Winter Grabs

 

Come winter in the Great Lakes, the players are scarce and many of them don’t play fair. “Player” is a term steelhead swami and swing guru Jeff Liskay, aka Great Lakes Dude, uses to describe the minority of steelhead that are eager to chase down a swung fly. And players are the target of those anglers seduced by the allure of using a highly ineffective, yet adrenaline-rush-inducing method to hook the freshwater version of the migratory rainbow trout that swim up the Great Lakes tributaries in the fall and winter.

December means cold north winds and short days. They combine to drop the water temperatures into Walter Payton (#34) territory. Trout, like all fish, are cold blooded and cold water slows their metabolism to something less than a bear’s in hibernation. Shivering fish prefer to hang in slow, soft water where they expend as little energy as possible while waiting for warmer days. For reasons that maybe only a fish biologist can understand, there’s usually at least one fish in the pool that’s willing to hop off the couch and pursue a fly. This is the player.

Every once and awhile the winter player will act like a Red Bull-fueled teenager and crush the fly with enough aggression that they hook themselves and the angler is just a bystander happy to go along for the ride. More often, the player will test the angler with something less than an enthusiastic grab; in other words, they don’t play fair.

While we imagine fish inhaling flies, sometimes it seems that they are more interested in inspecting than eating. It is impossible to say exactly what a fish is doing during its inspection but sometimes it feel as if they’re plucking at the feather or fur hanging off the end of the fly. Often, the pluck occurs at the end of the swing, when the fly is dangling directly below the angler. A fish striking a fly from the rear doesn’t provide much of a hooking angle. Also, an angler may ease up at the end of the swing or even fall into a bit of a trance. A pluck at the end of the swing sends a jolt up the tight line and the angler is prone to respond by raising the rod tip. Unfortunately that just pulls the fly away from the reluctant suitor. After making that mistake recently, I quickly hung my head in shame, bent over in disgust and put my hands on my knees. The fish plucked again. I was double plucked. I over-reacted, again.

The “pluck and duck” occurs when the fish pulls at the fly briefly and then quickly ducks back to the couch. The fish may be enticed off the couch again by a slightly different swing angle or a smaller (or brighter or larger or duller) fly. But more than likely, the fish is on the couch for the duration.

If the “pluck and duck” gets the imagination racing, the “pull and drop” just gets the angler muttering and wondering why bother at all. The pull and drop is like a half-hearted handshake. The fish grabs the fly, makes the classic turn and the angler responds with a proper hook set, but there’s nothing there. No weight. No fish. Nothing. Was the pull real? Maybe the sink tip was simply dragging across the bottom? No, it was definitely a pull. But where did the fish go? Maybe the drag was too tight and the fish felt the tension of the line too soon? Maybe the hookset came too soon? Or maybe the fish just decided the feather and fur isn’t protein? All fishermen overthink the fish’s decision-making. Swing fishermen excel at over thinking.

And sometimes we think wrong. We think that the swing is slower than normal because the

sink tip is dragging along the bottom when what’s happening is a lethargic, yet hungry, fish has grabbed the fly without sending a tell-tale signal up the line. Instead of pulling the line, the fish is just a weight on the end of the line. An angler who thinks the sink tip is dragging might try to mend the line or gently raise the rod to get the tip higher in the water column. This manipulation of the line when a fish has the hook in its mouth usually results in the fish shaking its head. That head shake sends a signal up the line, into the rod and finally to the angler’s hand. When the signal arrives, it often results in the angler jerking the rod back. Sometimes the hook is set, but rarely well. The fish has the advantage over the surprised angler and the fight often ends quickly with a slack line and an angler thinking about how they will respond the next time they feel the “weight,” and wishing for an early spring, when the players are more likely to play fair.

Hypnotized by the Swing

The rhythms of swinging flies for steelhead can be hypnotic.

The soft, steady rumble of the water moving through the run, into the pool and out the tail provides the soothing background music. The repetition of the same, consistent cast permits muscle memory to take over and the mind to slow down. The eyes watch as the white floating line slowly -- even slower than normal as the water is low and clear -- swings downstream until it extends directly beneath the angler. Two steps downstream and the cast and swing are repeated.

The river is empty, except for the floating leaves that drift slowly downstream. The mind follows the leaves. Slow becomes slower. Even the V-shaped wake caused by an unseen steelhead chasing baitfish in the shallow water in the tail of the pool seems to be moving in slow motion.

Did that V turn left toward the fly nearly at the end of its swing? No, the fly is too far away to have caught the steelhead's attention. Wait, is that the line starting to straighten out? Why is that happening? Hold on, the line is peeling off the reel. The reel is spinning fast, but the angler is still moving slow. This is actually helpful as it delays the hook set, as is preferred. The fish has plenty of time to grab and turn downstream before the hook is set. Finally, the rod bends in the shape of "C". Line is still peeling off the reel, its scream echoing off the cliff wall to the angler's back.

Then silence. The rod is straight. The line is slack. The trance is broken. Did that really happen?

Home Pool

Light rain fell from the thick, grey clouds pressing down on the tree tops. In other words, it was a perfect afternoon to swing flies for steelhead. I stood at the head of what I consider my home pool, even though my home is more than 10 miles to the south. I feel like it is home because it is where I fish most often. 

Over the last decade, I've gotten to know the pool very well. There are the deep slots near the head that hold fish as they prepare to continue

their southern migration. There is the small pile of boulders that provide shelter to fish and provide a place for a swung fly to get hung up. There is the slow, deep middle stretch that sometimes is full of fish and sometimes isn't. And there is the ever growing tail that was once a very reliable source of a fish or two but is now a mystery.

Rivers change every day, which is one of the reasons why I love them. Like life itself, they change in ways that we don't always understand.

 

The pool used to drain primarily to the near bank as it took a slight right hand turn. But after "100-year floods" became annual events thanks to upstream development and climate change, the river has straightened. Some water still jogs to the right, but much of it continues to hug the 80-foot cliff on the far bank until finally bending, with the cliff, to the right about 25 yards downstream. The far tailout used to be a narrow, shallow channel, but over time it has widened and is a bit deeper. The extra length of the tail has never produced a fish for me. Not sure why. And the part of the pool that used to be the old tail, rarely produces a fish anymore. Again, not sure why.

The mystery at the tail is matched by the near certainty at the front half of the pool. When conditions are right, I nearly always get at least one player to hit a swung fly before I even have to wade into the pool. And more often than not, I can expect multiple grabs. The pool is less than 20 yards wide, so a nearly effortless cast with an 11-foot rod can cover the water.

