American Angler Sept Oct Issue sample

Bright Light Steelhead / The Great Fall Drake / Best Selling Permit Flies

THE FLY FISHING AUTHORITY

TOUGH FISH British Columbia king salmon Russia’s giant Atlantics Upper Columbia bull trout False Albacore: From the boat & the beach

LABRADOR

Brook trout on mice

CANADA’S

Best salmon pool

VAYA

â„¢

M A N U FAC T U R E D I N M O N T R O S E , C O LO RA D O

ABELREELS.COM

Features

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 • VOLUME 42 / ISSUE 5

Russia’s rugged Yokanga River offers a giant race of Atlantic salmon. Here, a good one is held for release. —Matt Harris image

36 YOKANGA Russia’s Kola Peninsula and the Yokanga River offer a race of giant Atlantic salmon like none other. —Matt Harris

44 AK 47 KINGS If you want to get “spooled” chasing king salmon in the Pacific Northwest, this is your kind of game. —Dana Sturn

48 FALSE ALBACORE Bloody knuckles and burnt-out reels are the norm when chasing false albacore from the boat or from the beach.

WAITING FOR ALBERT Earning your albies from the beach. —Stephen Sautner

ALBIES FROM THE BOAT Hang on to your fly rod and watch those knuckles when the reel turns. —Beau Beasley

58 MOUSIN’ EAST Labrador’s enormous brook trout, all on top. —Gary Kramer

62 “KOKE” ADDICTS In Golden, British Columbia, looking for a steelhead stunt double. —Greg Thomas

COVER: King/chinook salmon test the limits of anglers’ endurance . . . and their tackle. When one comes to the beach, it’s a hard-won fish. — Adam Tavender image

Departments SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 • VOLUME 42 / ISSUE 5

4 SIGNATURE Atlantics, kings and steel.

6 OUT THERE

Dreaming of steel, and releasing steel, in the Pacific Northwest.

10 SOUTH FORK SNAKE

CUTTHROAT RECOVERY

Biologists are trying to save native cutthroat by trucking rainbows out of Idaho’s South Fork Snake. —Kris Millgate

12 WIRE ART Bob Baker’s Islamorada dreams expressed through wire sculpture and driftwood. —Tom Keer

14 TYING FOR THE CRUNCH S.S. Flies sales trends offer a window into the angling world. —Jerry Gibbs

18 TOP RUN:

ALDER ISLAND POOL

If you want a big salmon on the Grand Cascapedia, you can’t beat Alder Island pool.

—Raymond Plourde

20 MEDIA Sautner’s A Cast in the Woods, Spitzer’s Beautifully Grotesque. —Ryan Sparks

21 GRASSROOTS Access Unlimited’s specialized equipment gets disabled anglers on the water. —Joshua Bergan

22 BRIGHT LIGHT STEEL How to fish steelhead when the sun is high.

—the editors

24 CONSERVATION What’s behind all the glyphosate hysteria, and why should it worry anglers? —Ted Williams

28 HATCHES Hecuba is an overlooked fall drake that often outfishes the more popular green drake.

—Dave Hughes Fall fishing in the Pacific Northwest means spawned-out salmon and bears.

Anglers must keep their eyes on the water while their ears search for any unseen presence behind. Here, a grizzly’s tracks pass a spawned-out chum salmon. — Adam Tavender image

32 DESTINATIONS Japan, for golden char, rainbows, and taimen.

—Jess McGlothlin

72 WATERLINES

Fighting a brown trout into the backing without ever stinging it with a hook.

AA

SIGNATURE by Greg Thomas ®

I

LIKE NOTHING MORE THAN swinging flies off two-hand rods for salmon and steelhead. Doing so offers the sensation of hunting for an elusive animal in primitive fashion, which makes an encounter with one of these fish, at once, an unforgettable experience and a sort of miracle.

Unfortunately, these encounters are less frequent for many anglers, whether they pursue Atlantic salmon in the Northeast or Pacific salmon and steelhead in the Great Northwest. In fact, it’s been two years since I’ve traveled a mere two hours from my home to swing flies for steelhead on Idaho’s Clearwater and Salmon Rivers, a personal choice based on diminishing runs and deep concern about pestering native fish that, many people say, should be on the endangered species list.

Go up and down North America’s coasts and you’ll find examples of these fishes’ demise, especially acute for native Atlantic salmon, king salmon, and steelhead. Biologists don’t have all the answers but these factors seem to hold keys: farming of Atlantic salmon in Eastern and Western Canada, which spreads disease to wild fish stocks; warming ocean temperatures; dams; and the pollution of oceans with hatchery-raised salmon, which compete with native fish for limited food supplies. News flash: When you buy a “wild” salmon at a grocery store, it likely began life in a hatchery.

One of the greatest atrocities is British Columbia’s Thompson River, which offers, possibly, the greatestgenetic race of steelhead on the planet. These fish commonly reach 20 pounds and they take skated flies on the surface. Unfortunately, these fish must ascend the Fraser River to reach the Thompson, and in doing so they are systematically extracted by a commercial–tribal fishery that is designed only to take roe (eggs) from chum salmon. These First Nations and commercial fishermen regard the

4 I AMERICAN ANGLER

incredible Thompson steelhead as bycatch, meaning they couldn’t care less if this unique race perishes, and in some cases brazenly display dead Thompson steelhead on websites and social media platforms. It’s clear that Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans is, as some conservation organizations like to say, “Managing Thompson River steelhead to zero.” Fifteen years ago about 5,000 fish returned to the Thompson annually. Today, fewer than 150 fish make it to the spawning grounds.

So, if these fish are in such trouble, why is American Angler dedicating pages to fishing for anadromous species, possibly placing more pressure on fish that may not need it? Don’t think that we haven’t asked that question. When it comes down to it, however, how can these fish be saved if people don’t understand their value?

There is hope. In Washington State, for example, the Skagit River—historically Washington’s most treasured steelhead water—has been reopened to catch-and-release spring fishing after seven years of mandatory closure. And in 2018 the Washington legislature decided to phase out Atlantic salmon farms by 2025, after 250,000 of those non-native fish escaped from a net pen and flooded into Puget Sound.

Could this happen elsewhere? Would British Columbia, and Eastern Canada ever consider their native fish as more valuable than those hatchery-raised and chemically treated Atlantic salmon?

Could pressure from the angling community and other environmental groups force the Department of Oceans and First Nations to reexamine the Thompson steelhead conundrum before it’s too late . . . if it isn’t too late already?

That’s the hope. When you read about native steelhead, king salmon, and Atlantic salmon in these pages, enjoy the adventure, but please do so while asking yourself a single question: Is there something I can do to save these great fish?

GROUP

PUBLISHER

John Lunn A S S O C I AT E

PUBLISHER

Michael Floyd

(706) 823-3739 • mike.floyd@morris.com EDITOR

Greg Thomas ART

DIRECTOR

Wayne Knight D I G I TA L

CONTENT

MANAGER

Seth Fields ADVERTISING PRODUCTION C O O R D I N AT O R

Nina Eastman ADVERTISING

REPRESENTATIVES

Sr. Account Manager Linda W. Wood (717) 329-1128 • lwoodangler@gmail.com Crowley Media (216) 378-9811 • amos@crowleymedia.com Cherek Group (307) 635-8899 • cherekgroup@bresnan.net Buchmayr & Associates (978) 462-6335 • buchmayrscott@gmail.com Stone Wallace Communications (512) 799-1045 • jimkstone@gmail.com CONTRIBUTING

EDITORS

Zach Matthews, Dave Hughes, Henry Cowen, Philip Monahan, Chris Santella, Scott Sanchez, Will Ryan CIRCULATION

ProCirc: 3191 Coral Way, Suite 510, Miami, FL Kolin Rankin, Consumer Marketing Director, ProCirc Mike Bernardin, Circulation Coordinator, ProCirc Retailers: To carry American Angler, call (646) 307-7765.

Subscription Inquiries: (Orders, address changes, problems)

1-800-877-5305

americanangler@emailcustomerservice.com www.americanangler.com Back Issues:

(706) 823-3526

A publication of MCC Magazines, LLC, a division of Morris Communications Company, LLC 735 Broad St., Augusta, GA 30901

Donna Kessler Patty Tiberg DIRECTOR OF CIRCULATION Scott Ferguson DIRECTOR OF MANUFACTURING Donald Horton DIRECTOR OF PUBLISHING SERVICES Karen Fralick PRESIDENT

VICE PRESIDENT

Morris Communications Company, LLC CHAIRMAN

William S. Morris III William S. Morris IV

PRESIDENT & CEO

AMERICAN ANGLER® (ISSN 1055-6737) (USPS 451-070) is published bimonthly by MCC Magazines, LLC, 735 Broad St., Augusta, GA 30901. Editorial Offices: 643 Broad St., Augusta, GA 30901. For subscription inquiries, call 1-800-877-5305.

American Angler,® American Angler & Fly Tyer,® Fly Tyer,® and Saltwater Fly Fishing® are registered marks of MCC Magazines, LLC. Warmwater Fly Fishing for Bass & Other Species™ is a trademark of MCC Magazines, LLC. Subscription rates are $21.95 for one year, $41.90 for two years. Canada and Mexico add $20.00 per year (U.S. Funds only). Outside North America add $40.00 per year (U.S. Funds only). Periodicals postage paid at Augusta, GA 30901, and at additional mailing offices. ©2019 MCC Magazines, LLC All rights reserved. Volume 42, Issue 5.

PRINTED IN THE USA

POSTMASTER send address changes to AMERICAN ANGLER P.O. Box 433237, Palm Coast, FL 32143-9616

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

NAUTILUS PRO GUIDE DATA SHEET

Captain Rob Fordyce BIO: 30 yr veteran offshore/inshore guide, 2015 nominated as top “50” fishing captain in the world, placed 1st, 2nd, or 3rd in over 100 competitive fishing tournaments, 1st guide in history to win all 4 major fly Tarpon tournaments in the Florida Keys.

GUIDED ANGLERS TO: More than 4000 giant Tarpon on fly TARGET SPECIES: Bonefish, Permit, Tarpon, Snook, Redfish Sailfish, Swordfish, Dolphin, Tuna BOAT: Haverick HPXS / 37 SeaHunter FAVORITE KNOT: Improved Blood FAVORITE FLY: Tarpon worm FAVORITE RIVER/WATER: Florida Keys / Everglades FAVORITE TYPE OF FISHING: Fly fishing giant Tarpon FAVORITE FISH: Tarpon FAVORITE NAUTILUS REEL-WHY?: Silver King series, light, powerful, indestructible, fast retrieve FAVORITE SAYING: “They eat with the other end” “This is gonna hurt” BEST DAY FISHING: ( NOT BITES) Hooked 47 big Tarpon on fly, getting 27 to the leader BIGGEST FISH EVER LOST: Too many DREAM DESTINATION: Great Barrier Reef Australia WHO WOULD YOU LIKE TO GUIDE ONE DAY?: Clint Eastwood, again WHEN NOT FISHING?: I ’m hunting , at the gym, or with family WHAT DO YOU LIKE BEST ABOUT NAUTILUS REELS?: They are lightweight to match modern light rods, but still remain structurally sound with great sealed drags AND ONE TIME A CLIENT: An 86 yr old client hooked a 3 lb. Snook on fly, which was then eaten by a 130 lb. Tarpon, which was then eaten by a 400 lb. Bull Shark. The hook pulled during the shark attack but while reeling in the original Snook that still remained on the end of the line thru the craziness, a 200 lb. Lemon Shark came out of nowhere and bit him off the line. ONE CAST GOT 4 BITES which just kept getting bigger!

NAME:

EXPERIENCE NAUTILUS® Nautilus ® Silver King CCF-X2

NAUTILUSREELS.COM 305.625.3437

OUT THERE LOCATION: Olympic Peninsula, upper Quinault River TARGET: Wild steelhead NOTE: When you’re a photographer who shoots wild steelhead, you have a lot of downtime to check out your surroundings. On this day the water had dropped fast all morning, exposing fresh sandbars and rock. I found a small stick and etched a representation of what we were looking for. I framed up on a tripod and waited for the angler to fish through and into the frame. I don’t know if it’s an image that speaks “a thousand words,” but possibly, a thought or two.

PHOTOGRAPHER: Jeff Edvalds, www.jeffedvaldsphoto.com

6 I AMERICAN ANGLER

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 I 7

OUT THERE LOCATION: Babine River, British Columbia TARGET: Steelhead NOTE: British Columbia’s Babine River is in a roadless wilderness where access comes in two versions: stay at a lodge or do your own thing and raft the river. DIY requires rowing skills and camping knowledge, particularly how to avoid the valley’s numerous grizzly bears. The season is short but, depending on weather, any week in September or October could be the lucky one. With their exceptional girth and length, Babine fish are the Clydesdales of Skeena country steelhead. There’s potential for a 30-pound sea-run rainbow to sip your tiny skated dry fly . . . surely one of the greatest experiences in fly fishing. In this photo, Dean Bell safely releases a feisty September steelhead back to the river.

PHOTOGRAPHER: Adam Tavender, www.adamtavender.com

8 I AMERICAN ANGLER

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 I 9

AA

HEADWATERS

TRUCKIN’ TROUT

STEMS OF WILLOWS ARE STILL BARE next to Idaho’s South Fork Snake River.

Cottonwoods haven’t budded yet. A bald eagle is perched in one of those cottonwoods, easy to spot on a leafless branch.

The eagle is hunting and it has help—a generator on a jetboat in the river below feeds electrical probes, which send a charge into the water. Fish go belly-up.

Easy pickings for eagles and biologists.

“We are electrofishing over rainbow trout during spawning season to suppress their abundance,” said Patrick Kennedy, an Idaho Department of Fish and Game biologist. “We’re capturing them, moving them into live tanks, and transporting them to local ponds.”

Nets loaded with rainbows swing into a tub on the deck of the boat. What the nets miss—mostly stunned whitefish— floats for a few seconds on top of the current. The eagle talons a surfacing fish and takes off as emptied nets swing around for another haul. The process takes place three times a week and results in hundreds of fish removed from the South 10 I AMERICAN ANGLER

KRIS MILLGATE / WWW.TIGHTLINEMEDIA.COM

MOVING ’BOWS TO SAVE CUTTS IN IDAHO

Fork. It’s ironic: The same fish purposely trucked around the country decades ago and dumped in rivers, including the South Fork, are now leaving the same way they came in—by truck.

The South Fork’s rainbow trout population has more than doubled since 2002, but rainbows are not native. Yellowstone cutthroat trout are. ’Bows compete with cutthroat for a limited supply of resources (i.e., food and cover) and by interbreeding—rainbows can crossbreed cutthroat out of existence.

“I recognize Idaho Fish and Game put them in here many years ago,” Kennedy said. “That was a mistake. I think we’re now trying to fix that mistake.”

Now is an operative word. These rainbow suppression efforts on the South Fork began in 2003, when IDF&G encouraged anglers to take their daily six-fish rainbow trout limit, an effort to lower rainbow numbers and keep native cutthroat off the Endangered Species List. However, the department found anglers reluctant to kill one fish to benefit another, even when it lifted

the rainbow limit altogether. To encourage harvest, since 2010 the department has marked more than 9,000 rainbows with tags worth $50 to $1,000. Only 425 have been turned in. (The tag isn’t visible. It requires harvest with the head scanned by the department). In addition to those efforts, managers screened tributaries to keep rainbows out of certain cuttie spawning beds, but this didn’t prohibit interbreeding on the South Fork’s main stem. The department also tried to mimic a traditional spring runoff—by flushing large volumes of water out of Palisades Reservoir. The department hoped that large releases would destroy some of the rainbows’ spawning efforts, which occur just prior to and during traditional spring runoff. And yet, rainbow numbers have continued to climb.

Idahoan Jeffrey Rand Olsen is an angler who isn’t fond of efforts to cull rainbows from the fishery. His dad, a fishing guide in the 1970s, taught him how to fly fish. He’s fished the South Fork for three decades. He hooks dozens of trout annually. He releases all of them, even the rainbows.

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

rainbows when he’s on the South Fork.

“I take them home and I eat them,” Gabettas said. “People recognize they need to do their part and rainbows need to be controlled, but there are still other people who let them go because they like rainbows.”

Some of those people are guides. They row thousands of visiting anglers down the river annually. Seven outfitters are permitted to guide on the South Fork. One of them is The Lodge at Palisades Creek. It employs 26 licensed guides. Half of them don’t keep rainbows.

“I am sad to say, we have not helped the issue at all on the river,” says Justin Hays, general manager of The Lodge at Palisades Creek. “I can’t make catch-andkill mandatory. That creates a negative experience for guests, and half of my guides will revolt. Older guides get it. Newer guides, they just want fish in the river so they can earn their keep.”

