Kevin over at The Cutthroat’s Spot sent me an email last weekend: “Hitting the Big Lost. Are you interested?”

If anyone remembers my post from the Big Lost last year, you know what my answer was: Yes!

South of Arco, Idaho are three large volcanic (rhyolite) domes.

I met up with Kevin and his friend Daryl in Arco, Idaho at 9:30 and transferred my gear to their vehicle. We were on the river by about 10:15. It was a nippy 10° F. I reluctantly threw on a red midge pattern and walked upriver. Kevin had a dual fly setup with a black and a red zebra midge. He had a couple of bumps.

I moved upriver into a sunny spot and there were a few risers. That’s all I need to hurriedly put on a dry. Midge were buzzing all over the surface of the water so I put on my trusty midge sprout pattern and got nothing. My fly/line seemed to put the fish down. Kevin had landed a couple on his nymph rig with the red midges.

I worked my way upstream and ran into Kevin who had added a few fish to his count. I swung a heavy brown wooley bugger through a hole, but nothing there. I worked my way back downstream and found a place where a few were rising consistently. But on the other side of the current.

I tied a #20 BWO since there were a couple of those spotted on the water. Then I resorted to my dip-and-dap method. I moved as far into the current on my side as I dared so as not to spook the fish on the other side of the current. The water was quite clear and I didn’t know how turbulent (bubbly) it was under the surface. I reached across the water with he 9′ rod and let the fly bounce along the surface. A healthy 16″ rainbow took. He leaped four or five times (which always surprises me a bit when I haven’t caught rainbow for awhile) before I landed then released him. The fish was in beautiful pre-spawn colors.

(Yes, I do have pictures. My computer got a virus a couple of days ago and I decided to just reinstall Windoze for a clean system since I’m getting a new machine this Monday. I’m shooting in RAW right now, and I don’t feel like installing Lightroom on this machine since the rest of the family won’t be using it. So I’ll wait until Monday and when I install Lightroom on the new machine, I’ll get the pictures uploaded. I know, you didn’t need to know that long explanation, but I need an excuse to brag on the new machine. OK, I got it all installed, but had some issues with figuring out how to download the RAW files and manipulate them in Lightroom, so I lost the biggest fish picture and a couple of Kevin fishing.)

Kevin and I met up with Daryl at the big slow section where we parked. He’d collected a couple of rainbows from there. I moved down where Dan and I began our fishing last year. On the far side of the river, behind a rock, I could see the steady repetition of nose, dorsal, tail. There was enough separation between each one that I figured it was a pretty good sized fish.

I worked my way to the far bank which was covered in snow. When I was about 15 feet below the fish, I put my back against the snow bank and slid my way closer to the fish, keep as close to the water as I could, but with my feet on the dry rocks along the bank. When I was about nine feet away I stopped. I watched for several minutes as the fish continued to cruise a 3′ x 6′ patch of slack water behind the rock. It was taking some nice baetis from the surface. (Dang it, I didn’t take pictures. I took plenty of time watching him, but I never thought to taking pictures while he was feeding. Note to self: remember to take pictures of feeding trout)

I snipped by smaller parachute BWO for a #18 standard BWO. Since the fish was cruising, there was no guarantee of where to put the fly. But something I noticed when he flashed his left side toward me, there was a white patch near his dorsal fin. This gave me a good indication of where he was before he rose for a fly. Using this cue I tossed the fly upstream.

I had a hard time spotting my fly. One thing I like about parachute flies is the white foam post I wrap the hackle around. This gives me a good visual aid since my eyes aren’t quite what they used to be. Without that white, I couldn’t see the fly for the first couple of seconds on the water until I could finally spot it.

Luckily the first few time I cast and couldn’t see it, the fish didn’t rise to it. After a couple more casts I was getting used to where the fly would land so I could see it. And he took. I lifted his weight to the surface. For less than 1 second I felt that weight and then he was gone. Just like that. I cursed myself multiple times.

I like to think that in this type of situation, with a consistently feeding fish, I could see exactly what he was taking, I had on a fly that was a good match and I was in a prime position, that I would catch this guy. As I was readying myself for round two of verbal self-abuse, it happened. He rose to another natural.

And another. He was still on the feed! Occasionally in life the fish gods look down and smile on an angler. Why? I don’t know, but I was not going to blow chance number two.

I continued to track the white spot, flipping the fly another half dozen times before he took again. He was on solid this time, peeling ten feet off the spool before his first jump. A bigger fish looks awkward leaping out of the water, much like watching a big man dribble a basketball down the court—it appears labored. He jumped twice more before dropping to the bottom of the hole, where he proceeded to do his brown imitation by shaking his head a few times. It didn’t take long to bring him to hand after that. I set him on the rocks, snapped a couple of shots, then released him (a shade under 19″ measured against my rod). I’m not sure what the white section was, but it looked like he’d been scraped against something rough that took away his scales from a 1.5″ x 3″ section just below his dorsal fin.

I caught a handful more fish over the next couple of hours. Kevin found a riffle that delivered up nine fish. I didn’t catch a lot of fish, but they were all over 14″ and beautiful.

It’s good to be back on the water and writing about fishing instead of _ _ _ _ _ (the-bill-whose-number-shall-not-be-mentioned). I’m looking forward to a great fishing season.

And thanks go to Kevin for the invite!

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