A Lesson From the Gibbon
Last Wednesday afternoon I went fishing on the Gibbon River. The day was vintage September, bathed in the warmth of Indian summer, rich with blue sky, and nary a breath of wind.
I had chosen the Gibbon for two reasons. One, I hadn’t yet fished it this year. Two, last week marked my thirty-sixth season of fishing Yellowstone Park, and I felt a need to contemplate that passage of time on one of the first rivers that I fished here. So off to the Gibbon it was.
Driving up from Madison Junction I saw few anglers on the river, and I stopped next to a stretch of pretty pocket-water below Gibbon Falls. I strung my rod, pulled on waders, and walked down to the water. It looked inviting alright, just as it did all those years ago. I thought briefly about my first trip to the Park, fishing with my brother and a close friend. We were young then—I was still in high school—and we lacked experience, but the Gibbon was a river that had graciously provided us a modicum of success.
Still strolling memory lane, I began casting to a juicy-looking run that shelved off into a pool of some depth. My fly of choice was a big beetle, given to me by a friend some years prior, and as yet unfished. I made eight or ten casts into the teeth of the run, each drift ripe with expectation, but moved no fish. Wading upstream, I suddenly spooked a sizable brown from alongside a log near my feet. He had been lying in roughly a foot of water.
At that moment I snapped back to the present, and I remembered something I’d learned about the Gibbon over the past thirty-six years. It is this: Rarely is the best-looking water the most productive. Odd, I know, but that’s how it seems to be here.
I think one reason for this is that the Gibbon is essentially brown trout water. And brown trout by their very nature like to feed in off-beat lies. Not bad or second-class lies, mind you, but simply the less-than-obvious spots that frequently get overlooked by anglers. Since the Gibbon has plenty of irresistible textbook runs and pools, it’s easy to fall into a routine of fishing just those spots. But the attentive angler will also fish the shallow pockets formed by rocks and/or weedbeds, the grassy banks where the water appears too shallow (it isn’t), alongside the many logs that grace the banks, and all side channels no matter how tiny.
For the next couple hours, that’s exactly what I did. I probed every obscure, out-of-the-way lie I came across with that big black beetle. A number of them gave up beautiful brown trout. (I still fished the deep runs and pools, too—they’re so seductive how could I not, even knowing better—and I had my usual success. Which is to say very little.)
So the next time you find yourself on the Gibbon, you might think about working all the possible lies, if you’re not already doing so. If your experience is anything like mine has been over the years, you’ll be glad you did.
Incidentally, when I was done with my day and reflecting back on what had transpired, it occurred to me that the biggest fish I’d seen was the one I spooked at the start. Despite the accumulation of thirty-six years of experience and (I hope) knowledge, some things in fishing never change. May it always be so.
Click on view full post to see a couple photos from the day.
A Gibbon River brown recovers after being released. He's lying in about the same depth of water he was caught from.
A pretty Gibbon River trout. Thanks for the beetle, Bucky.
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