Upgrading the magazine for you, our readers.
America could lose these beautiful and unique fish before most anglers even realize we have them.
"On my first day fishing the Agua Boa, an upper tributary of the Amazon River in Brazil, I learned that a peacock bass is not like a largemouth bass..."
- Photography by: Val Atkinson
I received my 2010 Umpqua Feather Merchants flies and materials catalog a few days ago and went right to the listing of flies to see what’s new. In scanning the “Saltwater” section, I counted nearly 100 bonefish flies. Not many of them resembled the little shrimp I saw when I snorkeled the Bahama’s flats some years ago. Nearly all of these flies contained enough material from which to make two or three patterns and there was way too much flash in both the body and “wing.” In fact, some of the old favorite, sparsely tied flies were missing from the collection.
So I thought I would create a bonefish fly that in my humble opinion appears more like the little shrimp I saw while snorkeling. All those little shrimp were exactly the same color as the light-colored coral sand on which they lived.
Imagine that! Nature designs the prey to be unseen and at the same time equips the predator to detect the prey. In this instance, the predators—bonefish—will be attracted to the movement of the fly.
RECIPE
Hook: Mustad 34007 sizes 4, 6, 8
Thread: Danville #41 Light Tan Monocord
Eyes: Small silver bead-chain
Antennae: Dozen guard-hair fibers of golden yellow Arctic fox
Legs: Small tuft of golden yellow Arctic fox underfur
Body: Clear V-Rib
Underwing: Small tuft of golden yellow Arctic Fox underfur
Overwing: Pair of light barred ginger rooster hackle tips
➊Put the hook in the vise as shown, attach thread behind the hook eye, wind to the end of the shank and attach bead-chain eyes with firm wraps of thread. Tie on antennae behind the eyes curved slightly into a bend and lash downthe butts. The length should be equal to the length of the entire hook. Tie on a small clump of underfur behind the eyes.
➋Tie on V-Rib one hook-eye space behind the bead-chain, lash it down to just in front of the eyes and carefully wind forward saving room for the head and wing tie down.
➌ Tie in a small clump of underfur for the underwing. When tied at the right length, it should barely reach past hook bend, as seen here.
➍ Tie a barred hackle tip on each side of the head. The length should be a hook-gap-width beyond the hook bend.
➎ Tie-off the thread, lacquer the head and sit admire your Sand Flats Shrimp.
Gadgets, accessories and other must-have items of angling convenience.
"On spring creeks and tailwaters throughout the country, some of the year’s best and loneliest dry-fly action happens from December through late winter."
Pacific Bonefish
This is a follow-up note to our article “Pacific Bones” in June 2009 on catching big bonefish off Honolulu, sent to us by Capt. Terry Duffield, a k a Coach Duff: Here’s a pic of an 11½ pound Hawaiian bonefish landed a few weeks ago; it took Coach Duff’s 1/0 Plate Lunch Crab fly, and was caught by my client Luke Conner from Alaska. Aloha and many Mahalos!
Superb Genius
I would like to commend you on two aspects of the December 2009/January 2010 issue. First, the cover photography is superb. It is such a pleasure to see someone actually fishing on a fishing magazine cover. And, of course, electing Thomas McGuane Angler of the Year and asking Nick Lyons to write the profile is a double stroke of genius. Well done.
Grant McClintock
Sent via e-mail
Looks at Hooks
Professor Buzz, recently you were queried about barbless verses barbed hooks. And, unfortunately, your response was (technically/scientifically) incorrect. Actually, there aren’t two sides to this story, there are three: barbed versus pinched; and barbed versus barbless. Please let me explain.
Know, first, that I’m old enough to remember Sir Stirling Moss’ win at the LeMans 24 hours, after he drove his Ferrari GTO to the race. Which he won, wearing a polo shirt, while listening to the race being broadcast on his car radio. (Of course, in those distant, halcyon days fire-resistant suits and seat belts were unheard of.) But that’s just about the time this whole catch-and-release thing began to be debated. So I well remember the barbed vs. pinched barb vs. barbless debates from the Sixties and Seventies.
You should be aware that many (myself included), to this day, despite every shred of evidence, believe an ultra-sharp barbless hook will hold better than any barbed hook in actual fishing—and will get you more fish, anyway, since the barbless hook slides in more easily. And I don’t care what the scientific testing shows. (As I never do. Except, of course, when it proves that I’m right.)
Still, when barbed, pinched barb and barbless were all scientifically tested against each other, on actual fish, with underwater cameras and scientists and everything, it was discovered that, of the three—surprise!—the pinched barb was the best, holdingest hook of all. Though I can’t help wondering: if you yourself believe barbed hooks work best—or if, as I do, that barbless hooks work best—won’t you have more confidence during the fight because you are fishing the equipment you most believe in? And won’t that confidence contribute to the ultimate outcome of the contest? Of course, there’s no way to scientifically test that one.
