Blog Archives - Page 21 of 22 - 2 Guys and A River

October 12, 2015July 30, 2016

8 Tips When You Fall into the River

On more than one occasion, I’ve enjoyed watching my podcast partner, Dave, flail as he has started to head downstream at the speed of the river. Okay, I’ve done it too. Fortunately, neither of us has fallen into a deep, rushing section of river.

Several years ago, Duane Dunham, an outstanding fly fisher in Portland, Oregon, shared with me some tips for getting out when you fall into a river:

1. Don’t panic. Easy for me to say while I’m warm and dry. But even if you cannot swim, you can emerge safely from water over your head.

2. Don’t attempt to stand up too quickly. Wait until you are in knee deep water.

3. Never fight the current. Let it take you, but angle toward shore. Otherwise, you’ll get exhausted.

4. If the water is deep, you can take a breath and push off the bottom toward shore. Do this enough times, and you’ll get there.

5. Keep your feet down stream. If you are out of control and headed downstream, this will help you avoid hitting your head on a rock. Stay in a semi-sitting position. This may be the most important tip!

6. Don’t fish dangerous water alone. Okay, that’s not going to help you if you’ve already fallen into a rushing run. But it’s worth the reminder for strong-headed, stubborn fly fishers (which Dave and I can be at times!).

7. Let go of your fly rod. This allows you to use both hands to stroke towards shore. Obviously, this is not the first step you take. It’s for emergency situations. Better to lose your Sage rod than your life.

8. Learn to swim. Remember, though, cold water is extremely shocking to your body. An excellent swimmer will quickly tire, so don’t get cocky and take unnecessary risks. It doesn’t matter than you are an expert in a warm pool or lake.

Here’s one more that I didn’t learn from Duane Dunham:

Don’t laugh at your fly fishing partner when he’s floating down the river. I’m sure Dave would appreciate it if I worked on that one. Seriously, falling into a river is no laughing matter.

Stay safe, my friends!

October 5, 2015January 22, 2017

Friends Don’t Small Talk, Friends Fly Fish

Friends don’t small talk, friends talk fantasy. A recent NFL Fantasy Football commercial asked the question that, uh, was on everyone’s mind:

“Without NFL.com fantasy football, what would friends talk about?”

I can’t speak for the other gender, but at least for guys, the answer is, really, not much. We cheerily sit in silence like my 16-year-old, who is at complete peace not saying a word (other than “I’m hungry. Can we stop for Jimmy John’s?”) during our 15-hour trip from Chicago to North Dakota for our yearly hunting tradition.

When There is Nothing to Say

I’ve heard that some guys have no friends. I can’t relate. I’m close with my 82-year-old father; we talk every day, even though he lives three states away. He is my father. And a friend.

As an irrational teenager with a reptilian brain, I had no imagination for what our relationship is today. During those years, when we (er, I) struggled to talk without anger or overstatement, my father and I always had our yearly hunting tradition. We always had fishing, something that drew us together even in the sullen years when we had little to say.

When I was in my early twenties, I convinced my parents to let me drag my younger brother along on a week-long fly fishing trip to Montana. Just him and me. A week of fly fishing helped me see him as more than just an annoying younger brother. Today I would call him one of my friends. And he has now begun taking his children on fishing trips.

With my children (two sons and two daughters), fishing helped us transcend their (and my) snarky behavior. Just recently I took my youngest son on a fly fishing trip to the Driftless in southeast Minnesota. Before the trip, he was laconic and uncommunicative. During the trip, we had some of the best conversations yet as father and son.

After the trip, he returned to his laconic self, ostensibly with no memory of our time on the river.

Common Passion, Common Language

With Steve, my partner on 2 Guys and a River, fly fishing created a reason to stay in touch and thus rekindle a college friendship. After school, we went for years with little contact, while he began his family and I skipped through the odyssey years of my twenties. When it was my turn to settle down, we found a way to stay in touch through some common writing projects. I made several trips to Montana, where Steve served as a pastor, and we made it a point to hit the river every chance we could. In more recent years, we began a yearly tradition to Montana to fish the rivers in the Yellowstone ecosystem, sometimes in the spring, more recently in the summer, and occasionally in the fall.

A common passion created a common language. Fly fishing became a way for Steve and me to small talk and “large talk” – to discuss the deeper things of life – our dreams and fears for our children, the hardships of our lives, and our hope for the years ahead.

