Some Delphic Oracle blog post, magazine article, fishing forum or most likely a buddy, has elevated The  X Hatch to the pinnacle of hatch nirvana—the angler’s Empyrean (Icarus has much to teach the angler in this situation). It has been imbued with tales of such mythic proportions that it pulls you ever closer in a vortex of irrationality. Your mind worries it like a tongue does a chipped tooth.

What is it that can bring grown men to their knees, begging both boss and boss wife for permission to drop all vestiges of responsible adulthood and flee with abandon to River A for the hatch of all hatches? It is the Kryptonite Hatch.

“But wait a second,” you say, “shouldn’t I avoid Kryptonite?”

That’s right my hapless friend, you should avoid it! But it draws you in nonetheless, like Trichoptera to a bare 200 watt bulb, ever circling to that ninth level of hell.

As with all Kryptonite Hatches, yours has a “window of opportunity”—that optimal time after the hatch starts when the fish have focused on the hatch but haven’t gorged themselves beyond feeding. You want to hit that window dead center. The more fabled the hatch, the smaller the window, until you are down to Joseph Heywood’s The Snowfly (a book I quite enjoyed).

“So, when is the hatch?” you ask your benefactor.

“It usually comes off around the y day of z month,” you’re informed.

“What do you mean, ‘usually’ and ‘around’?” you ask.

“Oh…Well…You see…It…Um…”

This is most often accompanied by shuffling feet, more hemming and hawing and eyes focused on anything but you.

“Spit it out, man!” you finally bellow in annoyance.

“OK, OK. Sheesh. The problem is, it can be a bit unpredictable. There’s no guarantee it will happen on those specific days,” he informs you. “Or at all,” is meekly whispered.

“What? You mean the flight and hotel I booked over three months ago should be canceled? The vacation days I’ve already scheduled should be rescinded?”

“Uh…yeah, that’s what I mean. In fact, we’ll need to be pretty mobile because the Kryptonite Hatch could come off any time or place along the 60 mile length of River  A . Or possibly its sister river, River  B . We don’t want to be tied down to a motel.”

“Is there at least a campground to park the RV?”

“Well buddy, we want to be even more mobile than that, so we’ll just sleep in the bed of the truck. We’ll travel light, so don’t bring lots of extra clothes or unnecessaries.”

“Alright, alright…you’ve been talking this hatch up for six years, I guess I can rough it for a change. It better be worth it. ”

“Oh yeah, like I keep telling you, best night of fishing I’ve ever had. The  q flies were so thick I could barely breathe. Fish were sucking ‘em down like a fat man popping Tums. The hatch shut right off at dark, cold turkey. Everybody packed it up and left except me and a couple of other guys. About 10:00PM I heard a big ‘slurp’ by the far bank. Then another…”

“…and another. And you slayed another half dozen bruisers, alone, in the moonlight. Yeah, yeah, yeah…I’ve heard it before. But, my question is, How do we know when we’re supposed to go?”

“You see, I’ve got this friend, who has an informant who works at the gas station/fly shop a couple of miles from River A . He knows every nuance of that river, and people talk at the gas station. He listens. We’ll just call him, ‘Fred,’ to make things easier. Now, when my friend is informed by ‘Fred’ that the hatch has begun, we’ll leave.”

And that, my friends, is how the Kryptonite Hatch begins. How your Kryptonite Hatch ends is entirely up to you. And the flies. Especially the flies.

My Kryptonite Hatch involved Brown Drakes on Silver Creek last week. A hatch that falls toward one of the smaller windows of opportunity out there.

Our “Fred” informed my friend’s friend that the hatch started last Thursday. But the weather turned south and put them down. But they should be back again by Monday. So, with school being out and us in a position to pack and leave on a moments notice, we left Monday afternoon.

A four hour drive (including some last minute fly tying in the truck by Dan) put us at Silver Creek East, Point of Rocks parking lot just before 7:00 PM.

The parking lot was not quite full (a couple dozen vehicles). Some anglers were in the water, many were sitting or standing on the banks and quite a few were standing in the parking lot looking out over the water. Vehicles were still pulling into the lot. It was kind of weird, having so many people waiting to begin fishing slow close to dark, kind of reminded me of a few hatches on Henry’s Fork.

