Fishing Days – 1- 65, December 24, 2022
It’s early morning Christmas eve day, December 24th 2022. What can I say except that I’m in the mood to write so here we go! At a high level, 2022 was both a good year and in many cases a very challenging year. The goal here is to capture some key learnings, relay some positive experiences and also convey key concerns about a few of our fisheries moving forward. When this blog began at the start of 2022, one of my ambitious goals was to blog about each day of fishing. However, I realized early on that the goal was not practical and frankly unless I could come up with something incredibly profound, it would make for boring reading as well. Last week I logged my 65th day of fishing in my calendar for this year. If you asked me to recount each of those days, I could not, but one of the objectives of this blog is to memorialize the really impactful experiences. Because over time one day blends into the next and eventually one year blends into the next.
Mindset
The mindset for me this year needed to shift and it did. Partially due to some articles I’ve read and mostly due to reflection, I asked myself “Why do I fish and what do I expect to get out of it? Why questions are really hard to answer. Come up with a quick answer at the surface level and there is always a deeper ‘why’ question beneath it.
So here is my take on why I fish. First, I think that most people see fishing as a form of game. It really comes down to the fisherman fooling the fish. And it can be described as a game of chance, similar to playing a card game with friends or gambling at a casino. Our casinos are lakes and streams, rivers and oceans. We improve our chances of winning by utilizing lots of sophisticated gear, making the right fly choices, choosing the right run or riffle and the perfect presentation at the right depth in the water column. The number of variables that influence your success rate are mind boggling! Sure, there are variables in other forms of fishing, but they are compounded when fly fishing. It is so much more involved than merely dunking a worm and that is where the attraction is for many of us. We all love to play the game and win at it, and we use catching fish as the measuring stick. And it can get competitive when friends get together to fish, keeping score by the number and size of fish caught. If you happen to be a “catch and release” fisherman, as are the vast majority of fly fishermen I know, your goal is clearly not to put food on the table, it is about getting enjoyment or satisfaction from playing the game.
Now, for myself and the majority of my fly fishing friends, there are several other factors that influence the enjoyment that we get from fishing and those can vary, but here are a few popular ones. First and foremost for most friends I speak with about this subject, we tend to fish in really beautiful places. Whether it is viewing a flock of sandhill cranes in the mangroves of the Everglades, walking a beach looking for snook or watching a deer take a drink from a mountain stream, the wildlife can be stunning. On my last trip out, I had a flock of wild turkeys, cross the stream right below me and moments later I was admiring a huge adult bald eagle perched on a branch above. Of course, I had my fly rod with me, so it is still about the game, otherwise I would have just gone on a nature walk with a pair of binoculars instead of a fly rod. Still most of my friends will say that they get enjoyment from fishng and that catching fish is just a bonus. Clearly, the incredible scenery we enjoy at fishing venues adds to that enjoyment! Another factor that contributes to my fishing enjoyment, is the unique state of mind that fly fishing puts me in, which is one of total relaxation and total concentration. It becomes 100% of my focus including reading the water, fly selection, choosing where to cast, etc. It is really beneficial for me and my psyche to eliminate a whole host of random thoughts that race around in my mind constantly when I’m engaged in regular everyday life. I enjoy fishing with friends, but my fishing friends whom I’m most compatible with don’t talk while they are fishing. We talk on a lunch break or driving to and from the river. That state of “total concentration” is delicate and interruptions are problematic. For this reason, there are days when I really look forward to fishing alone.
Finally for me, but I’m sure it is true for others as well is the spiritual aspect. I experience this profound connection to nature, which is one way I connect with my higher power. It is like meditation for me, especially when I’m standing in a river and even more so when I’m rhythmically casting. I lose track of space and time. Sometimes hours go by and it feels like minutes. This “state of being” is particularly powerful for me and frankly it has caused my “mindset” to shift in the past few years especially.