I realize that many folks would rather fly fish alone. I can appreciate that. But for me, fly fishing is a team sport.

In contrast to the NFL Fantasy Football commercial, friends actually small talk. While they fly fish. And they create a lifetime of laughter, great conversation, and apocryphal stories of 27-inch rainbow trout.

September 28, 2015July 30, 2016

Go-To Gear for All Kinds of Weather

The worst days for fly fishers turn out to be the best days for fly fishing. The moisture in the air — whether in the form of rain or snow — triggers the insect hatches that often trout into a feeding frenzy. A few weeks ago, I witnessed a stretch of river come to life with leaping trout during a brief rain shower. I saw nothing feeding on the surface and caught nothing until the rain seemed to coax bugs and trout from their lairs.

But how do you cope with the various kinds of weather you’re going to face on the river? Here is my list:

STEVE’S GO-TO GEAR

Rain jacket. A few years ago, I bought a lightweight Simms rain jacket. Typically, my budget doesn’t let me splurge for the highest-end stuff (although somehow I ended up with a Winston fly rod!). But it was a purchase I don’t regret. Despite the obvious protection from the rain, the jacket also provides warmth on cool spring mornings and cool fall evenings even when the weather is dry. The jacket is small and light enough that I can roll it up and keep it in my fly vest.

Waders. This seem obvious. But waders also provide their share of warmth in cool weather. When we’re fishing the Driftless in Wisconsin, Dave and I rarely wade in water above our calves. Yet in the spring, we’ll wear our chest waders. It’s not because we’re worried about falling in the little spring creeks we fish. It’s just that the waders provide some warmth.

In the summer, though, you may prepare to wet-wade. I still shake my head when I think about the guy Dave and I saw wearing waders on a little creek in the Driftless on a sunny, eighty degree day!

Wool or waterproof gloves. I’m a wimp when it comes to keeping my hands warm. It’s been that way since I started deer hunting at age 10. So I’ve found that either wool or waterproof gloves work best. The gloves which expose one’s finger tips just don’t work for me. They make about as much sense for me as a screen door on a submarine. But whatever kind of gloves work for you, you’ll be thankful you’ve stashed a pair in your fly vest in the spring and fall. Snow happens. And early mornings and late afternoons can get cool.

Gore-Tex or wool hat. For years, I’ve worn a Woolrich hunting cap because it keeps the moisture off of my head whether it’s raining or snowing. A cotton baseball cap just doesn’t cut it. Recently, I bought a Simms Gore-text hat that I love (whoops, so much for my claim about not buying high end gear!). It’s lightweight, and it’s terrific for keeping my head dry on drizzly days.

Neck gator. This is the newest “gadget” I’ve been enjoying. I thought this would drive me crazy, because I don’t like stuff around my neck. But besides providing warmth, it’s great for protection from the sun. Dave took the above photo of me using the neck gator for sun protection when it was over eighty degrees on the Madison River. Even though I look like a threat to homeland security, the neck gator really works. The fabric is light enough that I never started sweating.

Layers with micro fiber. I’ve become a bit of a micro fiber fanatic. My kids think I must have a deal with Under Armour. But I wear Nike’s Dri-FIT too. This stuff keeps my either warm or cool, depending on the need of the day. Most importantly, it doesn’t soak up moisture. Having several layers of shirts or pants allows for easy adjustments. Besides, it means that you don’t have to bring a bulky coat.

At the end of the day, the goal is not to look like a model in a Simms or Cabela’s catalog. It’s to stay warm or cool, and always dry. Yes, the right gear can make or break your day on the river. Believe me, even a Winston doesn’t cast well when your hand is numb with cold or your body is shivering because you’re soaked with rain water.

September 21, 2015November 8, 2017

Wisconsin Urban Salmon

You fly fished for salmon where?” That’s a question an acquaintance asked me when I described my introduction to fly fishing for salmon in Wisconsin. A few months after moving from Montana to Illinois, my friend, Leon, took me to the Milwaukee River. It was a cool, damp day in October, and the King Salmon were moving into the river from Lake Michigan.

I brought a nine-foot, eight-weight Orvis rod, and I managed to land a couple of salmon which attacked my purple and pink woolly bugger. I also foul-hooked a couple of others. That was inevitable given the number of salmon moving up the river.

