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3. Tannin-Stained Little River, Page 2

Waterfalls are exactly such super turbulent spots. I've got a sketch in one of my journals that shows how drift-feeding trout were arranged around such a plunge-pool I got to view from high up on a bright sunny day. The short drift lanes were like spokes on a bike wheel, but.. less stable. I don't think the trout like it much either.

The smaller the stream the tougher those plunge pools are. I had that one figured out though, on a little upstate NY stream that was worth figuring it out on. It held unique brookies with bright cream-yellow-orange bellies -never seen that before or since, some breaking 11inches! (One of my apprentice kids wrote me a few years after I'd moved away to tell me he hooked one he swore was 14". It ran him all around the pool before wrapping him up. I swear his letter was actually bleeding, his emotion came through so strong. Or maybe I was bleeding for him lol.)

We fished those plunge-pools by resorting to heavy shot to slice through the turbulence, literally dragging a nymph through, at proper speed. Whap! And you had to react quick -with sharp hooks to get a look at one of those beautiful creatures.

...maybe you will bleed for me...Somewhere above I mentioned a problem trout on the Madison in 1995. As you know, and can see here, these things have a way of staying with you...It is not about all the times you won, though those are important too, but how you played the game. :)

This dry fly guy didn't figure this one out until he was back in the room in Ennis with his note-pad out and had redrawn the whole senario and had an eureka moment.

Large boulder in river. Only a fraction above the water-line...Racing Madison current charging around either side of this huge rock. A rather long slick/pool behind the boulder with a 20+" monster feeding at his leisure...Not a friggin care in the world.

I threw everything I had at this bad boy and nothing, not even serious drag from time-to-time, seemed to interrupt his feeding. I used every casting trick in my bag of tricks and invented a few that day. Sometimes he would rise and give my offering a long nose-to-fly look and then sink slowly back in to his sanctuary, completely unruffled...Other times he would rise and take a natural right after mine was ripped away by the raging current.

After quite sometime, and I'll never tell how long, I went passed the normal and slipped in to the obsessive...To the point it still bothers me today...:) I was gone! Completely over the edge. Once in awhile I would look around like a fugitive making sure no one was watching. Or they weren't sending the wagon for me. :)

When I finally dragged myself away I walked through the shrubs along the river to the path back to the car. But I wasn't through...I put down my rod and rummaged through my vest trying to find something to write with. My brain was still scrambled...All I could find was a ball-point pen. I picked up a hard-ball sized stone in the path and scratched an arrow in it as best I could pointing towards the river...I was coming back for him and needed to know how to find him!

That night I did my drawing. It was like a general planning his company's attack for the next mornings battle. All of a sudden the light went off...We all know that trout face generally upstream in to the current...My fish didn't have to. In fact, as I drew things out, I realized that the currents, after passing the rock, hooked back upstream...He was facing downstream, which was upstream for him! He was facing the current after all but after it had whipped back around.

Now I had watched this same thing happen before on the Au Sable...The foam bubble stream being forced back upstream along some structure carrying all those emerging and dying bugs and delivering them to some fat lazy monster Brown as he lay there with his belly resting on the gravel. But I had gone brain dead here and ended up losing this one...When I finally returned I could not find my marker and was never sure I was ever in the same spot as before.

Understanding the dynamics of what's being presented to you is part of the learning process. Once it is "learned" one never forgets. You solved your physics problem with the proper amount of weight etc to get your presentation to come off in a natural manner for those whirlpool dwelling trout. Are we obsessives? Yes! And then some. Is it fun? You betcha! :)

Spence

I don't really mean this, but I wish you could of seem my drying patch on my vest that day...I had enough dead soldiers drying there, after they had failed, to open a damn fly shop! I don't really mean it, because I don't want to own up to it. :) Ouch!

Love the stories. You guys should be writing for Grey's!

The old time bait guys were deadly. Served those critters up like we do nymphs. Irresistible to the fish and unlike with nymphs, they don't let go. Night crawlers and stonefly "creepers" in the Spring; minnows and crickets in the Summer - those seemed to be their favorite poison. Those guys really loved to 'roll" their rigs along the bottom, sometimes with a Colorado spinner blade rigged above the bait.