Anglers who keep rainbows and hope to turn in tagged fish for money need not worry about current suppression efforts—Kennedy won’t allow tagged fish to go into the ponds, so every trout netted for relocation is scanned. Tagless fish go to the pond. Tagged fish go back in the river. Even knowing that, Olsen isn’t keeping his catch.

“If they are bound and determined to make it a cutthroat fishery, why aren’t they

poisoning the whole system and starting over?” Olsen said. “The line of reasoning is tough for me. If you’re really going to go for it, let’s really go for it.”

There are many reasons for avoiding extreme measures. One is snatching fin in the wake of the netting crew. Bald eagles, like Yellowstone cutthroat trout, are part of the South Fork. The bird persisted here even when it was on the endangered species list. The feathered population recovered nationwide and left the list in 2007. Talk of the South Fork’s cutthroat population possibly becoming endangered has recreation and irrigation implications that no one, not even anglers releasing rainbows, will tolerate.

“Though they’re both wild, native cutthroat were here first,” Kennedy says. “I would say that’s an important paradigm shift. We need to appreciate the Yellowstone cutthroat population we have here. This is an important population and we’re lucky to have it. It’s important that we help it persist.”

Outdoor journalist Kris Millgate is based in Idaho, where she runs trails and chases trout. Sometimes she even catches them when she doesn’t have a camera, or a kid, on her back. Her first book My Place Among Men will be published in August. See more of her work at www.tightlinemedia.com

KRIS MILLGATE / WWW.TIGHTLINEMEDIA.COM

“I don’t believe in killing, because I don’t think it’s benefiting the river,” Olsen said. “There’s enough space for rainbows and cutthroats. This system of removing rainbows, I just don’t believe in it.”

Kennedy, however, believes in it.

He was given a $7,000 budget to move a minimum of 3,000 rainbows in six weeks. By the end-of-May deadline, he’d moved 5,857 ’bows. It’s the most dramatic rainbow suppression approach taken so far on the South Fork, a waterway with more than 6,000 wild trout per mile. And it’s timely; in fall 2018, researchers counted 3,073 rainbow trout, 1,832 Yellowstone cutthroat, and 1,347 browns per mile in the river’s Conant reach. Cutthroat used to dominate that count. The last time they did was 2016. Repeating this year’s rainbow removal in future years could change the fishery, not just for the trout targeted, but for cutthroat fisheries in general.

“Yellowstone cutthroat trout are stressed throughout their distribution in the West,” Kennedy said. “The South Fork of the Snake is a stronghold for them, so this is a particularly acute threat to the species as a whole.”

Jimmy’s All Seasons Angler is five minutes from one of the rainbow receiving ponds. Fly shop owner Jimmy Gabettas doesn’t fish the pond, but he keeps

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 I 11

AA

HEADWATERS

ART

I PLEAD GUILTY TO HAVING OWNED a Velvet Elvis. I saw a collection of two dozen for sale at a gas station. The twodollar price was reflective of its condition, so I sealed the deal in record time. The prompt came from my buddy who said I didn’t have the balls to hang it on my living room wall. My wallet never came out of my pocket faster, and for four years, Velvet Elvis hung loud and proud in prominent display. One day, my buddy’s friend offered me $25 for Velvet. I didn’t think twice, and pocketed a 1,150 percent return on investment. I wish all deals were so lucrative.

Bob Baker’s wire sculptures don’t deserve that kind of treatment, for they wonderfully capture all things fly fishing.

Sometimes they focus on the explosion coming from a jumping tarpon. Other times they take us back to our time on a bow when we watched tailing bonefish inhaling shrimps. Baker’s sculptures are special because they come from a life lived on a poling platform while surrounded by nature and marine life. In his case, museum-quality lighting serves them best.

Baker, an Ohio native and Islamorada, Florida, captain, spent his childhood tormenting bass, panfish, and perch. When he wasn’t fishing he was drawing, a passion so strong that he landed in art school at Kent State. The late 1960s and early ’70s were an era of unrest, and despite national events, such as the college shooting Bob Baker fled Ohio and moved to Islamorada, where the sand and the sea offered inspiration for his wire art.

12 I AMERICAN ANGLER

of the Guide

at Kent State, Baker remained focused. He concentrated on oils, watercolors, and clay until he decided that he loved fishing as much as he loved art. Baker split the Midwest, headed for Islamorada, and spent 50 years guiding stealthy flats fishermen, introspective backcountry junkies, and high-energy offshorers. In the evenings

and on days off, he’d create art.

“It’s hard to beat Islamorada’s sheer natural beauty,” Baker said. “It’s the ‘fishing capital of the world’ for good reason. In addition to so many different species, the natural setting is unparalleled. Bird populations are vast, there are cool mammals in stunningly wild settings and uniquely interesting people too. My art draws from those experiences. Some appear as standalone subjects and others serve a lesser, supporting role. What I create simply depends on my mood of the day.”

After experimenting with many media, Baker settled on wire sculptures.

“I started working with armature wire by accident. It was 1968, and my final assignment during my freshman year was to create a piece of art from an ulterior medium. Like most college kids, I procrastinated until the last minute. When I sat down to work, I turned on my lamp and the fixture blew up. I tried to fix the darned thing by unplugging the lamp and cutting back the rubber insulation. I got it WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

T

BOB BAKER’S WIRE SCULPTURE DEMONSTRATES A SOLITARY LIFE.

working, but then I noticed a coil of copper wires in my lap. They were interesting, so I fiddled with them until I made a figure. I submitted it and got an A. “I didn’t think much of it, and moved on to other media,” Baker said. “But several years later I took my mom to an auto repair shop to pick up her car. It wasn’t ready, so I wandered around. There was an armature workshop next door, and hanging from the walls were huge spools of copper wire in all different gauges.

They reminded me of my college project.

After talking with one of the employees, I bought ten-pound spools of 18-, 20-, 22and 24-gauge wire. The rest is history. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been sculpting for fifty years.”

Depending on their complexity, Baker’s sculptures take between 2 and 14 days to complete. The process is simple but requires the patience of an angler stalking a skinny-water bone. Baker starts with a simple stick-figure skeleton and then allows the creative process to take root.

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

Shorebirds, baitfish, or boats are added as necessary, with one proven principle: adding is easy, but removing is difficult.

When he’s finished with the wire, Baker heads to one of many beaches near his home. “I’m a beachcomber so I like driftwood,” he says. “I find the best pieces after a storm when there are lots of different branches washed up above the tide line. I’ll pick a type of wood that best matches the subject and cut it to a desired shape. My favorite grains and color come from tamarind, Jamaican dogwood, tropical almond, red mahoe, or sea grape, all of which are local trees. Multiple sandings bring the wood to a perfectly smooth finish, and then I round the edges with a rasp and files. The wood’s true beauty comes out after the first coat of lacquer.

When it’s dry I’ll add two more coats. A few coats of wax that gets buffed contributes to a polished look. The agonizing part comes at the end, [when] I handpaint every wire with high-gloss black enamel. The shiny paint really brings out

the sculpture’s details. When the wire is totally dry, I mount it on the base.

“Every day, just like every fish, is memorable,” Baker said. “I’ve enjoyed forty years of fishing in the most interesting of places. Spending time on the water with my family has been a tremendous highlight. My daughter, Stephanie Vatalaro, is inspiring to me in that she’s made a career of fishing and boating as the senior vice president of the Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation.

But an artist’s life is solitary, which is why my favorite sculpture is of a man rowing alone in a boat. It’s an example of life, one where we never really know what we’re going to encounter. And mine with my family, friends, clients, and fish is more wonderful than I can describe.”

Great art touches the soul, and to see what Baker feels, simply look at his art. It takes just one look to know what he thought and felt at that moment. I can guarantee that his view of the world is more powerful than a Velvet Elvis. —Tom Keer SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 I 13

AA

HEADWATERS

TYING for

the Crunch MONITORING S.S. FLIES SALES TRENDS OFFERS A WINDOW INTO THE ANGLING WORLD.

14 I AMERICAN ANGLER

BLAME IT ON THE SPRING CRUNCH; a wave of gotta-have-it-now orders spiking from fly shops in need of trout flies, mainly. Enough demand to eliminate the possibility of a balanced schedule. A rush that made Peter Smith, the owner of S.S. Flies, think. Logic held that people would likely be fishing year-round where it was warm, and they would call for flies outside the insane spring production schedule up north. So he went on a road trip.

The year was 2002. Saltwater fly fishing was growing. Smith headed south. He called on every fly shop along Florida’s east coast down through the Keys, up the state’s west side to the Gulf. “It was a failed trip,” he said.

“I nailed one account.You could tell people were thinking, Who’s this Yankee trying to peddle stuff? We can get what’s needed from one of the big fly supply houses.” But that one account made all the difference.

Saltwater Angler in Key West was

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

founded in 1991 by Jeffrey Cardenas, a former guide turned entrepreneur, turned writer/photographer/adventurer now on the final scheduled year of his round-theworld (primarily single-handed) sailing journey. Curtis White was manager. The shop was a clearing house and hangout for visiting anglers, guides and occasionally the beau monde of the saltwater fly fishing world.

Smith discovered a potential niche needing filling. “There were few commercially available flies that the top captains wanted to fish,” he said. “True, many tied their own, but guides like Will Benson couldn’t craft enough to keep him fishing and was looking for someone to tie for him.” The best guides had their own exacting fly patterns or concepts that needed development. Smith dived in and word spread. Shortly, captains such as Bill Houze, Scott Irvine, Tom Roland, and others long gone began ordering from him.

As his reputation spread first in the lower keys and then South Florida, Smith wondered about developing a more lucrative retail market. He took a small ad in The Angling Report, which is focused on traveling fly fishers—that ad quickly produced a $200 order in one day, a $350 order the next, commencing a steady pipeline of activity. The decision was easy. In 2006, Smith launched the retail website S.S. Flies, which now produces 25,000 flies annually.

Two other tiers—Nate Gordon and Tom Blair—form the S.S. team, which is housed in a rustic shop next to Smith’s pleasant home that sits well back from the blacktop, no sign out, in Denmark, Maine. It’s bucolic country where Smith grew up and where he and Susan homesteaded. They raise and eat their own food—chickens, pigs, vegetables.

“You don’t get the usual benefits, working here,” Gordon said, “but I get half a pig a year and all the produce I can pick.”

Characteristically, S.S. patterns are known for blending natural and synthetic materials, and for the quality of their ties.

Smith’s materials sources range from a New York furrier (his amazing synthetic Fox Fur) to a California costume maker who specializes in Mardi Gras regalia.

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

Saltwater flies are the bread-and-butter patterns at S.S. Flies. Tarpon flies, in particular, are tied to cover all situations—laid up, flats, migratory schools, and so on.

He’s cornered the market on badger tails used on his Goat Belly Shrimp (more later). Other arcane, proprietary suppliers provide the kind of perfect bucktail, ostrich, and marabou that would make anyone who ties fairly weep with envy.

Along with feeding the pipeline for shops, lodges, and guides around the country, S.S. maintains a robust directsale inventory, and with several requirements custom-ties original creations for anglers. Technical fly construction embraces not only what and where specific materials are used but building a variety of foul and weed guards that are not “fish guards” too.

Where possible they use stiff synthetic materials that veil and protect the hook gap, keeping loose fibers from catching around the shank. On feather tails they’ll often tie hard mono on top of the material, loop it around and beneath the feather, then back up and through, capturing material in the loop.

The bent VinceGuard, originated by professor Vince Maggio, is formed using a piece of 60-pound fluorocarbon bent with the flattened end directly in line with the hook point. It’s not only effective but also sensitive enough that fish rarely

bounce from it. Smith cut part of the jaw from electrician’s pliers in order to consistently clone the exact size of guard needed in production. The guard is used both on streamer-style patterns and the Weed Walker poppers, which, along with obvious freshwater bass assignments, can be fished in a dirty tideline in the salt or fired back into the mangroves. With a correctly formed VinceGuard, a Walker, and especially a light streamer that looks to be hung up back in the uglies, normally worms out like one of those old steelspring Slinkies humping down the stairs.

Used on a fly stripped through mainly open water, it will prevent the hook from picking up a piece of floating weed—the killer that’s happened to us all just as a fish is coming to eat.

For crabs and other flies meant to crawl the bottom, S.S. uses a Single Post guard made of 20-pound hard mono sticking straight up or canted slightly forward, trimmed to just reach the point but not click on the hook.

S.S. freshwater patterns cover the gamut from warm water (pike, bass, muskie) to trout (streamers like their Fox Wiggle and Soft-Hackles being most popular), though they make up less than SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 I 15

AA

HEADWATERS Fly sales can tell many things about fishing trends. And right now, permit fishing is hot. S.S. ties a variety of crab patterns that are suited to specific regions and the conditions found there.

10 percent of annual sales. “Mostly, I make them because I just like tying trout bugs,” Smith said.

The saltwater arena is where S.S. has clearly positioned itself in the fly market.

One wonders about most popular patterns, of course, which can indicate trends in current angler focus. When asked, Smith doesn’t miss a beat. “Permit are hot,” he said. “What blew us away is that ten percent of our entire sales this year is in Camo Crabs. Of course, that’s for the Belize–Central America area.”

The Camos are those small, nickelsize patterns with prominent, articulated legs. S.S. developed a way to create multicolored carapaces. Belly weighting is a lead-epoxy convex cast piece made in molds to a size that produces just that right plop when the fly lands.

“But everywhere else,” Smith continues, “it’s our larger-size Permit Crab that’s tops.” That pattern features tails of scarce Cree feathers, and barred olive forming the claws that are spread-mounted to simulate a crab in defense position. S.S. builds them in a regular size 1 and heavier size0/1 large—for those situations where you need to “hit the fish on the head and have the fly immediately drop.” The Permit Crabs hold prominence—they account for wins and are usually on the 16 I AMERICAN ANGLER

leader boards at high-profile fishing competitions throughout the Southeast.

The redfish market continues to be strong for S.S. “Significantly, that’s because of the wide accessibility of the fish,” said Smith. “In many places you can wade for them.” Throughout the Southeast, the hottest S.S. patterns for reds include the bizarre pink and chartreuse Electric Chicken (I first saw the color scheme on a seven-inch plastic Slug-Go years back), though the same flies tied using more subdued root beer or black/purple Estaz are popular too. The woolcentric, marabou-collared, soft-landing Woolly Toad is a close second. But in Louisiana they want Camo Crab

larger flies, and here the four-inch, heavyeyed Dinah-Moe Drum is hot. Barred hackle and marabou give it life.

No surprise that forage fish imitations are still the preferred dish on the Northeast striper menu. The S.S. Bulky Bunker and Punky Meadows (named for the glam rocker featured in one of Frank Zappa’s tunes) are the top sellers.

What’s still a semi-closet offering among the area’s closemouthed cognoscenti is crab patterns. Especially dark green with olive. “They’d be more popular if people knew stripers eat crabs the way they do,” Smith said. Of course, fishing them right requires a lot of patience. But that’s another story.

I’ve always wondered, do more anglers target bonefish than tarpon? An accurate survey would be interesting. The S.S. inventory is about even in patterns for both species. Number one bonefish sellers fluctuate, but S.S.’s Foxy Gotchas are often in first place. However, Smith considers his Goat Belly Shrimp to be the top bonefish fly overall. It features fine cashmere goat fur belly, with sparkly, crinkly-stiff, and translucent badger tail as the carapace.

The number of tarpon patterns for niche situations seems ever growing.

There are patterns for laid-up ’poons, oceanside cruisers, resident fish, migratory schools, jungle rivers, flats, channels, deep holes, happy surface rollers—it’s endless. Still, the S.S. Duke of Poons has grabbed high-bar status for multiple conditions wherever tarpon are fished.

It features an inverted bunny tail, a head of sparkle-infused marabou, a Bird Fur collar, and it comes in four different colors. In use it produces a slim profile and suspends better than many skinny tarpon patterns. Yet among some of the top Keys captains, another pattern is taking over, especially for laid-up fish or those simply being contrary. It’s the Fox Fur Tarpon Fly. The pattern has a wide profile yet lands like a whisper due to the hollow-style tie of the long fiber fox fur.

When stripped, the collar-body collapses, then flares out. The tail is barred bunny.

Though it comes in five colors, blackand-purple is a captains’ favorite.

Most S.S. saltwater flies are tied on Gamakatsu hooks, some on Owners when WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

a heavier weight is needed. Daichi hooks are featured on most trout patterns.

A common thread is characteristic among creative tiers and anglers like Smith. It’s the constant quest for answers—the reasons why. It’s inherent in thoughts behind the building of new patterns and in all fishing. “It’s great having a guide pole you to a place where you’re going to cast to a fish that’s going to eat,” Smith said, “but I want to know why that spot, and if that place isn’t going, why we’re going to move . . . what the right tides are for that spot. And why we should need a different fly. That’s as much fun as casting to the fish that’ll eat.”