The drakes are “supposed” to come off a bit before dark. At least that’s the common wisdom based on years of fishing this particular hatch. Large (size 10-12) mayflies fill the air in an incredible mass of bacchanalian revelry. Fish feed at a frenetic pace. Anglers wet themselves while attempting to tie flies in the fading light and target risers.

Or not.

What we saw were miles of smooth water. No dimples. No rings. No bugs. Nada.

There were eventually some white caddis swarming the water, but rarely landing on the water (I have no idea why I failed to get a shot of the massive numbers flitting above the surface, but there were lots). There were also swarms of smaller brown caddis around bushes on the banks.

Brown drakes? A few. A couple here and there. A cluster of a dozen or so. But masses filling the sky and my nostrils? Nope.

We picked up a couple of small fish here and there. A guy a little ways down from us landed a nice 16″. I saw a very cool take from a 14″ rainbow: it leaped completely out of the water, parallel to the surface, and seemed to cover about three feet before plunging back in the water.

And I saw a common fly, Diptera, land on the back of a #16 mayfly (not brown drake). In mid-air. It seemed as if the Diptera was mounting the Ephemeroptera. Strange.

Wednesday morning I awoke early (Dan brought his pop-up tent trailer) and took a few photos.

We hit the Picabo store for breakfast and discussed the situation with the very knowledgeable Bob (the local “Fred”). We gleaned the following reports of what happened for the previous couple of days:

• Thursday, June 4, 2009 – Brown Drakes hatch in fairly decent numbers
• Friday and Saturday, June 5-6, 2009 – Weather cools, not much in the way of Brown Drakes
• Sunday, June 7, 2009, 5:00PM – sizable hatch comes off
• Monday, June 8, 2009, 10:30-11:30 AM and 3:00 PM – good hatches, the morning one was especially impressive. Large hatches of baetis, callibaetis and PMD were found on the Conservancy beats.
• Tuesday and Wednesday, June 9-10, 2009 – not much (these were the days we were there)

We did pick up a few decent fish on Wednesday and a number of smaller fish too. There were also a couple of attempts at hatches during the day, where the drakes would mass in large numbers in small sections of the river for 30 minutes or so, but just not enough to really get the fish worked up. There were a few excellent takes of naturals (watching that huge mayfly sail float downriver, then gobbled up by a decent fish was exciting).

Yes my friends, avoid the Kryptonite at all costs. Unless you have the time. Make no mistake, this Kryptonite Hatch is definitely on my “try again” list!

Two feet off the far bank, three feet behind the defense of a large rock, the water bulges and dimples. With my failing sight looking into the rising sun, all is silhouette and sparkles—the bulge and dimple a trick of current and light?

A caddis to match those on the bank would seem the best opening move, but no caddis flit over the water yet. I move into the current, water inching higher with each step as I try to get close enough to see the pocket water behind the rock and what I now verify as an unmistakable bulge.

I shift from one round, slick rock to another hoping for a better view but only succeed in teetering my right arm into the water allowing a momentary surge of river over my wader tops.

From the lower angle in the water relative to the bulge a tiny sail shadows against the glint, then pirouettes out of sight. Another hoists up. Then several more. Hatching PMDs? A small ring forms among the eight or so flies lined up like so many defenseless pawns getting picked off one by one.

Using the disappearing flies as my opening gambit, I tie on a CDC comparadun emerger. A second rock, closer to me by four feet, creates a three feet wide chute between the two rocks. My line would bisect this chute with a straightaway cast giving me little to no drag-free drift.

The current comes from my right. The fish is slightly below me currentwise and 13 feet away. The pocket water contains about ten square feet of water between the rises and the rock with no discernible back eddying.

I make a couple of false casts a few feet ahead of the rock to measure the length of the line. I let the fifth cast edge back toward the pocket then set the fly down on the seam of the current where it yanks down river. The water puckers again and another fly slips away.

I shake the line out and repeat the false casts, paying out an extra foot of line. This time the fly lands on the back edge of the rock. I quickly flick a roll cast over the top of the rock and reach the nine foot rod out and up, lifting the slack line off the rock. I strip in a little line keeping everything from fly to tip as tight as possible.

I switch the rod to the left hand, slowly moving the tip downriver until the fly makes a nearly imperceptible skitter a few inches closer to the fish. In the subtle current it naturally makes its way closer still.