I've learned how to speed the fly along the shale that rarely holds fish and to swing slowly through the the deeper slots and through the boulders. I often need to relearn, as getting hung up on the bottom happens more often than it should.

This was my first time fishing the hole this fall. I'd visited a few weeks earlier during low water to see whether the sycamore tree that hangs over the hole had finally succumbed and fallen in. Thankfully, it hadn't. Although the split in its trunk had grown, bringing the tree's branches to about six feet from the water's surface. Over the years the branches had collected more than their share of spawn sacks and flies (including a few of my own). Today it was covered in fishing line, a sign that I wasn't the first one to fish the hole this fall. I stood in the slack water alongside the fast run that dropped into the pool. The boulders near the bank provided me with a vantage point to watch my fly swing over the shallow shale and into the deep slot directly downstream of me. I was trying out a new fly, tan and brown with copper flash. Its colors matched the bottom and I thought a natural-colored fly would work in the clear water. About 10 yards downstream, the fly hung up on the bottom and while I was able to pop it free, the point of the hook was bent by the rocky bottom and I decided to change my fly, as well as the hook.

I tied on a black and orange leech-like tube pattern developed by Jeff Liskay, a Great Lakes steelhead guru, and taught to me by Joe Beno, a younger guide on Lake Erie and steelhead alley. Over the last few years it has become my confidence fly, replacing the tried and true black and purple marabou fly that still gets a lot of use. On the second swing, my confidence in the fly was rewarded by a fierce grab followed by a long run that made my reel sing. The fish was near the tail of the pool before I got her under control and guided her back upstream. I tried to calm my breathing and prepared myself for the next round of the fight. I used the leverage of the long rod to bring the fish toward the net, but she had other ideas. She quickly reversed direction and leaped from the water before splashing down upstream of me. She exited the water one more time before I folded her into the net. She looked fresh from the lake, several miles to the north. No wear or tear on her body, yet. I removed the barbless hook and returned her to the river. The clouds got a little lower. The rain fell a little harder. Another beautiful day in paradise.

Waiting

 

The half-moon bounced the sun’s light down to the river valley only to have the light bounce right back off the surface of the river. The moon hung by an invisible force directly overhead, surrounded by a crown of stars. The moon’s craters nearly shimmered and the leaves of the trees on the far bank were illuminated in the soft glow of ghosts. The barren ash trees – destroyed by an invasive beetle – played the role of skeletons guarding the river as we waited our chance to catch a different invasive species – Pacific Salmon.

What We Were Waiting For

No artificial lights marred nature’s display. We were miles from a road and much farther from anything resembling civilization. Frogs and crickets added a vocal track to the river’s acoustical riff as it hurried its way to the great lake called Michigan. Yesterday’s owl declined to join the chorus. And the cedars, pines and hardwoods stood silent.

Salmon splashing in the downstream riffle ended any doubt of whether fish would be moving through this stretch. We had arrived at this bank more than an hour before first light. More youthful, aggressive anglers were wading in the dark downstream run, occasionally hooking into a chinook headed east to the gravel beds. We didn’t know how early the other anglers had arrived. We beat their peers, or perhaps them, to the spot the day before. We had resigned ourselves the night before to the reality that we wouldn’t be the first ones on the river again today. We were all in our sixth or seventh decade, so we valued our sleep a bit more than being first and were prepared to pay the price. That price included waiting for light before risking crossing the high flowing river to access an upstream hole that promised to hold fish throughout the sunny day to follow.

We could cross in the dark, and had the water dropped a bit more overnight we might have risked it. But caution, or perhaps wisdom, comes with age. We waited.

We weren’t in a hurry. We planned to fish all day and had the water bottles, lunches and snacks to sustain us. Once the sun cleared the trees and pierced the river’s tannic-colored water the salmon’s migration for the day would halt and they would hunker into the deep hole patiently waiting for the sun to slide back behind the trees so they resume their journey and swim through the shallow, sandy riffle around the next bend. A fresh pod of salmon waiting out the sun in a hole could keep a pod of six anglers busy all day long.

At least that is what we were hoping would happen. It was a hope based on experience. But we also had experience fishing the hole when it appeared to be barren of salmon

We had reasons to be optimistic and patient. The far bank was quiet. No headlamps flashed through the dark forest. There was no way to access the far side of the river that didn’t entail a river crossing. And there was nowhere else to cross the river nearby. We knew this because we had checked out alternate crossing points before reluctantly agreeing that this section was our best bet. So we waited in the moonlight, listened to river and thought of friends and fish.

The Swing King -- No, Not Me

I stood thigh deep on the outside edge – the wrong side -- of a big bend in the river when two things happened at the same time: I caught a glimpse of a white hat bouncing behind a deadfall laying on the far bank – the right side – and a fish grabbed my white, olive and chartreuse tube fly as it swung out of the main current and into the slower water on the outside edge of the bend. I had enough time to think it would be nice to impress whoever was under that white hat with my fishing prowess before the fish popped off. This is what is known as foreshadowing.

The angler greeted me from across the river, speaking in a loud voice that carried over the wind and the river’s persistent percussion. He commented on how glad he was to be out swinging flies on such a beautiful day. I agreed. He asked if I minded if he swung through the hole behind me. I appreciated his politeness and assured him he was welcome to fish behind me. He patiently waited while I worked my way toward the deeper end of the run. I hadn’t fished this stretch of the river in several years and much had changed. The river used to be crossable just upstream of the bend, but a huge tree had fallen into the river. The tree’s giant root ball pushed the current more toward the center of the river and that added flow made it impossible to cross at its present height and it made the tail of the bend much deeper, as I was about to find out.

My new colleague slowly waded out to stand next to what was once the top of the tree that was now redirecting the flow. He only made a few swings before hooking into a fish. I didn’t mind at all because I was hooked into one, as well. I’d never had a doubleheader on the swing before and after we both landed our respective fish, we agreed that sometimes one fish makes for a great day. He again made a comment about how great it was to just be out on such a nice day. “I don’t know why I keep saying that,” he said.

He quickly hooked and landed another fish and I missed a grab. He cautioned me a few times that the wading would get treacherous on my side, and he made it clear that I was welcome to share the good side of the river, if I could cross.  As I kept swinging downstream the boulders got more treacherous and the river deeper. With few good options, I reversed field, walked upstream and then cut over to safety of the shore. I decided to hike upstream and look for a place to cross far above the bend. The river was high and moving fast, but one small section looked manageable – except I couldn’t really tell how deep it was against the other bank. Foolishly, I began to cross – ignoring that the current was too strong for me to effectively back up if it got too deep. I wished that I had my wading staff. I wished that I was 10 years younger.

