Bonus Fish.

Day two and rain is in the forecast. We are two very happy campers and expect big things on this particular day on the water. However, with our high expectations we set ourselves up for an inevitable let down. The skies were overcast, the air was chilly, and rain came down. The steelhead for some reason, shut it down. Most likely due to a shift in water temperature that they must not have liked. Throughout the day, covering a ton of water, we witnessed three landed steelhead for a hundred or so anglers. Not very good odds, especially when most of the day was spent swinging flies through great looking water. Adam managed one tug to satiate his addiction and landed a very pretty brown trout while I settled for a six inch creek chub (good times). The rest of the day was spent probing, hiking, swinging, and wading. Adam with a malfunctioning pair of Orvis waders and myself with a slow leaking neoprene booty that left my left leg soaked and frozen much of the day. This post consists mostly of bonus fish from the previous day and random catches and sights from the weekend. 

First Cast, First Light Coho.

My, What Big Teeth You Have.

Intermittent Brown Trout.

Knubs.

It is approaching the time of year when the river starts to exude a wonderfully pleasant odor. That of rotting salmon. Sea gulls, ospreys, the occasional eagle, raccoons, and maggots all feast on the rotting corpses in the stream bed and along the banks. Large dead salmon often get caught up on logs and boulders in the river some of which approach thirty even forty pounds. Others are left on the banks from previous high water periods where they go through several stages of decay. Stages that remind me of a scene from Young Frankenstein where Marty Feldman assumes the position of "presently dead," and breaks into song once discovered. Anyway, the salmon are extremely beneficial to the river ecosystem and also to the fly angler. Aquatic insects will feast on the decomposing carcasses and steelhead and brown trout will begin keying in on these insects allowing one to diversify their arsenal on the river. 

Not Presently Dead, But Probably A Few Days Dead.

A Maggot Feast.

All That is Left is Skin, & Dispersing Maggots. 

Small Browns That Will Grow Up To Become Quite Large.

We spent much of our slow day of fishing swinging flies, slowly getting into a zone, and hoping that a fish would be willing to grab. I tried everything I had in my box. Egg sucking leaches, woolly buggers, tube flies, intruders, and some stinger missiles. I tried all sorts of colors as well, black, olive, brown, purple, red, blue, and chartreuse and then mixed and matched them to no avail. It just wasn't my day. Sometimes, especially on this river, you often latch onto something other than a fish. Mono-filament litters the landscape and is an unfortunate problem associated with fishing. It does not decay and with so many lines entering the water on a daily basis, your are bound to get caught on, trip on, catch, and lose your own line on someone else's lost fishing line. The day before, Adam and I were nymphing a deep run and we each caught someone else's rig. Judging by the size of the split shot and the large hook wrapped with estaz, this person lost more than one rig and we both caught them. The rig was a little excessive. 

Swing, Swing, Swing.

Practicing on a Beautiful Stretch.

More Bonus Fish.

Someone Else's Rig.

A Sparse Chartreuse and Purple Tube Fly Intruder.

Some Previously Caught Steel.

Small Male.

Release.

Adam's brown essentially saved our day. His persistence paid off after he spent some extended time on an outlet of a nice stretch. I, long before, had given up and was searching another piece of water when I heard the hoot and holler of Adam. Netting his fish in the fast flowing water, we brought the brown to some slack water along the bank, where the tube fly was removed from her lower jaw and the fish was released. On slow days, it pays to have patience and the resolve to offer a variety of presentations. Varying the speed of the swing and maintaining constant contact with the fly paid off for Adam. Not everyday is produces steelhead, but fortunately the browns are there as well. 

The Grab.

The Satisfaction.

The Shot.

The Release.

First Frost.

The crisp cold air catches me off guard as I step outside, sending a shiver down my spine. Frozen grass crunches under my feet as I make my way to the truck only to find a windshield coated in ice. The truck takes awhile to warm up and I am still quite cold as I approach my destination. Sliding into a pair of waders my breath fogs up my polarized glasses causing my eyes to water. As I make my way down the path, the sun is emerging through the trees slicing through the fog hovering above the tiny freestone stream. After a few errant casts, the small stream rod becomes familiar once again, like riding a bike, and a roll cast under some evergreens provides me with my first trout. A young of the year wild brown. A perfect contrast compared to the spectacle about to unfold in the coming weeks. The spawn, which will produce next years yearlings, and the coming years adults. 

The first frost of the year means more than just the beginning of the spawning period for brown trout. It means hunting. Hunting for deer, hunting for fish, and hunting for a meal to fatten up for the upcoming winter. As I change destinations, I spy a red tailed hawk on the side of the road with a fresh kill. A groundhog. As I am exiting my car, an older man and his son drag a doe out from the woods with their bows dangling at their sides. A product of their morning in the outdoors. As I make my way into the woods, several gunshots are heard in the distance and a pack of wild turkey fly over head just before a cast produces another wild brown on an orange stone fly. Squirrels run about as they make their way to and from their nests harvesting acorns. A weasel prances about along the opposite bank and several birds sing in the trees. As I make my way upstream, I am just another cog in the food chain, except I am not doing this out of survival, I am doing it to escape. This is why I love to fly fish. 

I've Been Doing This For 35 Years...

A few moments after the final swing and the last dead drift, Adam and I found ourselves with a long hike out. A weekend spent hiking, plowing through currents, and non-stop fishing has left us with weary legs and minds. As we made our back to the truck, our minds refocused from catching fish to what is awaiting in the truck: food. The food is the driving force on our hike, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The trail is our new obstacle. It crisscrossed through the woods, over streams, and under logs. It has been beaten down into a muddy pulp by the hundreds of anglers that have made their way on it over the past month. The river was flowing rapidly as we attempted to ford it for the third time of the day. Small boulders moved under our feet and are pushed downstream by the roaring current as we skated precariously on top of them. As always, things got sketchy in the middle despite the water never getting higher than our waists. Back on dry land, we finished the last leg of our hike up several hills and back into the parking lot where we simultaneously reached for the leftover Wegman's submarines from the night before.

As we hung out on the tailgate of the truck reminiscing on the weekend, an older man approached from the corner of the parking lot. He was freshly out of his fishing gear and like us, reaching for something to satiate his thirst. Except for him, it was a Coors Light, instead of Wegmans and an iced tea. Before long, we were talking about our days on the water, where we are from, and how long of a drive we had. After hearing of our journey's and probably spying the sleeping bags in the back of the truck, the old man proclaimed, "I have been doing this for thirty five years." At the age of sixty five (I would have guessed fifty) he was still migrating to New York in the fall to chase salmon and steel. We talked a brief while longer about the river and the fish that dwell in it. It seemed after thirty five years, the river is still a mystery to him just as it is for us. Some days produced fish after fish on anything you wanted. While others, leave you questioning the ten hours of driving that brought you there. After he departed, my mind began to fast forward. I can only hope to still be slinging it in my sixties like the old man we met in the parking. However, I highly doubt I'll be hiking miles from the truck, crossing rivers, and sleeping in the bed of the truck in a Walmart parking lot.