I jitterbug my feet around the rock I’m on until I can switch the rod back to my right hand just as the fly drifts within his window. Four inches below the fly a bulge forms and slides toward my fly, cracking the water into two jaws closing on the imitation. I lift the rod tip setting the hook and lifting his head momentarily above water where his cutthroat flashes at me.

He bulldozes into the pocket then moves toward the chute, nose downriver. I check his run and he turns upriver and shoots the gap between the rocks, circling the far rock. Showing some cuttbow tendencies he makes a spastic leap and throws the fly—in one deft move he escapes.

I’m resigned to the fact that this game is finished. I tip my hat to the winner, then gather myself and head upstream for the next match.

As we rolled into Mountain Home, Dan and I were wondering what the odds were that we would get to hook up with Judie again this year. She has an open door policy (literally…we walked right in) that runs 24/7, but one never knows when one’s luck might run out, so we were pretty excited when she was there.

But after this trip, I’m not so sure the feelings are reciprocal. Judie wasn’t looking up when we approached her. As she started to turn toward us, Dan said, “Marbles,” at about the same moment her eyes came in contact with us. I’m pretty sure we were both standing there with sappy grins pasted on. But I could swear I heard a groan. And she kind of rolled her eyes then looked at the floor. I’m sure she hunched her shoulders, maybe even shuffled as she came toward us. Maybe the bizarreness of it was getting to her. Maybe I’m just imagining it all.

She glanced up, and I think I saw a little twinkle there, just a hint, mind you, as she said, “Do you guys really want to do the marbles again?”

Sensing her earlier hesitation, I was ready to give her a break and say no, but Dan thought marbles were a good idea. The way I remember what happened next was that she had a definite twinkle (that’s the way I like to remember Judie) as she dropped the bombshell, “I don’t know where they are.” Like I said, that’s the way I remember it.

Marbles. They’re a funny thing. Originally made of stones or clay in the Egyptian, Roman and Aztec empires. Occasionally made of glass in the ancient world, by the mid-1800′s that’s been the most common material. Glass beads—so beautiful, and so utilitarian too.

I excused myself to use the john and let Dan and Judie finish their business. I still didn’t think Judie was in her usual chipper mood when I got back, so I’m not sure how things went between them, or what was said, but I figured it was time to leave. Maybe we catch Judie in a better mood next year and we can try the marbles again. We grabbed the fixings for a sandwich and hurried out of there, eager to unload our flies on the South Fork.

Stay tuned for the rest of Day 1 on the South Fork of the Boise River—where we actually fish.

A green cloth, partially in the water, caked with mud. Looking a little closer I see it is green flannel. I reach down and pull it out. A flannel shirt, intact. I rinse it in the river and set it over a sagebrush to dry.

I fish the hole, a nice stretch of water with a large boulder in the middle, a smaller rock to the left and another rock, submerged and below the large boulder about ten feet. Fish usually hold in the section between the boulder and submerged rock and right below the rock near the left back. I cover these areas for 20 minutes and land a couple of beautiful fine-spotted cutthroat: deep red gill plates, orange-reddish throat markings and golden belly and flanks.

Ben carefully releases each fish and adds the tally to the other fish caught. Not yet a fisherman, he enjoys being my ghillie on these father and son outings.

Heading back to the truck I grab the shirt, dodging the blue flax and wild geranium dotting the path. The white truck stands out against the dark green of pine and fir trees marching up the roadcut behind it. Behind that a canvas of deep blue sky stretches taut above us framed by the valley.

At home I wash the shirt then toss it with my other outdoor gear. Heading out the door on my next fishing trip I notice it’s a bit cool and I grab the green flannel shirt and throw it over my T-Shirt.

The wind kicks up. I trap the rod under my left elbow and reach down buttoning the flannel shirt without looking, or really even thinking about it as I scan the water for rises. As it warms again I unbutton the shirt. I think its unbuttoned, but the button side of the shirt does not separate from the buttonhole side. I look more closely and notice that the button has not come through the button hole cleanly because the buttonhole is frayed, catching the button in a web of threads. Every buttonhole is the same.

I have worn that shirt for nine years. The deep green flannel reminds me of pine and firs. Of that bright blue sky. And watching Ben release the fish. I smell woodsmoke from dozens of campfires he has built on that river.