That said, and given the man’s fortune to have fished for about everything that swims, you wonder what continues to light his fire. “Oh, I dream about trout bugs—hatches,” he said. “But tarpon still get my knees wobbling. Not bonefish, not permit. You cast at one of those big things [tarpon], you see its gills flare, and your stomach jumps. And you know havoc is going to break out.” —Jerry Gibbs

S.S. Flies started with one order for Jeffrey Cardenas’s Saltwater Angler in Key West. From there, guides started requesting patterns and the business bloomed.

307 S. Main St. P.O. Box 475 Twin Bridges, Mt. 59754

CUSTOM PACKAGES: Guides, Lodging, Meals

Professionally guided float and wade trips on the Big Hole, Beaverhead, Jefferson, Madison and Ruby rivers & spring creeks.

Call for Rates and Brochures.

Flatline Outfitters & Guide Service: Matthew A Greemore (Lic. # 4005) Cell: 406-596-2036

www.kingsflatline.com

800-222-5510 • Phone: (406) 684-5639

Cast Out Clutter.

Renew Online!

Sign up to receive all

subscription renewal notifications via e-mail instead of U.S. mail.

It’s fast, easy and earth friendly!

Visit www.americanangler.com for details.

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 I 17

AA

HEADWATERS

TOP RUN Alder Island Pool, Grand Cascapedia River, Quebec

By Raymond Plourde

18 I AMERICAN ANGLER

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

IT’S FUNNY HOW THE FISH WE’VE lost are those we remember best.

I’d seen pictures of Alder Island Pool in Gaspé, Quebec, long before ever fishing it myself. Mostly photos of happy anglers holding nice and, in some cases, exceptionally large fish. These were wild Atlantic salmon taken on the Grand Cascapedia—a legendary “big fish” river famous for producing occasional giants.

There was one photo that really put the hook in me. It was a shot of the late, great reel maker Stanley Bogdan at Alder Island with a monster hooked-jawed male that must have pushed 50 pounds. The fish’s head was bigger than Stan’s.

Atlantic salmon are predictable in terms of when and where they’ll show up.

There are certain places that, at certain times, hold large numbers of fish year after year, where others do not. There are resting pools on the way up, where salmon hold for a few hours or days before pushing on.

And there are the holding pools where fish stay for weeks or months. These are generally larger, deeper pools with a steady flow, well upriver from the sea. Sometimes they offer coldwater springs or a brook flowing in. Sometimes there are boulders or bedrock structures that create currents and eddies the fish find to their liking. However, some spots that look awesome may be barren of fish; another nearby pool—which looks nearly the same—may hold a large number of salmon. These are anadromous fish that don’t feed in fresh water, so their choice of holding spots is different from those of trout. Whereas trout are generally well dispersed throughout a river system, competing for prime feeding lanes, salmon prefer to hold in groups, in very specific places. Alder Island, located way upriver on the Lake Branch of the Grand Cascapedia, is such a pool. Fish show up here by midJune and stack up in July.

At Alder Island, the water flows in over a shallow riffle and into a quickly deepening rocky run against the high left bank. The roiling water quickly disperses into a deep, broad pool before shallowing out into a nice tailout that splits around Alder Island. Pretty as a picture. A big pool in the upper river valley surrounded by spruce and pine-clad hills. More WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

important, this particular spot along the river’s considerable length attracts and holds a disproportionately large number of fish on their migratory journey. And every year a few truly huge salmon are landed here. I had my chance at one of these remarkable Grand Cascapedia giants a few years ago.

It was a fine summer morning as we set out from Salmon Lodge on the Grand Cascapedia and headed upriver along Route 299. Driving through the beautiful Chic-Choc Mountains, part of the northern Appalachian Range, we follow the sinuous twists and turns of a truly stunning wilderness river. My good buddy Gerry “Deepwater” Doucet and I are fortunate to be fishing with top guide Clément Bernier today, and we’re all excited to have Alder Island to ourselves for the morning shift. The water level had been low, but there were thundershowers upriver overnight and the water was up a few inches and a little discolored. Good news—a bump of water often makes the salmon excited.

It’s deceptively quiet when we arrive, though. You wouldn’t know there was a fish in the river. Until a big old salmon jumps clear of the water and shatters the stillness of the pool like Shamu coming down sideways at Sea World. Now we’re more excited than the salmon.

There are three ways to fish the pool: wading downstream on either side; casting a wet fly into the fast water at the head of the pool or from below the pool; casting a dry fly upstream. We try all, in turn, under Clément’s watchful eyes. They don’t call Atlantic salmon the fish of a thousand casts for nothing. Crossing over and fishing down to the head of the pool from the right-hand side, Gerry is the first to be rewarded with a nice salmon of about 12 pounds. And a little while later I release one around 10 pounds.

The morning is made now, but we’re all thinking the same thing: There’s still time to hook a big one.

We give the pool a rest and let things calm down. Discussing the wisdom of dry flies, I pull out my number one go-to: the Carter’s Bug, which is a big, brown spundeer-hair dry fly from the popular Bomber

family. Clément takes one look and gives it the nod of approval. On she goes.

Creeping slowly upstream from below the island, I cast my bug here and there with short, drag-free drifts. Eventually I am reaching into the center of the pool.

A dozen nice drifts over the slick, glassy water, and suddenly there’s a big boil under the fly, pushing a bulge of water at the surface. One salmon in the pack has “raised” to take a closer look at my fly. Now, by tradition and presumably some considered wisdom, I have to do the hardest thing in salmon fishing—wait, do nothing, let it settle back into its lie. I give it two minutes and cast carefully again to the same spot. Nothing. And again. Nothing. I start widening my search, probing the pool. Maybe it’s moved. Maybe it’s lost interest. Maybe it— Whoosh! A salmon the size of a small dolphin makes a big head-and-tail rise right beside my fly, but never touches it. I let it float past the disturbance and wait again. Now my heart is racing. That was a big fish. Maybe not as big as Stan Bogdan’s, but it was by far the biggest salmon I’ve ever seen. I wait a minute and cast to the same spot, just this side of the current seam. Nothing. I pop the fly out again, then again, and—boom—there it is. This time the fly is gone. I wait a second and pull. Swish.

Nothing but air. The Carter’s whizzes by the back of my head untouched. Try as I might, the giant would not come back, its curiosity with the little interloper apparently satisfied. No yanky-von-tugville for me. The French Quebecois up here have a good word for this feeling: désolée, meaning “I am desolate.”

“Well, ’e never took de fly,” says Clément, who watched it all from the high bank “’E jus’ drown it, ’e never take it in ’is mouth.”

How many times have I replayed that scene in my mind? I will forget a thousand fish I’ve caught, but I will remember every moment of my brief encounter with that big fella on the surface of beautiful Alder Island Pool.

Raymond Plourde is an angling writer and photographer based out of Halifax, Nova Scotia.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 I 19

AA

HEADWATERS A CAST IN THE WOODS

by Stephen Sautner; 181 pages; $24.95; Lyons Press Retreating to a cabin in the woods is a subject with a long history, stretching back to Thoreau’s Walden. Steven Saunter’s A Cast in the Woods breathes new life into the subject, situating it among today’s flaring oil wells and almost annual 100-year weather events. Saunter has realized a dream shared by many anglers—he owns a quiet cabin in the Catskill Mountains near a small trout stream. However, he shows this dream is more complicated than expected. Whether purging mice from his cabin, repairing his outhouse, or tackling any of the items on his never-ending to-do list, Sautner writes with a lighthearted humor that gives the impression he is thoroughly enjoying himself. When a 500-year flood levels the trees around his cabin and scours the stream into a lifeless drainage, Sautner commits to restore it, and with tremendous effort, succeeds, only to have the stream threatened again by an impending fracking operation. In the course of these struggles, we see how difficult it can be, even with the best intentions, to care for something as delicate as a trout stream. Every chapter is punctuated with notes from Sautner’s fishing journal, as if to remind us the “moments of incredible beauty and wonder” that happen on a trout stream are worth protecting. A Cast in the Woods shows that understanding a stream means more than a knowledge of fish and insects—it means realizing we are “intertwined in something much larger than merely fishing.” —Ryan Sparks

BEAUTIFULLY GROTESQUE FISH OF THE AMERICAN WEST

by Mark Spitzer; 232 pages; $21.29; Bison Books In recent years, many fly anglers have ditched their trout-centric blinders to pursue other species, such as bass, pike, muskie, and carp. These fish diversify and enrich our sport. But what if we widened this circle of species even further?

In his book Beautifully Grotesque Fish of the American West, Mark Spitzer rambles across the country, “buzzing” on the numerous misunderstood and unappreciated fish swimming in western rivers and reservoirs. Spitzer is no stranger to obscure species; he’s written two books about gar, caught the Nebraska state record yellow bullhead, and appeared on the popular Discovery Channel show River Monsters.

In Beautifully Grotesque, he describes fishing for American eel, burbot, sturgeon, paddlefish, bowfin, catfish, muskie, alligator gar, razorback suckers, and pike minnow. Along the way, he waves his homemade press badge, interviewing experts and insiders. Spitzer’s gonzo approach to his research—entering a catfish noodling competition, dumpster-diving for burbot—gives his writing a refreshing colloquial style. Those who love fishing—from sloshing bait buckets to the flutter of caddis—should recognize where Spitzer is coming from. Those who are fussy about how, where, or what they fish for should look elsewhere.

Throughout the book, Spitzer shows us that what we fish for as a culture, and the animals we value, says a lot about us, but that the fish we don’t care about says even more. While most of us may not fish for the species that star in Spitzer’s book, readers may end up looking at our complicated fisheries with a new view. —Ryan Sparks

20 I AMERICAN ANGLER

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

boat but rowing. We began to talk about other people who would benefit from an opportunity like this, and four years and a lot of hard work later we have made an impact on over 50 participants’ lives.

ACCESS UNLIMITED (www.challengelimitation.org) is a Montana-based nonprofit that utilizes specialized equipment to take disabled anglers fishing. I chatted with cofounder Jesse Alberi about the group and its impacts.

Q What was the catalyst behind Access Unlimited?

A I rolled my truck and became a T10 paraplegic at age 30, with a young daughter and wife. I was shaken to the core.

Turns out what I needed was a simple drive through the mountains with my friends, which led to an adapted Cummins, RZRs, and drift boats. My friends and family saw the change that being in nature was making in me. We began to develop ways not only to get me in the drift

Q What are the trips like?

A We do four large trips a year and as many small, intimate ones as possible.

Our large groups usually consist of 10 to 20 people and are based out of the Silver Bow Club in Divide, Montana. The Bowe family has been one of our biggest

supporters, and their facility and staff let us offer an unmatched experience. On our smaller trips, we like to focus on one individual at a time for a day or two. This allows the guide to give all of his focus to one angler, which means more fish.

Q What specialized equipment does AU employ?

A All of our designs have come by way of necessity. And just like anything, you always learn the most from screwing things up. We were able to take all of those lessons and partner with RO Drift Boats to make our first electronic-anchor boat. This along with a lighter design has made putting my friends on fish much easier. R.L. Winston has been there for us since day one, as have my Red Sox boys at Cheeky Reel, and Travis at ARC Fishing. No fish are caught without these companies. —Joshua Bergan

Tied in Maine Fished Everywhere www.ssflies.com

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

207-452-2343

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 I 21

A LOT OF WESTERN STEELHEADERS put their fly rods down during the heat of the day, especially in August and early September, choosing instead to pilfer the beer supply and follow their gluttony with a midday nap.

This follows the adage that summer steelhead won’t bite when bright sun is on the water and that the best times to get them are during mornings and evenings, when shadows cover portions of the water. That is only half true, and also throws sand in the face of a classic angling truth: You can’t catch fish if you don’t have a fly in the water.

Truth is, steelhead do take during the middle of the day, but you probably won’t raise one to the surface at that time.

Instead, these fish find deep runs, slots, chutes, and plunge pools. And they hold closer to bottom. Ironically, this is what winter steelhead seek during low-water conditions too. Summer steel also hold in the shadows that ledge rock provides, and that’s exactly what we look for when fishing western steelhead during late summer and fall. You’ll find plenty of this shadowy ledge rock on Idaho’s Clearwater River, Oregon’s Deschutes and North Umpqua Rivers, and you’ll see some of

it on Washington’s Klickitat and Grand Ronde Rivers too. You’ll also find it in British Columbia, up and down Vancouver Island, and elsewhere.

Ledge rock alone, however, won’t hold steelhead. It needs to be accompanied by water that’s at least four feet deep and relatively slow moving, meaning walking speed or slower, which allows a fly to get low in the water column, something you couldn’t do in a fast moving midriver seam, for instance. Don’t overlook shadowy ledge rock even when it’s located between fast currents—just remember, slow, shadowy slots hold steel.

To get a fly down to the fish, you’ll need to attach a sinking tip to the end of your fly line, something that purists may scoff at. Well, we like to catch fish, and to do so we’ll attach two or three feet of 6-to-10-pound-test tippet to the end of a sinking tip. Then we tie a fly to the end of the tippet—three of our favorite fall patterns are Montana Fly Company’s Sticky Sculpin (black), Umpqua’s Bantam (black and green), and Umpqua’s Tiny Dancer (October caddis or olive coloration).

You don’t need some gaudy Intruder; subdued, natural colors and smaller sizes

get answers here.

Don’t get rattled by all the choices in sinking tips these days. You can keep things simple by requesting tungsten tips in just three sizes and weights. Tungsten tips quickly take a fly down to the fish during these bright-light midday hours, and you can manipulate the sink rate by casting at various angles across the water and mending line in various ways. Here’s all you need: 10-foot sections of T8, T10, and T12. T8 sinks at 6.5 inches per second; T10 sinks at 7 inches per second; and T12 sinks at 8 inches per second. Want to go deeper? Loop on some T14, but don’t be surprised when you snag.

No matter which tip you fish, think low and slow. Steelhead often take a fly because it annoys them. Pick the choicest water and allow your fly to slowly swing through it, preferably near the bottom. If you piss off these fish, you may get a grab.

Oh yeah, you’re right—you’ll lose flies while fishing near bottom this way. But you’ll also come up with some midday steelhead that your pals overlook while sleeping off their afternoon beer buzz and ignoring that ancient angling truth.

—the editors

Steelhead get a lot bigger than this, but they don’t get much brighter. This midday fish took while the sun was high.

22 I AMERICAN ANGLER

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

BRIGHT STEEL Where to Throw When the Sun Is High.

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 I 23

AA

CONSERVATION by Ted Williams

The War on Glyphosate

DAVID BLINKEN

What’s behind all the glyphosate hysteria, and why should it worry anglers?

C

ANCER WARNING, Roundup [glyphosate]” shouts a typical ad, one of hundreds on TV and social media. “You may be entitled to financial compensation. Call Knightline Legal…”

No herbicide has been used more, studied longer or been proven safer than glyphosate. And no herbicide is more essential for saving aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems from invasive plants.

Despite popular and incorrect nomenclature, native aquatic plants (which disgust ecologically challenged swimmers) are rarely “weeds.” Most serve fish and other aquatic organisms the way native trees and understory serve terrestrial life, recycling nutrients, slowing sediment 24 I AMERICAN ANGLER

transport and producing oxygen, cover and food.

Glyphosate formulations labeled for aquatic use include Rodeo, ShoreKlear, Pondmaster, Toughdown Pro, AquaPro, AquaNeat and Avocet. No herbicide may be so labeled if it has more than one in a million chance of harming humans, fish or any nontarget organism.

LD50 stands for the lethal dose that kills half the test animals per unit of mass. Higher is safer. For rats, caffeine’s LD50 is 192, glyphosate’s 5,600.

Still, local glyphosate bans are proliferating, and pressure is mounting for a national ban. There’s a dirty, disturbing story behind the public panic. But first, a review of how glyphosate saves fish.

Floating tussock formation a mile below Lake Okeechobee outlet. This one contains native cattail rendered invasive by phosphorus from dairy farms and ag land. These mats are mobile and can kill native stands of emergent bulrush and spike rush as well as submerged eelgrass and pepper grass, all important fish habitat. Glyphosate is essential for invasive cattail control.

N

owhere is glyphosate more desperately needed than in the alien hell that is Florida.

In June 2011 biologist Don Fox of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission toured me by airboat around Lake Okeechobee, the heart, lungs, and kidneys of the Everglades.

What happens here affects life all the way to and in Florida Bay. WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

In most cases you can’t pull or plow phragmites, because the roots are so deep.

The only alternative is herbicide, usually glyphosate.