Gameshift
So what is this game shift and how does it apply to the question above – “Why do I fish and what do I expect to get out of it?” Above, I covered “the game” and that I like others enjoy it! The other aspects that create enjoyment for me are experiencing nature, the experience of total relaxation and total concentration, and the spiritual connection. It has been my emphasis on these other elements that have caused me to change the way I play and measure the game. First off and perhaps the most obvious game shift is to de-emphasize the quantitative measurement. Think about it, what gets the most attention at the end of the day when you are comparing notes with fishing buddies. How many and how big? I’ve noticed that some of the younger fly anglers seem to be totally focused on size. On any given day they are out there chucking big articulated streamers convinced that by doing so they will catch the biggest fish. For them, the tug is the drug and the bigger the tug, the better. Do I still care about size and numbers? Sure I do, but I have greatly de-emphasized the importance. Size and quantity is still the primary measure of success in this game. Quantity is an equal measure across fisheries, but size is relative. A big trout in a small mountain stream might be 12″. A small tarpon might be 20lbs. Ten years ago if I got skunked, it was enough to ruin my perception of my day because I termed it a failure. This year I had several awesome days that resulted in few or no fish. The most important aspect now is did I enjoy the experience of fishing and perhaps more important, did I learn something. Just like it is for an athlete, is it about winning? or is it about getting better? Because if you are getting better, you are also improving your chances of winning.
Going a bit deeper into “what do I get out of fishing” and more importantly “what aspect of catching fish do I enjoy most?” I noticed that as I began to de-emphasize the size and numbers aspect of catching fish, I decided that “catching”, or netting the fish is not my favorite part. My favorite part without question is the dry fly hookset. Watching the eat and getting the set is by far the most exciting aspect to fishing for me. Next in line for me is getting an eat and a set on a swung soft hackle, followed closely by a streamer eat and set. The best part is watching the eat and setting the hook, which also applies to saltwater fishing. Watching a bonefish or redfish eat your fly on a shallow flat is awesome. Or seeing a tarpon come up to swallow your fly just under the surface. These experiences are the best! Playing the fish is enjoyable, but not nearly as enjoyable unless the fish is sizable, because a lot of skill goes into playing a large fish, especially where light tippet is involved. Landing the fish is no longer that interesting to me. In fact if a fish gets unplugged at the net, I’m fine with it. Unless it s huge, say a 20″ or bigger trout, I don’t really care about having a picture. I have hundreds of photos of 17-20″ trout and I don’t need another one.
Gameplan
On most of my days fishing, I do have a game plan, typically conjured up the day before, but when planning a multi-day safari, the planning starts weeks if not months before. The game plan is just another aspect of the game. Think about that planning that takes place prior to an NFL game. The coaches and staff spent countless hours reviewing film of their competitors and preparing their teams. Strategy takes time to plan and execution requires practice. I never go on a saltwater trip without casting my heavier rods on a lawn days in advance, getting my double haul dialed in so that it is automatic. Do I always game plan? No. Sometimes I just show up at the river and make decisions based upon what’s happening in that moment.
Something that changed for me big time this year is that I realized that you have to be flexible with your plan. You have to be open to new learnings and not be rigid about your plan. The past couple of trips out were good teachers in that respect. I had been coached by a colleague that soft hackles were working particularly well in this one spot. But I found them to be really inconsistent and had to experiment a lot with weight. The fish I learned were on the bottom and I had to vary the weight of the fly in order to get to the proper depth. When I substituted a tungsten bead leech for one of my soft hackles, I had the majority of the eats on the leech. One of the things I like about fishing two flies is the ability to do A/B comparisons. Is there a fly they are consistently eating? Yes? then changeout the one they are not.
While executing a game plan, do you stick with what’s working? The fishing gospel I rarely violate is “Never leave fish to find fish”. Sounds obvious, but fishermen I know will fish a spot, take a fish or two and move on. Sometimes this makes sense, like on a mountain stream for instance. Not always. I was fishing with a buddy on a stream in YNP that will remain nameless and I watched him take 4 cutthroat out of a hole and took his picture with a few that were nice size. He then asked if I wanted to join him and I said, “How many fish have you caught here?” He said, I think I’m at 8 already. He said we can alternate, so I said “OK”, but under my breath I was really skeptical. We alternated and I got 4 and he got 4 more, so a total of 16 fish out of a fairly small hole. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised and somewhat shocked!
OK, let’s say it is now December and you are your planning your trip to the river. You might be thinking streamers and nymphs are a good plan unless there is a midge hatch. You get to the water and there is no hatch. You go with a streamer like a leech that is a good match for the season. It is overcast so you pick a dark pattern. You are picking up an occasional fish and you decide to stick with it. This happened to me the other day. Then I began fishing a spot with a very weedy bottom and decided my dark leech was too heavy. I tie them all balanced with a tungsten bead. So, I switched to a larger pattern with no bead and it was light in color. It immediately worked! I was able to slow my retrieve as the fly suspended better and didn’t get hung up. I landed four fish in a row and then kept the fly on and went back to the water I fished previously and the success continued. In this case I waited for conditions to change before changing out the fly. Sometimes you have to be willing to change out what’s working for something that might work better!