Fortunately, I was able to navigate the crossing with water only filling my wader jacket pockets and not my waders. I climbed up the bank and walked back downstream and came in behind the angler with the white hat. He welcomed me to the good side of the river and after introducing himself, said he probably wasn’t tall enough to cross where I did. He offered me a chance to swing through the run, but I said I was in no hurry and I watched him cast his line across the river, landing the fly beyond where I had been wading just a few minutes earlier. He was using a 12.5 foot rod – similar to the one in my car. The lighter 11 foot rod in my hand suddenly felt inadequate.

He hooked another fish and spryly hopped out of the river and onto the bank to fight the fish – a sight that I would get accustomed to over the next few hours. I admired both his fluid movements and the song sung by his click and pawl fly reel as the fish peeled line off of it. He used the leverage provided by the long rod to land the fish quickly. I did the neighborly thing and took pictures of him with the fish.

At his insistence, I started fishing from the top of the run. And he would follow behind me. I’d get a grab or two, and he kept catching fish He was humble. He said that he’d never had a day like this one. 

We talked about the rivers we liked to fish, the impolite wind that was playing havoc with our casting and the poor etiquette of some anglers. We didn’t talk much. He was too busy landing fish. I watched and tried not to get jealous. I almost succeeded.

We talked flies and how color didn’t matter, but his brown was obviously working better than my olive. As his fish total topped double digits, we talked about how unusual it was for so many fish to be aggressively attacking flies in a single run. I decided to change flies and hooked a fish on a black and blue fly. The fish leaped from the water and came rushing upstream. The line went slack and the fish was gone. The swing king -- what else could I call him -- hooked more fish, including one that rocketed at least three feet out of the river. He kept hooking them after he lost his brown fly on a snag and shifted to black and chartreuse. Maybe I should have changed flies again. But I had swung through the same run several times and, as is often the case, I wanted to explore new water.

I’m sure a part of me was tired of being schooled, as well. But I will tell myself that I said my goodbyes and headed downstream because the swing king had earned the right to end his beautiful day on the river swinging through the magical run in peaceful, glorious solitude. I am sure he would have done the same for me.   

Unexpected Delights

The grab came as a complete surprise. It followed a few hours of mild frustrations on an afternoon that began cloudy and damp on a different river. I started my social distancing routine by hiking into a remote stretch of the Grand River only to be disappointed by its chocolate hue. I walked the riverbank for a quarter mile upstream hoping that I'd see something promising in one of the side currents. I spooked a wild turkey while following the tracks of raccoons that had been feasting on freshwater clams pushed onto the bank by the recent heavy rains. I flipped a few casts into the current halfheartedly before deciding to hike back up the hill to my car and drive back west to the Chagrin, which looked a promising green color when I crossed over about 40 minutes earlier.

I worked up a decent sweat with the hike up the hill and tried to enjoy the songbirds touting spring. But I spent most of the trek lamenting my original decision to bypass the Chagrin and admonishing myself to pay more attention to the turbidity gauge on the Grand. An hour later I was wondering whether I should have just stayed home. On the Chagrin, I had fished a stretch of familiar water without even a pluck and my mood didn't improve even though the wind off the lake pushed all the clouds away revealing a bright, blue sky. The water flowed dark green thanks to the suspended clay particles from the saturated banks and feeder creeks. The Grand's chocolate color was caused by the same clay, just that much more of it. Only a few anglers were in sight, even though the stretch I fished was more suburban than secluded. Two majestic Canada geese worked the far bank for food. Woodpeckers worked on the dead ash trees on the bank behind me. It was turning into a delightful afternoon, but it was wasted on me.

I chose to walk farther upstream to fish a fast moving run that I had never fished before. I was on the inside part of the bend where the water was deeper and faster moving. The far side looked more promising, but at the same time I didn't see any tell-tale signs of spawning fish. I muttered to myself that I was alone on this stretch because the anglers were all upstream, with the fish.

These were just some of the thoughts bouncing through my head when I decided to resume my halfhearted fishing and flipped a bit of line out of the end of the rod and watched the line swing from the fast, shallow current into a deeper run of undetermined depth that looked both promising and perilous for wading. The grab disrupted any thoughts I had of moving back downstream to more familiar water. The aggressive grab was followed by a powerful dash downstream that started my reel screaming. The fish kept pulling line off the reel until I gathered myself somewhat, tightened the drag setting and started trying to guide the fish back upstream. Chasing after it downstream wasn't an option. I reclaimed half the line before the fish made another furious dash downstream and splashed at the surface, sending water spraying and causing me to focus harder on keeping the fish under control. Slowly I pumped the rod and cranked the reel until the fish could be swung into the rocky shallows.

The fish was as silver as a newly minted dime, but it wasn't fresh from the lake. She was fresh from the spawn. Her tail and fins were rough around the edges and her belly was scarred. These were the tell-tale signs that she had wrapped up her spawning run and now was making the journey back to the lake. There was no way to know how far she had journeyed south to spawn, but she was clearly very hungry by the time my olive, white and chartreuse fly adorned with a bit of crystal flash and olive rubber legs enticed her. These so-called dropback steelhead are active feeders -- unlike the fish that are actively spawning or those sulking through the winter. She had obviously restored most, if not all, all of the energy she had expended on her spawning run. Her power tested me and my gear.

The delights kept coming. Three more dropbacks emerged from the run, including one on the final swing, which followed a long-distance cast almost to the far bank. This fish put up as much of a fight as her two female and one male predecessors. The rod bent deep into the cork. The reel screamed again. The hook and knot held and I was able to once again swing the fish into the shallows. I quickly slid the barbless OPST hook from the corner of her jaw and admired her as she did a U-turn and returned to the fast current. I slid the hook onto the leg of one of the rods eye's and reeled up the rest of the line. I could have fished longer, but sometimes it is wise to end the day with a fish. Before heading back downstream, I took a moment to just enjoy the river. The rushing water nearly drowned out the highway two bends to the south and the whistle of the train rushing down the tracks several bends to the north. The sinking sun and the trees on the bluff behind me cast long shadows across the water. A cardinal sang from one of the trees. The afternoon that began gray and brown had transformed into blue, green and silver. What a delight.

On Chrome & Corona

The fishing that I do is a selfish act – never more so than during a pandemic. 