I feel the wet sleeves riding around my wrist from reaching into the current to release a fly from a snag. Reaching into the breast pocket I finger a few sunflower seeds left from the last trip and grab a piece of jerky. A few months-old leftover cookie crumbs cling to the jerky.

The shirt is a story in itself, but is also now a part of my narrative.

Another day, another river. Beyond the Varney Bridge my brother-in-law, Danny, parts company with me; he heads downriver and I up.

I pick my way through the knee-deep water close to the near bank, casting. The day warms and the dew dries I peel off the green flannel shirt, tie it around my waist. The sun glints and winks over the endless riffles that I cover with endless casts. Nothing stirs except my rod and line and tall grasses bent into the water bouncing from the riffles. White clouds scuttle toward the east.

I reel in, set the fly in the hook keeper and head down river to look for Danny. Stepping onto the bank from a slow side channel, the shirt catches on a branch and flops into the water. I quickly grab it and ring it out.

I reach the car and unload my stuff, leaving the shirt to dry on the hood. Just beyond the parking lot is a gunnysack and on the far side of a small log something glints in the mid-afternoon sun.

I move closer. The shine comes from a belt buckle. Attached to the belt are two knife sheaths, with a Swiss Army knife in one and a Leatherman in the other. I pick up the belt, buckle it and throw it over my shoulder like a bandolier.

I meet up with Danny. He was also skunked. I take my find back to the motel where I open each blade and carefully clean them. The knives are in excellent shape and sharp enough to deeply cut the pad of my right thumb, my casting hand.

The two knives are attached to my daypack and have traveled with me for eight years.

Above the Glory Hole on another river, Dan L. and I cross at the Old Wagon Crossing through the swift current, struggling to keep the water out of our chest waders. slipping and stumbling on rocks I realize I’m not a young man anymore.

The sky darkens as we pick our way along the far shore, away from the fishermen shouldering each other on the near shore. Dan moves ahead, upriver while I stop on the rocks ten feet above the river. Trout are lined up, methodically sipping flies. Others are cruising the still water created by rock outcroppings.

I make my way to the water and cast to the risers, working slowly upstream. The fish come readily to the fly.

Just upriver from me, in two feet of water, is a net. Actually, two 16 inch nets hooked together: a tiny-holed white net for collecting insects and a black landing net for fish. I pick them up and clip them to my waders.

I reach Black Lagoon where dozens of fish rise just as the first few raindrops pock the river. I fish from a bar covered in 18 inches of water.

The April temperature quickly dips and the raindrops come quicker. My only layer is a green flannel shirt. Last night, parked below the down, I left behind my jacket with my polarized glasses in them. They weren’t there when we checked in the morning. Someone had good Karma last night and enjoys a Columbia rain jacket today.

Today…today I am not sure of my karma account balance. I’m thankful my hat keeps the rain from dripping down my neck and into my shirt. But I eventually lose my balance at the Black Lagoon, falling on my left side. Water gushes over the nets and the top of my waders soaking my green flannel shirt.

It is a shirt of the river—born of water and mud (and rebaptized with regularity).

It is imbued with my narrative. Our narrative.

Things lost. Things found. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

It didn’t start too well. I swung by Dan’s house as I was heading home. He was putting siding on his shed and I honked. He swung toward me and grazed a finger across the chip board (wafer board), thereby skewering the middle knuckle of his middle finger on his right hand with a large chunk of wood. The wood entered slightly above his knuckle, disappeared, then protruded below his knuckle. The “sliver” was approximately 1mm thick, 3mm wide and 2cm long. About 1.8cm was under the skin. Dan, the fishing wacko that he is, was not about to forgo fishing to visit a doctor.

Dan provided me with a pair of needle-nose pliers and I attempted to yank the sliver out from the exit point. I succeeded in merely demolishing the 1mm tip of sliver poking out. I worked at it from the entry point, but there was even less wood to work with there.

Enter the good doctors cutthroat stalkers.

Dan found a utility knife in the garage. He proceeded to work at the sliver. Not like most of us, which would be to work under or around the entry or exit point, but rather cutting through the skin on top of the sliver. He was concerned about the blade, so he found another one (titanium, he said) and swapped blades. He then haded the knife to me.

