Fly Fishing: Pretty Day, Pretty Crick, Pretty Trout

First cast I missed a really small brookie; next cast this fat female blasted the #16 Orange Stimulator and...for the next couple hours we enjoyed some of the fastest, bestest little crick fishing of the season. Since this was the first trout of the day and a particularly fat one at that I snapped a quick pix before handing the rod to Gale who promply hooked an equally fat one a few yards upstream. Then it was my turn and two or three casts was all it took--although this one was teeny-tiny compared to the first two. No matter, big ones, leetle ones, continued to attack the Stimi often three or four to a run. The males are especially colorful since spawning is just around the corner in these high country cricks. But even the tinest were fat and healthy and I would suppose happy, at least before and after the ordeal of being stuck on a hook for a few brief moments.

Away from the crick the air was sultry, way too summer-like for our tastes but with our feet in the chilly crick it seemed more fall-like, quite pleasant actually. For a short time the wind kicked up and made for tricky casting but then the wind gods decided to take pity and the stiff breeze suddenly morphed into just a whisper making a hot afternoon all that more comfortable.

What with fresh elk tracks in the sand, the shimmering crick framed in flaming aspens and willows beneath your typical wide, blue, cloudless Big Sky, the already snow-splashed granite peaks of the Beaverheads for a backdrop, trout on the take, the dogs behaving (sort of anyway) for a change...hell, can't beat it.  

Tough Walking, Tougher Fishing, Troublesome Mosquitoes But...

...all in all seems a small price to pay for the chance to gaze handsome trout such this one. The best of the best of high country cricks is often found in the meadow sections. Many of the best meadows are wet, full of holes, some deep and large enough to swallow a moose and worse, hidden like land mines amid the tall grass. Little wonder Gale carries a big stick, eh?

Some meadow streams are wall to wall trout, many on the small side due I suppose to overcrowding a mostly sterile environment. Others, such as this one, hold fewer but fatter trout on average. 

Not many, however, produce trout quite so handsome as the cutthroat pictured above. 

Yesterday we spent a couple hours stumbling about the mud and hole-pocked meadow, amid a nasty swarm of hungry mosquitoes. All told we spied probably only a dozen or so brookies and cutts, managed to not spook and actually cast to about half and landed only about half those. No where near the sort of fast fishing we've come to expect from most high country cricks but you won't hear us complaining. For sure, the skeeters were thick and troublesome, the hidden holes frightening but check that trout one more time...I rest my case.       

Chasin' Colorful Char Is All

What at first sounded like a muffled motor, perhaps an unseen camper's generator, running somewhere down in the trees below upon closer inspection turned out to be the roar of water spilling from the relatively flat, benign meadow into a narrow boulder-strewn chute. Knowing the white and tea-colored, roaring malstrom offered no chance of tempting even the hungriest brook trout to take a swipe at our flies without further ado we opted out.

Later, swinging a pair of soft hackles in the flat calm behind the beaver dams in the meadow, we took turns hooking colorful brookies almost at will. Considering that a 12-incher in this stream puts it in monster class many, no, better make that most anglers couldn't be bothered. Laughable, flat out insane, why would you want to...

But then, why would we not? Brookie fishin' suggests solitude, scenic, simplistic, surprise, serenity, stunning, stimulating, spirited and more. And all that wrapped-up in one nifty package, hell, can't beat it... 

      

At Least We Didn't Need Snowshoes...

With the big storm now history we decided to head to high country, more out of curiosity how much snow the mountains got than any real idea we might just get to fish...after all that moisture it seemed a given the little cricks would be ragin'. But surprise, surprise despite all--up top around Crystal Park there was still at least 6 or 8 inches and you could plainly see a lot had melted--we found them just about perfect. So naturally after having a look around we rigged up a rod and had at it.

The creek is about as brushed in as creeks get. Wall to wall willow thicket just getting to the water is tough finding room to cast at times a cruel joke. But poke around enough and usually we can find a pool or two and hopefully a willing trout or two waiting to nab our offerings.

We almost always rig just one rod and play it something like "three strikes you're out." Mostly because I was holding the rod when we found the first opening I got first dibs. But several good drifts with a soft hackle failed to interest the pools residents so we plowed on deeper into the brush. The next pool looked really good but with all the brush I could not get a decent drift so again we moved on...

The third pool proved to be the proverbial charm. Pitching the soft hackle upstream and letting it wash into the deep then slowly hand-twisting it in a brookie grabbed it but got off as I was manuvering it around the idiot dogs--bless them for their fishing enthusiasm but today the pair were a royal pain in the you know what. But the next cast another brookie grabbed the soft hackle and this time I managed to land it despite the dogs--hooray! 

Handing the rod to Gale she too landed a brookie and then I took a really skinny rainbow. Enough carnage for one spot we continued on. Switching gears we caught trout on a couple different soft hackles, a bead head fox squirrel nymph and Adams dry fly. Two hours and a mile or so upstream we'd had enough--cold, wet feet (why we didn't put on our hip boots who knows) way more than fed up with the damn dogs, and worn out leaping beaver ditches and willow thickets--called it good. 

Several yellow-bellied marmots, a couple sandhill cranes, one way up the crick at the base of the tall mountains, elk and moose tracks galore in the fast melting wet snow, a couple mule deer, two snipe and...hell, dogs excepted, turned out an OK day after all.