Part of the learning process is to experiment. One inclination I have is to start with the same fly that worked the week before. Makes sense, except the variables have all changed. It may be warmer or colder, the streamflow may have changed. Hatches may be on or off, or the species hatching may have changed. Streamflow is always a bugaboo for me, particularly on my home water in Idaho, the South Fork of the Snake in Swan Valley. Because it is a tailwater, the flow changes and sometimes dramatically one day to the next. These changes have a profound affect on the riffles and runs and water depth. One week the fish are holding and feeding in a spot and the next week they are not.
Water Column
The fact is, you will never have all the info on a given day, but we all know that feeling of having it dialed in. Sometimes, it is luck. Sometimes it is because you made the correct read. Those reads are easier when there is a hatch. You see fish rising to a baetis hatch, you tie on a size 20 BWO which is about the correct size because there are loads of sailboats on the water and you have sized them up. You fish that pattern hard for an hour and nada. Unless the competition with the naturals is super intense, never give it more than 20 casts that are clearly in the zone. Look closer at the rises. Are you seeing more backs than mouths? Is there any porpoising or swirling around the fly? If so, this is a telltale sign that the fish are eating the emergers, just below the surface. Tie on an RS2 of the same size 12″ behind the dry fly and give that combo another 20 casts. No luck? Try a clinkhammer style fly, where the back end of the fly stays just below the surface. If you are seeing mouths, then try a parachute BWO first, then a cripple and finally a spinner. When you are casting at actively feeding fish, the biggest mistake is not changing up.
Fish feeding a foot to two feet deep are likely picking off emergers before they reach the surface and they are an excellent target for soft hackles. You can control the depth by the size and material of the bead, or go beadless if you want them to ride high. Even with the tungsten bead soft hackle, which may go 3′ deep on the drift, the magic happens on the swing because as the line tightens, it will rise slowly toward the surface. This makes trout go nuts!
When fish are feeding on the bottom and are stationary for the most part, like in the seam of a run, they are excellent candidates for nymphing. Often other methods don’t work because they are laser focused on a particular insect in it’s larval or more likely pupal stage and they don’t see or don’t care about anything that doesn’t match the pattern of the bug they are focused on. I wrote another article about the Nymphing Paradox which goes deeper into why I don’t enjoy nymphing as much, but the method consistently catches more fish(hence my paradox!), except when there is a hatch and the fish are looking up.
Remember the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Don’t go insane! Change your fly, change your depth!
Tippet Rings
This topic has come up in other articles, but since it has been a key learning for me in 2022. Although I have used them in years prior it has been in 2022, where they have become a game changer for me and I will go into the reasons why. First off, a little history in terms of how I have come to fish multiple fly rigs. Twenty years ago when I began fly fishing, the standard nymph rig at the time was two nymphs with the trailing fly tied to the hook bend of the first fly. This rig worked really well for me. But, honestly, I had nothing to compare it to either. Then several years later a friend said, I tie my nymph rigs “eye to eye”, you should try it. So I did. Works great if the front fly has a big enough eye to fit two tippet widths. However, neither is ideal because the front fly is not free to move naturally in the current.