Aaron Eagar, Utah’s noxious weed program manager, offers this: “Utah Lake has 7,000 acres of phragmites around its shoreline. In the 1950s it wasn’t there. For the last seven years, we’ve treated it with Rodeo [glyphosate], and we’ve brought back lots of natives and opened up areas for fish and fishing. Phragmites grows out to four feet in water and all the way to the transitional zone of dry land. We get rid of the biomass by burning or cutting; then we spray new growth.”

But, provided it’s green, what takes over aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems doesn’t much matter to the public, media, or even a large element of the environmental community. Human health, not fish and wildlife, is their main issue. They seem to imagine that glyphosate, safest of all herbicides, is the reincarnation of Agent Orange.

Part of that fear is misplaced aggression.

Environmentalists hate Monsanto, glyphosate’s major distributor, because it sells neonicotinoids that wipe out pollinators. And it has genetically engineered “Roundup Ready” crops unaffected by glyphosate, so farmers can blitz ag land without hunting down weeds.

This from Dr. Lee Van Wychen, who directs science policy for the National and Regional Weed Science Societies: “Farmers overused glyphosate. It was too good

to be true. You could spray it anytime. It was extra safe for the environment, and it killed almost any weed. The selection pressure they put on that herbicide was unparalleled in the history of weed control. When you apply the same herbicide on 200 million acres multiple times a year, a few weeds are gonna get lucky and then pass on their resistance.”

These “super weeds” require harsher herbicides such as dicamba, which can drift long distances. In 2018 dicamba killed crops on hundreds of non-targeted Midwest farms.

So awash is North American ag land with glyphosate that traces (far below federal safety standards and measured in parts per billion) are turning up in wine, beer, and cereal.

In March 2015 the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a semiautonomous body loosely tied to the World Health Organization, placed glyphosate on its “2A List” of substances with “limited or inadequate evidence of carcinogenicity” or, in IARC’s abbreviated translation, “probably carcinogenic.”

Right up there with glyphosate on IARC’s 2A list of probable carcinogens is “red meat” and “very hot beverages.”

Does glyphosate “probably” cause cancer? I put the question to Dr. Van Wychen.

His response: “I understand people’s frustrations with Monsanto, and I get pissed off at Monsanto myself. Glyphosate is still a good, super-safe herbicide in areas where TOM CARLISLE

Fish, alligators, and turtles swirled from our path. Ospreys hovered, snail kites wheeled, and a manatee that had negotiated the entire St. Lucie Canal sashayed over a shallow bar. A wide, half-mile-long swath of brown, withered cattails marked the area Fox had sprayed with glyphosate. Cattails are native, but the huge slug of phosphorus from dairy farms and ag land renders them invasive.

“They’re good guys gone bad,” Fox told me in May 2019. “If we didn’t use glyphosate, cattails would crowd out native vegetation, and organic sediments would build up, causing anaerobic conditions. We’d lose our invertebrate communities, and that would magnify up to forage fishes and game fishes.”

Glyphosate is an especially effective tool for combatting giant salvinia infesting bodies of water throughout the South.

Few, if any, aquatic weeds are more deadly to fish than this free-floating, duckweedlike fern. “It just explodes,” says Dr. Wes Neal of Mississippi State University’s Extension Service. “If not sprayed, it takes over, shading out sunlight, depleting oxygen, and killing fish.”

Without glyphosate, non-natives such as water hyacinth and torpedo grass would proliferate from Florida to Texas. They’d create huge mats that would smother such natives as bulrush and knotgrass—spawning, nursery, and foraging habitat for catfish, bass, crappies, bluegills, and redear sunfish.

Phragmites, an alien grass, blights America’s three coasts. It pushes out native wetland plants, killing fish, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and the complex food webs that sustain them.

Two-thirds of all sport and commercial fish depend on coastal wetlands at some point in their lives.

Phragmites destroys inland wetlands too. In Utah, for example, it has devastated populations of the federally endangered June sucker and eliminated spawning and nursery habitat of largemouth and smallmouth bass, pike, and panfish. What’s more, it blocks angler access.

Mandalay National Wildlife Refuge near Houma, Louisiana, is degraded by non-native water hyacinth and giant salvinia. Both are controlled with glyphosate.

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 I 25

ZACK SIMEK

CONSERVATION

The Nature Conservancy, which uses glyphosate far more than any of the other 18 herbicides it depends on for fish and wildlife recovery, sprays glyphosate on alien phragmites in the Adirondacks.

we don’t have resistance [virtually all water and wildland, for example]. IARC’s review was such a crooked scam! I’ve never seen anything like it. Every other regulatory agency in the world has concluded time and time again that glyphosate does not cause cancer.”

Among these agencies is the World Health Organization, which disagrees with its IARC branch.

“IARC cherry-picked a couple studies and on top of that fudged the results of those studies,” continued Van Wychen.

“They did these odds-ratio calculations— a correlation, not even a mechanistic cause—of how glyphosate might cause cancer. Now there are people on the conservation side who are afraid to use glyphosate.”

According to Reuters, “IARC edited findings from a draft of its review of the weedkiller glyphosate that were at odds with its final conclusion.”

The same week IARC published its opinion, the person leading the review, Dr. Christopher Portier, signed on for $450 per hour as a litigation consultant for counsel suing Monsanto on behalf of alleged glyphosate cancer victims.

IARC’s opinion convinced California to require that all glyphosate products 26 I AMERICAN ANGLER

carry a cancer warning. But on February 26, 2018, a federal judge struck down the requirement, ruling it “inherently misleading . . . when apparently all other regulatory and governmental bodies have found the opposite.”

Still, in August 2018 and March 2019, lawyers used IARC’s opinion and Portier’s testimony to convince two California juries that plaintiffs had contracted non-Hodgkin lymphoma from glyphosate. Monsanto was ordered to pay $78 million to Dewayne Johnson, then $80 million to Edwin Hardeman—verdicts that convinced Los Angeles County to ban glyphosate.

So began the current lawyer feeding frenzy, which has resulted in almost 11,000 similar lawsuits. The latest absurdity occurred in May when yet another California jury ordered Monsanto to pay $2.2 billion to non-Hodgkin lymphoma patients Alva and Alberta Pilliod. Because these verdicts aren’t based on science, they’ll almost certainly be overturned on appeal.

G

lyphosate hysteria in Florida spawned an online petition (signed by 175,738) titled “Stop the State-sanctioned Poisoning of Our Lakes and Rivers” and illustrated with a jolly Roger on a metal drum beside a dead spotted seatrout. On January 28, 2019, Florida responded by imposing a statewide moratorium on all aquatic herbicides.

The moratorium horrified organizations working to protect aquatic life. The Nature Conservancy (TNC)—which depends on glyphosate for fish and wildlife recovery far more than any of the other 18 herbicides it uses—warned of “serious economic and ecological consequences.”

And Audubon Florida voiced strong support for herbicide treatments in Lake Okeechobee.

“When a water body gets choked with vegetation, that vegetation dies,” declares TNC’s Kristina Serbesoff-King. “The huge amount of decaying biomass takes out oxygen. That kills fish.”

LeRoy Rodgers, an invasive species biologist with the South Florida Water Management District, told me this: “In 1986, Florida also had a herbicide moratorium, and in a few short months, our lakes and flow ways were choked with exotic plants. We had to use triple the amount of herbicide we’d used at maintenance mode. It’s unfortunate that people without an understanding of weed management jump to conclusions and miss the big picture.”

On March 4 reason prevailed, and Florida lifted the moratorium. But five days earlier the City of Miami banned glyphosate.

S

cientists, not vulturine lawyers and lay-populated juries, determine the safety of herbicides.

But let’s assume that all studies, save IARC’s, are wrong and that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic”—that is, in the only group ever considered: ag workers who have applied glyphosate for years, often with no protective gear and at thousands of times the concentrations used by water and wildland managers.

In that case, banning all glyphosate use—including the minuscule amounts used to control invasive plants devastating aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems— makes as much sense as banning dental X-rays because first responders at Chernobyl suffered radiation sickness.

Ted Williams’s environmental writings enjoy national acclaim, and keep the bad guys sometimes looking over their shoulders.

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

AA

HATCHES by Dave Hughes

The Bonus Drake The fall hecuba often out-fishes the more popular green drake.

I

T WAS LATE AUGUST. THE western green drake hatch on the Deschutes River was already more than a month in the past. I’d retreated into the shade of some cottonwoods on a placid and pastoral tributary to the famous river, and spent cool afternoons fishing the short riffles and long, lazy pools of the smaller stream.

Everything was sort of sleepy, including the trout, until midafternoon each day.

Then a few big duns would begin to show, fluttering on the water, and fat rainbow trout, prodded from their hidden lies, would emerge to hunt down those helpless duns.

The trout, like the mayflies, became easy to pluck.

The duns were Timpanoga hecuba, a close relative to the more famous green drakes, but known as great red quills, drake mackerels, Snake drakes, or just plain hecubae. I still carried the green drake patterns I’d used earlier on the Deschutes. Those duns of August were closer to tan than olive in color, but about the same large size.

Trout were satisfied with the size 12 Green Drake Quigley Cripples I’d fished earlier on the Deschutes, and would fish later on rivers in Montana and Wyoming.

T. hecuba nymphs have an adaptation that makes their hatches important in scattered locations from the eastern front of the Rocky Mountains all the way to the Pacific Ocean; from BC and Alberta in the north throughout all the western states to the border with Mexico in the south. Their gills are operculate; the leading gill plates are lids that cover all the others. They lift to throw off any dirt or debris that has settled. The gills under them flutter and absorb oxygen from the water. Then the top gills close back down like garbage can lids, protecting the more fragile gills beneath from anything that settles on them. As a result these nymphs do well, and hecuba populations become heavy enough to provide fishable hatches

28 I AMERICAN ANGLER

in silted waters that dampen other aquatic insect hatches.

Within their wide range of distribution, T. hecuba are most important where glacial silts descend, or on irrigated pastoral streams, or on forested waters where logging has disturbed the waters, and on any rivers with fine soils in their watersheds. The most famous hatches happen in September on Slough Creek and the Lamar River in Yellowstone Park, where thunderstorms pound on powdery soil and cloud the rivers. T. hecuba nymphs are primed to survive such silting. When the water clears up, and the big duns hatch, trout key on them.

Emergence centers on mid-July to mid-August in the Pacific coast region, from late August to mid-September in the higher elevations of the Rockies.

Emergence tends to begin in early to middle afternoon in both regions. If the weather is sunny and warm, the hatch will be short, usually an hour at most. If it’s overcast, and with even more luck, raining lightly, the hatch might go on for two or three hours, with trout feeding greedily the entire time.

T. hecuba nymphs are not important in terms of imitation. No doubt they’re fed upon, but if trout ever become selective to them, I’ve neither seen nor heard about it. They’re flattened like clinger nymphs, but have heads narrower than the body, rather than wider, unlike all clingers, and they have those distinct operculate gill plates. They’re almost always found on bottom rocks covered with debris, and are so camouflaged by the same silt that they’re often difficult to notice. If you ever feel the need to imitate them, a size 12 Gold-Ribbed Hare’s Ear will do an acceptable job. Fish it on a dead drift in the riffles, and right down on the rocks.

The dun is the most important stage.

It doesn’t take many insects of such large size to prompt trout to feed. If you see a single dun, or only a scattered few, trout

(Above) Hecubae can bring large trout to the surface during fall, especially on tailwater streams. This beast took a hecuba imitation during later summer. (Right) Timpanoga hecuba spinners are reddish brown, with distinct banding. They’re not often seen. If you ever find them important, the same dressing you use for the green drake spinner will work fine.

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 I 29

HATCHES

(Above) Dressings for the hecuba hatch need not be specific to the species, but do need to be the right size and close in color. A size 12 Gold-Ribbed Hare’s Ear (bottom) is all you need for the nymphs. A size 12 or 14 Green Drake Quigley Cripple (left), though a bit off in color, will rarely get refused when duns are coming off. Chuck Stranahan’s Brindle Chute (top) in size 12 to 14 is almost always close enough when Timpanoga hecuba duns are scattered, and it also resembles many other insects that trout eat. A size 12 Red Quill Spinner, which you probably carry to match other mayflies, will be perfect if you get into the unlikely situation of needing one for this hatch.

30 I AMERICAN ANGLER

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

are likely to be seeing them as well, and will know what to do about it when you show them a sizable imitation. Fishing can be best when rises are sporadic, rather than steady, because trout will be most eager to rush an imitation when naturals are present in less-than-overwhelming numbers.

The duns are size 12 or even 10, with three tails that are somewhat short, tannish to olive-brown bodies that are distinctly banded, and lofted forewings that are moderate to dark slate gray. As with all species in the green drake complex, they’re subject to a large proportion of cripples. The most effective pattern I’ve used is the Quigley Cripple. I’ve never bothered to tie it specifically for the hecuba, since they take one tied for the green drake just as well.

If the hatch is sparse, or you’re lucky enough to find one of those waters where it’s heavy but hasn’t gained any fame, and the trout might be selective but haven’t been fished over enough to be picky, you can get by with less than an exact imitation. One of my favorite exploring patterns all over the West is Chuck Stranahan’s Brindle Chute. I haven’t had

(Right) You don’t always have to wait for the water to come down and clear up to have good fishing in the sort of silty water preferred by Timpanoga hecuba nymphs.

You’ll rarely need to get imitative; a searching dressing such as the Gold-Ribbed Hare’s Ear will be close enough.

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

many refusals to it when a few hecubae are on the water, prompting trout to feed.

In all our years fishing western waters, Rick Hafele and I have seen only one confirmed sighting of a T. hecuba spinner, on an excellent and remote trout stream that had the disadvantage of being burdened with cow poop. It’s not necessary to tie an imitation for the spinner stage. The Red Quill Spinner you tie and carry for green drakes will do just as well for this more obscure spinner fall. If you’re specific in your desire to separate the hecuba hatch from its relatives, in either the dun or spinner stage, remember it’s the only adult with gill remnants from the nymph stage visible on the edges of abdominal segments four through seven.

Presentation of the large dry flies that imitate the cripple or the fully formed dun don’t need to be complicated. If you’re in riffled water, upstream casts will be fine. If you’re on smoother currents, move off to the side and use cross-stream reach cast presentations, or take a position upstream from the rising trout, and present the flies downstream to them with wiggle casts, to avoid damning drag. If your patterns are ignored, perhaps not even noticed, give them a twitch to imitate the fluttering of the naturals. Then let them sit again.

One of my most memorable days over T. hecuba came while fishing with Nelson Ishiyama out of his Henrys Fork Lodge.

He drove us to Slough Creek at a leisurely pace. “There’s no reason to be there before two o’clock,” he said. “That’s when the hatch will start.” He had us in position on a long pool with a short but brisk riffle at its head, at the appointed time, already armed with Quigley Cripples.

It was an overcast day. All Nelson’s predictions came off precisely as he’d foreseen them. Trout began rising right on time, and we caught fish over those big crippled duns for several hours. It was better fishing than I’d had during the earlier, and more famous, real green drake hatch.

Dave Hughes is coauthor with Rick Hafele of Western Mayfly Hatches, author of Pocketguide to Western Hatches, Handbook of Hatches, and Essential Trout Flies. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 I 31

AA

DESTINATIONS by Jess McGlothlin

Wild Hokkaido In remote Japan, surrounded by volcanoes and bears, chasing the fabled golden char.

I

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JESS MCGLOTHLIN

’M LOLLING IN NEAR-SCALDing mineral water, a gusty southern wind kicking up steam. Somewhere to the southwest, a typhoon is speeding my way, preceded by banks of dark clouds that, admittedly, are a bit ominous.

From my vantage in the natural hot springs, which are on the roof of the Akan Yuku no Sato Tsuruga hotel, it’s an impressive sight. Already, whitecaps are kicking up on the wide expanse of Lake Akan. For now, I settle a bit deeper into the steamy water, feeling my sore muscles protest; after 34 hours of flights from the United States, followed by a morning of two-handed casting, my shoulders are a bit cranky. A white-tailed eagle wheels overhead and I tip my head back, mulling the odd attractions that have drawn me to Japan, fly rods in tow.

The densely wooded country surrounding Kushiro and Lake Akan brings to mind broad, forested Pacific Northwest steelhead rivers and the rugged countryside composing parts of Russia. Those

32 I AMERICAN ANGLER

who imagine Japan only as city sprawl filled with businessmen and neon lights would be surprised—this is rural Japan, a land of Ezo deer, halcyon rivers, dense forests, towering active volcanoes, and more than its fair share of large brown bears. Waterways are in abundance, and a quick stroll through a local craftsmen’s market shows that fish that swim here are held in high regard; carved wooden fish are everywhere, and vendors take great pride in the distinctions between each species.

Chief among the carvings is the species I’m looking for—Lake Akan’s “golden” char.