I don’t fish for food, although I’m confident I could if it comes to that. The fish that I catch and release are essentially victims of torture. Regardless if you believe that fish can feel pain, there’s really no other word describe the practice of removing a living creature from its natural habitat by force.

I justify my selfishness by saying it brings me closer to God’s creation, which it does. I feel connected to something larger than myself when a fish chooses to inhale a fly that I tied and then presented. But a less selfish man might find a similar connection by taking a picture or simply sitting still and observing God’s handiwork. One of my heroes, Aldo Leopold, did just that – and he fished for food.

I also justify my selfishness by saying it brings me peace and improves my mental health. Thoreau was right when he said: “Many men go fishing their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.” I’ve known for a long time that I’m not after fish, if only because my best friend, and wife for 34 years, will insist that I go fishing on those occasions when my trips to the river are so scarce that my inner Mr. Hyde emerges. The river restores me.

I used to quote another hero, former Michigan Supreme Court Justice turned writer, John Voelker, who (under the pen name Robert Traver) wrote the eloquent Testament of aFisherman and said he fished “not because it was terribly important, but because I suspect that so many of the other concerns of men are equally unimportant and not nearly so much fun.”

That conceit doesn’t hold up in the age of Covid-19. As I fish in these times others risk their lives keeping their colleagues, friends and total strangers alive. I’ve never felt as useless as I fish safely – either alone or at a distance from good friends who keep me from succumbing to the anxiety. So I turn to another hero, Yvon Chouinard, for wisdom, solace and justification. If more businesses were run like Yvon runs Patagonia then we probably wouldn’t be in this mess and our planet would be much healthier. In 2012, Yvon accepted the Inamori Ethics Prize from Case Western University and used it as a platform to articulate his determination to run a company that did no harm to the planet. He lashed out at the culture of consumerism fueled by companies inspired only by the desire to make more profits by selling more products. And he acknowledged his own hypocrisy embodied by his own passion for rock climbing and fly fishing. He conceded that the only way he wasn’t going to climb aboard a green-house gas emitting jet in a few days to fly off to a remote river in Russia and chase steelhead was if someone punched him in the face and knocked him out.

Justifying my selfishness by pointing to Yvon’s is pretty lame. It’s amazing the lengths an addicted steelheader will go to justify what he does – and what he doesn’t do. But as I prepare for my next river visit, I’m thinking a lot about a new set of heroes. And I need to figure out ways that I can help them through this crisis, so that someday very soon they too can find solace in their own selfish, restorative ways.

Is the Tug Enough?

A small subset of the social deviants that fish do so with flies. A much smaller group of those fly anglers prefer to chase the anadromous version of the rainbow trout called a steelhead. And a relative few – you might say the most deviant of the deviants – swing a fly to entice a strike from these pink-sided silver bullets with fins.

Wild, native steelhead call the northern Pacific home. I live in the Great Lakes region, so I fish for the descendants of steelhead that were transplanted here from our nation’s West Coast more than a century ago. Pacific steelhead are born in the river and head to the ocean, before returning to their home river. Most of the steelhead I chase start life in a hatchery. A few are born in the rivers that flow into the lakes. None are native. I don’t care. I am addicted to hooking these fish even if they are planted in the river when they’re about 10 inches long. They return one or two years later when they range from 18 to 26 inches long. A fish that is returning after its third summer in the big lake can top 30 inches. Of late my addiction to addiction to these fish has evolved so that I prefer enticing them with a swung fly.

Anglers that swing flies are fond of saying “the tug is the drug.” The tug comes when a fish, entranced by the movement of a swung fly tied with hair, fur, feathers, flash and other materials that undulate in current, grabs on and literally tugs the hook, line, rod and hand of the angler in an act of pure aggression. That saying begs the question, "Is the tug enough?" I am forced to ponder this question while standing on a rock, mid-current, hunched over, hands on knees. A bystander might guess I’ve been punched in the gut. I might as well have been.

From this rock, I can swing a fly tied with rabbit fur that resembles a black leech through the conflicting currents caused by a narrowing of the stream bed and love-seat-sized boulders. The boulders create pockets of slow water next to tight, fast moving currents. Given the cold-water temperatures, I expect the fish are holding in the slower water to conserve their energy. I had fished this run twice before without luck but remained optimistic – despite losing two flies in its depths – because, in angling parlance, it looked “fishy.”

I cast out the fly line and the fly swung, right to left, through the conflicting currents before dangling directly below me in a slow pocket of water. The fly line hung without life one moment and was electrified the next. The slack disappeared, the line tightened, and I responded by pinching the line between my finger and the cork handle of my twelve and a half foot, two-handed rod. Anglers learn early that when a fish pulls their line, they should pull back. Swingers need to unlearn that lesson and allow the fish to grab the fly and turn before pulling on the rod. Failure to give the fish the chance to turn results in the fly being pulled directly out of the fish’s mouth. A delayed response increases the odd that the hook will find purchase in the corner of the fish’s mouth after it has turned.

As I hurriedly pinched the line, I could feel the fish shake its head twice before the line went from alive to dead. After a hard afternoon of fishing, this was my one tug and the clock said it would be my last of the day. I bent at the waist, hands on knees. I looked at the rocks in the dark water. They were silent. With a forecast of cold, rain and work, it is not clear when I will return to these waters. For now, the tug will have to be enough.

Thanks for the Drop Back

The national symbol flew north through the river valley, passed over us and banked to the right with the river. Hikers along the 150-foot cliff at our backs had an eye-level view of the broad-winged bald eagle as it glided under the heavy gray clouds that foreshadowed 12 hours of rain to come. The rain would pour into the rivers along the shore of Lake Erie carrying with it clay silt that would muddy up the rivers and cause a temporary stop to the fishing.

Of late the fishing has been one of the few pieces of normalcy left during these unprecedented, surreal times prompted by a virus. The virus has limited my work, but I’m fortunate to still have plenty. Fly fishing has been my mental therapy for nearly four decades and now it is more so. Neither the eagle nor the steelhead I pursue know anything about this virus, and I can pretend to do the same while the river’s current pushes against my calves.

My friend, Joe, has even more things to think about and that’s one of the reasons he’s joined me on the river this evening. We both value the river’s cleansing power. He is early on his steelhead journey. He was standing upstream developing his nymphing technique on a few fish that were much more interested in procreation than they are in eating a nymph or egg tied to his line.