Sandy Untermyer
Appling GA
Chico Fernandez has his own opinions, not scientifically tested but persuasive, in his Salt Water column on page 30.—ed.
Argentina's Rio Irigoyen is one of the angling world's newest options for trophy sea-run brown trout.
Fly-fishing literature has new allies, even as old friends of the genre surrender—for the moment—to devolving exigencies of the publishing world. Skyhorse Publishers has picked up slack since 2006, with class-act books by William G. Tapply, Peter Kaminsky, Ted Williams, Ted Leeson and E. Donnall Thomas, Jr., among others. Now comes Barclay Creek Press, entering our world with a novel by John Larison. (At HQ, Fly Rod & Reel Books was launched in autumn 2009, with Fresh Water Gamefish of North America and In Hemingway’s Meadow, worth checking out.)
Fiction. Serious fiction deserves serious consideration. John Larison’s Northwest of Normal is elegantly written, by any standards. No reader need dilute expectations because, as in “after all, it’s about fly-fishing,” nor surrender to covert understandings such as “if a dialog describes hatches, never mind that it’s unspeakable, even by characters so flat.” Make no excuses; none needed.
Here begins John Larison’s Northwest, through the mind of guide Andy Trib: “What hadn’t changed was the smell: first the purpled sweetness of ripe blackberries, then deeper, the green spice of Doug fir needles. Deeper yet was the chocolaty musk of the river at dawn, its fog ghosting over the riffle. This was the Ipsyniho he remembered, and Christ had he missed it.”
Missed it he had: even Chile’s cold rivers provided scant solace. But better than the oft-asked “How come you left?” is a singular demand “Why did you come back?” As in, “How dare you?”
It takes a brave author to tackle the betrayal theme with a central character revealed as a sinner early on. That’s partly because of readers like me—folks who drop The Kite Runner after 30 pages, convinced they’ll never care enough about the errant narrator to follow him anywhere. “Beyond redemption” says it for we of rigid minds; to steal from the original story of the Golden Rule—mindful of the irony—“Everything else is just commentary.”
So give author John Larison points for courage, delivering us Andy, a steelhead guide who returns to his home river to row a load of hubris upstream. He fled his Ipsyniho life for good reason—Andy betrayed Danny, fishing-mentor and best friend, with Danny’s fiancee, just days before their wedding and then fled before the ceremony. That the fiancee and Andy shared a hidden history, regrets and unfinished business—or is it?—might help explain their misdeed. But all of the same threaten his homecoming: Andy’s less Prodigal Son than a pariah tempting consequence. Why?
Is it conscience? A friendship too valuable to abandon or a lost chance of love—or both? Is it memories of an innocent time in green gray paradise—special people who made home for him on a special river...steelhead, a special fish—the purity of place and pursuit that once engaged him, utterly, and that might, somehow, again?
Or did he just run out of options in a wide world where he never escaped himself? Don’t ask Andy. Odds are he’d lie; and so he does, first to himself, perhaps, then to everybody who matters. But Andy aches each time he does so, and wonders what he might do differently.
Remorse as a saving grace: Larison presents Andy as lost soul rather than lousy man—aimless, often clueless, but not indifferent. He’s profoundly concerned by an issue far older than Oedipus: how do you make right an irrevocable wrong?
That’s not the only aching issue in Northwest. Larison’s Oregon gasps for breath, or water, as it happens; Andy’s Ipsyniho barely fishes at the low flows left by drought, ailing too much to help him make rent; the hills are alive with the sound of chain-saws; an allegedly-benign developer has plans for the watershed surrounding a spawning tributary; and let’s not forget the influence of the state’s major cash crop, which sure ain’t Andy’s beloved blackberries. Our not-so-anti-hero isn’t the only player compromised or threatened by secrets; soon he’s drawn and tempted, and then hauled by the hair into a high-stakes game.
The book reads as if Larison lives the river, ripe with observations, a landscape at times more clearly realized than the characters in Andy’s life. A sense of community comes through—a mosaic of long-time locals living and lumbering where they were born, often beside newer residents absolutely committed to that land as it was, still is—and, they hope, will remain. Those well-wishers, in turn, need and resent those arriving after, colonizing wilderness with condos; everybody disdains the Day Trippers who sweep through on weekends to spend dollars that support the straight economy. It’s too true, in this Northwest, that everything has a price. Witness a formerly “free” festival, a harvest celebration so inflated by success there’s little space for the locals who helped found the fun and now can’t afford a ticket...And somewhere in there is Andy, feverishly looking for answers. ■
Seth Norman lives in Washington state and is the author of Meaderings of a Fly Fisherman and other books.