These white-spotted char take on a particular golden coloration on their bellies, fins, and jaws. That tint, termed proudly by locals as champagne gold, adds a nearly divine-looking glow. The fish fight well and take streamers and nymphs, although during my stay I had one rather spectacular take on an orange Stimulator in the midst of a torrential rainstorm.

Catching a golden char on a dry fly in the shadow of a volcano in the pouring rain isn’t easily forgotten, and that theme

is prevalent when fishing the region. Most of Lake Akan’s golden char range from 16 to 20 inches, though fish as long as 36 inches are possible. The freshwater species is native to the area and is not supplemented by fish hatcheries—these char exist in the wild waters of Lake Akan just as they have for centuries. When hooked, their take is more subtle than other char species, but once on the line they show the grittiness of their kin . . . regardless of the continent, char have a mind of their own.

The golden char, however, aren’t the only draw. Lake Akan also boasts populations of large rainbow trout, kokanee salmon, and taimen. The surrounding rivers, especially the catch-and-releaseonly section of the Akan River, are stacked with large, happy, and hungry rainbows and the occasional brown. (One local angler said the odds of catching a brown are “one in every twenty fishes.”)

The river looks like something out of a fantasy feature film; overgrown ferns and trees lean precariously over the tumbling water, yielding to a rocky river bottom strewn with volcanic stones. The water is clear, lending itself to sight fishing . . . no blind-casting in these waters. At one point while fishing the river, I edge along a hole bordering a green bank and spy a veritable throng of fish stacked in the clear water—six large rainbows, a smallish taimen tucked in their midst, and three or four cruising carp, likely pushed down from the lake during the recent storm. I quietly back away and then, no more than five minutes later, cast into the pileup. I immediately hook up. These fish are more than obliging.

“They love big fly . . . this area, these fish,” said Dameon Takada, my local host for the week. He grew up on these waters, fishing and hunting the local woodlands with his father. And after a stint living abroad in Canada as a rugby coach, he’s back and on the water. A wizard at the WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

LO G I S T I C S Getting There: The nearby airport of Kushiro (one hour from Lake Akan) is an easy, hour-and-a-half flight from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. Air Do, a local Japanese air carrier specializing in flights to and from Hokkaido, is easy to fly with and accommodated overlarge bags without fuss.

Lodging: Akan Yuku no Sato Tsuruga or its attached sister hotel, Tsuruga Wings, offers comfortable accommodations in both traditional Japanese or Westernstyle rooms. Lodging at both hotels includes access to the local natural hot springs. Fast internet makes it possible to stay in touch with the outside world if desired.

Guides: The Akan Yuku no Sato Tsuruga can connect visiting anglers with Takada, who has strong English skills and is a companionable guide. Junichi Okeya is the best local guide and has a shop a few blocks from the waterfront. Local lodges will readily connect anglers with Mr. Okeya.

Lake Akan offers a variety of game fish, including the golden char. Rivers flowing into Akan offer rainbows, a few browns, and even taimen.

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 I 33

DESTINATIONS fly tying vise, Dameon knows what his fellow anglers favor—large (size 10 and 12), finely tied caddis, though an old series of Stimulators from my American fly box tempts the fish up as well. It’s one of those fisheries where casting accuracy outweighs pattern choice; one gets the feeling these fish will eyeball most anything reasonable that’s been presented well.

Summertime in northern Japan and on Hokkaido, which is Japan’s largest northern island and rests south of Kamchatka, means long days and good fishing.

The season on Lake Akan runs from May 1 to the end of November, and the river season from May 1 through October.

“The middle of June until July tenth is very good,” Takada said. “We have big mayfly hatches—the first is larger insects; the second is smaller and orange.” Small midge hatches occur from mid-May to mid-June, and when conditions are right the terrestrial fishing is productive too.

“Morning and evening match the hatch; daytime terrestrial,” local chef and precision angler Masaaki Nofuji said, adding that the fishery sees a good October caddis hatch as well. He speaks very little English, and I virtually no Japanese, but thanks to the oddly universal language of fly fishing, we can still talk hatches.

I spend my last full day in Japan driving through the countryside with Nofuji and Takada, listening to them speak comfortably in Japanese while I These char are beautifully spotted and can grow to large size, meaning 30 inches or better.

hang out the rear window, shooting images of the surrounding countryside. It’s almost eerily comfortable; rolling hills are broken up by farmland and dairies, the horizon bracketed by a cozy layer of clouds promising more rain later in the day. We fish our way through several of Nofuji’s favorite rivers, stopping to cook up some midday ramen in the open air.

This is small-stream tromping; 3-weight rod territory in tight quarters.

At one point we pause atop a bridge, skulking forward to peer through the tight trees into the clear waters below.

Several rainbow trout fin beneath us, moving gently through the current. We later sneak down the bank, moving into position for a tight cast into the lane, but despite our efforts, the fish refuse to play.

It goes to show that even in a fishery such as this, sometimes there are off days.

The winding country road back to Lake Akan takes us past more pastoral dairies and cornfields, swaths of the crop blown down in a memorial to the storm that blew in while I soaked in the springs. Military convoys canvas the roads, camouflage and utility trucks a harsh reminder of a reality beyond the farmland—1,126 kilometers away lies North Korea; the week prior to my visit, alarms went off throughout Hokkaido as a ballistic rocket was launched from the neighboring country and flew over the island before crashing into the Pacific. The

Independent recently termed Hokkaido as “The Japanese island most at risk from North Korean missiles.”

But the topic dwindles in the face of fishing. When I ask Takada how locals feel about the constant threat from North Korea, he shrugs, states plainly that Kim Jongun is “crazy” and that he’s not going to let the threat of nuclear war affect his fishing.

Given that threat, and with Russia being only 47 kilometers away, residents of this idyllic countryside are no strangers to the challenges posed to their beloved natural environment. While Japan feels like one of the safer locales I’ve visited in years, when an emergency alert alarm goes off in the hotel on the day of the typhoon, I wonder if it’s a weather warning or if we have minutes until a missile hits.

This area of Hokkaido sees very few Western tourists—Takada tells me he saw two Americans in 2016, and that most travelers are from Japan, Korea, and Taiwan.

From the time I depart Tokyo’s Haneda Airport to the time I return to the city eight days later, I’ve seen two other Westerners.

The restful, small-town feel of the region is a powerful break from the bustle of daily life, and the relatively small community of local anglers, teamed with virtually no visiting angler traffic, means the rivers and lakes receive minimal angling pressure.

Today, worldwide, there are very few quality fisheries that have not been overly developed. More so each day, it’s common to compete against other anglers for fewer fish, and to see tired, overfished species with markings from ill handling. One stroll through the woods bracketing the Akan River serves as a reminder that wild places—and wild fish—still exist.

Late in the week, drenched by torrential rain after attempts to find coffee, I wonder if this area could become overrun by anglers or, worse, destroyed by nuclear weapons. For now, I’m not worried—in the relaxed pace of Lake Akan, it’s easy to accept that things are as they are. So I sip my canned coffee, watch the storm, and the world goes on.

Freelance writer and photographer Jess McGlothlin is happiest working in the far-off areas of the world . . . where the good stuff happens.

34 I AMERICAN ANGLER

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

An Angler's Adventure Awaits

Contact us for the vacation of a lifetime.

FLAT CREEK RANCH

GREENHORN RANCH

Flat Creek Ranch is your own private wilderness just miles from Jackson but a world away. The gin clear waters sustain healthy populations of native cutthroat and wild brook trout. Catch and release, fly fishing only.

Learn to fly fish at our ponds or explore one of the nearby rivers and lakes with Orvis-certified fly-fishing guide Mike Pease. Contact us for details or custom fishing packages.

Jackson, WY

307-733-0603 | www.flatcreekranch.com

Quincy, CA

800-334-6939 | www.greenhornranch.com

C LAZY U RANCH

BAR W GUEST RANCH

C Lazy U Ranch is Colorado’s premier guest ranch and an Orvis Endorsed Fly Fishing Lodge two hours Northwest of Denver. This inclusive luxury guest ranch caters to avid anglers and their families.

Some of the best fishing in the world surrounds the Bar W. Set up a trip with a guide or go out on your own, this trip you will remember for a lifetime.

Granby, CO

970-887-3344 | www.clazyu.com

Whitefish, MT

866-828-2900 | www.thebarw.com

UPPER CANYON OUTFITTERS & GUEST RANCH

VEE BAR GUEST RANCH

Come to a hidden corner of Montana and experience the Ruby River, one of the best trout rivers in Montana. This ranch provides great fishing for everyone and skill level doesn’t matter!

Over a mile of the Little Laramie River flows through the ranch, providing guests with private waters that are literally a stone’s throw away. Anglers of all ages are welcome!

Laramie, WY

Alder, MT

406-842-5884 | www.ucomontana.com

307-745-7036 | www.veebar.com

MEDICINE BOW LODGE ADVENTURE GUEST RANCH

GROS VENTRE RIVER RANCH

Experience Medicine Bow Lodge and Adventure Guest Ranch’s exhilarating, memorable fishing in settings that will leave you awe struck! Keeping it real and authentic for many years.

The Gros Ventre River Ranch is located on two miles of private river that is excellent for fly fishing.

For beginners, we also have stocked ponds!

Saratoga, WY

800-409-5439 | www.medicinebowlodge.net

Kelly, WY

307-733-4138 | www.grosventreriverranch.com

www.duderanch.org • 307-587-2339

This Is

Yokanga A genetic strain of Atlantic salmon like none other, and the madmen who chase them.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MATT HARRIS

By Matt Harris

36 I AMERICAN ANGLER

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

T

he big rotor lumbers slowly to life, and I look around at the same old faces, everybody grinning, laughing, and digging one another in the ribs. A bottle of duty-free Jameson makes the rounds; I accept it with a rueful smile and take a hefty swig. I pull on my noise-canceling headphones to drown out the deafening noise of the rotor blades and the first bars of the Who’s “Baba O’Riley” swirl into my head and bring on those familiar goosebumps. The Mi-8 shudders once, twice, and then lifts into the gray northern skies. The craggy old Arctic city of Murmansk, Russia, unfolds below. We are on our way. The best week of the year. This is it. This is Yokanga.

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 I 37

Many times I’ve gazed longingly at the old sepia-toned plates of yesteryear. Stiff old British gents posing formally beside impossibly huge salmon, fish we can barely dare to dream of today. For many years, I thought those fish were from another time, but in 2001, I found a river that can still provide the leviathans of yesteryear.

I’ve been lucky to fish some of the best Atlantic salmon waters in the world, from Iceland’s crystalline streams to the wide waters of Canada’s celebrated Restigouche to the hallowed canyon of Norway’s mighty Alta.

Each has its own unique character and its own unique run of fish. But none offers anything like Northwest Russia’s Yokanga. I first fished it in 2001, wondering if the massive fish I’d seen in the old sepia-toned photos were real—and if so, could they still exist? These were impossibly huge salmon. I dared dream; today, 18 yeas later, I can tell you, unequivocally, they are still there.

Located about 175 miles east of Murmansk, the Yokanga winds its way off the Kola Peninsula’s sprawling tundra and races downhill into the Arctic Ocean at Gremikha Bay. The river offers the largest strain of salmon on the Kola Peninsula, a unique race of deep-bodied, shovel-tailed fish that arrive in mid-June and stick around well into August. To set a hook into one of these leviathans,

Can you say “fish of a lifetime”? On the Yokanga, giant Atlantic salmon, with beautiful markings, are possible on any cast. The author, obviously, chose the right fly at the right time.

38 I AMERICAN ANGLER

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 I 39

chrome bright and fresh from the ocean, is an unforgetable experience. I’m unashamed to say that, once or twice, I’ve blinked away tears of frustration on this river; other times I’ve wiped tears from my eyes in unalloyed delight.

I’ve caught my fair share of big salmon from Yokanga, but I’ve lost fish that I would have given my eyeteeth to put hands on. Most nights at Yokanga Lodge, which stands on a high bench above the river and the “home pool,”someone has a tall tale featuring an epic battle with one of the river’s mighty salmon. More often than not, these stories end in despair, but sometimes, just sometimes, one of our lucky band manages to hang on to one, and a vodka-fueled party ensues.

While the majority of Atlantic salmon fisheries are in steep decline, with aquaculture, netting, and habitat degradation just a few of the myriad causes, the Yokanga and the other feted rivers of the Northern Kola still manage to consistently produce fish.

Fish start showing in the Yokanga in mid-June and they remain into August. One in five of its fish weighs 20 pounds or more; 30-pound fish are landed each week of the season; many larger fish are lost.

To fish the Yokanga effectively involves a heavy-duty kit.

Leave your funky little switch rods and pretty little reels behind. . . . In the early season, when the water is high and the Yokanga’s biggest fish of the season barrel upstream, you need some serious artillery. Fifteen-foot-long 10-weight Spey rods married with reliable high-capacity reels holding at least 300 yards of tightly packed and well-maintained 65-pound gel-spun backing and featuring a powerful disk drag system, are required.

Twenty-pound Maxima is your best choice for a leader, but most veterans choose 30-to-35-pound Seaguar fluorocarbon.

You’ll need two setups to get the best out of Yokanga: in

40 I AMERICAN ANGLER

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

The Yokanga is broad and fast and littered with boulders. When you hook a giant here, you have a long battle ahead.

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

the early season, a Skagit head coupled with a selection of T-14 MOW tips allows you to present large and sometimes heavy flies deep and slow in the fast, high water. In the lower, warmer water of mid- and late season, a full floating Scandi head with a range of 15-foot tips, from floating to Type 8, is perfect for smaller, lighter flies and longer, more subtle presentations.

In the early weeks, you won’t go wrong with the deadly German Snaelda fly, tied on a one-inch brass tube, coupled with an ultra-strong barbless Guideline size 4 double hook. Later, as the water drops, use smaller Temple Dogs, Willie Gunns, Green Highlanders, and my favorite pattern, the deadly Sunray Shadow. Fish the Sunray through the surface with a riffle hitch, and be ready for heart-stopping surface takes.

A typical day on the Yokanga starts with a hot shower in the lodge’s comfortable and well-appointed private suites, followed by a hearty English breakfast in a huge dining room of the magnificent Canadian timber-frame lodge. This is followed by another magic carpet ride in the helicopter to your appointed beat for the day.

Today, we have Upper Norcamp—one of the very best—and it is suddenly visible up ahead through the helicopter window. I grin at Chris, my longtime fishing partner. It’s our turn.

Vova, our brilliant guide, waves us forward and we accept the silent good-luck wishes—the nods and winks and thumps on the arm—from our brothers- and occasionally sisters-in-arms before clambering out of the hovering helicopter and onto the tundra.

As we huddle low and watch theMi-8 lift into the sky, we savor that special anticipation of having perhaps three miles of the very best Atlantic salmon fishing in the world all to ourselves.

Vova busies himself pumping up the little inflatable raft, and Chris and I rig up.

I put up my favorite Hardy 15-foot, 10-weight rod and bolt on my big Mako 9600 reel, loaded with about a million miles of meticulously maintained 65-pound gel-spun backing.

The water has dropped and warmed considerably overnight—the onset of summer. The flower buds, tightly shut just a few short days ago, are starting to open.

Perhaps a little optimistically, I replace the Skagit head and the 12 feet of T-14 with my favorite full-floating Scandi head. I ignore the German Snaelda fly that has been catching some cracking fish all week and instead rig my favorite Sunray Shadow tube fly to a long, tapered, 15-foot, 30-pound-test leader. I feed the leader through a hole in the side of the tube so that the fly will hitch across the surface, and attach a large single hook rather than the more common double hook, which tends to snag the fly’s long wing.

The river is wide here. Chris clambers into the raft and Vova rows him to the far side of the draw, while I wade into the river and tackle the tail of Upper Norcamp pool.

By lunch, we’ve each moved a fish but have nothing to show for our efforts. Vova blames a drop in the air pressure. The Arctic skies have turned a dark, leaden gray that suggests summer is postponed for a few more days at least. Snow is in the air as Vova pours the hot soup and we gaze at the wild tundra’s bleak beauty.

Vova suggests I change to a sinking-tip. Grudgingly I agree, and

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 I 41

thread on an intermediate tip and a favorite black and orange Temple Dog, tied for me by my old friend Hakan Norling.

By 4 p.m., snow is falling heavily.

I take a nip of Lagavulin from the hip flask and wade into my favorite spot on the river, the Lower Norcamp draw.

The blizzard intensifies, thick white flakes contrasting beautifully against the dark northern sky.

I draw the zipper of my rain jacket right up to my chin and do my best to wipe the dissolving snowflakes from my glasses.

Wild weather.

Yokanga weather.

