Alex Stulce and I launched the boat a bit after 9 a.m., slipping into a stretch of river that neither of us had ever fished before. It’s a piece of one of the West’s most famous fisheries, but there’s little-to-no information about this particular section online. As Alex observed, that’s either a good or bad thing.
It’s not often that I go into a day of fishing – especially when I’m in the drift boat – completely blind. At the least, I like to get the lay of the land for any downstream obstacles, like fences that might take your head off, or rapids that can sink a boat if you don’t take the right line.
I wasn’t too worried about rapids, because there just aren’t any on this stretch of river. Fences stretched across the water – ostensibly to contain cattle, but in reality, placed there because some ranchers resent the hell out of the fact that the public has a legal right to float on rivers – were higher on the list of worries, but there wasn’t much I could do about it.
So, we set off with next to no expectations, other than that we’d get to see some new country, and maybe find some fish.
The first couple hours of the float passed without any fanfare. Pale morning duns and caddis littered the river’s surface, but there weren’t any rising fish. I stuck a whitefish in a deeper run, but the trout weren’t showing their fins.
Eventually, we came to a bend in the river where the water rushed off a shelf, and another tongue of current pushed down to create more features and holding water than we’d seen all day. Previously, it felt like we were floating in a canal; now, we were on a proper trout river.
The fish responded in kind, but in one of the most unique ways I’ve ever seen. Alex was drifting an Amy’s Ant while I rowed, and something downstream had his attention. The ant was drifting in choppy water, and if I hadn’t been paying attention, I would have missed the nose of a trout poking up just high enough to suck in the ant. It disappeared so quickly I did a double-take, then realized Alex hadn’t been watching. I yelled “set!” and he instinctively raised the rod, putting a fat, angry brown trout in the net.
We switched spots, and I tossed the same ant up into a riffle, right where the shelf dropped into a deep trough.
The brown trout blended in so well with the river that it looked like the streambed itself moved to eat my fly. The movement was so quick, but fluid and unhurried, and once more, the fish’s nose barely broke the surface. In fact, it looked like the trout just opened its mouth slightly below the fly, sucking it in, rather than smacking it the way they usually eat foam bugs.
This fish ran downstream and we had to chase it in the boat. Anchoring is illegal here – your anchor touching the riverbed where it flows through private property is considered trespassing – but we still managed a decent shot of the best fish of the day, so far.
The rest of the day passed in a frenzy of targeting that same kind of water – fast riffles with a drop-off nearby. We rowed through long flats that might have had rising trout in them, if we’d been paying attention. But we were obsessed with these brown trout that seemed to be trying to outdo each other in how quiet and subtle they could be while eating a size 12 foam ant.
On one bend, Alex returned the favor and told me to set when I didn’t even see my fly disappear. He’d watched it swirl around and disappear, and I set on what turned out to be another great fish. A few runs later, I lost what felt like the best fish of the day after another slurp that looked more like my fly just bouncing along with the water in a riffle.
I know not every brown trout eats foam flies with the aggression we see in fishing videos. But to see such large fish sipping them with more hesitancy than when they take tricos was, if nothing else, entertaining as all get out. The challenge wasn’t making a good cast, or keeping the boat on the right line. Instead, it was identifying which bump and jostle of the fast water was a fish eating your fly, and which wasn’t.
For a day that started out with a bit of trepidation, and absolutely no expectations, I’m not sure we could have asked for a better experience.