SPECIAL REPORT: WorldCast Anglers, the owners of the A-Bar property proximate to the Henry's Fork in Island Park, discuss plans for the future.
Finding the right amount of barb for your hooks will ensure better hookups and more fish landed.
The conceit among trout fishers is that we’re all such unreconstructed fanatics that when fishing possibilities dwindle over the winter we go quietly insane. In fact, some do—and not always quietly—but others seem to take the break more or less in stride and a few even think it’s “good for the soul,” as Nick Lyons once said, to have an off-season for rest and reflection.
I go back and forth. I do go quietly insane at times, although the apparent cause is usually CNN rather than a lack of fishing. It’s true that a week somewhere with a fly rod in my hand would affect a cure, but then so would the same week at home without TV or newspapers. For the most part, though, I’m happy enough to think about where I’ve been, plan where I’ll go next, tie flies, fuss with tackle and try my best to make a living.
I was doing just that toward the end of February when my friend Vince called and proposed a quickie. We’d drive up to the Miracle Mile in Wyoming, fish for two days with an overnight camp and then head home.
I’d been hearing about The Mile—as it’s called—for years, but had obstinately never fished it. I think I was put off by the name as much as by the crowd it’s known to draw at certain times of the year. “Miracle Mile” sounds more like a roadside theme park than a stretch of the North Platte River in Wyoming that’s famous for good trout fishing. It’s not even precise because the stretch of river the name refers to is actually more like six miles long. (One symptom of incipient off-season insanity is that I become my high school English teacher, snidely correcting inaccuracies of language at every opportunity.)
The weather was seasonably cold and uninviting, the forecast was for more of the same and there was no available fishing report. I jumped on the invitation with more eagerness than I thought was in me.
The drive to the river was familiar from other trips north until we peeled off the interstate at the dreary refinery town of Sinclair and started out across the Red Desert. This is a region without clear boundaries that’s been variously described as hostile, inhospitable, unforgiving and haunting, but its salient feature is that there’s no one there.
The population density of Carbon County Wyoming is roughly one person for every three square miles, but that’s deceptive since better than half of them live in the county seat of Rawlins and are smart enough to stay in town in the winter. Out on County Road 351, anyone at all constitutes a crowd and seeing another car amounts to traffic.
Except for a low pass through the Seminoe Mountains, this area is largely treeless with scattered sage, sparse grasses and tough little shrubs like cedar rim thistle and bladderpod, all hanging on for dear life in what Annie Proulx called “bad dirt.” Living things tend to stay low here, while rocks that stand up in the constant, sandy wind are abraded into the spooky mushroom shapes geologists call “hoodoos.”
Wind is a fact of life as well as the basis for rural Wyoming humor. Mark Spragg said, “There are people here who’d like to move away, but they’d have to go outside to do it.” A man living in a town that eleven souls now call home once told me, “We’re losin’ people. Even the wind is in a big f-ckin’ hurry to be somewhere else.”
For long stretches of the drive in there were no human artifacts except for the unpaved road we were on and the ubiquitous western barbed wire fences that Ted Leeson described as separating “a great deal of one thing from a lot more of the same.”
It had snowed recently, but most of it had blown away, leaving ominous-looking drifts across the road in the low spots. You’d normally stop and inspect drifts for depth on a road like this because it’s the last place you’d want to get stuck, but there were fairly recent skidding tire tracks through the snow, so we’d put the truck in high range four-wheel, pick up some speed on the down slope and fishtail through, postponing second thoughts until we were back on bare ground on the other side.
When we finally got down to the river we reconnoitered for half an hour, peering at fishy-looking water and keeping an eye out without much luck for a spot to camp out of the wind. There were a few cottonwoods along the river, but not enough in any one place to make a proper shelterbelt. We picked out a long tailing pool above a bridge and gave it half an hour. There was no sign of insect or fish life, but the water was easily readable, so you could tell where the fish would be if they were there. After 30 minutes I believed that I may or may not have had a half-hearted bump to a nymph. It was the usual first act on a new river at less than the best time of year.
When we decided to try another spot the pickup wouldn’t start. Vince turned the key and instead of the usual growl of a V-8 engine coming to life, there was the disheartening click that tells you there isn’t enough juice to turn over the starter. This means corroded terminals if you’re lucky, a dead battery if you’re not.