I take three steps downstream and now I’m coming to it. The Lower Norcamp pool can almost be guaranteed to provide some action, but it is also a notorious, boulderstudded heartbreaker, with a savage, leadershredding rapid directly downstream.

Lower Norcamp is a treacherous wade, and the blizzard and the river’s heavy tannin stain make the water almost impenetrably dark, impossible to read. I go carefully, using my wading stick and easing myself into the next spot with exaggerated care. Each of the myriad rocks can hold a fish, and I search each one hard, throwing my talismanic little Temple Dog fly in front of each.

It’s savagely cold now. I pull on my neoprene mittens and send another long snake roll whistling across the river, throwing in an upstream mend to slow the fly’s progress.

I squint through the snowfall, and suddenly, my heart skips a beat.

There it is, a chrome beast of a salmon racing for my fly.

There’s an implosion way out in the gray current, and suddenly, that magical moment: a savage, wrenching tug that brings the reel to life. The running line has resolved out of its deep curve, and is knifing straight out across the river.

The fish crashes away and jackknifes skyward—no color in the monochromatic gunmetal gray of the Arctic snowstorm— just a great black back and gleaming silver flanks slicing through the blizzard.

It’s a big fish.

Forty minutes of wild, knuckle-busting mayhem, of running and slithering over the rocks, and of praying and holding on tight.

Finally, we are into the endgame.

Vova brandishes his net. The fish is close, but not ready; it thrashes angrily at the surface, and I ease off the pressure, frightened that at close quarters, the steely 10-weight Spey rod might tear the hook hold.

I let the fish settle down, and Vova endorses my tactic with a tacit nod.

More pressure, and a few abortive attempts at a dash down-

42 I AMERICAN ANGLER

stream, but the big salmon is tiring now.

The snow starts to ease, and the pale watery disk of the sun is momentarily visible. The big fish thrashes through the surface, and its huge head shows that it is a big, sea-bright cock fish.

It kites around in the current, and Vova skips nimbly across the rocks and positions himself just downstream of the fish.

A vast, spadelike tail rolls up through the surface, and I see that the fish is beaten. I hold my breath and draw the fish gently toward my old friend and his cavernous net. Vova sees his moment, and gently slides the net underneath the mighty fish before lifting the frame triumphantly upward.

Vova punches me hard on the arm and shakes my hand. I thank him with a smile and we gaze down at the magnificent fish. It’s not my biggest from the Yokanga, but it’s heartbreakingly beautiful. Forty-four inches long, gleaming silver, peppered with long-tailed sea lice, and shot through with that sapphire-blue line that betrays it as fresh from the ocean. Thirty-two pounds.

I hold this stunning creature for a quick picture. My arms are shaking, and it’s not from the snowflakes settling on my hands or the ice water, or the lactic acid.

As I let the fish glide back into the frigid water, I feel the wild, primal quality of this place.

These fish.

This is the wildest and the best Atlantic salmon fishing on earth.

This is Yokanga.

Matt Harris has fly fished all over the world, and although he constantly seeks out new fly fishing experiences, he has returned to the Yokanga every year since 2001.

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

By the end of a week on the Yokanga, you’ll be tired and sore.

But, you’ll likely have a new appreciation for giant Atlantic salmon and the Kola Peninsula’s stark yet beautiful landscape.

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 I 43

ADAM TAVENDER

44 I AMERICAN ANGLER

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

The

AK47 CLUB

by Dana Sturn

Overheard somewhere along the BC Coast, July 2009.

Guide: Anything?

Me: Another handshake.

Guide: Steelhead?

Me: I think so.

Guide (looking at fly): This is too big. You’ll need to go smaller for steelies.

Me: But I don’t want to catch steelhead. I’m here for kings.

Guide: What the hell is wrong with you?

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 I 45

O

nce upon a time I decided to go fly fishing for king salmon. Like so many of the other questionable decisions I’ve made in my life, it ended badly. It was a week of seized reels and savage beatdowns.

It was exactly what I needed.

I emerged from that experience like Christian Bale from the Lazarus Pit. The next season I formed the AK47 Club, a loose group of fly fishing masochists who revel in an annual week of getting their Asses Kicked For Seven days on a little coastal river near Terrace, British Columbia.

Every year we happily forgo a potentially amazing steelhead trip for a week of angling angst. On king waters we stress about everything, even the stuff we stopped worrying about on steelhead waters long ago. My steelhead buddies don’t understand it, so I don’t bring it up much anymore. I learned the first year that announcing your intention to go king salmon fly fishing is like mentioning you’re taking your wife to a swinger convention.

Most won’t understand, and trying to explain just makes things worse, so it’s best not to say anything at all.

My companions on this little ordeal have always been Mike and Shirley Walsh from the UK. Mike has chased anadromous fish from the Kalum to the Kharlovka, with Shirley joining him occasionally, and most often on this trip. A few other folks have suffered with us as well, but when a Skagit River sage named Dake Traphagen joined us a few years back, we knew our team was complete.

The AK47s have endured the best and the worst of times.

We’ve had glory days where the fishing is so good you’re not surprised to find that the other guy or gal had an even better morning than you did. We’ve hooked uncontrollable monsters that make you almost happy the hook pulled out. We’ve called the guide boat to follow fish back to the ocean. We’ve been certain that the fish that crushed our fly and emptied our reel

was a 50-pounder, even though we never saw it.

But on coastal river systems, early summer can be unpredictable. You can easily spend a week watching dirty water go by without wetting a line. We’ve done this several times. We’ve also spent an otherwise perfect week of great water and weather conditions without hooking a single thing. And some years we’ve hooked lots, but lost every single one. Kings put the hurt on you.

That’s what makes king salmon so special. They are handsdown the most challenging and rewarding anadromous fish you can hook.

“They are like no other freshwater species,” says Walsh, “uncompromising, with speed and unpredictability that test my ingenuity and tackle to the very limits. Kings are sheer brute force.”

Traphagen agrees. “Kings are the closest thing in fly fishing to encountering a grizzly in dense bush. They can rip your gear and ego to pieces or just ignore you altogether. Either way, they leave you shaking.”

And just so we’re clear, when we’re talking kings here, we’re not talking about the red-booty-looking horrors splashed all over the magazine covers like Hellboy. Those are fish that entered fresh water possibly weeks ago, and have deteriorated out of their prime. They make a nice photo op for visiting anglers who, with all due respect, just don’t get it. Those fish may go by the name chinook, but they ain’t kings. Not at all. When I say kings, I’m talking tide-fresh, sea lice–laced, titanium-hued beasties, the real ass kickers. Fish you’re afraid to hook, because even a 20-pounder could spool you. I’m talking about those ones.

If you’re going to chase those fish, you’ll have to supersize your steelhead tackle. Ten-weight rods are standard. When it comes to reels, bigger is always better. “Hooking one of these salmon is like hooking a jetboat,” says Jeroen Wohe, owner and head guide at Skeena River Lodge in northern British Columbia.

ADAM TAVENDER

You’re not after numbers when fishing king salmon. A few good fish during a week of effort is considered an acceptable reward. When the stars align you may greatly exceed that number, if you don’t first run out of gear.

46 I AMERICAN ANGLER

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

COLUMBUS LETH

“On most steelhead reels the drag won’t cut it. You need a large reel with lots of capacity and a high-quality drag system.”

Your drag not only slows the fish down, but a seriously tight drag might be the only thing that allows you to get a hook into them. Kings have notoriously tough mouths. If you don’t stick them on the take, you probably won’t get a second chance to set the hook. I’ve had so many fish take and leave the pool so fast that I’ve barely had time to lift the rod. If they stop—a big if— there’s usually so much line out that trying to set up on them is pointless. A strong disk drag system cranked down to medieval is sometimes the only thing that gives you a fighting chance.

So classic Hardys are out. I prefer big reels from Islander, Nautilus, and Danielsson. These have drag systems designed for big saltwater fish, hold several hundred yards of backing, and are not overkill. I clamp these onto 13-foot 10 weights. Cable-thick Skagit-style lines help me turn over the heavy T17 tips and big flies I use. My leaders are always 20-pound Maxima Ultragreen, thick beefy nylon that gives me the abrasion resistance I need when I’m pulling hard on a big fish that’s hunkered down in a swift-water rock garden.

Kings eat flies of all kinds. Big or small, flashy or subdued, it doesn’t really matter when they arrive on the tide. Kings eat flies because they can. They can do anything they want. These badass fish have gone toe-to-toe with killer whales and prevailed. So once they reach fresh water they crash around campus like Brett Kavanaugh on reading break. They’re the salmonid equivalent of the Honey Badger, or Trump after the Mueller report. They just don’t give a shit. Your goofy fly is just in the way, so they kill it.

If you’re swinging for kings, don’t tuck the rod under your arm while you light up a smoke. When they grab, they usually go, so you’d better have a good grip on the rod; otherwise, the hours—maybe days—you’ve invested in this are lost, not to mention the possible loss of that expensive two-hander. “Fly fishing for kings can be an unmerciful mental and physical game,” says Steffen Juhl, who runs Salmon Junkies and fly fishes for kings in British Columbia and Chile. Loss of focus is not an option if you hope to earn a chance to place hands on one of these rare gems.

You don’t ever really beat a king salmon. They just decide to let you hang out with them in the shallows awhile. If you’re lucky enough to tail one, they look at you with menace, as if they’re plotting your destruction. There’s not an ounce of fear in their eyes. You are clearly not in control, and never really have been.

The whole experience is intimidating.

Sound tough? It is. Hyperbole it’s not. Joining the AK47 Club is only for those who reach a place where the only climb worth taking is one without the rope. It’s a strange little place where success and failure look almost exactly the same. Where one week can take it all from you. And one fish can be the answer to why you started fly fishing.

Welcome to the Pain Cave.

LOGISTICS The small fraternity of committed king salmon anglers are tightlipped about where and when they choose to suffer. But if you check in with the good folks at Deneki Outdoors (deneki.com), Skeena River Lodge (skeenariverlodge.com), or Salmon Junkies (salmonjunkies.com) they’ll steer you in the right direction.

Dana Sturn is a Spey rod guru who spends part of each year guiding anglers to dream days on British Columbia’s Dean River.

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 I 47

FALSE AL BUILT fo

BLOODY KNUCKLES and BURNEDwhen chasing false albacore, whether you

JOHN MAUSER

48 I AMERICAN ANGLER

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

LBACORE: or SPEED

- OUT REELS are just part of the game fish them from a boat or the beach.

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 I 49

Waiting for

ALBERT Earning your albies from the beach.

By STEPHEN SAUTNER

Albert is late this morning.

BOTH IMAGES DAVE SKOK

I sit on a salt-bleached log worn smooth from wind and tide, staring out at the flat-calm Atlantic. My stripping basket, buckled around my waist, rests in my lap. My 9-foot 8-weight sits in a cradle that’s molded into the rim of the basket. Intermediate line is carefully wound in loose coils. A 1/0 Surf Candy, loop-knotted to 10-pound fluorocarbon, sticks from the cork grip.

I am so totally ready.

Except, where is Albert?

50 I AMERICAN ANGLER

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 I 51

52 I AMERICAN ANGLER

When hunting false albacore from the beach, anglers endure significant downtime.

The way wind plays with grass and sand, and the way a bird’s history is written with tracks may be your only entertainment. Until, finally, the fish show. If they are in range, you may end up hoisting a beautiful catch.

BOTH IMAGES JIM LEEDOM

Every September, from New Jersey to Nantucket, they arrive.

Call them Fat Alberts, albies, false albacore, little tunnies, Euthynnus alletteratus—whatever you’d like. They come when the first big cold front of the season flushes baitfish out of estuaries. They swoop in like squadrons of strafing P-51s, swashbuckling in a ballet of carnage. Silversides, bay anchovies, and sand eels shower in flight. Tunnies stylishly leap after them, their emerald backs gleaming in the sun. They are audacious, these scale-model tuna, abandoning their pelagic home each autumn to gorge within a roll cast of the beach.

That is, when they feel like it. Oftentimes they do not, which leaves shoals of wader-clad fly fishers restlessly standing around sandy points or inlets, waiting. Some clutch flies between thumb and forefinger like an addict’s last cigarette. Their eyes constantly dart about, looking for anything that could indicate the slightest possibility of a fish—a hovering tern, a dimple behind a wave. They seem to be in a perpetual state of distraction, but in reality they are as focused as an astrophysicist contemplating string theory.

You can catch many more albacore from a boat, no question about it. Anglers chase down surfacing schools, then drift into them from upwind. They sometimes hook doubles or triples, then do strange dances around the boat as they fight their fish. Then they chase down another school and hook some more. One fish blurs into another. Catching an albacore from the beach, on the other hand, is beautifully inefficient. It’s like skating flies for steelhead instead of dredging with lead. Both techniques work; but you remember the single fish that came to the dry far more than the six you took down deep.

I stretch my legs in the sand, but remain seated on the log. The early autumn sun feels good on my face. A flock of sanderlings have alighted 20 feet away. They scurry to the sea’s edge, then come rushing back just ahead of the next wave. Don’t they ever get swamped? I look beyond them, but all I see is an empty ocean.

Yes, Albert certainly is late this morning.

Sometimes, though, he is early. Annoyingly so.

His premature arrival usually comes by way of a report posted on a local surf fishing forum. It seems to always happen on a Tuesday or Wednesday when most of us are busy earning a living. Guys with handles like SurfNut55 or AlbieAddict38 (or is it 39?) may gush: “EPIC today. Fish busting everywhere!!! Arms killing me!!!”

Don’t these people work?

By the time I show up Saturday morning along with the rest of humanity, it’s blowing snot out of the northeast. And Albert has retreated to the 20-fathom contour to gorge on butterfish.

Damn you, Albert.

Even when Albert is on time, he can be fussy. There have been moments when I have stripped the most perfectly presented fly directly through two dozen gorging, slashing, marauding tunnies and nothing happens. It’s hard not to take up golf after that. Last fall along the New Jersey shore, I watched for the better part of a morning while albacore boiled and porpoised almost nonchalantly in and out of the surf line. Over a couple of hours, 3 out of 50 anglers hooked up, random as lottery winners. Then I peered below the surface and could see the problem: thousands—make that millions—of half-inch fry hurrying along.

God knows what they were, young-of-the-year bay anchovies?

Juvenile sand eels? A size 14 Pheasant Tail nymph would have been too big. Eventually the school moved on and I went home, arms killing me, but for all the wrong reasons.

Other times, it’s a distance thing. Last year (again!) the surf turned purple as large numbers of hickory shad pushed a massive school of rainbait into a rip. It was a stunning sight: the white blossoms of busting shad erupting on the dark undulating clouds of baitfish, delicate terns hovering, then diving into the melee. But the albacore stayed back, content to occasionally rip the surface 75 yards out. A 10-knot headwind quartering in from the east further handicapped me. I grunted and groaned and double-hauled as best I could. Each time, the fly landed impotently maybe 60 feet away. Then a surf caster strolled up next to me, nodded, and cracked off a rifle shot with his 11-foot rod and Van Staal reel.

His lure—a two-ounce pink epoxy jig—went impossibly far. He cranked twice, then lurched back and hooked an albacore.

Freaking Albert.

Virtually every albie I see landed is mechanically released. Anglers revive the fish by thrusting them headfirst into the water. This jump-starts them back to life, and they swim off stiffly wagging their tail like a windup toy. I release mine too. Well, most of them, anyway.

There’s a myth that false albacore are an inedible, foul, bloody mess.

Pure hokum. The trick is to bleed the fish immediately, then gut it and pack the body cavity with ice. This cools down the endothermic muscle unique to tuna that enables superfast bursts of speed. The muscle also gives off heat, which can spoil the flesh.

At home, I fillet the fish, then cut out the center blood line.

This leaves four crimson-colored loins. You can slice the meat very thin and serve it raw with ginger, wasabi, and soy sauce. Or cut the fillets into chunks and toss them in a marinade of soy sauce, white wine, ginger, olive oil, garlic, and dry mustard seed. Let it sit for an WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

DAVE SKOK

hour or two; then sear it on the grill, leaving it rare in the middle.

A beach-caught albacore served this way with sweet corn on the side, or maybe sliced Jersey tomatoes and fresh basil drizzled with oil and vinegar, makes for a fine autumn harvest. Pair it with a hearty Oktoberfest beer, and all is well with the world.

From the perch on my log, I glance behind me—briefly, of course—and see bird activity in the bayberry shrubs on this rare-as-gold undeveloped New Jersey beach. The birds are small and hyperactive, darting from branch to branch, feeding. LBJs or “little brown jobs”—probably fall warblers, now olive drab, having shed their springtime breeding plumage and song. One time while waiting for Albert to show, I heard a muffled thud, then squawking overhead. I looked up to see two peregrine falcons following an injured shorebird one of them had just struck. It spiraled into the ocean and crash-landed just beyond the waves.

