“Capturing Nature in its essence is not easy- your work becomes a dance between light and weather…”
Annie Liebowitz, Photographer
Cold mornings. A trace of snow up high. Leaves are dropping. The Larch trees are golden and glow when the sunlight finds them. Bull trout are spawning in the creeks. It’s Fall. There are still a few more weeks of dry fly angling left. Maybe a little more. It’s the best time of year to be on a river. The angling crowds are gone. The campers have thinned out. It’s real quiet out there. And the afternoon light is rich. And exceptional dry fly fishing is all about the light…
Many miles put in this September wading tough clear freestone rivers with slippery boulders. With the Fall waning light, long shadows and cooler temperatures, hatches, if there are going to be any, are an afternoon event. That’s when the trout become most active and are most likely to rise. That’s when the river comes alive. That’s when a good one may show itself and the time walking and searching can pay- off.
A wild, native trout (Cutthroat) caught on a dry fly while searching in the Autumn afternoon light. Treasure found…
“Let’s Get Ready to Rumble!” – Boxing ring announcer, Michael Buffer.
Rumble river. I never see anyone there. I notice the occasional boot print in riverside mud or silt but it is usually near a road access. And I did spotted a big foam dry fly hanging from a branch by some lower river homes. However, as I walk km after km upstream I generally see no other traces of significant angling pressure. The fish, colorful Cutthroats, have few or no hook marks on them. Most don’t look like they have been handled at all. That’s rare for most regional trout streams. They also fight with every cell in their body. Fish that have been caught over and over simply give up once hooked; offer little resistance; have no spirit. The trout in this river are different. They are more than willing to Rumble and use the fast water, boulders, willow branches, and log jams to their full advantage. Landing a sizeable one is always an accomplishment.
The river is really a stream. It is relatively small, often willow lined and has a significant gradient. Most sections are fast but not all. It has some well defined pools. When insects are on the water, which seems almost daily, trout can be spotted rising in slower sections. The abundance of bug life produces thick and strong trout. The river water is clear. New Zealand clear.
Clear water, challenging terrain, little angling pressure, insect life and sizeable, powerful trout that are willing and ready to Rumble…
On most days forest fire smoke is in the air. All rivers are at historic lows. Reservoirs are emptying. Angling on all rivers shuts down after 2 pm due to poor flows and high afternoon temperatures. This now seems to be the summertime norm. We need rain. We need a lot of it. We need a Rainmaker…
I’ve been fishing where the water is still cold in the headwaters of rivers at elevation. It seems with every new angling season you have to travel further and higher to find water that numbs your feet and legs.
Late June in SW Alberta. A Cutthroat stream. Clear water. Cold water. The weather was suppose to be mainly sunny today but for the most part it was a mixed sky. Mainly cloudy with some sunny breaks. It made wet wading chilly. My feet quickly became numb. River temperature was 49f in the shallows. It felt much colder in the deeper water when I crossed sections of the river when making my way upstream. Sunny breaks heated the riverside sand and fine dry gravel beds. I knelt down in these soft spots absorbing the heat radiating from the ground and watched a number of pools for rising trout. I only saw two slight surface disturbances all afternoon. Fine Cutthroat they were.
There were a variety of bugs but not a lot of anything. The sum total of PMDs, Drakes, Yellow Sallies and the odd Golden Stone was not enough to entice many fish off of the bottom. Not enough for the river to come alive. Hopefully that will change in several days when the water temperature breaks through the 50f mark. I’ll come back then.
I covered a mile or so searching the clear water. The Cutthroat were caught on a size 12 Drake dry tied on an emerger hook; body of the fly breaking the surface. The river was low for this time of year. All rivers are low. I fished barbless for a quick hook release. I’ll do that all season. Alberta once had a barbless policy. No more.
“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”
Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Cormac McCarthy. One of my favorite writers. I’ve read most of his novels. My favorite, Suttree, and then the border trilogy: All the Pretty Horses; The Crossing; Cities of the Plain. He recently died at age 89, probably writing to the end.
The past few days I visited some mountain streams that are “older than man” and casted dries to Cutthroat, Cuttbows and Rainbow trout.
“WELL THAT FLY DIDN’T WORK and he’s still rising. Change fly! Let’s go smaller. Nope, no response. Try again. Wow, same response. Change fly! Let’s try an ant. Nice cast. He’s looking. Closing in. Nope. He rejected it the last second. Wow, tough fish. Throw the ant again. Hmm. No go. Change fly! Let’s tie on a Klink/Emerger. No response to that. Change fly! I see some Drakes in the flow but the fish is ignoring most of them… but not all. Try this CDC version. Nope, he didn’t even move over to take a look. Toss it again. Change fly! I have a Drake Emerger pattern. Let’s try that. No luck. Maybe we need to rest the fish. Let’s go upstream. We’ll come back later. Hopefully he’ll still be rising then…wow, picky Cutthroat. Hard to walk away. Look at him still feeding. Some naturals passing overhead. He only rises to some; not others. Passing on the Duns, sometimes…maybe he’s mainly cueing in on Emergers. Well he just took a Dun but then let several others drift overhead. He ignores some, then eats the odd one. Yikes, challenging trout…we will come back.”
Cutthroats. Simply beautiful. Some say they are easy to catch. Sometimes that’s true. Sometimes, however, they are as challenging as any other trout. It depends on the river. It depends on how much food is in the flow. It depends on angling pressure. It depends on water clarity. It depends…
Late season low water can make things extra challenging. You have to try and stay out of sight; and don’t move too fast; and don’t drag that dry fly; and don’t do this, or that, or they’ll disappear. They’ll go hide in a log-jam. Remember, Cutthroats have been around for several million years. They’ve survived. They’re always on alert…
one of Roman’s best
I recently spent four days fishing with a good friend, Roman, on different sections of one stream. A clear, pristine cutthroat stream. We pulled-up fish in the faster water on dry flies and came across several fish rising occasionally in slow water. The slow, flat water fish often required multiple fly changes in order to be fooled and a few tough customers couldn’t be enticed. With our fly selection we went big, we went small, we went slim, we went chubby, we tried low-riding patterns, emergers, terrestrials of varying sizes, a nymph dropper, lighter tippet…We caught many but a few couldn’t be fooled.
Some say Cutthroats are easy. Sometimes that’s true. Sometimes, however, they are as hard and challenging as any other trout. Here are some photos from our four days of walking clear water in pursuit of this beautiful trout. All Cutthroats were taken on dries. All released…
Crisp in the mornings. Sun is arcing low. Noticeable long shadows mid-afternoon. Still windy. Still mainly hanging out in the mountains trying to escape the wind. Still fishing dry flies. Did spend one half day on a tailwater river out on the Plains sight-fishing a slightly sheltered back bay.
When you head out to a river for a day or evening of angling you often have a set of parameters that you operate by. For some people these criterion are broad. For some they are very narrow. The longer you’ve been at something like fly fishing, or any other pursuit, the more you have probably refined the way you practice it; the way you go about it; the path you chose to take. Over time you focus more intensely on some things and discard much of the rest.
Here are some fine trout fooled with small dry flies: mostly ants, beetles and pmd’s in contrasting landscapes and rivers. Some wide flat flows in open austere terrain and smaller clear ones in a treed mountainous landscape. Trout, from the Plains to the Rockies…