I continued the delicate procedure. I slowly flayed the skin starting at the entry point and working my way to the exit point. I continued to gently incise the epidermis until I made my way to the dermis. The patient was doing extremely well under non-local anesthesia (amazing the amount of pain one can handle when planning to fish in Idaho, not our local Utah waters).

Having greatly reduced the pressure on the sliver, it was time to work at it with the pliers. Unfortunately I was still unable to get a good purchase on the wood. Surprisingly, Dan had a small kit in the cab of his truck containing a pair of tweezers (for sculpting the uni-brow between casts?). I was able to get a corner of the tweezers into the entry wound, grip the wood, and with a quick tug, extract the offending wood.

The whole procedure occupied about seven minutes of our precious fishing time. Luckily we didn’t waste any of it inside the house or informing his wife (such trivialities would have wasted more minutes, what with antiseptic, etc.). The entire operation was performed in the garage and driveway, figuring the closer the proximity to the vehicles, the quicker we could get to the important things.

We duly arrived at the “West Fork” of the Bear River (please note the quotation marks, thereby signifying that said creek is not it’s actual name–this is Dan’s special place and I have agreed to leave it unnamed). We decided to fish the upper stretch which we had tried earlier in the summer.

In this first hole

I caught this little beauty

I missed a couple of smaller fish in that hole.

Dan proceeded upriver, but the next 30 minutes didn’t produce much else.

We drove back down to the middle section of the creek

but didn’t see any signs of fish. So we headed to our favorite location along the lower stretch

Dan was first up in the hole I earlier caught 8 fish in (see that report here). He proceeded to catch four fish and miss a couple more.

Notice the bandaged finger.

We continued upriver catching another ten fish or so in the last waning hour of the day. Dan never complained about the finger, so I’m assuming the surgery was a success. Then again, maybe he’s in the hospital.

I reach toward the dark spot in the center of my half of the bed to shove the cat over but he only rolls onto his back and stretches out for a belly rub. I lift the edge of the thin blanket and help him continue his roll off my sleeping spot.

I slide into bed and pull the light summer blanket up. The warmth in the middle of my back from where the cat was and the cold sheets on my feet make me shiver again. I think of the thick comforter, the winter one on the shelf of the closet—it’s about time to put it on the bed. The weight pressing down is the thought—not the warmth, the weight.

It’s mid-September. The air-conditioner is off. The windows stay open 24 hours a day. The bigtooth maples and aspen on the mountains paint a backdrop of orange and yellows for the red barn across the road.

As I contemplate the weight of the comforter, my feet warm. I close my eyes and see the small stand of fir trees tight to the bank of the small creek in The Basin— my favorite fall haunt. I picture the sun low, slanting across the fir which cast their penumbra across the fifteen foot wide creek for 60 or more feet upriver.

I inhale deeply and can smell—smell, mind you, lying in my bed, I actually smell—the fir and the dirt. The sage. And the water. The cold, crisp water. Not the water itself—cupping the water and bringing it to my nose I smell nothing. But leaning back, inhaling deeply it smells like water. Or, more precisely, like the river. Or is it the sound of the river? If I were deaf and blind, would it still smell like the river? I believe it would.

Yellow leaves from the aspen upriver pinwheel and tumble through my mind into the small eddies and pools. They glow from the golden creek bottom and are plastered to the sides of rocks.

I think of stepping into the water—a tentative foot in an old pair of leather boots. The shock is welcome as I wet wade like so many times before. A self-flagellation to focus the mind on the water, bringing the senses to immediate and full awareness.

In my bed, in my mind, I see this. I smell it. I feel it.

I take the size 16 Adams from the hook keeper and pull a couple of feet of float line from the end of the 7’6” 3 wt. rod. Nine feet of line hangs loose. I squat down and lower myself a bit too far—the water laps my pockets causing me to quickly stand. I try again more slowly.

I squat-waddle a few steps forward and swing the fly into a pool half the size of a bathtub. A couple of bright red osier dogwood leaves clump to the fly. I lift the fly, shake the leaves off, then swing it back into the pool.

I picture a lightly spotted nose and slash of white lift from the water, followed by an orange gash while the fly disappears. I bring the eight inch cutthroat to hand.

