with him. But he insisted he was okay.

By then I had made it into position to work a seam against the far bank that had 5 or six risers. I decided to switch to a smaller #20 BWO parachute pattern. Knowing the fish on the river tend to duck and run when the fly line spooks them, I decided to fish from as close as parallel to the fish as I thought I could get. I put the fly above the riser a good six feet and let it drift back to him several times, but as before, it put the fish down. I moved tot he next fish and repeated the procedure, but with a slightly bigger, #18, sparser BWO pattern.

One of the things I like about fishing to risers is that they’re usually looking for a specific fly. And it’s my job to find the right pattern. That process of elimination and mental work is one of the aspects I enjoy in fly fishing (until, of course, the point comes where I’ve tried every pattern in my possession with no success—but there is even a certain kind of pleasure in that type of frustration).

The new pattern seemed to do the trick, as I shortly hooked into two fish. Both of them seemed to be solid takes and the fish felt heavy. I saw them and they both looked like they would easily be over 16″, but they both were off within several seconds.

It tells a lot about a person when things aren’t going well but they persevere without complaint or cussing. Ken was dealing with his awkward setup when I saw him reach into the water well past his shoulder. Up came the reel. Later he said, “It’s OK I tightened the tension down so I could easily retrieve the reel when it fell again.”

He was ready to head back to Dan’s truck and see if there was duct tape or something he could use to fix the problem. Then it came to me: tippet. We could take some tippet and tie the reel to the rod. Which we did. It worked for a wile, then had to be retied, but it kept Ken on the river a bit longer.

We had moved upriver to an area that has some lava rock on the bed and a few poking out of the water. This place gives a bit of holding water and I think I’ve always caught a fish from there. Sure enough, there were more risers working this section. We had been fishing for about an hour and the hatch had died down considerably. I had been working my eyes and brain in trying to figure out which stage the fish were taking the flies in, since emergers, duns, spinners and spent flies littered the water. As I watched the rises more closely, I could never see a full-wing profile mayfly in the rise. I tied on a #16 BWO emerger pattern (blue-gray forward tilting CDC post, green dubbed body and trailing Antron shuck) and immediately hooked and landed a fish. I had another hook-up with a bigger fish, but couldn’t bring him in.

Watching the big fish work the hatch was great fun. And casting to them was exciting too. Knowing that some of the fish were native Yellowstone cutthroat was unbelievable. Most of the cutthroat I end up fishing for are in the 12″ range, with the biggest pushing 18″. When I fish the Greys River for fine-spotted cutts, the average jumps up a few inches. But Coach had caught a 24″ cuttie just a couple of days before, and I had hooked into and seen a fair number of fish that big working the water.

Casting to rising, native cutthroat of that size just doesn’t happen too often around here, and I was having a great time. But I was ready to land one too. I had spotted a decent-sized fish working the edge of a weed bed on the far side of the river. I had thrown my previous fly his direction several times. The first time he rose to it, drifted down with it a couple of feet, then swam back to his feeding lie. The same thing happened with the next cast. The following five or so casts were then ignored.

With the emerger pattern tied on, I figured it was time to try for him again. My first cast drifted past him, six inches too far to his right. I gathered the line for another cast and put the fly four feet ahead of him in what looked to be a perfect cast. Apparently the fish thought so too as he took the fly, then took off. Fishing weed beds means fighting a hooked fish in the weeds, so it’s a double battle. I had on 6x tippet since the water was so still. I was concerned about keeping the fish on without horsing him too much against the light line.

I soon brought him toward me and Ken scooped him up in his net. I’m trying to get to the point where I don’t feel the need to capture the fish I catch on film (exploitive, and all that). And he was big. I’m also trying to get over the size thing, so I won’t report his size. Okay, that was a lie, he was a good 20″. I can do this. He was the biggest Yellowstone cutthroat I have ever caught. I have given up the “hero shot” some time ago, and my need for reporting its size, but I still like the occasional picture for purely aesthetic reasons. And this one was gorgeous. Some of the fish in Chalkstream are rainbow and a few cuttbow, but this was all cutthroat. Dark, greenish back. Golden, buttery, pinkish belly. Slash of orange-pink on his throat.

It really doesn’t get much better than that. Except catching another one nearly as big a short time later from nearly the same spot. But that one was a rainbow. It was still a nice fish, but not the beloved cutthroat.

It’s amazing how one’s fortunes can shift so rapidly within a 15 hour time span. I plan on fishing Chalkstream again on Wednesday. Or am I better off leaving it alone with the memory of this one perfect day?

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