What struck me about the stretch of river we fished was its proximity to civilization.

We were fly fishing the Milwaukee River in Estabrook Park, a half mile east of a McDonald’s on East Capitol Drive in Milwaukee, just four miles north of downtown Milwaukee. It seemed odd to fly fish just minutes from the Bradley Center, home of the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks. On a more macabre note, we were only five miles from the apartment complex where serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer murdered most of his victims. Then again, I’ve fly fished in Montana within sight of the spot where another serial killer murdered one of his victims. But that’s a story for another time.

Surprisingly, when I walked down the path from one of the parking lots in Estabrook Park to the Milwaukee River, it was if I had been transported to another world. Hardwood and softwood trees lined the river, their orange and yellow leaves fluttering in the breeze. When the morning fog lifted, the sun seemed to set them on fire. Other than an occasional siren, all I could hear was the sound of the river and the chirping of birds. Once I heard a dog bark. A few times, I heard Leon whoop when he hooked into a feisty salmon a few yards to my right. To be sure, the river did not run as clear as the Yellowstone in Montana. But I could easily see the pods of salmon darting their way up the river.

I’ve caught fish miles away from anywhere. But on this day, I caught fish blocks away from anything you might want — restaurants, a major university, a hospital, and even a professional sports venue and concert arena. No, it wasn’t the Yellowstone. But it didn’t need to be. Those urban salmon didn’t realize they were “city slickers.” They didn’t fight any more or less than the “rural” salmon I’ve hooked on the Wilson River in Alaska. Nor did they have more metropolitan tastes than the big browns on the Madison when it came to the flies I was using to catch them.

It was a good day on the river, and I had plenty of time to reflect on it as the rush-hour traffic slowed to a crawl when we drove out of downtown Milwaukee.

September 16, 2015November 6, 2017

The Heli-Logger Fly Fisher

A lot of my fly fishing memories have more to do with the people I’ve met than the trout I’ve caught. One fly fisher I remember well is Nolan, a heli-logger from Plains, Montana. His job was to fell a tree and hook onto it a cable, which dangled from a helicopter. Then the helicopter would whisk away the tree. It’s an effective method for logging in remote areas, and it lessens the environmental impact. Nolan, the heli-logger, took me on a float and it changed how I approached the sport.

One September in the early 1990s, Nolan was working with a heli-logging crew up the Mill Creek drainage in Paradise Valley, just south of Livingston, Montana. At the time, my parents lived within sight of the Mill Creek Bridge which crossed the Yellowstone River. One day, Nolan showed up at my folks’ house and asked if he could park his travel trailer on the edge of their property.

It would be a lot closer to where he was logging than if he stayed at a campground further down the road.

Floating with the Heli-Logger

Meanwhile, my brother, Dave, and I showed up at my folks to spend three days bow-hunting elk in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness area several miles up the Mill Creek drainage. It’s rugged country, and we were exhausted after two days with warm temperatures and few elk encounters. My dad suggested that we might float the Yellowstone with Nolan on the afternoon of day three. Hel-logger Nolan had brought an inflatable raft with him, and had caught quite a few trout when he floated a stretch of the Yellowstone a couple days before we arrived.

Dave and I thought floating the Yellowstone would be a nice break from traversing steep terrain. Besides, we would be doing Nolan a favor. We could share our insights with this newbie to our river, and it might help him catch more fish.

It turned out that Nolan did us a favor by taking us on the float. Nolan was a predator — and I mean that in the best sense of the word. He stalked and hunted trout. The guy had an eagle eye. Every few minutes of floating, he would say, “There! Do you see those heads popping up about fifty yards to the right?”

“Uh, no. Where are they?”

I thought Nolan was imagining things. But when we closed to within twenty yards, I could see trout heads breaking through the film to sip bugs off the surface. What struck me, too, was Nolan’s sense of anticipation. He seemed to know where we would see rising fish. The guy could read water. He had fished this stretch only once, and I had fished it a dozen times. Yet he knew the river like it was his backyard.