I see myself moving upstream to the beaver pond that’s surrounded by aspen gnawed into spires four feet above the ground—a winter dam. I know I’ll lift a handful of cutts from here, like always. And just above, around the bend, is where, 17 years ago, a 14 inch cutthroat took my Hopper as it dangled from a twig, six inches above the surface.

The moose is there, in my mind’s eye, with her calf as I slowly back away. She steps toward me, then turns and dips her muzzle to tug at some greens along the bank. I creep between the bushes on the far bank.

A small hatch of the largest green drakes I have seen in the surrounding mountains comes off at the next beaver pond—the double pond where I cast to cruising trout. Another stand of fir line the bank where I stand in a glint of sun to drip dry.

I picture myself packing up and walking the road back to where I parked. I hear a truck pull alongside. A couple of gents in their slick waders and catalog fishing vests stop and ask how the fishing was. I shrug noncommittally. They complain there are no fish in the creek. I quickly agree and cheerfully wave as they head down the road.

The moon now shines directly through the south windows onto my bed. I turn over and continue dream fishing through the sleepless autumn night.

For even more pictures from this area, try The Basin – A Picture Report.

Do you like reading well-written fishing stories? Enjoy "Gray’s Sporting Journal" but wish it came out more frequently so you could read some decent outdoorsy type poetry? Are you a closet writer? Have some great photos you’d like to share with a larger viewership?

Then StoryArc is the place for you. David Motes, a published writer and professional guide (although I don’t know if he still guides) has started the "Literary Outdoor Blog," StoryArc. If you like reading outdoor literature, or you would like to get your own work published, check out StoryArc. In addition to reading the fine pieces offered there, make sure you also read his "A Rationale" in the bottom right corner of the blog.

Here is the blurb from StoryArc’s homepage:

StoryArc is a cooperative nonprofit publication of fiction writers, poets, photographers, and artists with a focus on the outdoors, conservation, nature, and wildlife. Its mission is to present quality work to a discerning readership.

Full disclaimer: he does have one of my poems on there, "Last Hole."

All right, it wasn’t all peaches and cream when I took my daughter on her first fly fishing excursion. Besides forgetting the camera, I forgot to bring a pair of polarized sunglasses for her. And when we got to the river, there was an even bigger problem.

Before leaving on our little outing I asked my son to grab my reel from the truck so I could put it in the car. He came back a few minutes later.

"Uh, dad? I dropped your reel. You might want to check it."

Wow, he actually told me he dropped it? Now, my son is a good kid, but the reel is in a little velour pouch and I don’t know if I would have told someone I dropped their reel. Kudos to you, my son!

"Naw, don’t worry about it, I’ve dropped it before. Just toss it in the car."

At the river we got ourselves ready and I put the rod together. I got the reel out of the little pouch and attached it to the rod. As I was tightening it, the spool feel out of the reel. Plop. Right on the ground. I have clumsy finger and figured I dropped the whole reel, but no, the rest of the reel was attached to the rod. I bent down, picked it up, and stuck it back on the reel. Plop.

"What the …" I checked myself just in time as my daughter looked at me with those big brown eyes, "…heck?" I lamely finished off.

I should have listened to my son and checked the reel when he asked. I examined the reel a little more closely and realized that the center plate that has the spool release in it was cracked.

The reel should look like this.

You’ll notice the two screws and the small little spool release lever. There was a crack in that plate from one side of one screw to the other side of that screw. It caused the release lever to just flop back and forth. Hence the spool kept falling off.

The plate is made of a composite material. Why in the world isn’t it metal like the rest of the reel? This is a Loomis Venture 3 reel. It’s a fairly decent reel for $100. I like the quietness of the reel (no clicking in either direction). But for all the places to scrimp on a couple of cents, to do it in a vital area that holds the gears and levers and thingamabobbies that keep part of the reel functioning, that was silly.

There we were, ready for our big father/daughter fishing adventure and we were reel-less. We were about 40 minutes from home and I just didn’t want to drive back and pick up a different reel. Solving unforeseen problems on the fly is not typically my forte, but sometimes I get lucky.

In the exact same spot about six years ago I showed up to fish and realized I had no reel at all. The stream is small and most places can be reached within 20′ of the fisher. Lots of places are even closer. I took 15 feet of 2x tippet, tied it to the reel seat and ran it through the guides. Then tied on several feet of 4x and a couple of feet of 6x. I caught a handful of fish that day.