When you’re out in winter weather, the pickup truck is a real icon of survival: a mobile windbreak with a heater that, in a pinch, can get you the many miles to the nearest McDonald’s or Motel 6. When it fails to start forty-some miles up a lonesome dirt road with no traffic, you experience what can only be called profound disappointment. We stared ahead through the windshield at sagebrush twitching in the wind. Nothing was said. When we’d driven around earlier we’d seen a few other fishermen parked here and there along the river, but the chances of any of them happening by anytime soon seemed slim. Vince told me later he was beginning to formulate a plan, while I was simply thinking that we’d taken his truck because it was newer and more reliable than mine.
At which point our friend Corey pulled up, having recognized the truck. I stepped out the passenger door to shake hands. Vince began digging behind the seat for the jumper cables. As it turned out, the terminals were pristine, as anything Vince maintains usually is, but the battery was eight months past its expiration date and wouldn’t hold a charge. So we fished with Corey for the rest of the day because he’s our friend and we like his company, because he knows the river and because the truck would no longer start without a jump, so we had to stay close to a functioning vehicle.
We camped together that night for the same reason in a bivouac that consisted of eight fishermen ranging in age from their early 20s to past 60. I’m not at all sure who most of these people were except that everyone seemed to know someone else and so we’d all ended up together in a sparse grove of narrow-leaf cottonwoods that had no effect on the cold wind except to funnel it into stronger gusts.
Everyone had packed in firewood—from neatly split pine logs to construction scraps—so we got a uselessly huge bonfire going. The temperature had dropped into the low 30s even before the sun went down and the wind picked up and came from a different direction every five minutes. Hunkered around the fire, you’d either get a face full of sparks or your ears would be cold even as tread melted off the soles of your boots.
Someone tossed foil-wrapped potatoes at the edge of the fire to bake. Once that suggestion was planted, the rest of us dug out propane stoves and the usual odd assortment of camp food ranging from quick, cheap and easy to elaborate. While we were cooking supper, someone produced a battery-operated boom box. I’ve never cared for recorded music in camp and I rolled my eyes at Vince, but then when a vintage Bob Dylan tune came out of the thing, I softened a little.
It had turned full dark and bitterly cold by the time we’d all gotten supper taken care of and had settled in for some serious campfire sitting. Eight lawn chairs were crammed in a seamless ring around the fire pit, but it wasn’t possible to either build the blaze big enough or to sit quite close enough to it. Cans of beer and a bottle of tequila appeared, and although I don’t actually remember seeing a joint going around, I do recall a familiar whiff of something that wasn’t wood smoke. Some trout had been caught that day, but I won’t say how many in case you’d think the trip wasn’t “worthwhile” in the way some understand that term.
It must have been on someone’s mind because the talk turned to women earlier than it usually does in a camp full of men. “You need a woman who likes to travel and fish herself, but who doesn’t always want to come along,” someone said. “You know, she’s gotta give you some space.” We were lined up around the fire nearly in each other’s laps and all nodded agreement on the need for space in relationships.
Even the youngest of these guys were old enough now to have had these things go south a few times, although why is never clear. The assumption is that these are affairs of the heart and therefore a great mystery, but we’re men; we can work it out logically. When a lull in the conversation came, I felt an urge to say something wise befitting the thirty or forty years I had on some of these guys. But nothing came to mind except a youth filled with older men droning on as if they owned the secrets of the universe, never mind that their own lives were train wrecks. Then the moment passed and the conversation drifted in the predictable direction of pickups, boats, fly rods and increasingly long, fire-gazing silences.
Finally one man said, apropos of nothing, “I’m like a largemouth bass: I lurk…and then I pounce!”
Someone else replied, “Damn right.”
It was getting late.
I’ve never been much of a winter camper, although I did once spend an experimental night in a snow cave to see if it would be as cozy as some claimed. It wasn’t. In other words, I don’t have actual winter camping gear, but I make due by stuffing a so-called three-season sleeping bag inside a summer-weight bag and sleeping in full long johns, fleece socks, sweatshirt and wool hat. On that particular night it was stinging cold away from the fire and I only reread a page of The Meadow by James Galvin before I nestled in to generate a pocket of heat by burning calories.
I had the tent cinched tight as a drum with rocks on top of the stakes to keep them from working loose, but the wind was still up and the rain fly flapped like a trapped condor. Even with that racket I managed to drift off before I was actually warm. I’d only gotten good and cozy hours later when I woke up in the middle of the night with an undeniable urge to pee.
For some reason, cold, windy nights in tents are when I’m most likely to have one of those luminous dreams where everything suddenly fits together. I wake up with the fleeting sense that I’ve been given the answer to a question I don’t remember asking and lie there in the first light trying to remember what it was. Then I get sidetracked by thoughts of coffee and a big cold-weather breakfast: As much chopped up bacon as will fit in the pan with room left over for half a dozen eggs scrambled in and four slices of whole wheat bread scorched over the fire to approximate toast.