Nolan had done more than spend his entire life outdoors, whether working or fly fishing or hunting. He had learned to observe and see patterns and draw conclusions. One afternoon spent with him challenged me to work harder on reading the water I fished and to be more alert for rising trout. As skilled as Nolan was, he didn’t have a smidgen of arrogance. He was curious about bow-hunting. He hunted elk with a rifle, but he had never tried calling them in with a cow call or bugle to get a thirty-yard shot with a bow. But I still had a hunch that if I could take Nolan bow-hunting, he would teach me a thing or two.

I know that we caught some trout that day. But I don’t remember how big they were or how many we caught. What I remember is Nolan. I think that’s the way it should be. Fly fishing is not just about the fish. It’s also about the people you meet along the way.

September 9, 2015December 31, 2016

Monster Brown Trout Save the Day

It is a late October afternoon, and rifle season has just begun. But the Montana weather is unseasonably warm. So my son, Luke, and I grab our fly rods instead of our rifles and head for the Beartrap Canyon in the Madison River. I’m looking forward to time on the river with Luke. I wish my oldest son, Ben, could be with us, but he is in college a thousand miles away.

Luke and I find spots about thirty yards apart on a favorite run in the Madison about a mile upriver from where it leaves the Beartrap. On his first cast, Luke apparently gets snagged on a rock. He turned twelve a couple months ago, and his fly fishing skills keep improving. But it looks like he’s going to need help from his dad. I see him pulling his rod this way and that way. But he cannot dislodge his fly from the rock.

Time is short today. I make my way upriver to help him.

“Here, why don’t we switch rods,” I offer. “Let me see if I can get your fly loose. I’ll probably have to snap it off, and I’ll re-tie everything. Just go down and fish the stretch where I was standing. I only made one cast.”

I take Luke’s rod and give it a tug or two. I can feel the rock which has snagged Luke’s fly move up the river about a foot. “Luke, you have a fish on the end of the line, and it’s a big one!”

Luke’s eyes light up, and he splashes his way back to me to grab his rod. “Go easy,” I tell him. Let’s see if you can pull him back towards shore out of this run.” For the next two minutes, Luke battles the monster at the other end of his line. Finally, we get it in shallow water, and the fish rolls over in the film.

“Oh wow,” I say to Luke. “It’s a big brown. Did you see that cream-colored body and those red spots? What a monster! Just go easy and I’ll get in position to net him.”

Whatever I do, I cannot lose this fish. So, I move into position, a few yards below Luke, and I get ready as he guides the fish my way. But I get too close too quickly. The big brown senses my presence and scoots around my leg, line and all. SNAP. The line breaks, and the trout is gone.

“Oh nooo! Luke, I’m so sorry.”

Luke turns his back on me. He is angry. “What were you doing?”

Now I feel my anger rise.

“Hey, I couldn’t help it,” I tell Luke. “I couldn’t wait forever to net him.”

Then I throw him a peace offering. “Here, take my rod and keep fishing and I’ll tie a new fly onto your line.” Luke’s back is still towards me as I hand him my rod. Now I see why. A couple tears slide down his left cheek. Oh great. I’ve ruined what should have been an incredible moment for him. My anger melts into a sick feeling.

“Don’t worry,” I say. “There are more fish where that came from.”

“Yeah, right,” Luke mumbles. Neither one of us is convinced there will be another fish, let alone one like that.

So I take seat on the bank and sigh. I root through a pocket in my vest and retrieve the box. As I open it to retrieve a new fly, I hear words that bring back the joy. “Dad, I’ve got one!”

“Alright, keep your line steady, but let him take it if he wants,” I say. Moments later, another large brown breaks the surface, whipping its head back and forth in an attempt to discard the fly caught in its lip. “Wow, Luke, that’s as big as the last one.” After a couple anxious minutes, I land this one securely in my net! I would have swam after it before letting it get away. What a fish! It doesn’t quite fit in the net because it turns out to be nineteen inches long!

Luke goes back to work. Two casts later, his strike indicator disappears and his rod almost doubles over.

“I don’t think I can land this one, Dad.”

“Yes, you can.”

After five minutes I don’t know who is more spent – Luke or the big brown. This one measures twenty-two inches. It is certainly the biggest fish Luke has ever caught on a fly rod. The next forty-five minutes yield four more fish for Luke. All are between nineteen and twenty inches. All but one are browns. The lone exception is a twenty-inch rainbow.