When I got started with tippet rings several years back, my first experience was using the tippet ring that came on the end of a furled leader. I became acquainted with furled leaders at a fly fishing expo in Sandy, Utah. Cutthroat Leaders had a booth at the event and they chatted me up about the benefits of using a furled leader. I bit and decided they were the bomb for fishing dry flies. Turnover was really easy. Nylon leaders, especially in cold weather can be really stiff and difficult to turn over at times. The other benefit is really easy tippet changes and further, tippet weight is not an issue either. When tying tippet to leader, or tippet to tippet, a blood knot only seats correctly when the diameters are similar. This is not a factor at all with a tippet ring because you tie each knot to the ring independently and you can use a simple improved clinch knot with each connection. A few years ago I began using tippet rings with nylon leaders too and besides, preserving leader length, the ring enabled an easy way to tie on tags. In the past I resisted the other methods, leaving a long tag on a bloodknot or surgeons knot. But I started using tags for my two fly nymph rigs a few years ago and the tippet ring was the game changer for me. So easy! When a tag gets short, you snip it off and tie on a new one. This year, the game changed again. I was visiting my favorite fly shop, Fly Fish Food in Provo, Utah . Speaking with Lance Egan, who I have great respect for because he is a Utah fly fishing legend, not to mention a World Champion in Euro nymphing circles. He is also just an all around great guy! I was in the shop buying fly tying materials and getting Lance’s advice and I asked about an issue I was having tying two soft hackles in tandem. Since I tie all my soft hackles using barbless hooks, I had an issue with the back fly sliding off the hook bend of the front fly. On a barbed hook it is the barb that prevents this from happening. Lance said, “Do you use tippet rings?” and I said yes, I love using them with nymph rigs. He said, “why don’t you do the same with your tandem soft hackle and streamer rigs? I do and they work great?” That was the game changer right there. I now use tags off the tippet rings for all of those rigs. I was concerned about tangles at first, but in practical use, they haven’t tangled at all. When you rig a streamer or soft hackle with a “front fly, back fly set-up”, changing the front fly out s always a pain. With the tags, both are equally easy. They also move independently, so you will get more strikes on the fly that was the front fly. I put the heavier fly on the short tag and lighter fly on the long tag. This creates good separation between the two and the tag lengths only need to vary by 4-6″ to minimize tangles.
Changes in our environment
One of the difficult aspects of 2023 for me was the impact that warmer weather was having on the fisheries. My favorite in Idaho being the Henry’s Fork. Hotter weather means warmer water. Warm water is not good for trout. They feed less actively and will feed more at night when the water temps are lower. Floating the lower sections (downstream of Ashton) like Ora Bridge to Chester Dam, was a nightmare past mid-July last year. One day in particular, we pulled up to the Ora ramp late morning only to find zero trailers in the parking lot and zero boats on the water. Fishing was horrible and we were completely skunked that day.
It is also my perception and I have read an article or two that say that mayfly populations in the US are beginning to dwindle. My perception from last summer is that mayfly hatches were both fewer and lighter than previous years. A friend of mine and I went over to Jackson Hole in mid-July to fish the Gros Ventre, a popular river that flows into the Snake and is known for good populations of native cutthroat. It was post peak run-off and the flows were good. Fishing was just OK when we arrived and by 11am, the bite had shut-down completely. We had noticed that the water temp had gotten progressively warmer. Two days earlier we had a similar experience on the Grey River. This is not normal!
For 2023, my plans are changing and I will load up my fishing dates with floats in May, June and early July and wade fish higher elevations in late July and August.
New Year’s Resolutions and Fishing Plans for 2023
Resolutions for 2023 include branching out and fishing new places and breaking more old habits and trying new approaches. Included in this plan is to fish more with my new friend from Victor, John, and perhaps discover new fishing friends. I’d like to spend more time fishing Wyoming and Montana, including the Wind River in
The Bahamas will be my dream destination this coming year. The trip is scheduled for May with my brother and his wife and my wife too! The four of us will explore the the Exuma area of the Bahamas. Bonefish will be the target species and it should really be fun!
Yellowstone National Park was a major disappoint this past fall, except for one day. Warming water may have played a role, but I also think the secret spots there are no longer secret and they are in fact overfished and pressured. We also had two extremely slow days on the Green River in Utah. For this reason, the Three Amigos won’t be returning in the fall of 2023.
The Three Amigos will be getting together in the Everglades this October. Mel believes this is the best season for weather and the tides and water temps should cooperate for tarpon and snook. HIs place came through the hurricane just fine, except for some mud in the garage, but that is all cleaned up. Our April trip this year was just OK fishing wise which is why we changed it up. Mel and Reid will visit me in June of 2023, targeting the drake hatch and if we are lucky, the salmon fly hatch. If we add the Green to this trip, we will target the cicada hatch.
Conclusion
Despite some the issues I raised above about warming waters and the health of our fisheries, I thought 2022 was an excellent year. I got my new drift boat, my Hyde Montana Skiff and put it through its paces and my overall impression is excellent! I had some amazing days fishing too, as several blog posts here will attest to.
Bottom line is that I am so blessed to have the means, the good health and the understanding wife who encourages me to do what I love.
