An early season evening on the Madison River
During dinner last evening Jackie and I noticed midges hovering over the trees off our dining room window. I wolfed my elk steak down, grabbed my fishing gear and headed to the river near Story access arriving around 6pm. Clear, calm conditions with 52 degrees and lots of midges in the air. I never saw a rise while I knotted on fresh tippet and a Skittering Zelon Midge but figured the fish had seen emerging pupae and impaired adult midges during the mid-day when midges typically emerge this time of the year.
I eased into position on a favorite midge pool, walking on my knees and sitting on a rock along the shoreline all the while keeping low and out of sight of the resident brown and rainbow trout. On my 3rd cast a fine 14" rainbow sipped my offering. A few more casts and a 12" brown came up, then a 8" rainbow followed by a 16" brown. All the while I had to smile to myself knowing I was the only one on the river enjoying some fun dry fly fishing. A few minutes later I busted a heavy rainbow that took the fly and bolted upstream. We parted ways when my 6x tippet snapped. It all happened so quickly I could only shake may head at the "rookie" mistake I'd just made, one i make from time-to-time by hanging on to the fly line on the trouts' initial run after it takes the fly. Afterwards I was treated to a couple fine jumps the fish made as it tried to free itself of the barbless hook it now sported in its jaw.
As I knotted on a new fly 4 mule deer came to water and spoiled my fun by sloshing through my spot. I moved upstream to another pocket and took another nice 14" brown before the sun sank behind the Gravelly Mountains, the temp dropped and I headed home. A nice hour of dry fly fishing on a warm May evening!
Jackie and I head to Michigan today to see family and do a Yellowstone fly fishing/Yellowstone Park Foundation show. We are back Sunday and I look forward to bringing more spring fishing stories here so stay tuned!
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Assault and Battery of the Wind
I went fishing with an old friend the other day on the Henry’s Fork. The weather was overcast and cool; perfect for a Baetis mayfly emergence. Perfect, that is, except for the wind. By one o’clock in the afternoon what was forecast to be light turned out to be howling. The kind of wind that goes beyond testing your mettle. (Nothing terribly unusual for April in eastern Idaho, but certainly a day most reasonable anglers would—and did—sit out.)
My friend, however, doesn’t get the chance to fish here all that often. So we stayed put and watched. At two o’clock Baetis began emerging. Fish started to rise. We started to rig up only to find, alas, we were but one rod for two anglers. My friend had forgotten his.
Not a problem, I insisted. He would fish, I would watch. Working as he does as a fishing guide in the Big Hole valley, we both knew that he might not have another chance to fish here this year. I would be back many times over.
We entered the river below and downstream from some rising trout. Enough Baetis were emerging to allow the fish to feed steadily, but they weren’t. They chose to operate (as they often do) on their own terms, rising several times in short order, then sitting it out for varying lengths of time. They were also changing positions between rises. From experience I knew this kind of feeding was going to require repetitive, accurate casting. All the factors—fly placement, the timing of the cast, a drag-free drift—had to coincide, and that would take some doing.
Coming off a months-long stint in New Zealand, my friend started casting from about forty feet away. (This was too far; he was thinking about the skittishness of South Island trout.) After a few casts I told him to hold up, we’ve got to get much closer. Accuracy in a shrieking wind is already a challenge; no point in compounding it by adding unnecessary distance to the equation. Carefully, we moved to less than twenty-five feet from a rising fish. I could sense we were pushing my friend's comfort limit, but I assured him this wasn’t too close to bother the fish. He's a fine caster, but we simply had to chop some distance to improve his accuracy. (Fishing alone, I would have moved even closer.)
After a flurry of casts, I realized things were still not right. Although the shorter distance did aid his accuracy, my friend was still failing to make enough accurate casts. Most were being blown off to one side or the other, to the point where raising a fish was out of the question. Our problem was the angle from which we were fishing. It was too much across the wind to control the cast.
The angle that my friend had opted for was thoughtful considering the river’s currents and their effect on the drift—ordinarily the biggest issue here—but on this day those concerns paled in comparison to those of the wind. We had to deal with that first. I suggested that we move directly upwind of the fish. Doing so would immediately minimize the wind’s effect on our left/right accuracy problem, even if it hurt our drift (I could sense that the drift, even though compromised, would remain acceptable). This is a tactic I use all the time in big wind, and it is surprising how much easier it makes the fishing.
So move we did. Now my friend could get the fly over the fish with a degree of regularity. Some drifts were good, some not so good, but with the wind skittering the naturals anyways, an occasionally dragging fly didn’t hurt our chances. It still took a lot of casts for all the elements to come together, but come together they did—just often enough to provide us with a rewarding afternoon.
If you find yourself onstream when a vicious wind arises (or, heaven forbid, intentionally go out in one), these two tactics can really help. Get close to the fish, closer than you’ve ever dared, and get straight upwind from them. I think you’ll find success. And much of the time, you’ll find it alone.
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April on Montana Rivers.
I just returned from some fishing and fly tying-conservation presentations in and around Montana. I fished the Yellowstone, Boulder and Stillwater Rivers during March Brown and Baetis mayfly times as well as midge times on the Boulder. The fishing was good. I tested some of the new midge and Baetis fly designs we have been working on. Then I met my old fishing friend, Al Ward, and together we fished the Madison and Ruby River for 3 days.