I figured I could repeat the procedure, but I really wanted a real reel my daughter could use so it wouldn’t be a completely lame experience. I rooted around in the car for someting. If I would have taken the truck I have extra rods, reels, glasses, tools, empties, three year old dropped fries, spinning lures stuck to the back of the seat (you get the idea, a man’s truck), but no, I had to be frugal and take the better-gas-mileage car. I was hoping for a little something I could use to unscrew the screws and mickey mouse with the gears to jam them.

I’m no MacGyver, much more along the lines of Red Green, so when I finally found some Stride™ chewing gum in the glove box, heh, heh, heh—that’ll do!

What a little gum can do for you.

The crack.

Hey, Loomis, spend an extra 20¢ on these reels. And I’ll try to be a little more careful (look at the scratches on that bugger, this is definitely a fishing man’s reel—I have a habit of being hard on my gear).

And a big thank you to Stride™ chewing gum, made by Cadbury Adams.

Sorry Tom, my trip was before the maxim accompanying the photo with this picture. If you would have posted a couple of weeks earlier, I would have been prepared! Scout’s honor.

So it was a brown. No big deal. It was only eleven inches. Who cares.

It was hers, all hers!

And just who is the dipstick who forgot the camera? That would be me. DOH!!!

Her fishing experiences started many years ago. As soon as she was old enough to touch the fish I caught, that’s exactly what she has wanted to do—touch the fish and release them for me. I first let her reel in fish when she was about six. She first cast a spinning rod about four years ago. But today was the day she first cast a fly rod.

She has been asking me for a couple of years, but I’ve always been a bit leery of taking her before I was ready. That’s right, not whether she was ready, but whether I was ready. You see, I think I ruined my son’s desire to fly fish because it was about me, not him. I know, I know, I just said the same thing about my daughter’s fishing, that it was about me.

My son went through the same kind of experiences as my daughter, but a lot more of them. He would come with me on quite a few fishing trips and always want to hold the fish I caught. He would walk the bank with me and tally the number of fish caught. He caught his first fish on a spinning rod when he was about eight. We were just fishing a little bend in the river near the school on our way home one day. An urban setting. I pulled the spinning rod out of the truck and he cast a couple of times and reeled in a 12″ brown. We fished for about ten minutes at the most.

Now, nine years later, it’s all I can do to get him to touch any fishing gear, let alone fly fishing gear, and he won’t fish with it. Since I’m here on your nice comfy couch, can I unburden to you for a moment?

“Sure, that’s what I’m for. So what went wrong?”

Well, I took him fishing in the mountains. No big deal you’d think. But there was a lot of brush.

“Yes…and so…?”

Well, the little guy kept tossing his spinner in the brush.

“Right, that’s what happens when you’re learning to fish.”

Well, he was getting frustrated.

“Of course, that’s expected too.”

But I was getting frustrated.

“Ah, now we’re getting to the crux of the matter. It was about you, not him?”

Yep, that was the problem. But doc, it get’s worse.

“Yes…?”

You see, I was trying to fish while he was fishing. And stopping my fishing every couple of minutes to go back and unwrap him from a bush across the water was getting to be a real drag.

“Continue.”

I couldn’t keep going back and forth from my fishing to his, so I…well…the water wasn’t deep, it was just a little mountain stream with maybe two feet of stillwater where he was fishing…

“You’re rationalizing. What happened?”

I told him to buck up and if he got tangled again he’d have to retrieve it. Then I stomped off and fished by myself for another half hour before checking up on him again. Okay, I’ve said it…I’ve come clean. Are you happy? It was about me, me, me and not about him.

Somebody out there have a good dope slap they could offer me? I’ll take a couple dozen if it means I could redo that day. But it did teach me that I wouldn’t do the same thing with my daughter. I would not take her fishing until she wanted to go and I was ready to let her have the fly rod in her hand and none in mine.

Oh what a blessed day it was too! Such a better experience than my major screw-up with my son. We took the little 7′-6″ Reddington 3 weight. It was a small stream (Temple Fork) with plenty of casting room for some simple roll casting. We used a nice, easy to see beetle. I taught her some basic arm movements on the bank, then we moved into the water. I pointed out some likely spots that fish would find appealing. We talked about stalking fish quietly and with a low profile as we moved upstream.