It’s colder this morning than it was last night, so frost will condense on the propane bottle before the percolator on the camp stove starts to bubble. I can picture it all vividly. Now all I have to do is pry myself out of my warm spot and make it happen.
Corey is already up and a little too cheerful as I force my fingers to work enough to get the coffee started. I hear a snore from one of the tents and think we’re the only two awake until I glance downstream and see one of the younger guys at a bend pool landing what looks like a good-sized fish. I’m deeply impressed, but not exactly envious. For some, winter fishing is the kind of extreme sport that separates the men from the boys, as they used to say. But then for others it’s a more pensive enterprise where the fire and the coffee pot compete on equal footing with the river.
When our gonzo companion sees activity in camp, he trudges back and we learn that he got that trout and one other—both rainbows—on a Girdle Bug. I ask if he knows the origin of that fly’s name and he doesn’t. I explain that the rubber legs on the first ones were elastic strips salvaged from discarded girdles. He nods politely. It’s possible he’s not that into fly tying trivia, or maybe he’s heard of girdles, but is too young to have ever actually seen one.
During this short conversation the guy has wolfed down a granola bar and chugged a big cup of coffee. Then he opens a fly box, gives me a neatly tied brown Girdle Bug and walks back toward the river. Bottom line types in the fly-tackle industry worry about the future of the sport, but it seems to me there’s an endless supply of these young fly casters who, as far as the ruling class is concerned, fish and drink too much, work too little, are at perpetual loose ends about jobs and girlfriends, but always have a fishing trip in the works.
Few of them earn enough to be valuable customers now, but that will likely change because they’re genetically programmed for success in the 21st century. By that I mean they’re comfortable with technology, but they’re not in love with it and recognize its limitations, they work hard when they work, they tend to be non political without being ignorant to the point of negligence and they take things no more seriously than they need to be taken.
Even with the provocation of a couple of trout being caught, it takes some of us another hour to get fed, suited up and on the water. Corey and I planned to air out our spey rods that day. We’d swing weighted streamers through the big runs and if that didn’t work we’d rest the water and come back with nymphs. I’d never fished a nymph with a spey rod, but I’d heard about it and wanted to try it. If nothing else, the reach of a 13.5-foot rod would be a tremendous advantage. The fishing had been slow, but not dead, and I suddenly had big plans for that little Girdle Bug.
In the meantime, Vince had crawled out of his tent blinking and yawning and I’d all but finished the coffee, so I poured him the dregs and started a fresh pot. I’d come to fish and I’d get around to it eventually, but the real reason for the trip was simply to get out of the house in the winter and there I was, so there was no rush.
John Giearch’s Sporting Life column appears in each issue of FR&R. His latest book is Fool’s Paradise.
Are steelhead to fly-fishing what Mohammad Ali was to boxing?
Q: I’m interested in buying a new digital camera, primarily to take fishing, but am bewildered by the choices and options. Do I need a waterproof model? What about features? Help!
ANSWER: It’s sort of like starting fly-fishing isn’t it? The initial problem to overcome is to figure out where to start. The good news is that there are dozens, hundreds even, of models from which to choose (kinda like fly rods). The bad news is that there are dozens, hundreds even, of models from which to choose.
There are two main camera-body types: DSLRs (digital single-lens reflex) and point-and-shoot (P&S). The DSLRs generally utilize a viewfinder that allows you to see the image through the lens, so you’ll know exactly what you’re capturing on film—oops, digital media. Most SLRs have interchangeable lenses, bunches of accessories and provide maximum control and versatility.
P&S cameras generally have a fixed zoom lens, built-in flash, are compact and are generally less expensive than DSLRs. We’ll concentrate on these. If you’re looking for a DSLR, you probably have some photo experience to build on, and are better equipped to choose among the options.
The image is the bottom-line issue—is the camera capable of delivering the images you need? First, you’ll have to define what you intend to do with the photos. Are you simply interested in photos that look good on Internet posts (like the fun and funky image above) or e-mailed to fishing buddies, or are you chasing after the cover of Fly Rod & Reel?
Generally, any of today’s offerings can produce a nice print of reasonable size, provided the original is composed and (more important) exposed correctly. Here, digital differs not at all from film. If you start out with a mediocre image, all the processing in the world won’t make it a high-quality shot. And as with film, while a full-frame shot will likely produce a nice-size print, don’t expect that you can blow up a fly speck within a digital image and get an acceptable print. You’ll have to read up on the ins and outs of pixel counts to fully understand this. (We’ll post some examples of calculating resolution at flyrodreel.com Skills section.)