The peregrines swooped repeatedly over the floundering bird, seemingly unsure what to do. Perhaps they were juveniles and had not learned the fine art of administering the final coup de grâce. Just then, an adult black-backed gull that had been loafing on the beach casually took off, landed next to the shorebird, and ate it headfirst. I was as stunned as the peregrines.

I have seen other things too. The spouting humpback whale perfectly silhouetted against an orange sun that had just risen above the horizon moments earlier. The summer flounder hurtling themselves out of the water, chasing peanut bunker and looking like skipping Frisbees. The snapper bluefish driving onto the sand thousands of young-of-the-year fellow bluefish. The nude sunbathers strolling past me, waving. Sometimes, whether WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

or not Albert shows up feels irrelevant.

Oh, but when he does.

I sometimes hear them first. It’s a sound like kids having a splash fight in a kiddie pool. Then I spot them in front of me, lunging through the waves. I’ll have four seconds to get off a cast.

Haul once, then shoot. Tuck the rod and strip back fast. Don’t set the hook until you feel the full weight of the fish, even if you see one streak in and crush the fly. Otherwise, you may pull it out of its mouth. I did this three years ago on a beach in Rhode Island, and it still haunts me. When the line comes tight, strip-set, then watch fly line jump from the basket. Then: backing, glorious snow-white backing. Yards and yards of it dump off the reel into the Atlantic. After that, things you rarely experience: the very real thought you might actually get spooled; the strange whining noise backing makes when fully stretched; hand cramps. Eventually you back up and the ocean presents to you one of its lords.

False albacore look like something imagined by Leonardo—the ideal of the perfect fish. The high dorsal that folds into a slot and completely vanishes. The recessed panels where each pectoral fits perfectly. The scimitar tail. The swatch of blue-green camouflage along its back. The large, ever-eager eye. All elegantly designed for high speed and pursuit.

I take in a deep lungful of salt air and exhale slowly. I unhook the fly from the cork and hold it between my fingers. It feels better there. I gaze at the ocean, ever-patient, waiting again for Albert.

Stephen Sautner’s latest book, A Cast in the Woods, is published

by Lyons Press. Learn more at stephensautner.com.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 I 53

ANGRY FISH GALLERY

54 I AMERICAN ANGLER

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

ALBIES

from the Boat ang on to your y ro , an watch those nuc les when the reel turns.

By BEAU BEASLEY

Standing near the front of the boat,

ohn Mauser cast his fly into the wind and toward a pack of nned marauders approaching the boat at breakneck speed. e set the hook nearly as soon as his fly hit the surface. is fellow anglers did the same, ghting to hold rods and reels being taxed to the limit. he water near the boat became a churning mass of sh and foam, with false albacore slashing back and forth, plunging headlong after their prey. he poor bait sh, fleeing for their li es, were so harried they actually leaped out of the water, a desperate bid to escape the false albacore pursuing them

JOHN MAUSER

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 I 55

like a pack of wolves. Nothing remained in the marauders’ wake but a remnant of stunned baitfish floating near the top of the water. Diving seagulls picked off stunned survivors.

Each fall, to the delight of eager anglers from New England to the Carolinas, false albacore migrate along the East Coast. On average, false albacore weigh between three and six pounds, though they fight like fish that weigh three times that much. In fact, a cruising albie swims at an amazing 35 miles per hour and is shaped like a torpedo.

Their large eyes, set well back on their heads, give them excellent peripheral vision—just what they need when chasing something small and fleeing.

Larger albies, the ones that weigh in at 10 pounds or more, generally come along later in the season, and schools of them may spread over several acres.

In October the quiet seaside hamlet of Atlantic Beach, North Carolina, plays host to the Cape Lookout Albacore & Redfish Festival (CLARF), which pairs angling with fund-raising: the festival raises money for the nonprofit Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing, which helps rehabilitate sick, injured, and traumatized service veterans through fly fishing and fly tying. Local anglers, such as Mauser, Kellie Thompson, John Snipes, and Tommy Bennett, collaborate with members of the Cape Lookout Fly Fishing Club to put on the event.

Chris Thompson, program lead for the local Project Healing Waters Crystal Coast Program, is intimately involved in CLARF, and with good reason: as a former Marine Corps scout sniper, he suffered a career-ending back injury and endures constant pain and nerve damage as a result of his military service. He readily admits that he needed help adjusting to civilian life.

“When you’re in constant pain and you lose the career you’ve always wanted, it’s very depressing,” he said. “PHWFF gave me an outlet by providing fly fishing opportunities and a sense of belonging once again.”

Thompson is quick to point out that PHWFF is not “just a fishing program” but provides regular meetings during which program members “learn to tie flies, build their own fly rods from scratch, and enjoy the company of other veterans” facing similar challenges. All the money raised at CLARF goes toward helping PHWFF reach veterans who desperately need it.

Most anglers don’t eat false albacore, so they’re of little value to commercial fishermen—but recreational anglers absolutely love albies because they are abundant and fight like mad. Anglers who aren’t prepared for fast-paced, chaotic action learn to adjust to the prevailing conditions and the blistering albie runs, or they just stand in the boat wondering what the heck just happened.

Broken fly lines and even broken rods are a common experience when taking on these extremely aggressive and hard-fighting fish. Make no mistake, the false albacore really tests the limits of an angler’s gear and skill, and it’s not for the faint of heart.

On my first albie fishing trip, I didn’t move my hand out of the way fast enough, and the zinging fly reel handle nearly broke my knuckle. It only bled a little, but it hurt like the devil.

False albacore anglers generally use a 9- or 10-weight fly rod and clear or slow-sinking intermediate fly lines. Simple flies that mimic baitfish are especially effective: Clouser Minnows in a 56 I AMERICAN ANGLER

variety of colors often work, as do patterns that are sparsely tied to imitate local baitfish, generally referred to as silversides.

How does an angler locate a school of feeding false albacore?

Simple: find the “working birds,” and you’ll find the albies—as well as a scene straight out of a horror flick. Alternatively, one may follow shrimp trawlers—albies wisely take advantage of a buffet line created by shrimpers when they discard bycatch (the undesirable species accidentally caught in their nets). Of course, albies aren’t the only opportunistic species, so anglers shouldn’t be surprised to see sharks sidle up to the buffet to pick off unsuspecting albies.

“Fishing behind a trawler is a lot harder than it looks,” says Chuck Laughridge, longtime member of the Cape Lookout Fly Fishing Club. “Finding fish is one thing, but operating a boat around a trawler and an active school of fish can be dangerous if you don’t pay attention. Too many boats in one place is nerve-racking, and crossing lines with another nearby angler is very frustrating.

If you get too close to the trawler and don’t manage your line well, you can hook the trawler’s gear and lose your fly line.”

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

Fishing false albies from a boat can provide some wild action. Birds, sharks, and some big albies make this one of fly fishing’s greatest experiences—if you can get a fish to hand before something else takes a bite out of it.

JOHN MAUSER IMAGES

Indeed, this is easily done. Please don’t ask me how I know this.

Here are some simple tactics I employ when fishing albies: Limit false casts. An angler who accurately casts 25 to 35 feet is much more likely to hook up than one who requires additional time to launch a 70-footer.

Cast in front of the breaking fish, or in the middle of the school. Rest assured that below the breaking fish are plenty of fish that you can’t see.

While it’s important to get your fish on the reel, never let go of the fly line until the fish is on the reel. Instead keep tension with your line hand, and let the fish place itself on the reel.

Once a fish is to the boat, it may continue to swim in circles—and this may result in crossed lines. Unlike other species, false albacore can’t stop and catch a breath or be revived by gentle handling. They require water continuously moving through their mouths to keep their gills open so they can breathe. While some guides net albies, most lean over the sides of their boats and grab the fish by its hard forked tail and yank it up out of the water before release.

Once on board, albies may cough up their prey, spreading blood, scales, and bits of baitfish all over the deck. They often shake violently, as if trying to swim out of your hands. Once you’ve captured the moment with a photo or two, release your catch by throwing it over the side of the boat and into the water like a spear. This action immediately opens the fish’s gills and helps it breathe. If you try to gently release an albie, as though it were a red drum, striper, or speckled trout, it will only sink like a WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

WAR-TORN RELIEF

Most Americans are insulated from the ravages of war: Today less than 1 percent of the population serves in the military. For most of us, the “War on Terror” and the nation’s military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are nothing more than stories on the nightly news. By stark contrast, our men and women in the armed forces suffer—the loss of a limb, constant headaches and memory loss resulting from traumatic brain injury, and post-traumatic stress disorder are just a few of the daunting challenges returning vets face.

Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing is dedicated to reaching and rehabilitating our veterans through fly fishing. All members of the military are welcome to participate in PHWFF programs regardless of their length of service or their physical limitations.

All gear and instruction—and even transportation to PHWFF outings—are provided free of charge. For more information on Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing, visit www.projecthealingwaters.org.

The fifth annual CLARF Tournament will be held October 24 to 26, 2019. (In addition, on October 23, PHWFF members and supporters will enjoy an action-packed day of noncompetitive fishing.) Entry fees are $125 per angler; special dinners and other events will be held throughout the weekend.

For more information on how to become a sponsor, volunteer guide, or to assist in some other way with this year’s CLARF, please visit www.capelookoutalbacorefestival.com.

rock and become someone else’s Happy Meal.

If albies sound like a game you want to play, consider participating in CLARF; both conventional and fly anglers are welcome. If taking on albies for the first time, I highly recommend hiring an experienced guide; boat-handling skills are crucial in this kind of topsy-turvy, fast-paced fishing environment.

Beau Beasley (www.beaubeasley.com) is the director of the Virginia Fly Fishing & Wine Festival (www.vaflyfishingfestival.org) and the Texas Fly Fishing & Brew Festival (www.txflyfishingfestival.com).

He lives with his wife and children in Warrenton, Virginia.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 I 57

In the 1950s, Lee Wulff discovered Labrador’s giant brook trout, and over the years this remote fishery has remained strong, producing the majority of line-class world-record brookies.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY GARY KRAMER

58 I AMERICAN ANGLER

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

MOUSIN’

EAST Labrador’s brook trout, up top.

By Gary Kramer

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 I 59

Many of those fish come from the Minipi watershed, a remote and mostly roadless 120,000-square-mile area containing some of the most fertile waters in the north country. This allows brook trout to grow fast—up to a pound a year. Because these fish are long-lived and anglers practice catch-and-release, visitors catch brook trout that average four to five pounds, with many topping the seven-pound mark.

I took the plunge and booked an early September trip with Cooper’s Minipi Lodges. At that time I expected the fish to be in spectacular pre-spawn coloration and willing to eat on top. And I wasn’t disappointed; in four days, I and three fellow anglers caught 45 brook trout over four pounds with the largest being a 7.5-pound brute. Best, we took all those fish up top, on mouse patterns and Bombers.

60 I AMERICAN ANGLER

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

One of the most exhilarating aspects about mousing is the take. Because the mouse is large prey, the brookies don’t just rise to the surface and take it as they would suck in a floating insect. Instead, they try to kill, stun, or maim the mouse. The results are savage, topwater blowups that often catapult the mouse clean out of the water. It always reminds me of a great white shark attacking a sea lion, but in miniature. On multiple occasions, I saw a trout miss a mouse on its first attempt, then return to slash at it two or three times before being hooked.

During our trip we utilized floatplanes to reach distant locations where a boat or canoe was waiting, or where a short walk was required to reach the fishing grounds. Bombers were the fly of choice in rivers, while mousing worked best on lakes, often near outlets where we found a gentle current.

Overall, mousing brook trout in Labrador ranks as one of my best experiences in more than 30 years of fly fishing. It was a treat to stay at a first-class lodge, and to enjoy fly-outs and a guided fishing adventure in a spectacular North Woods setting, catching giant brook trout up top.

Gary Kramer is a traveling fly fisher–photographer. Check out his work at garykramer.net.

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 I 61

“KOKE ADDICTS” IN GOLDEN, BRITISH COLUMBIA, LOOKING FOR A STEELHEAD STUNT DOUBLE.

BY GREG THOMAS

62 I AMERICAN ANGLER

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

IT WAS EARLY, MAYBE 6 A.M., AND DARK, WITH SLEET FALLING steadily, when Dave Burns’s F-150 slogged through the mud puddles and pulled up to my rental cabin.

This was morning one of a three-day hunt for British Columbia bull trout, and as I put on a rain jacket and handed over gear, Burns told me exactly what I didn’t want to hear: “It’s been weird this fall.”

“Weird” meant that Burns, a fishing guide based in Golden, British Columbia, who goes by the handle “the Golden Gillie,” hadn’t found those bulls in the numbers or sizes he expected when we first discussed this trip several months earlier. At that time he was confident we’d find a slew of big bulls in the upper Columbia River and its major tributaries, fish following kokanee salmon out of the 160-mile-long Kinbasket Lake, bulls possibly ranging toward 20 pounds. Burns said we could swing streamers off twohand rods for those bulls, just as an angler might when fishing coastal steelhead. I thought about that momentarily and asked myself a question: With many Pacific Northwest steelhead runs in major decline, and river closures keeping anglers off the water in some places, could swinging for inland bull trout be the new steelhead game?

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 I 63

I needed to know. So last October I loaded my rig with Spey rods, Skagit heads, and sinking tips, and headed north from my home in Montana, hoping to find a stunt double for steelhead.

Seven hours later I parked at Kicking Horse Cabins and listened to wolves howling nearby while I readied my gear.

The next morning, during a short drive to the Columbia, Burns said he didn’t know why the fish seemed a little scarce.

Perhaps those bulls had already spawned and dropped back into Kinbasket. Or maybe fewer bulls followed the kokanees upstream from the reservoir. Maybe I was a little late and the fish that did follow those kokanees (which are landlocked sockeye salmon) had their fill. Nobody knew for sure. But fishing wasn’t quite so productive as it had been in late spring and summer, and not nearly so good as it was the previous fall.

None of that really mattered. I was in British Columbia to fish bulls, and whatever the odds, and despite the weather having turned from late summer to what felt like winter in a single day, I was going to throw.

After driving around a labyrinth of logging roads, we ended up at the mouth of a stream feeding the Columbia, hoping to find some fish in and around its mouth. We worked above the mouth to begin, myself in the lead with Burns following. After 15 minutes or so, I felt a grab but couldn’t set the hook. Could have been bottom. Then Burns hooked up behind me, quickly landing a fourpound bull. Ten minutes later, ditto—it happened again. A short while later, now fishing below the mouth of the feeder stream, Burns was into another bull. I don’t like getting my pocket picked, so I took a rest on the bank and watched Burns closely, wondering if his fly, which mimicked those kokanee salmon, was better than my general white streamer. Could it be that simple? Then I saw the difference: I was swinging flies as I would for steelhead, just letting them consistently glide toward the bank; Burns was doing the same until the fly got to the sweet spot, which is when he would give it action with short, quick strips.

I was back in the water moments later and soon had a three-

64 I AMERICAN ANGLER

to-four-pound bull on the beach, a bright fish with colorful pink spots, which obviously spawned during summer and now was headed back to the lake for winter. That strip was the key.

You can catch bull trout in the Golden area, which lies north of Radium Hot Springs and northwest of Banff, anytime from July into October. During summer, those fish are simply headed upstream to find remote spawning tributaries; later, in September and October, you may catch bulls falling back after the spawn, or fresh bulls that follow kokanees out of the reservoirs and feast on them in the Columbia.

This section of the Columbia is broad, deep, and wild. It offers a deep-green coloration and flows between the Canadian Rockies and the Purcells Mountains, areas littered with wolf, grizzly bear, lynx, mountain goat, bighorn sheep, elk, and mule deer. Its towering, snowcapped peaks are a heli-skier’s dream, and its local rivers have become significant spots on the map for fly fishers. When I fished the area, I hoped to do so in solitude, but even now—still early in the development of this fishery—it has a little bit of that West Coast steelhead vibe, with anglers trying to reach the best runs (us included), before anyone else. I did, in fact, on a day when I fished alone, get low-holed by some shaggy longbeard who had the audacity to ask me how I was doing.

I’m brutally honest. Never been good at keeping my mouth shut or saying what people want to hear. So I answered, “Good until you cut me off.” He sneered, broke down his Spey rod, and drove away in the rain.

Before I deem bull trout to be the new steelhead, let’s get one thing straight—bull trout are no steelhead. Steelhead just fight harder than bulls, and steelhead jump. Bulls, instead, fight deep, pulling hard and shaking their heads, sometimes performing that maddening “Dolly Varden” spin when they reach the net. The appeal of bull trout, to me, is that they are hardy creatures that swim in a beautiful yet harsh landscape, and they kill to survive. They can be found in really good numbers and they grow to large size— 40-plus-inch fish are possible throughout the Northern Rockies,

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

The area around Golden, British Columbia, is wild. When early fall storms hit, anglers may face some challenging elements, and snow-covered roads, during their pursuit of bull trout. Once on the water, anglers can get lost in the beautiful landscape and the rhythm of casting for a fish that may weigh 20 pounds or more.