Luke’s arms are too tired to continue, so I put my net away and start fishing. In the next fifteen minutes, I land a couple more browns, both around twenty inches. Then, the catching stops as quickly as it started. The daylight begins to dim, so Luke and I head down the trail towards our truck and towards home. Our time on the water did not start well. But thanks to some big browns, the anger turned to joy.

September 1, 2015October 7, 2016

Stupid Is As a Stupid Fly Fisher Does

Forrest Gump gets credit for the line “stupid is as stupid does.” But I suspect this aphorism originated with a fly fisher. After all, fly fishing brings out the best and the worst in a person’s behavior. I can imagine one fly fisher laughing at another who has just fallen face first into a stream while trying to move too rapidly over the slick boulders beneath its surface and then saying, “Stupid is as stupid does.”

In this post I offer a few of my more stupid fly fisher moments:

Stupid Fly Fisher Hiking

One of my “stupid” moments happened a few years ago at 10,000 feet above sea level in Rocky Mountain National Park. I was fishing with my brother, Dave, and my Uncle Ivan. Dave I and were in our teens. Our Uncle Ivan was old enough to know better. The plan was to take a short-cut to the upper reaches of a mountain stream which had a healthy supply of brook trout.

You can guess what happened. We got lost.

A half hour after realizing we were lost, my Uncle Ivan feared that our quest would not lead us to the little stream. I simply feared for my life. We had been following a faint game trail. This trail must have been made by Bighorn sheep because it took us over a ridge line onto a steep hillside. Before we knew it, we were hanging onto small Aspen trees to keep from sliding into the canyon below us.

A snowfield loomed ahead. How did we end up here? Stupid is as stupid does.

We finally found a flat spot where we could sit without the fear of sliding down the steep hillside. My Uncle Ivan decided to eat his lunch. I was too scared to eat. Just then, we heard a helicopter and saw it flying up the drainage in between our hillside and the opposite one. We all started waving and shouting, “We need help.” But it never changed direction or speed, and soon it was gone. What were we thinking? Was the helicopter pilot really going to see or hear us? If so, would the pilot really assume we were in trouble and begin some sort of rescue mission? Stupid is as stupid does.

Although my Uncle Ivan resembles a character right out of a Patrick McManus tale, he is an astute woodsman. He scanned the steep hillside and noticed another trail on a bench above us that would take us on a much gentler grade. It took some work to scramble safely up the hillside to that bench. But we did it. We hiked for another thirty minutes until we found the object of our pursuit.

For the next two hours, we caught so many brookies that we forgot about our peril. We fished far enough downstream to find a more substantial game trail, which led us to one of the trails maintained by the National Park Service.

The fishing success seemed to repress the memory of those scary moments on the side of the mountain.

I didn’t think much about it until a year later when I tried to take my younger brother, Kevin, around Upper Two Medicine Lake in Glacier National Park to get to the “better water” on the other side of lake. Before we knew it, the bank had ended and we were on a steep stone cliff with intermittent seeps of water. We ended up hanging onto scrub brush so that we would not slide down into the glacially cooled lake. I wondered what I had done. With one slip, my parents would lose two sons. Since I’m writing this, you know that I made it around the lake safely.

So did my brother. What else can I say, but … stupid is as stupid does.

August 19, 2015April 23, 2017

Healing Waters – the Story of Jessica, Wife of a Wounded Warrior

Wounded warriors are the heroes among us. Yet so often, they suffer in silence. In Episode 10, we interviewed Dave Kumlien, Trout Unlimited’s Veterans Service Partnership Western Coordinator, about his involvement with the Warriors and Quiet Waters Project. Here is a first-hand account from Jessica B., wife of a wounded warrior, about the impact a couples’ fly fishing trip had on her husband.

My husband, Damein, served in the Army nine years and endured three combat tours with the 82nd Airborne division. Being the leader that he is, he carried the burden from his deployments along with the demands of our family until it became too much to bear. I watched my husband slowly disengage from us, become distant, and wrestle with matters that left him sleepless and bothered. He was hurting.

As a spouse, it is hard to watch the person you love the most go through something you can’t fix. The more I tried to expose the problems, the longer the lengths he went to hide and dismiss them. He was trying to protect us. Damein was trying to figure out how to live with what happened, while I was trying to figure out how to deal with our newly delicate situation.