I stand on a gravel bar trying my best to resist the temptation to swing to the fish in the shallows. I’ve succumbed to that temptation too often of late. My lack of success is a reminder that when you commit to swinging big flies for anadromous fish you focus not on the fish you see, but the fish you can sense from reading the water. While the skinny water along the edge appealed to spawning fish, the rapid current mid-river and the deep water in the tailout looked appealing to either fish moving upstream in search of spawning grounds or to fish dropping back to the lake after completing the spawn. A steelhead porpoised in front of VW sized boulder that served as the demarcation between the run and the tailout to affirm that the current, while swift, wasn’t too much for these giant rainbows.

To get a good swing through the faster section of the run, I waded through the skinny water and stood on the edge of the strong current. I cast the sink tip and Skagit line into the fastest water rushing toward the lake. The line swung from the end of the 11-foot rod down and crossed into the slightly slower water pushed its way around the giant boulder. The grab came three swings through the run with a welcome fierceness. I didn’t have to work to set the hook. The fish did it on her own. She responded to the pull of the rod by leaping from the fast water. She ran past the boulder downstream and I followed while also heading to the bank. My heart raced in part because it’s been a few days since I had felt such a grab and I wanted to land this fish more than I could fully understand. She splashed on the surface again and I worked to lower the fish back into the current to minimize the chance of her throwing the hook.

She made a few more runs before gently coming to my feet. She lay on her side resting in the shallow water, patiently waiting for me to take her picture and remove the barbless hook dangling behind a chartreuse, olive and white fly I tied on a copper shank.

I removed the hook and nudged the fish back in the current. She swam off unaware of the joy she brought or the gratitude I felt for being able to partake in such a simple, selfish pleasure.

Yellow, Green Brown and Silver

The combination of persistent rain, extended flu and the demands of a new business have made this a frustrating spring steelhead season. There are plenty of fish to be caught, but on those rare days when schedule and health have permitted me to fish, the rivers have been raging.

Last weekend, I fished a small tributary with a young man I mentor and he was fortunate enough to land a small steelhead on his first outing. His smile says it all, although I will always remember his look of disbelief after a steelhead cartwheeled downstream on him and threw the fly before he knew what happened.

On Wednesday, I decided to take a break from preparing for a speech the next morning and visit the Rocky. The gauge warned that the river was unfishable, flowing at about 1,000 cfs -- twice as fast as I'd ever fished it. But the height had dropped below 2.5 feet, so there was some hope -- but not much. Through Berea, the east branch flowed heavy and brown. Below the falls, nine cars lined the parkway and anglers stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the muddy water creating a gauntlet along a tight turn in the river. Unappealing in more ways than I care to count.

No anglers were visible in the main river as I drove north. After parking, I wasn't even sure I'd fish. I left my gear in the car and walked into the woods. I admired the yellow flowers rising above the green leaves that carpeted the forest floor. April showers bring April flowers. Aldo Leopold tracked spring by the returning geese. Our geese never leave. I measure spring by the explosion of ramps and the burst of yellow flowers along the banks of Steelhead Alley streams. I walked the trail, knowing that at least I'd have a nice walk in the woods. I cut over to look at the river and was immediately greeted by a small, dark male steelhead porpoising out of the muddy water along the bank. A few more fish showed themselves and I promptly returned to the car.

The spey rod was rigged up with a double marobou spey fly, black and purple, with a red head. The bigger the better for muddy water. I hiked back to the river and stepped into the shallow, swift water and started to slowly strip out line testing the bank for fish. No fish showed and I extended my cast out 10 yards from the bank when a fish interrupted the fly's swing with an aggressive strike. I was lackadaisical on hook set and soon lost the fish. I kept working out toward a mid-river depression that would provide some shelter from the fast moving current. 

During the dead of winter, steelhead generally strike as the fly slows down or dangles at the end of a swing. When the water is above 50 degrees, fish often strike early in the swing as the fly begins to speed up. An early strike is usually aggressive and is often followed by a line peeling run downstream. High water inspires longer, even more powerful downstream runs. I thought about this while a female steelhead jumped from the water 35 yards downstream, my tube fly hanging from her mouth. Just a few seconds earlier she'd crushed the fly almost directly across from me shortly after the fly had landed.

I cranked down the drag, thankful for the 25 pound test line and used the leverage provided by the long rod to pull her upstream. I brought her close to the bank, grabbed the line, dropped to my knees and cradled the fish in one hand while trying to pull out the hook with the other. It wasn't graceful, but eventually the fish was freed and quickly swam away into the muddy water.

Steel Sunrise

The sun to the southwest hadn't yet cleared the horizon down in the river valley. But the trees hanging over the 50 foot bluff across the river were painted yellow by the day's first light. The blue sky brightened. And paired up geese honked angrily at a third party trying to interrupt their fun. Eventually the third goose flew off, quieting the pair. The only sounds were caused by water from a small feeder creek cascading down the cliff and water from the river rushing down the rapids at the end of the 20 yard pool that I was ready to step into.

Dawn is the best time to fish. It's also the best way to get a day off to a good start. Solitude is what I seek. And it's available at dawn. On this morning, no other fish cars were pulled off to the side of the road near where I parked and no anglers could be seen up or downstream. The fish had a relatively warm night to move upstream. Based on experience, I expected a few fish to have chosen to take a break from their upstream journey in the pool.

The water carried a green tint as it flowed past me at about 200 cubic feet per second -- according to the USGS gauge. The water was warming up a bit, but still well under 40 degrees, so the fish would be holding in the softer water. I tied on a black and purple marabou tube fly with a little flash and a chartreuse collar. Black and purple are often effective in cold water carrying some color. The leader was looped to a Rio Mow Tip, five feet of floating line and five feet of T-11 sink tip to get the fly down to the bottom in the slower water.

I stood at the head of the pool and slowly stripped out line and swung the fly through the top of the
head of the pool. After pulling the entire head shooting head off the reel, I took one step downstream, cast and watched the line swing deeper into the pool. One more step, one more cast. The fly's swing came to a sudden stop and the tip of the 12.5 St. Croix two-handed rod started to bounce and line  spun off the reel. I set the hook and watched a second-year steelhead thrash the surface of the pool. The fish fought hard, but the leverage of the long rod and a long-handled net allowed me to end the fight quickly. I snapped a picture of her in the net, hoping to capture the morning glow reflecting off the water. No such luck.

Three more steelhead grabbed the fly within the hour, the last one a silver female pushing 10 pounds. The sun shined through the trees as I walked back to my car with a silly grin on my face. Several anglers were rigging up in one of the parking lots as I drove back through the MetroParks. I'm sure they caught their fair share of fish. It was going to be beautiful day on the river. But dawn is the best time to fish.