My paternal grandfather had a next door neighbor that was an old market duck hunter between the two world wars. Man, could he string up the fish. I remember outings on the Upper Sac when he'd come back into camp just as I was waking up with a creel full of beauties. He learned his craft before spinning rods and never switched from a fly rod. He used the old silk lines and had a ritual. Bait in the morning, let the line dry during the day, and grease it up for the evening dry fly fishing. It worked out pretty good for me because since he was done so early, he could give me lessons before lunch and beer cooler time. I can still hear his lessons, "Flip it out into that current tongue up against the rock. Let it settle. Feel it tapping the bottom? Good, let it work... No! Never set when you feel a tug! You'll miss 'em like that last one. Instead give 'em slack on the taps for a few seconds. Slowly bring it taught and if you still feel anything, set the hook. Then you're in business!" By the time I was old enough to really get into fly fishing, we had become aware of nymphs. The learning curve was less mysterious and much faster because of those early lessons.

Oooooo... good story, Spence.

"He was fishing water, not drift lanes." -from my thread "Recipe ..." link provided above.

Yes, that's where the fun really begins, when mind and body both are engaged.

Speaking of bleeding... A while back I fished with a very serious and very good dry fly fisher (20/20 guy) who plied the Delaware like it MATTERED. Late one evening I met him on the trail back to the truck and he had this wild banshee expression on his face. He saw me and just blurted out "I...I...just...couldn't catch them!!!!" I thought he might burst into tears. This guy had accomplished quite a lot in his life, yet I could see that this MATTERED.

Kurt I still "bait fish" -but with nymph ties, bc indicators are for shallow water in my exp. At certain times, knowing how to drift a shot string will put you in business.

It's a balance of aggressiveness -required in a predator -with patience. And this takes "wherewithall" = everything to bear on the subject. It's not the same as "obsession".

Surprising spots: Once, as a student, on a shocking run on a small stream we came to a long foot-deep sand flat with ONE softball-sized cobble sitting in the middle. "There'll be nothing here, can we bypass it?" I naively asked. My Prof said, "No. There won't be a fish here, but.. in science the null is just as important to document." We shocked through and from that little cobble rolled up a 9" brown! I learned two lessons that day.

Try searching through the water with some brightly colored streamers on an off weathered day and see what happens. If there are some other toads in there this might help you find them. And yes, off colored water does allow for a little less sneaking around, for it impairs their sight a little. But, with that said, trout can enjoy murky water and the food that it provides. If the river is constantly murky though, i don't know if that's necessarily a good thing.

Good stuff Paul!

Kurt...I would of loved to have shared a few "pops" with your grandpa. To me this is what culture is all about...The passing down of some hard earned knowledge. We were lucky to have a couple fellas in our lives who took a moment to share with their grand children...What is it about grandpa's and their grandsons? They didn't seem to have the same relationship with their own sons??? At least this was true in my case.

"Man has no nature, only a history." Ortega Y Gassett.(sp?) He forgot that some of us were lucky enough to have to have shared some special history.

I have to let you guys go...I need to finish up some paperwork for the trades I made today before I can get out of here for the weekend.

Spence

Ugh...I wont be going anywhere this weekend. Swamped. Can you tell? My eyes already feel like the proverbial holes in the snow.

I live in brook trout heaven. Most of the waters around my home only have brook trout. No other type of fish live in these waters. Only brook trout. They feed on insects almost exclusively. Even frogs are rare. Yes....the fly fishing is easy.

On top of that, there are few fishermen. It's rare for me to meet another fisherman except on larger bodies of water and then it's from a distance.

One thing I did notice....even if the fly fishing is super easy, the fish are wary....especially the big ones. The reason is simple.

Fish do not grow like humans. They spend their whole live getting bigger. This means that contrary to humans who are born with large eyes and other organs of perception that are almost adult in size, the fish's perceptive organs increase in size. No...they do not get bigger like we think. Each individual cell does not get bigger...there are just more of them. More eye cells, more cells for smelling, more cells along the lateral line, more cells for tasting. Larger fish are even faster than smaller fish.

It all adds up to the fact that a larger fish is better at detecting smells, vibrations, seeing things and tasting things. This adds up to a fish that is harder to catch no matter where it is and no matter how many fishermen it meets in it's life.

Recently released fish are easier to catch because they have spent their lives seeing movement above them. The movement also means that food will appear. They live in a noisy environment. It takes time for them to become wild. Where I live, no such thing as a stocked brook trout. There are a couple of places in the downtown area where brook trout are stocked and they are easy to catch. I've heard of old hatchery fish being released and of people sitting in boats a few yards from the released fish catching their limit of 20 trout.....all very large hatchery fish....lol. Now when the old hatchery fish are released near cities, it's done in secrecy.