She spooked a fish or two. She caught the fly in some bushes. We saw some nice little holes. She missed a strike. And then, in the Honey Hole, she did it! Fish on! She was so excited she didn’t know what to do. Luckily the fish was well hooked and wasn’t going to shake loose. I showed her how to hold the rod and line with her right hand and strip the loose line in with the left. Then reel in the slack line. What a grin!

You know, teaching your child to fish isn’t so difficult, when you’re ready and prepared for it. And luckily, I was.

“Did you bring the camera?” she asked, still flashing that huge smile.

DOH! A couple of more dope slaps please.

“No, I forgot the camera,” was my meek reply.

“Oh, that’s okay,” she said with the forgiveness only a daughter could give, as she let the buttery 11″ brown slide from her fingers back to it’s hole.

I think Dan was a bit jealous because at the end of the fishing day, as we were stripping off our waders, he said that I had expressed my excitement at least four times (well, he said that the picture was worth a lot more than the verbal comments). Okay, it probably wasn’t jealousy because he did pose with my pride and joy (the picture is at the end of the post if you just can’t wait).

Today was another reconnaissance mission. We wanted to see what it was like closer to the headwaters of the famous West Fork we fished last week. We had never been to that area, so that was today’s main destination. The “near the headwaters” was among a lot of grazing land at 6000′, but luckily access was on public land:

The West Fork runs right along the white line (it goes behind the hill in the middle and in front of the hill on the far right).

It’s a pretty little creek, with openings here and there, and lots of brush and trees block access in areas as well:

Dan was first in the water:

(make sure you compliment him on his new hat—his ears were getting burnt, so he needed some cover)

He had a fish on within a couple of casts:

We were hoping for cutthroats along this upper stretch, and luckily were not disappointed. As far as we can tell, the entire West Fork is loaded with a Bonneville Cutthroat. Dan said several years ago he did catch one that appeared to be a cutthroat-rainbow mix. Other than that, nothing but cutts!

This is the hole he plucked the fish from:

“Hey Dan, guess what?”

“What?”

I told him the exciting news.

One of the best catches of the day was this little fella:

He was about 35′ upstream from us. He didn’t seem too bothered. We kept as quiet as possible. I snapped some shots. I moved a little closer and snapped some more and took a little video. Then we tried to spook him with animal noises (my wife pulled the you-couple-of-idiots face when I told that). Then we started talking and moving closer. He finally took off. I hope he has the instincts to make it.

This is a fairly open section, but you can get an idea of the typical “dap-and-dab” fishing we had to do.

This method did help produce this fine specimen:

I was only getting little nips here and there from the small fry. Dan was getting those as well, but he at least landed a couple of better-sized fish. I finally got one about 6″.

“Hey Dan, guess what?”

“What?”

I told him the exciting news again.

We headed downriver to our usual destination after about two hours of fishing. We hoped the back way was accessible all the way downriver and out our usual route. It was an exciting, back-realigning trek. We crossed the creek several times. And finally made it to the burned out section we fished just eleven days ago:

The red indicates the approximate location of the water when we were in the same spot last week. This is the hole Dan caught the fish in that I have on video from last week’s post.

I picked up a nice 13″ cutt that I tried to get a picture of, but it flopped out of my hand while I fumbled with the camera. It was time to wrap it up and head home.

“Hey Dan, guess what?”

“What?”

“My feet are dry!”

That’s the mark of a true friend—someone willing to pose with the best catch of the day: a walked-in-all-day-long-in-waders sock.

That was indeed my best fishing day in at least 18 months of fishing. I am officially the Aquaseal poster boy:

Several tubes of Aquaseal have created this thing of beauty. After every trip for the past year and a half I would look for, and try to Aquaseal patch, the leaks in my neoprene footies. No problems with the breathable fabric, but those booties have been my bane. Dry feet make this the best fishing day in 18 months!

Leaky waders or dry waders, I want to see more pics of great looking patch jobs. Leave a comment with a link to the worst looking patch jobs you know of.

“Hey Dan, guess what?”

These are Talking Bull’s hand-me-down waders (they are now my son’s waders). I’ve highlighted a few important features that my son has been especially impressed with.