We moved back to our home state of South Carolina after Damein was medically discharged from the Army. I could tell that he was struggling with all of the free time that retirement had granted him. Luckily, Damein was introduced to a local Project Healing Waters program run by the Mountain Bridge Trout Unlimited Chapter in Greenville, South Carolina. These folks reintroduced him to fly fishing. As Damein got more involved, I could see that there was energy to his voice. For the first time in a long time, he was excited to talk to me about fly fishing.

He told me one night about the opportunity to go to Montana to do some fly fishing with Trout Unlimited Veterans Services Partnership. It was a couples’ trip. The first thing that came out of my mouth was, “Are you sure I can go?” The second thing I said was, “I’ve never cast a fly rod in my life!” Soon after that we left for Montana.

I watched Damein on that trip. I watched him casting in the water. I watched him bubble with pride when he caught his first cutthroat trout. I watched stress roll off his body, and something was very different, but so very familiar. I saw my husband return to who he was—before his life had been affected by his time in combat.

I understood the serenity, the focus, and the silent satisfaction that he found in fly fishing. He was enjoying life, he was enjoying people, and he was surrounded by the most beautiful landscape we had ever seen. It was a sight for my eyes to behold, and I witnessed there what a quiet river and a fly rod, could do for your soul. It was a time of reflecting and reconnecting for us, and I feel like we both had the opportunity to decompress, enjoy each other, and just breathe.

We shared an amazing week with couples who had felt, in one way or another, the same connection to the river that we did. In the evenings, we sat around a fire, we laughed and we cried, sharing stories about the past, stories about the present, and I fell in love with this program. I fell in love with the compassion and the heart behind the work that Trout Unlimited and their partners are doing for our Veterans and their families. I fell in love with the guides who devoted themselves to work with each Veterans’ sensitive needs. I fell in love with the comradery and the brotherhood among the Veterans. I fell in love with the way it brought spouses together, so we could share our husbands’ enjoyment and healing.

We left Montana with a renewed energy for our relationship and in turn, it has reflected beautifully on our family. I hope this program will continue to make a difference in the lives or our nation’s Veterans and their families.

August 12, 2015June 24, 2016

Caddis Craze

The exact arrival of the Mother’s Day caddis hatch on the Yellowstone River is unpredictable.

As its name suggests, the hatch often peaks around Mother’s Day. By then, warm temperatures have caused enough snow runoff so that the Yellowstone swells and looks like chocolate milk. But every so often, cooler temperatures delay the runoff, giving fly fishers a few days to fish during the fabled hatch.

On one of these late April days, I drive over the Bozeman Pass on Interstate 90 to fish a favorite section of the Yellowstone below the Pine Creek Bridge. As I walk down the river along its east bank, I enter a stretch where huge cliffs of dirt and rock loom over the river and obscure the view of the Absarokee-Beartooth Mountains. A deep, narrow run flows right beside the bank.

The caddis are fluttering all over the water. In fact, they are climbing on my hat and on the lens of my sunglasses. Every few minutes, these tan bugs seem to come off in waves. When this happens, the run beneath the bank comes to life. The water seems to boil as trout after trout rolls over and ingests one fly and then another.

My first cast is terrible. It is too short, so I decide to lift the line off the water and make another cast. But as I lift the tip of my fly rod, a 14-inch rainbow cruises to the surface and attacks my imitation caddis fly. I land the fish and try it again. My second cast is better. My fly floats a few feet, riding the roller-coaster current before another trout launches an attack. This time, it’s a 15-inch rainbow. For the next ten minutes, this scene repeats itself several times. Every cast gets a strike. I miss my share and even manage to land my flies in a tangle on my hat. You’d think I had never fly fished before. I hate to waste the five minutes it takes to untangle and re-tie my lead fly and dropper. But I have no choice.

For the next hour, I have at least four ten-minute stretches where the fishing is just phenomenal. Then the action subsides for a few minutes until another wave of caddis emerges from the deep.

But now the dreaded wind is picking up. It whips up dust from the dirt bank behind me, and my eyes cannot take it because I am wearing contact lenses behind my sunglasses. The wind also makes it impossible to cast. Even when I land my fly where it needs to be the wind forces it to plough through the water like a water-skier. It’s time to take a break. So, I hook my fly into the little hook near the cork handle on my fly rod. I cross my arms, and hold my rod to my chest. Then I close my eyes to wait it out.