But don’t be fooled by thinking that having more pixels will give you a better image. Sensor sizes vary, and the pixels crammed into a tiny 10 megapixel-sensor on a P&S camera are not the same quality as the pixels on a larger 10 mp-sensor in a DSLR, for instance. Generally, the larger the photosites (essentially, the pixels), the better the image will be, particularly in low-light situations. Next, there is image capture. Most cameras capture images in JPEG format; JPEG is an acronym for Joint Photographic Experts Group, which developed the standardized protocol that is so universally used today. All JPEGs are not equal, as the camera manufacturer’s software, as well as user-chosen in-camera settings, provide some processing of the image
during capture.
You can adjust many cameras to provide in-camera sharpening of the image, increase contrast or color saturation, color temperature correction and others. Generally, the more accomplished the photographer, the less in-camera processing is used, reserving image manipulation to a later, in-home setting. In fact, many people look for cameras, even P&S models, that provide “raw” capture. Raw images, as the name implies, are simply those that have no, or at least almost no, in-camera processing. That way, the photographer retains the maximum flexibility for later image manipulation.
Last, more and more of these cameras offer some form of movie mode. If that’s important to you, consider those that offer high-definition quality.
The simple solution is to do your homework, and take advantage of several internet sites that impartially review cameras; www.dpreview is one of the better ones. Pay more attention to the reviewers than to the comments on the bulletin boards.
If this is your first camera, don’t over-think the purchase. Work on your basic photography skills first. You’ll soon begin developing a knowledge of what you can do with a particular camera, and what you can’t do.
Go to the flyrodreel.com Skills section and I’ll take you through a whole bunch more options, including waterproofness, lenses, that pixel stuff and more.
Send questions to Professor Buzz at editors@flyrodreel.com.
Midway through 2009, I couldn’t complain about the angling year. I started in January chasing sea-run cutthroats around Washington’s Puget Sound, and then migrated north to the Queen Charlotte Islands for steelhead. By April I was throwing Spey on the Skagit River and shortly after, I was doing the same in Oregon on the North Umpqua. Right after that I headed to Maine for landlocked Atlantic salmon. In May I was in southeast Alaska putting the smackdown on more sea-run cutthroats and steelhead, along with some meaty dolly varden.
After Alaska I was settling into a family-focused summer pattern when Robert Eddins, owner of Ro Drift Boats in Montana, said, “Thomas, a friend just bailed out on a Smith River trip. There’s an open seat in my boat and I have all the provisions. All you need to do is be at the shop in Bozeman…in 32 hours.”
Signing onto a Smith River trip isn’t like saying you’ll throw a few casts on the Madison and be back for dinner by six. Choosing to fish the Smith means you’re committing to five days of angling, camping and landscape bliss.
In fact, for many people, Montana’s Smith River represents the Lower 48’s ultimate multi-day trip and the perks extend well beyond excellent trout fishing—without satellite phone service and cell towers and cable hookups and the Web access, you are free from the technological traps of our lives and allowed steady focus on truly important matters. Try that at a bar or ball game or on a Sunday afternoon at home, common places of perceived refuge from the digital spiral.
Over the past 10 years as Blackberries, iPhones and Droids have infiltrated our lives and as cell towers sprout like satellite dishes did in the 1980s (they used to be called Montana’s state flower), the ability to hold a directed train of thought with friends, let alone a meaningful conversation, is almost impossible. Long drives to the water, and bar time afterward, used to be opportunities for bonding and laughter and release from our daily drudgery.
Today, most of us stare at the road ahead and listen to one side of empty conversation, like, “Uh, yea baby, I’ll be home in an hour,” a conversation that occurs one hour after the last conversation that indicated arrival home in two hours.
The Smith begins south of the Castle Mountains near White Sulphur Springs, Montana, which rests about an hour and a half northeast of Helena, equidistant from Great Falls. The float section begins at Camp Baker, where the true freestone river commences its serpentine course between massive, radiant yellowish limestone walls and timbered mountain slopes that harbor mule deer, elk, mountain lions and bear.
In one place a tall Indian’s handprints are seen at the base of a towering rock wall, eight or 10 feet above the water line. And there are remote caves high above the river, I’m told, where more native art is found, ancient pictographs. Far downstream, the river leaves its limestone path and widens between timbered slopes and grassy ranchlands on its way to the main takeout, 60 miles downstream from Camp Baker, at Eden Bridge. The river ends, eventually, 50-some miles downstream at the Missouri River. There are no public takeouts between Camp Baker and Eden Bridge. Once you launch, it’s all-in.
