Back to the Basics

by: Benji Sorenson

Sometimes in the world of fly fishing things get complicated.  Is my tippet long enough?  Is it strong enough?  Is it too strong and therefore too thick, spooking the fish?   What hatches are coming off?  What stage in the insect lifecycle are the fish keying on? Where do the fish hold?  What time of day are they active?

Then there is the massive fly box you bring along to match any hatch that could possibly come off.  You have so many choices but it all comes down to reading the conditions just right and putting the right combination out on the water.  You try to put it together and sometimes it works out just like you pictured in your mind, but still there are times the fish confound you and leave you scratching your head.  To think of the lengths we go to in order to outsmart a slimy, wiggly, little animal that probably has a brain that would fit comfortably in your thumb.   I enjoy this pursuit and I actually kind of feel smart when I fool a wily pea brained trout but sometimes it is fun to get away from the complex world of fooling pressured fish that have seen it all and head up into the mountains.

I had the pleasure this last weekend of doing just that.  I hit the road in the afternoon knowing it was about two hours to the river I was hoping to fish.  It was an amazing trip even though it was fast and reminded me what fishing was all about, simplicity.  I threw my gear in the truck at 2:30pm and was on the river by 5:00.  On a normal day trip my gear could include waders, boots, two or three rod and reel combo’s for different presentations and conditions, a net, a large fly box, and a fishing vest loaded with various items like tippets; leader; clippers; forceps; strike indicators; more fly boxes, dry fly floatant; and reconditioner.  But on this trip all I needed was my three weight rod and reel, a small fly box with a couple foam grasshoppers, and an extra tippet, just in case.  

There are several reasons the fish in these mountain streams receive far less pressure than their low land cousins and I quickly learned that the first reason is washboards.  No nothing to do with laundry, it has everything to do with the condition of the roads that lead you into these off the beaten track locations.  On this particular trip I endured 32 miles of teeth rattling, gut wrenching, motion sick inducing, curvy gravel road.  I was only fishing 75 miles from my house and while the first 43 miles took about 45 minutes to travel, the remaining 32 took an hour and a half.  Ah but the air was clean, the water was clear and the fish were hungry. 

On these rivers there is very little thought needed as too what is actually going on in the fish’s minds.  They live in a place where insect hatches are not near as prevalent as in the lower elevations.  Because of this I think they become more instinctive eaters rather than selective.  They don’t really examine a bug as it floats over head, in their mind if it’s in the water and smaller than them it is a prospective meal.  For instance I did not see a single grasshopper along the bank on this trip and yet that is all I used and I caught fish all evening.  Another fun thing about fishing in these locations is that pretty much every place that you look at on the river and think “There has got to be a fish in there,” there is.  Each boulder had a hungry fish or two behind it and they jumped all over the foam grasshopper.  Every deep slot had several more fish lying in wait, and at the bottom of each riffle there were fish of different sizes waiting for the buffet to come to them. 

I fished for about four hours that evening before preparing myself for the rough ride back home.  In all I caught 18 fish in that four hours within about 50 yards of river.  Most of them were in the 10 inch range but a few were between 13 and 14 inches.  Those are very respectable mountain stream trout.    But the thing I took away from this trip was that this was the way I remember fishing being when I was a kid.  Nothing complicated about it, just fun.