Skills for the Caddis Craze

Suddenly, I feel my rod jerk. Something is trying to rip it out of my arms. I’m so startled that I almost fall into the water beneath my feet. I get a grip on my rod, open my eyes and can’t believe what I see. I am fighting a fish! I quickly realize that the wind had dislodged my fly from the hook on my rod and that the fly had been fluttering in the wind while my eyes were closed. It obviously touched down on the surface of the river. When it did, a trout made its move. After recovering from the shock, I start laughing as I land a 13-inch rainbow.

A few months later, I share this story with Bud Lilly and Paul Schullery. They are at the Magpie Bookstore in Three Forks, Montana to sign their book, Bud Lilly’s Guide to Fly Fishing the West. Bud and Paul both laugh, and Bud says: “Sounds like it didn’t take too much skill that day.”

Indeed, it did not.

Insect hatches on trout rivers are a crazy phenomena. They sometimes drive the trout crazy, and sometimes they make fly fishers go crazy when the trout go into a feeding frenzy but refuse to take an angler’s fly. Or sometimes they will attack your fly when you’re not even fishing! You never know what to expect.

It is part of the mystique of fishing the hatch.

July 29, 2015October 2, 2016

10 Reasons to Fly Fish the Yellowstone Ecosystem

If life was only about fly fishing, then the move was foolish. In May of 2006, I did something that makes no sense at all for a fly fisher. I moved my family from Montana’s Gallatin Valley to Libertyville, Illinois, a community thirty-eight miles north of downtown Chicago. In many respects, Libertyville reminds me of Bozeman, Montana. It is a wonderful community in which to live. But I had compelling reasons to make the move, and I haven’t regretted it. Still, though you can take the fly fisher out of the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, you can’t take the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem out of the fly fisher.

I return to fly fish the Yellowstone area once or twice every year since I’ve moved. Here are my top ten reasons to cancel all your other vacation plans and fly fish the Yellowstone ecosystem.

1. Your choice of blue-ribbon waters

There’s the Yellowstone, the Madison, and the Gallatin. In Yellowstone National Park (YNP), you have the Lamar, Slough Creek, and the Firehole (in addition to the Madison and the Yellowstone).

2. The meal at the end of the day.

You can wrap up your day with a tender cut of steak at Sir Scott’s Oasis in Manhattan or The Rib and Chop House in Livingston. Or, if you want to go with pizza, there’s Colombos in Bozeman.

3. The spectacular scenery.

Nothing compares with the majestic, snow-capped Absarokee-Beartooth Mountains that tower over the Yellowstone River as it flows through Paradise Valley.

4. Bio-diversity.

You can fly fish big rivers, small streams, spring creeks (in Paradise Valley), and even lakes (like Henry’s Lake or Yellowstone Lake in YNP).

5. Ample access.

Thanks to a good supply of public fishing accesses and Montana’s “streamside access law,” you can fish for miles on any of the big rivers without fear of being kicked off by a landowner or arrested by a game warden.

6. Three-season success.

The fishing can be superb in three out of the four seasons. Spring and fall can be as good or better than summer. I’ve caught fish in all twelve months of the year, but winter is slow.

7. The prolific hatches.

From the fabled Mother’s Day Caddis hatch to the sure and steady Blue Winged Olive (BWO) and Pale Morning Dun (PMD) hatches, the trout can become ravenous. Don’t forget hoppers in August.

8. Wildlife sightings.

You’ve got to be careful here, but you’ll have a chance to see everything from bald eagles to sandhill cranes to wolves to deer to grizzly bears. If you fish the Madison inside YNP in the fall, you may get to hear one of nature’s most stirring sounds … the bugle of a bull elk.

9. World class guides and fly shops.

The guides in the fly shops in Bozeman, Livingston, Gardiner, and West Yellowstone all know their stuff. You can get helpful tips and reliable information from them. Better yet, you can book a day float trip or a wade trip.

10. The chance to fish for Yellowstone Cutthroats.

It’s worth fishing the Yellowstone River inside Yellowstone National Park just to encounter these beautiful fish. Some of the bigger cutthroat I’ve caught in the Park have been as fat as footballs.

So what are you waiting for? I hope to see you soon on a river somewhere near Bozeman. Just don’t get too close. I like a little solitude. But please wave at me from across the river.