We had a fine time fishing Tenkara rods, talking fly patterns, design and materials and did well on the Madison. The Ruby was not nearly so kind to us but because it was slow that day we had lots of time to "sit water", waiting for insects and trout rising, and discuss all of the above. Midges and Baetis came off the Madison this past Monday and Tuesday and we had a ball fishing Tenkara and learning new technique as we went along. Our new midge patterns are tyed with more and more flash and sparkle as you can see one in the following photos of a large brown trout I fooled with one of the new patterns using opal Mirage tinsel. I fished over this fish, and more like it, and fooled 6-7 good browns with our new patterns. More on these flies in a later blog entry.
The above shot is one of Al taking his first Madison River trout using his new Tenkara rod. While many feel the fish are too large and the current too strong on rivers like the Madison you can see we did land some trout, many trout, without breaking one off.
Another picture is one of a March Brown mayfly I took on the Boulder River last week near Big Timber. The fish, mostly rainbows, got on these #14-16 duns and the fishing became "easy" for a couple hours as they rose to the first BIG mayflies of the new season. Note too the shot of a classic midge run, if you look closely you can see a couple rises and I took a few of these, mostly browns, on our latest midge flies. The one rainbow picture is a shot of a nice pre-spawning, run up trout at the mouth of the Yellowstone River, one I took on an Improved Baetis Sparkle Dun #20.
Our early spring fishing is now in full swing. The snow is still falling most afternoons and this brigns on great Baetis and March Brown emergences. More later on the fishing, new flies, etc! I am loaded up and heading spring turkey hunting in South Dakota and Montana so stay tuned, I'll fish both along the way and returning home!
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Re-Reading the Rise
In his 1976 book, In The Ring of The Rise, author Vince Marinaro has this to say about the riseform of feeding trout:
“Unfortunately, the riseform, important as it is, does not tell the fisherman very much, certainly not as much as he needs to know. It tells him only that a trout is feeding and in a few circumstances it may tell him what kind of an insect is being taken. That is all.
[The riseform does not] reveal the direction from which the rise came. It does not tell how far the trout drifted with the insect before the rise occurred, or on which side of his face the trout has been feeding, or whether he took the insect facing upstream, across stream, or downstream."
Though I thoroughly enjoy and maintain tremendous respect for Marinaro’s writings, my years of experience have taught me that a couple of his observations beg further examination. For indeed the riseform does reveal the direction from which the rise came and, in the case of rivers, whether the trout was facing up, across, or downstream.
To understand how this is so it’s necessary to look closely at the structure of the riseform. Characteristic in all surface riseforms is the presence of a “high” and “low” side. By this I mean that the small waves created when a fish disturbs the surface are not uniform in height across the rise itself. This can be seen in the photo above. It’s quite clear that the tallest waves in this rise—the high side—are on the left. The low side, home to smaller waves, is on the right. (The dissipating waves outside the immediate riseform are from a previous rise.) Draw a line from the low to high side of any rise and that indicates the direction from which the fish came. And the highest point on any riseform always indicates the direction the fish was facing when he rose. In our photo, the rising fish was heading left.
This high/low feature of the riseform is a manifestation of a phenomena we’re all familiar with. Think about what happens when we put our hands in a river. Water piles up in front of them on the upstream side, then drops and smoothes out behind. The faster the water, the higher the pile. Trout rising in a river act just like our hands or any other obstruction. Water pushes up in front of their snouts which causes the high side of the rise (always in the direction they’re facing), and as this water flows around them it drops and smoothes out resulting in the low side of the rise.
In stillwater situations, a similar effect occurs. But unlike in a river where water flows around the relatively stationary fish, here the fish are moving while the water remains still. Their bodies act as an obstacle, causing the exact same high/low effect on the riseform.
How does a knowledge of this phenomena aid our fishing? In several ways. I find it most helpful in stillwater environments; gulper fishing on Hebgen Lake comes to mind. Fish rise virtually every day on Hebgen, but sometimes not steadily enough to allow their path to be predicted by the linking of consecutive rises. Unless you can read the single rise and determine the fish’s path of travel, catching these fish is nothing more than a crap shoot. But the ability to look at a one-off rise and know immediately where to place your fly greatly increases your chances of success.
This skill in reading the rise is also useful on rivers like the Lamar and Slough Creek. Here, the cutthroat and rainbows frequently rise randomly as they cruise long, slow pools searching for food. Being able to predict their direction when conditions don't allow them to be seen underwater is a huge advantage in getting your fly in their path.
Trout rising in back eddies can also present similar opportunities. It’s not always apparent in a back eddy which way a fish is facing, especially a fish that’s milling about. But observing the high side of the rise tells you straight away where the fish is and at what angle he’s facing.
It’s worth noting that simply because we know the direction a fish is facing or traveling when making a rise doesn’t mean that he will remain on that course. Fish on Hebgen and other lakes are notorious for randomly changing directions immediately after single rises. Still, your odds of success are greatly increased through the ability to read the direction of the rise and placing your fly in the estimated path.
It takes time and a lot of practice to consistently pick out the high and low sides of a riseform. Naturally, in the frozen moment of a photograph it’s very easy, but remember that in real time the rise happens in the blink of an eye. The stronger the rise, the greater the discrepency between the high and low sides, and the easier it is to pick up on. Subtle rises, with little difference in height between the sides present much more of a problem. Since many fishermen struggle with simply seeing riseforms at all, looking deeply into their physical structure is unquestionably an advanced skill that requires serious cultivation. Even many pros struggle with this. So don’t be discouraged if you experience difficulty in the learning process. It is hard. But when mastered it provides exceptional satisfaction and can help you catch some truly tough fish.
Here are a couple more photos of rising trout. Can you pick out their direction of travel?
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This is April
Four aspens in a snowstorm, photographed a few days ago at Fir Ridge, north of West Yellowstone.
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