Ice, Steel, Baldy and Woody

As I walked down to the river, the only tracks in the snow were from the squirrels; a good sign. I live within an hour's drive of 4 million people but I prefer to fish alone. And I'm blessed to do so on a regular basis.

The sun made a rare appearance in February and warmed the air temperature near 32, but the the bank. I pushed them into the current and slowly I was able to clear the pool of enough ice to swing. The ice flows groaned and cracked as they headed over the rapids below the pool.
morning had started out at a crisp 18 degrees so the pool was lined with ice. The ice shelf extended half way to the far bank at about the middle of the pool. Tough to swing a fly through an iced up pool. The ice sagged and broke under my weight as I walked off the bank. I had to break through about five feet of ice to get to flowing water. As I busted through the ice, large cracks extended out and large chunks broke free from

I waited for the pool to settle and then headed back to the head to begin swinging a Kevin Feenstra Grape Fruit Head Leech through the pool. Feenstra says he likes to use this fly whenever snow is on the ground. I agree. Branches from a sycamore tree hang over the pool. The tree's trunk is nearly split in half. Some day soon I will walk to the pool and find the tree submerged in the pool. Then I will need to find another place to fish. But for now I just have to keep my spey rod out and fly of the branches as I set up my cast.

The water flows smooth and green past the 100-foot high cliffs on the far side. Ice chunks cascade down the cliff, sending two mallards scurrying for safety. Step, swing, step.

As I near the middle of the pool the ice extends farther out. As I contemplate breaking more ice, I feel a pull on my fly as it dangles at the end of the drift. Sometimes a steelhead will hit the fly and drop it. Sometimes the fish will hit the fly and keep going. This one kept going. He stripped off about 10 feet of line before I could set the hook. He burst onto the surface when I pulled back on him. He then ran right at me, producing enough slack in the line to make me wonder if he had thrown the hook. He hadn't. Instead, he swam under the ice shelf. Using the leverage of the long rod I pulled him out and finally coaxed him into the net. I put the net on the ice shelf and snapped a quick picture. In the picture, the fish's head is buried in the net. Oh well, I know what he looked like.

The hook popped out before I could remove it and the fish slid out of the net and back into the pool.

A few minutes later a bald eagle glided toward me from the north, cruising over the tree tops. He ignored my plea to land in a tree so that we could watch each other fish. I turned and watched him follow the river's path south. A pileated woodpecker gave his Woody laugh from his perch behind me on the bank. The bird sat in the branches of a large vine that wound half way up an even bigger
sycamore. Growing up, I used to hike the woods of the Kettle Moraine in Wisconsin and listen for the pileated pecking away at hollow trees. Their racket would echo through the forest, but rarely would I see one in its red-headed glory. They are less shy in Ohio. This one seemed to enjoy laughing at me.

I didn't mind. I was laughing too.

Ghost Fish

When in that mysterious place between being awake and asleep it's not uncommon to feel a tap on the shoulder. Some attribute the tap to a ghost. I've never seen a ghost. But I've felt that tap and I think of it every time I get a tap from a ghost fish.

Ghost fish hit a swung fly, but they don't get hooked. The ghost usually taps somewhere near the mid-point of the swing. Does the fish hit the nose of the fly and miss the hook? Or is it a sign that the fish is more curious than hungry? Hard to say, as I've also never seen a ghost fish. Sometimes the tap comes with a brief tug. But often, it's the equivalent of a gentle tap on the shoulder. By the time the signal is transmitted from the fly, up the leader, to the Skagit line, through the running line to my hand the ghost is long gone. At times the tap is so subtle that I second guess whether it was real or a figment of an overly optimistic imagination (or perhaps I had nodded off to sleep while standing waste deep in the run).

The ghost tap can be followed up by a real take on the next swing. More likely, the ghost tap simply serves to keep me in the run a little bit longer. Ghost fish are better than no fish.

Christmas Steel

The temperature gauge on the car read 39 as I headed home after a morning of meetings. I don't think the gauge had been above freezing since I returned to Ohio from a brief trip to warmer climes in early December. I had mentally prepared myself to not fish again until 2017. But perhaps the fish gods were going to give me an early Christmas present.

I decided to take the long way home and drove through the Rocky River Reservation. As I crossed the river on the Puritas Avenue bridge, a spin fisherman downstream was fighting a steelhead. A good omen. A few fish-cars were parked in the likely spots as I headed south. The flow and color of the water looked perfect. Ice covered the water on the edges of the largest, slowest pools, but most of the river was clear of ice.

After failing to persuade friends to join me on the river, I decided to head back north with the spey rod. Another spey guy pulled into the parking lot behind me. We talked briefly, comparing notes on sink tips. I had chosen to go heavier than his rig because the melting snow was starting to fill the river. We wished each other luck as he headed upstream and I walked downstream.

Wading cleats are meant for rocky river bottoms; they make icy trails manageable, as well. I'm still trying to figure out how to walk through the woods with a 12-and-a-half-foot fly without catching either the rod or the line in the brush and trees. I ducked under a few trees, made my way to the bank and crossed the river to swing through a a long, deep run that I hadn't fished in several years. I had never swung a fly through this stretch, but had often picked up winter fish using nymphs. The water flowed through at the pace of a brisk walk and the depth ranged from shin deep to a few feet.

I tied on a Feenstra Grapefruit Leach that had seen better days -- very little of the green head remained. Dark skies and stained water called for a dark fly. The rushing water covered the sound of the jets coming in over the bare trees to land at Hopkins to my right. The Rocky doesn't provide a wilderness experience, but it still is relaxing. Snow and ice melting along the banks would frequently shift or collapse, making it sound like deer or other creatures were nearby. But it was just me and what looked like a baby merganser on the water.

As I reached the middle of the run I mistook a tug for a drag. A drag is when the sink tip drags the fly across the bottom. For less-than-skilled anglers like me, it's common to think that a fly dragging on the bottom is a fish. The really less-than-skilled angler will sometimes assume that the pull they are feeling is a drag, when it's really the tug of a fish. That's what happened to me. I can blame it on a sluggish fish in 32-degree water. Or I can simply fess up and acknowledge that one of the reasons I enjoy using the spey rod so much is I have so much more to learn. The tell-tale head shake of a steelhead was quickly followed by nothing. No tension. No weight. No fish.

Expletives were expressed. The duck didn't respond. At least I knew it wasn't just me and the duck.