And that is a great thing. The Smith is loaded with brown trout along with some rainbows and native mountain whitefish. Those trout don’t see as much pressure as they would if finning in an easily accessed river, but by the end of the limited-entry float season, which runs from late March through July, when water conditions may get so low that floating isn’t an option, fish get wise meaning plenty of sniffs instead of the irrational strikes that angler’s enjoy in April, May and June. August, typically, is a bust on the Smith because of low water but the flows often rebound in September, when hoppers are abundant. Sage anglers call September and October their favorite time to fish the river.
Throughout the season the Smith offers killer hatches to match, including solid midge, Baetis, skwala stonefly, pale morning dun, brown drake, green drake, golden stonefly, salmonfly and caddis opportunities. Beginning in July, terrestrials draw takes, too. Always, streamers, placed under cut rock walls and behind scads of boulders, trigger strikes from some of the river’s largest fish, browns that stretch to 20 inches or more. A common Smith River brown or rainbow ranges between 12 and 17 inches.
The Smith fishes well beginning in April, if weather and water conditions are suitable. Some anglers come back from an early season trip down the Smith with photos showing 18 inches of snow stacked on their coolers. Others, including this author, have endured five straight days of muddy water providing two inches of visibility. To say the fishing is dour in those conditions is an understatement.
But, as in anything, risk and reward are tied together and friends have reported 40-fish days in April, mostly caught on adult skwala stonefly imitations while temperatures crept to the 50s and low-60s and water clarity was set at perfect.
When I fished the Smith one April—yes that April when the river ran mud and we managed about a half-dozen fish in 60 miles (yes, I threw black streamers)—we arrived at the takeout and each of us agreed if we had the time and a permit we would have run the shuttle, put back on the river and repeated the float. I’m a guy who’s addicted to catching fish so that should tell you the merit of the Smith, which reaches beyond fishing.
Of note from that trip was an evening when I couldn’t find my black Lab, Shadow. I called and called for her but she didn’t return, which was really odd. I feared the worst when I decided to check the tents. One of our companions had brought way more gear than he should have and we fumbled with his equipment each day and night. That paraphernalia included a full-size cot. We’d grown to resent his gear, so it was with great pleasure that I discovered Shadow in his tent, on top of his cot and sleeping bag, with her head on his pillow. That she’d swam in the river earlier made things in the world finally right.
May and June are great months to fish the Smith but they also offer iffy conditions because runoff occurs at that time. One day the river may be in perfect shape and the next it might be a muddy torrent.
In that variability is opportunity for those who weren’t lucky enough to draw one of the Smith’s limited-entry permits. (The state only issues so many access permits per year, awarded by drawing; this regulates pressure on the river, and makes for a truly wild experience. Go to fwp.mt.gov/recreation/activities/smithRiver/default.html.) Those who want to fish the Smith can arrive at Camp Baker, where Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks manages and educates floaters, and wait for someone to cancel their trip. It’s first-come first-served in those instances so one man’s lament represents another’s golden opportunity. The only sure way to float the Smith in a given year is to hire an outfitter who receives guaranteed trip dates from the state.
The Smith is a golden opportunity, a unique diversion, allowing anglers to take in fly-fishing at a leisurely pace, where you don’t have to pound the water into a froth because you’re going to get 12 or more hours of fishing a day, if you want it and your friends aren’t opposed to pulling the oars. Given that allotment, it’s easy to set down the rod for a time and watch a beautiful part of the world pass by, something you might not do if you have a single day on some other river and you have to work the following morning at eight.
On the Smith most of the fishing is done while floating. This can be either a bonus or a detriment, depending on how you prefer to fish. Wade-fishing opportunities are restricted to short stops along the way or hiking up or downstream from those designated campsites and working the water at a slow pace. I’m a wade guy, preferring to work a piece of water thoroughly, switching flies and presentations often, until I find that magical combination that discerning trout demand.
With that said, there’s no doubt that fishing from a raft, skiff or driftboat is the way to go when the Smith’s big bugs—those salmonflies, golden stones and grasshoppers—are present. Given a few bugs on the water anglers can cast at a grassy bank on one side with big meaty patterns, then turn quickly to the other and bounce those dries off a towering, 200-foot high limestone wall. On either side the trout are looking for those bugs and the takes can be insane.
But it’s not all fun and games. Floating the Smith without the service of an outfitter means you’re responsible for gathering firewood each day; setting up and breaking down camp; and cooking big meals on propane stoves; washing dishes; loading masses of gear; and pulling on the oars for your fair share of time. In the evening, after all the work is done, family-style meals and campfire time on the banks of the Smith promote reconciliation of our lives left behind.