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 I 65

You’re not alone in bull trout country. Bears (prints seen here), wolves, moose, and lynx are just some of the critters you might encounter while fishing remote stretches of the upper Columbia River. When doing just that, you are likely to catch several good bulls, like the fish guide Dave Burns caught.

Two-hand rods work great on the Columbia, allowing anglers to make long casts across the broad river; they assist in fighting big bull trout too.

66 I AMERICAN ANGLER

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

with the British Columbia record bumping 30 pounds.

There’s no shortage of good bull trout water in the Inland Northwest. Idaho has bulls running out of Dworshak Reservoir and Lake Pend Orielle, among others. Montana’s bulls run out of Flathead Lake, Swan Lake, and Hungry Horse Reservoir, among others. British Columbia’s bulls run out of various large reservoirs, including Kinbasket, Kookanusa, Carlton, Chilko Lake, and the Arrow Lakes. Some years, one Kookanusa tributary may see as many as 7,000 steelhead-size bull trout running out of the reservoir and into its flows. Compare those numbers to many declining PNW steelhead runs, and you can see why some anglers are throwing in the towel on steel and turning their efforts toward bulls.

There is a problem, however. Through their range, bull trout are in jeopardy. Biologists are working hard to reestablish this fish where its numbers have diminished. The outlook is positive, but bull trout, in some places, do not exist in historic numbers.

And this: in Montana, with the exception of a few places, anglers can’t specifically target bulls; in British Columbia, especially in the Fernie area, fishing for bulls has become so popular that anglers must now enter a lottery to fish some streams, hoping to get prime dates each year. That management mimics what steelheaders put up with when choosing to fish British Columbia’s “classified waters,” where daily fees range to $40. Not so along the upper Columbia, where anglers can fish for bulls for as many days as they choose, all under a basic fishing license. Talk about refreshing.

After fishing all morning with decent results, Burns and I headed to a small glacial-colored stream with a single pool that was deep enough to hold a bull. Burns let me fish the head of the pool, where a little waterfall pushed in, and he took the tail.

Moments later, Burns was hooked up again, this time with a modest bull, perhaps three pounds, that still managed to bend his two-hander to the cork.

He knew we could do better on bigger water, so later that day we made a move and headed north, to a place on the Columbia where Burns won’t take clients, mostly because it’s very hard to

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

access with his truck and even harder to reach when you step out of the rig. To reach the water, you basically plunge off a cliff and try to keep your balance—holding on to tree roots and limbs as you go—until finally reaching the Columbia, hundreds of feet below. Then you stagger across slick boulders and logjams to reach the prime places. One misstep means you’re burning the ass right out of your waders while sliding downhill through the forest at Mach V, or you’re snapping an ankle after slipping on the rocks.

When Burns asked me if I was fit enough to do it, I said, “I have some torn cartilage in my left knee and my ankle rolls sometimes, but I’m in.”

Being “in” in this remote canyon meant no signs of people, and a few miles of untouched water spread out in front. Here there are massive gravel bars, plunge pools below small tributary streams, and ledge rock galore. Burns waved one hand across the breadth of the Columbia and said, “You can hook one anywhere in this water, but along this bank,” he added with wide eyes, “is where some beasts live.”

I got first throw, right at the mouth of a feeder creek, and picked up a bull on the swing, just off the rock ledge. I worked it to shore and we weighed it in Burns’s net. Five pounds and chrome bright.

Burns quickly hooked a fish and lost it. I moved downstream from the “fish magnet” and hooked another bull, this one a near perfect match of the previous fish. By the time we reached the end of the run, at the head of a massive, river-wide, thumping rapid, we’d each landed a few fish, lost a couple others, and we were feeling pretty good about our prospects for the coming day.

We’d be back to this spot for sure.

That night I relaxed at the Kicking Horse Cabins, which meant dinner was delivered to my kitchen, needing only to be heated up. Then I soaked in the hot tub, listening to wolves while watching the snow stack up around me.

The following morning, Burns and I descended those cliffs and wound through the woods, then headed out across the

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 I 67

gravel bars to fish my new favorite run. We still hadn’t seen anything that approached the size of a fish Burns claimed to have lost last year, something that burned up his reel and briefly showed its back before it snapped the leader.

“It was a koke addict,” Burns claimed, his pet description of a bull trout that’s become obese by chowing down on salmon. “It was 20 pounds or more for sure, and I know there are more fish like that out here.”

Not long after saying that, Burns was hooked up to a real good fish. He could tell immediately that this bull was unlike the others we’d landed, maybe the 20-pounder he’s always looking for. I readied the camera and watched the fight momentarily before Burns shouted in disgust. The hook pulled free.

I put the camera away and picked up my rod, a fast-action 7126, and started to huck. Before long, as my fly worked a ledge, I felt resistance, wondered if I’d hooked bottom, then felt the familiar headshake.

This fish ran to the middle of the Columbia, then threatened to charge downstream into the rapid, which would have been the end of my shooting head and all my backing. Thankfully, the fish turned back upstream. It made several steelheadesque runs, then dived deep a few times before finally gliding into the net. This was another bright bull, with beautiful pink spots. It weighed 14 pounds on the net. I hoisted the fish for a hero shot, then released it back to the wild Columbia, sure that nobody else had ever caught that fish, and likely no one else ever would again. That’s the difference between Northwest steelhead and Inland Northwest bull trout—there are still magical hidden places in bull trout country where you can have the water to yourself, catching fish that may reach 30 pounds, giants that don’t own a hook scar, native fish that are as impressive and raw as the country they swim in.

Greg Thomas is this magazine’s editor-in-chief and the owner of Anglers Tonic.

68 I AMERICAN ANGLER

LOGISTICS WHERE: Golden and the upper Columbia River are located in southeast British Columbia, in the heart of the Rockies.

TIMING: Bull trout are available all summer long and into fall.

FISHING: You can use Spey rods to cover the Columbia River and to fight fish that may push 20 pounds or more.

A variety of patterns work well, including white streamers and specific kokanee patterns with green heads and reddish bodies. Sinking tips are a must because bulls don’t feed on the surface. Bring T-10 and T-14 sinking tips. Skagit and Scandi heads work well.

IN TOWN: Golden is a great town to visit, offering nice breweries and plenty of good restaurants. It’s located just next to the Columbia, and you can be on the water, fishing, within minutes of town. Dinner? Try Whitetooth Mountain Bistro, Cedar House, or the Wolf’s Den, which offers a great vibe and an inviting bar. A couple brews?

Try Whitetooth Brewing Company.

OTHER ACTIVITIES: You’ll probably spend all your time fishing, but you may want to sneak away to ride mountain bikes if you are into that. Golden is a hub for mountain bikers. Hiking is world class, too.

GUIDED TRIPS: Dave Burns can get you where you need to be. Check out his website and book at goldengillie.com.

LODGING: Kicking Horse Cabins is a great place to stay.

It’s close to the water, comfortable, and offers outstanding home-cooked meals. Wolves howling outside its doors are a bonus. kickinghorsecabins.ca MORE INFO: Check out more about Golden and download guides and maps at tourismgolden.com.

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

The author landed this great bull, which weighed 14 pounds, while swinging a fly next to a rock ledge. (Below) Tributaries to the upper Columbia also offer bull trout, and that great scenery that the Golden area is known for.

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 I 69

PRINT SUBSCRIBERS Add Digital for Only $1!

UNI PRODUCTS J.G. Cote Inc. 1004 Principale, Ste-Melanie, QC. Canada J0K 3A0 Tel: 450-889-8054 Toll-Free: 1-877-889-8054 Fax: 450-889-5887 Email: info@uniproducts.com

NEW FROM UNI UNI- French Twist Medium Gold 3 strands

See “subscriber services” at www.americanangler.com for additional details.

FIND

AMERICAN ANGLER FOR IPAD™

THE FL ITY FLY Y FISHING AUTHOR THORIT ITY

SPRING CREEKS

7

SECRETS of SUCCESS

British Spider Flies for U.S. Waters Guatemala’s Hot Sailfish Action

ON THE APP STORE IN

UNI-Thread 3/0 Purple and Light Orange Waxed or Unwaxed on spools of 50 or 100 yds

HOW TO MATCH A HEX HATCH AT NIGHT PAGE 46

PERFECT RETRIEVES FOR ANY STREAMER INTRODUCING THE DURA-LAR BAITFISH PRO TIPS: TIE BETTER LOOP-WING DRY FLIES

ITUNES! Visit AmericanAngler.com for details.

WATERLINES (Continued from page 72) of my rod and the orange backing began to follow it.

Such an event is rare enough on mountain streams that I paused to look.

I’d not seen my entire fly line leave my reel lately and it felt odd. Clearly this was a redletter day, to see my backing due to a fish I had no hook in pulling out my line.

I saw no way to follow the fish, short of swimming, so I stayed put and tested my luck. The backing peeled out slowly.

Since the brown probably wasn’t hooked, all it likely felt was resistance from the line. It was out for a leisurely stroll and had dinner at my expense.

I continued to fight the brown, or should I say, guide it gingerly, as best I could. A windfall on the left bank would be a problem if it found it. I doubted it would head into the fast water below to

My fly slid out and the brown sank back into the pool. It had managed to both eat the rainbow and dodge the hook.

Dinner on me, with no movie afterwards. make a run, but the best place for a long fight was the middle of the pool. All I had to do was convince it to swim there and stay.

I decided to start regaining my line.

The old brown appeared interested in hanging on to its dinner and came when I applied pressure. With every headshake, I expected the caddis to come free. Still, it was getting late and I was running out of options.

The old fish stopped in the middle of the pool about 20 feet away. I leaned on it a little to get it moving again and it slowly rose, its back making a crease in the surface film.

We held like this for some time. The fish drifted from side to side, occasionally bulldogging its head to shake loose whatever was slowing it down. I tried to coax it upstream of me, where I would be pulling the hook back into the corner of its mouth, rather than out the front. It had settled in, however, and I had no way to get below it.

Then I felt what I dreaded most, a

slipping of the line while I could see the fish was stationary. About 20 feet of water lay between us, but at this point it might as well have been an ocean.

My fly slid out and the brown sank back into the pool. It had managed to both eat the rainbow and dodge the hook.

Dinner on me, with no movie afterwards.

Now almost dark, I reeled in my line and hooked the caddis in the keeper ring.

In the fading light my walk out of the woods was measured as I followed the trail back to the riffle where I crossed. The night air brought a humid chill and the sounds of night birds. An owl announced its claim on this prime hunting territory.

Once back on the road, I bumped into another fisherman, one of the regulars who knew the hole. He guessed where I’d been fishing, so we exchanged reports.

“Do any good?” he asked.

“Some small rainbows,” I answered.

“How about you?”

“Much the same,” he said. “Nothing of any size. Did you see the big brown?”

“He ate one of my rainbows,” I replied.

The fisherman chuckled. “I had him hit a streamer in there last week, so that doesn’t surprise me. Knock-down, dragout fight. Didn’t land him, but he looked to go twenty-five inches. He’s a slab.”

“Well, with a size sixteen caddis in the fish he ate, I don’t think I even stuck him.”

We gave our good night waves and headed to our trucks.

The drive out was slow and winding. Fish that get away often dwell in our memories longer than the ones we catch.

My mind replayed the fight, tried alternative scenarios, and let them play out while I mechanically followed the road.

Big fish on mountain streams deserve these places in our thoughts, as they are few and far between. Even more rare are white squirrels, feeding hellbenders, and a brown trout that takes you into your backing without even sticking it with a hook.

Maybe next time I’ll get it to be the fish that eats the fly. There’s always a next time.

Jim Mize fishes with hopes to see his backing more frequently. You can find his award-winning books of humor and nostalgia at www.acreektricklesthroughit.com.

INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY FLY FISHING LODGE/CAMPGROUND & FLY SHOP/OUTFITTER

Established Business in Operation for Over 35 Years with 75% Repeat Clients

Located on a World-Renowned Fly Fishing River in Montana

FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:

BOB KAPLAN Kaplan Brokerage Group (303) 328-2034 Bob.Kaplan@marcusmillichap.com

Adam Christofferson // Montana Broker of Record License # RRE-BRO-LIC-15748

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 I 71

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM Cottonwood Camp Ad.indd 1

7/1/2019 10:29:01 AM

AA

WATERLINES by Jim Mize

Into the Backing

R

ARE SIGHTS REWARD a fisherman who spends time in the Blue Ridge Mountains. On occasion, I’ve crossed paths with solid white squirrels. A small population is established in an area I fish. Once, I watched a hellbender creep along the bottom of a pool by my feet, munching on the remains of a trout. And perhaps most rare of all, one late evening I saw the backing on my fly reel.

Seeing your backing pass through the tip of your rod is rare on mountain streams for two reasons. First, you need a pool long enough for all your line to be drawn out. Second, you need a fish large enough to take that much line the length of the pool. On this night, I had both.

I was fishing a long hole trapped between two steep ridges. In these mountains, no one calls such a place a canyon.

More likely, we would call it a holler. The ridges weren’t cliffs, and you could walk up the sides if your legs and wind held

out, though you would still want to find a deer trail that ran the contours.

This long hole ran a good length through such a deep, dark holler. I’m never more specific than that when describing the location of a fishing hole for less than the price of a good IPA, and even then I’m likely to lie enough to keep such a place secret. Secret is a relative term, as there are at least 10 regulars who keep this secret. Probably more.

Squeezed between these ridges, the river fell in steps that left wadable fast water where it dropped and a couple deep runs you could easily cast across where it leveled. The high ridges made sunset come early in any season. As the shadows of old hemlocks fell on the water, a hatch of small caddisflies came off and a few rainbows began to sip obligingly.

The hole grew deeper as it progressed, and water soon reached my wader tops. I couldn’t get behind the rainbows to fish upstream, at least not without swimming.

So I lengthened my leader and tied on a

size 16 caddis with the intention of drifting it down to the fish.

The water flowed slowly in this part of the pool, so any fish would have a good look. Still, no crosscurrents created drag, allowing me to give them a reasonable presentation by throwing a little slack in my leader.

As the shadows lengthened, more fish began to rise and I picked up a few pintsized rainbows. The largest was about 10 inches with bright colors. Scrappy and aggressive, they made up for their lack of heft with a little extra bravado. It reminded me of throwing foam spiders to a bed of bluegills, each fish a joy unto itself.

After drying the caddis, I targeted another sipper and sent the fly in its direction. The leader had just enough curves to allow time for the fly to drift past the fish before drag could set in. The rainbow sipped it and turned to run.

This rainbow was smaller than the rest, probably six inches or so. I say probably because I never landed it.

As the fish cut across the pool to escape, it dived and suddenly felt heavier. I lifted my rod tip, but it wouldn’t budge. I thought the rainbow had run through a snag. Then my line began to move.

Clearly, something larger had eaten my fish.

A brown trout—why is it always a brown trout that creates havoc—rose to the surface and held in slow current. Even in the shadows I recognized what had latched on.

Slowly, it turned and began moving downstream.

At this point, it dawned on me that I was likely still hooked to the rainbow. Unless the brown swallowed the small fish, I’d have no firm connection to the bigger one, so I didn’t press the fight. Time could work in my favor.

The brown kept angling away, heading downriver. That’s when the trailing end of my fly line passed through the tip (Continued on page 71)

F. W. THOMAS

72 I AMERICAN ANGLER

WWW.AMERICANANGLER.COM

Good things come to those who bait.

Photo by HookĂŠ

Get insider info For blogs featuring useful tips, insider information, videos and great stories on fishing in Golden visit:

tourismgolden.com/ blog

Head to Golden, B.C. for an epic fishing trip.

Golden is an angler’s dream, with spectacular mountain scenery, glacier fed lakes, rivers, and streams with great fishing options.

Golden is situated on the Columbia River, which includes a vast selection of rivers and streams as its tributaries. These and the numerous lakes that surround Golden offer fabulous fishing opportunities for spin casting and fly fishing from the shore or a boat.

Whatever your preferred catch of the day, Golden is the place to enjoy fishing at its best.

Start planning: tourismgolden.com/fish

tourismgolden.com

Better than ever.

The all new G Series from Scott.

Scott Fly Rod Company

| 2 3 5 5 A i r P a r k W a y, M o n t r o s e , C o l o r a d o 8 1 4 0 1 | 9 7 0 - 2 4 9 - 3 1 8 0 | s c o t t f l y r o d . c o m