A few swings later a more aggressive tug interrupted the lines journey across the current. The fish kindly hooked itself and then put up a spirited fight, despite the cold water. A large male thrashed on the surface several times before coming to the long-handled, but undersized net. After years of beaching steelhead, I'm trying to use a net to keep them in the water as much as possible and off the bank. The male showed signs that his journey south from Lake Erie had already been a tough one. His broad tail was marked and scarred. His belly was scraped up. But he otherwise appeared healthy and quickly swam off after I pulled the hook from his mouth with a forceps.

I'm sure he would have preferred not being an early Christmas present. But I said thank you, nonetheless.

Pocket Water Steel

Stretches where rivers turn white from the oxygen generated from the water tumbling over boulders and pushing through narrow slots is called pocket water. The abundant obstacles in the river channel create a traffic jam, forcing the water into eddies and slicks, trapped and unable to rush downstream despite the sharp gradient. Of course, the water eventually finds its way downstream, rushing even faster trying to make up for lost time. Pocket water is where rivers are most alive. There is not an abundance of pocket water on most of the low-gradient, shale-bottomed streams and creeks in Steelhead Alley.

But there is one stretch on one creek where the channel narrows, the gradient sharpens, boulders abound and the water's force has turned the shale bottom into a series of steps, rather than the more common playground slide. And when the water drops low enough to push the fish out of the runs, but remains high enough to provide shelter in the pockets; well that's when it gets interesting.

In March, we hit the creek when the conditions for pocket steel were just right. The runs were devoid of fish while we made our way downstream. The pool above the pocket water was empty too. The pockets looked too small to hold 20 plus inch steelhead, but looks can be deceiving. One step below the pool, a few boulders pushed the water tight against the far bank, filling the cut with with dark water adorned by a bubble fringe. The small cut ended when another boulder pushed the water back toward the middle.

Pocket water is relatively easy to fish. As long as you can place your fly into the pocket and get it to sink quickly you are in good shape. The drifts are short so mending is simple. Casts are short so line management is relatively easy. Pocket water is binary. The pocket holds a fish or two or it doesn't. And you know the answer quick.

I dropped a black stonefly above the cut, it drifted into the cut and before it bumped into the boulders below it stopped. I raised my rod and a small steelhead rocketed out of the pocket and started climbing upstream, then turned around and careened back down the steps. With little room and not much water, the fish was at a disadvantage and came to the net after a few minutes crashing around the rocks.

A few more fish were found hiding in the pockets below. And another fish was pulled from the first pocket during our return trip upstream. Nothing quite like pockets full of steel.

30 Years of March Madness

After 30 years of fishing for steelhead on the Great Lakes you'd think I'd be able to handle March Madness a little bit better. Nope. For me this a season of high anxiety and irrational emotion. As I walked outside today to grab some lunch from the food truck I couldn't enjoy the sun's warmth. While others soaked up this first sign of a pending spring, I wondered how many fish others were catching. I wondered how many more days like this -- days when the rivers flowed green, cold and full of steelhead -- there'd be that I'd spend walking past office towers rather than shale cliffs.

As I stood in line waiting to order tacos and empanadas I looked (for the umpteenth time) at the calendar on my phone. Four more meetings; the last one scheduled for 4:30. Last night I had thought briefly about fishing before work; madness given the amount of work that needed to get done before 9 am. Instead I said a quick prayer as I loaded the waders into the car at dawn. The wader bucket went next to the rigged up Scott, 10 ft., 7-weight. Maybe if I got lucky I'd be able to visit the river for 30 minutes before dark and that might be enough to treat the latest wave of March Madness.

A welcome email arrived after mid-afternoon. My 4:30 appointment asked if we could meet via phone instead. Sure. By the time that call ends, I am in the Rocky River Reservation. Usually just being on the water is enough therapy for me, but not during March Madness. I need to catch a fish. This makes no sense as I've caught hundreds of steelhead over the years. But really, I need to catch a fish now. I didn't catch one yesterday. And I won't be able to fish tomorrow. And rain is in the forecast and it might make the rivers unfishable for the rest of the week and beyond. Yes, this is March Madness. I tell myself to relax as I cast along the edge of the fast water. My self-advice works too well. I'm so relaxed that I fail to set the hook on a subtle take at the end of the drift. Now the madness really builds as I obsess over what I did wrong and whether I'll get another chance.

Fishing is supposed to be fun, not madness. But better writers than I have been driven mad by trout. The good judge compared fly fishermen to drug addicts that "dwell in a tight little dream world." More like a nightmare. The judge was wise enough to retire early and feed his addiction early and often.

Thankfully there is a cure for the madness. The tug is the drug. And a young, fresh steelhead tugged my fly and was kind enough to hang on until I slid her into the net. A slightly larger male followed a few drifts later. The madness passed, for now.

False Positive

My flies weren't even wet yet when Gerry hooked into a fish while drifting one of his new, bright pink minnow flies (tied up during Open Vise Night at Backpackers Shop) through tail of a pool we often fish when our time is short.

I headed downstream to net his fish and congratulate him on ending his 0 for '16 streak. It really wasn't much of a streak since our trips to the river were few and far between since New Year's as a combination of weather, work and other responsibilities kept us off the river.

As Gerry slid the long, slender female into the net, the bait fisherman drifting spawn through the heart of the hole dragged a dark buck onto the bank. All the signs pointed to a great late afternoon on Steelhead Alley. The river flowed high, but green. Visibility was more than a foot. The water temperature was rising, although the snow melt would keep it well below 40 degrees.

But early signs can be misleading; just ask the ground hog.

The promise of clearing skies remained broken (unlike the cloud cover) as a cold wind blew through the valley. I was dressed way too optimistically and returned to the car for gloves and a balaclava mask. They helped, but nothing warms a chilled steelheader more than a tug on the end of the line. I drifted my flies through a slow seam and lifted a sucker off the bottom. No warmth in that.

The bait guy headed home with his buck. Gerry and I shivered. We each tried the head, the heart and the tail. I tried the riffle down below. Nothing. We could have fished until dark. But the signs were clear. Gerry got his fish, and that would be all. But even a cold afternoon on the river beats the alternative; whatever that may be.
 