Or not. When I floated in early June my clan included a rowdy bunch and we spent our time concocting a bevy of drink combinations, building high fires and screaming at the moon. By 2 or 3 a.m. the carnage typically was complete and we’d retreat to our tents for a few hours sleep before rising with cobwebs to hammer big-time breakfasts, break down our camps and get on the river for another 10 hours of floating and fishing before arriving at our next requisite campsite.
About the third day of our trip the revelry lost its luster for me, partly due to age and a past lived in the fast lane. Basically, I don’t come back as quickly as I used to and I’m beginning to see that there are too few days left to waste on recovery. That doesn’t mean I’ll be sipping soda or tea anytime soon, but my fellow campmates, all younger, far outdistanced me in the latter stages of our trip. Each night I’d try to sneak away from the fire early only to receive a condemning verbal barrage.
Eventually, I’d make it to my tent, which allowed me to rise relatively early the following day. I’d grab a rod and wander up or downstream as the others slept, silent with my thoughts, running nymphs through choice riffles and runs while watching Canada geese on the banks and bald and golden eagles soar overhead.
I have a tendency to dwell on the negative, look past the present and too far into the future, and I caught myself working into that rut. What could be done to solve the issues at home, I wondered? How much is enough for a quality life? I wished I’d brought two particular books with me, one being The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen and the other being Buddhism Plain & Simple. I haven’t signed on to any particular religion or sect but there are words in each of those books that I address frequently. One passage, written by Yang Chu, a fourth century Chinese philosopher, says, “We move through the world in a narrow groove, preoccupied with the petty things we see and hear, brooding over our prejudices, passing by the joys of life without even knowing that we have missed anything. Never for a moment do we taste the heady wine of freedom. We are as truly imprisoned as if we lay at the bottom of a dungeon, heaped with chains.”
Recalling that, I peered at the bright canyon walls and the permanent blue sky. I breathed the dense, earthy air and stripped line from the reel. I studied the brown trout rising to brown drake spinners in an eddy created by ancient fallen rock. Here it was, Chu’s warning and his suggestion wrapped into a foamy, swirling pool on the Smith. When I got back to camp, Eddins asked how I’d done and I said, “Well.” Then he handed me a plate of bacon and eggs, and a beer, which tasted particularly sweet.
For me, fly-fishing provides one of only two escapes (basketball being the other) where my head becomes so focused on the task at hand that nothing of the past or future matters. It’s the challenge of each cast, delivered in total concentration, as well as it can be performed, that soothes. It didn’t hurt my state of mind to have the trout really turn on during the latter stages of our trip.
It seemed like solid browns rested behind every rock and though they mostly refused our dry flies, for reasons beyond my interpretation, they pounded the streamers silly. One particular fish hammered my streamer, took off upstream and jumped a couple feet in the air. On its decline it smacked into our friend’s raft, a good laugh for all, minus the trout of course.
On the fifth day we got up early, spent an hour loading the boats and paddled hard for Eden Bridge. By noon we were there and our shuttles had been performed accordingly. While the Smith is a great fishing river and big tallies can be had on almost every trip, it’s the float and the camping and the plethora of time on the water that separates it, I believe, from other western adventures. Somewhere on the Smith, away from all the cell-phone and e-mail mania, most of us get to a point where we realize why we’re there and it’s not always about the fish. It just takes time to realize that.
FOR LOGISTICS INFORMATION, SEE THE MARCH ISSUE OF FR&R
OUTFITTERS
Big Sky Expeditions
Gary Stocker
3180 Dredge Drive, Suite A
Helena, MT 59602
Phone: (406) 442-2630
Blackfoot River Outfitters
John Herzer
4555 Mallard Way
Missoula, MT 59808
Phone: (406) 543-6528
High Plains Drifter
Mike Hillygus
P.O. Box 516
Missoula, MT 59806
Phone: (406) 721-2703
Montana Flyfishing Connection
Joe Sowerby
P.O. Box 17701
Missoula, MT 59808
Phone: (406) 370-2868
Lewis & Clark Expeditions
Mike Geary
P.O. Box 970
Helena, MT 59624
Phone: (406) 449-4632
Blast & Cast Outfitters
Todd France
P.O. Box 824
Ennis, MT 59729
E-mail: blstcst@3rivers.net
Phone: (406) 682-4420
Greg Thomas is this magazine’s managing editor. He lives in Ennis, Montana.
The therapeutic value of fly fishing.
Raise a glass to Closing time at an east Idaho fly-fishing oasis. "The A-Bar is so fondly regarded by fly fishermen that writer Kirk Deeter described it in a lyrical tribute in Big Sky Journal as the student union of The University of the River, Henry’s Fork Campus."
.jpg)