4 Lessons from 4 Days

I ended 2015 and began 2016 by visiting the same big pool on a Lake Erie tributary for a few hours each day for four straight days. Four things I learned (or re-learned):

• Line Control is Key -- Swinging flies with a two-handed rod is still more much more art than science for me; and I'm a terrible artist. But I'm learning. There are three ways to get a swung fly to the right depth: alter the weight of the fly, change your sink tip or use the rod's length to adjust the swing speed. When it's 30 degrees changing flies or sink tips is not an attractive option. More importantly, the best way to manipulate swing speed and depth is to mend, adjust the rod angle and walk downstream during the swing. It's easier to simply cast and let the current do the work, but when the water is high and current speeds varied that's not a very effective technique. On New Year's Eve the water was high and my fly wasn't touching the bottom through the heart of the pool. Even after big mends the fly swung through the pool without disruption. I tried to slow the swing by keeping the rod high and slowly lowering it. Then I added a few small steps downstream to create a little more slack and give the sink tip more time to find the bottom. Finally the purple and black marabou tube dragged along the bottom early in the swing. My hope was that as it moved into the main flow the fly would stay close to the bottom and entice a steelhead into striking. Two drifts later I felt the tug I had been waiting for.
• Nymphing Works -- I'm hooked on the swing, but drifting nymphs and eggs under a strike indicator is deadly. A friend joined me one day and three other anglers joined us in the pool (including two spin fishermen rude enough to squeeze in and dumb enough to risk their lives by fishing under a rock-slide prone cliff on the far side of the pool) so swinging was out of the question. My friend and I each hooked a fish within our first few casts and while the action wasn't hot, it was steady. I'd still rather swing.
• Wait for the Weight -- Nymph fishermen learn to set the hook at the first sign of a strike. That approach doesn't work so well when the steelhead hits a swung fly. Raising the rod too quickly simply pulls the fly away from the fish long before the hook finds its way into into the fish's mouth, particularly when the fish are moving slowly in cold water. Instead of reacting quickly to set the hook, the angler needs to wait a moment for the fish to grab the fly and turn to return to its holding spot before setting the hook. It takes awhile to get used to waiting.
• The only bad thing about fishing four days in a row is not being able to fish five days in a row.

   Happy New Year.

Thanksgiving Silver

The low lying sun hid behind a train trestle and cast a deep shadow across a fast moving run on the lower Grand River this afternoon. The air temperature said September, the water temperature said November. The water flowed green through the run.

Surprised that the run was empty of anglers when I arrived, I waded through the ankle deep water, stood on a boulder the size of an ottoman and tied up a nymph and egg combination. All the things that had kept me off the water -- work, responsibilities and such -- drifted downstream.

Minnow fishermen showed up and fished the tail of the run, which had earlier been disrupted by children skipping rocks. I focused on the fast water hoping that the bridge's shade would appeal to steelhead still acclimating to the ecology of the river after spending the summer in Lake Erie. I was hoping to hook my first steelhead of the fall. Three earlier brief outings were unproductive.

After breaking off early I switched to a minnow and orange egg. I worked the run, first drifting the slower water on the inside edge and then working toward the middle. About 30 minutes into a beautiful afternoon on the water a tug reminded me what had lured me out of the office. A moment after setting the hook the fish ran 20 yards downstream, and I followed. I walked carefully across a shallow riffle and tried not to worry about losing the fish as I regained line and worked at getting leverage. With each run my nerves frayed a little more. I've caught plenty of fish. Lost even more. Landing one more isn't that important, but the first fish of the year is always special. And this fresh hunk of silver made me work for it. Eventually the large male with a fat stomach full of emerald shiners and a pink stripe along his side came into the shallow water. I pulled the orange egg from the corner of its mouth, snapped one more picture and then watched the fish swim back to the run.

A few drifts later, up in the head of the run, a slightly smaller steelhead smashed the minnow fly. I didn't worry about losing this one. And I didn't have to. She came to shore as well and a little later I headed home; thankful for a good start to another steelhead season.

One and Done in PA

Sometimes one trout is enough. Or, more accurately, it has to be enough because that's all that time and situation will allow.

After a wonderful family camping weekend in the woods above the Youghiogheny River in Pennsylvania my wife agreed to allow me to fish a small creek we would drive by on our way back home. The small freestone stream tumbles out of the Laurel Highlands and runs alongside a country road before ultimately trickling into the mighty Yough. I had driven past the waterway on my way to and from the Yough a few times, but had never stopped to explore it. The creek had the tell-tale signs of a freestone stream that gets too much pressure, despite its remote location. Every mile or so there was a gravel parking spot or two along the side of the road. The first two stops produced unappealing water as a week without rain had taken its toll on the flow. My patient wife rolled her eyes as I pulled into a third spot. Braided water upstream wasn't promising. If downstream didn't offer hope, I was headed back to Cleveland without even breaking out the fly rod.

The threads of the creek came together downstream and cut through a wide bedrock shelf. The water tumbled down the shelf and the main flow turned right into a small pool the size of a love seat. A separate, smaller thread of water flowed straight from the shelf past a rock before reuniting with with rest of the stream down below. As I stood back from the aquamarine pool a 12-inch brown trout rose up from the bottom of the pool to consume some flotsam in the foam line.

I quickly walked back to the car, talked my wife into joining me and assembled my 3-weight rod.

While I love small streams I rarely fish them. Bigger rivers are a little more predictable, and predictability is important when a multi-hour car trip is required to find trout water. Small trout streams are challenging for clumsy anglers like me who don't practice often. Tight quarters demand casting accuracy and low water requires stealth. I was down two strikes before my first cast. The angle of the sun through the trees made it hard to spot my fly on the water as it drifted through the pool. (Strike three.) However, I could see the bottom of the pool clearly and the brown trout that rose earlier was missing. (Strike four.)

The forest canopy kept the air and water temperature 10 degrees cooler than out on the road, yet beads of sweat poured down my face as I tied on an elk hair caddis to replace the tiny, invisible Adams. Ideally I would spend hours stalking trout and exploring the tiny pools downstream. But every few minutes the sound of my wife swatting a mosquito on her legs reminded me that both patience and time were running short. The sweat increased with my determination to hook a fish.

I decided to try the narrow ribbon of water that flowed straight out of the shoot. While most of the current headed to the pool to the right, it looked like the secondary flow would be sufficient to hold a trout. From a distance I couldn't see below the surface to judge the water's depth; and I figured at least a fish in the tiny run couldn't see me either.

Casting from the shelf I placed the caddis on the outside of the shoot and the current carried it straight downstream. Just before it went behind the boulder a small splash made the fly disappear. I set the hook and was pleased to see a small, but healthy brown trout flash in the water. My wife kindly netted the fish and let me know my mission was accomplished and it was time to go.

The memory of that one small brown trout on a small stream will have to hold me for a bit. But there's another family outing ahead in another place where trout like to hang out. And if I'm lucky, I won't be one and done in Montana.