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OCt-DEc 2021 flyfvisherman.com

Nine-Pound Hammer Charlie Craven puts it down

T H E LE A D I N G M A G A Z I N E O F F LY F I S H I N G

Great Lakes Steelhead Decline

California's

McCloud River

2022 Fly Rod Sneak Peek

Seize the Day Trip.

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Change is the only constant. Blane Chocklett executes a boots-in-the-water rig adjustment while fishing off the grid in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia. ANDREW BURR © 2021 Patagonia, Inc.

OC T OBE R - DE CE MBE R 2021 V O L . 5 3 N O . 1 T H E L E A D I N G M A G A Z I N E O F F LY F I S H I N G

c o n t e n t s

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6 Riffles & Runs World's Best Rod ROSS PURNELL

10 Tight Lines Parenting the Right Way, Slip Lift Pickup, Micro Trolling, and more

12 Horizons Abandoning Maine Salmon

42 A Gift of Rainbows California’s McCloud River: The genetic home of the world’s redbands DICK GALLAND

BRIAN IRWIN

1 8 T h e M i g r at i o n Where Have All the Steelhead Gone?

KARL WEIXLMANN

26 Rising Tides Remembering a Mentor JIM MCLENNAN

3 2 H at c h es Patagonia Stealth Hip Pack, Orvis Blackout rods, G.Loomis NRX+ T2S, and more

40 Newscasts Please Don't Feed the Lake Trout, Worst Steelhead Returns in History, and more

50 Muskie Hunter Tackle and strategies to improve your success BLANE CHOCKLETT

6 6 F ly T i e r ' s B e n c h Nine-Pound Hammer CH A RL IE CR AV EN

72 seasonable Angler The Things that Matter STEVE RAMIREZ

On the cover Rob Smith aka “The Stache” with a massive muskie caught while fishing with guide Blane Chocklett in Virginia. See Chocklett's story “Muskie Hunter” on page 50.

BLANE CHOCKLETT - PHOTO

S T AY C O N N E C T E D T O T H E B E S T F LY - F I S H I N G A R T ICL E S, T IP S, A ND TAC T ICS F E AT URING THE INDUSTRY'S TOP GUIDES AND PROS.

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WORLD’S BEST ROD

rom the turn of the 20th century until his death in 1926, W.D. Coggeshall was an American expat living in London . He brought with him to the Old World three fly

rods made by Hiram Lewis Leonard, founder of the H.L. Leonard Rod Company. Leonard made the first-ever six-strip hexagonal bamboo fly rod, and in his shop trained many of the next century’s great American rod makers.

Coggeshall fished the chalkstreams of Hampshire, Wiltshire, and Kent along with the foremost angling authors of the day, including Frederic M. Halford, author of Floating Flies and How to Dress Them, and also G.E.M. Skues, the author and lawyer who was publicly condemned by Halford more than a few times for advocating the use of nymphs.

Coggeshall was a trustee of the Flyfishers’ Club in London and later became president. Like many fly fishers who are passionate about their favorite brands, he was a vocal proponent of his American-made tackle. One of Coggeshall’s rods in particular caught the eye of Skues. After examining Coggeshall’s 9-foot H.L. Leonard rod, he ordered a duplicate. After 33 years of using it, Skues wrote that this particular 9-foot rod was the “WBR” (world’s best rod), and today it’s on display at the Flyfishers’ Club in London. (You can read more about the Coggeshall collection in Newscasts on page 41.)

I don’t doubt that the 9-foot, six-strip H.L. Leonard bamboo rod was Skues’s favorite rod for fishing wet flies on his beloved chalkstreams. It was the premier technology of the day.

It’s interesting to note that 100 years later, we’re still refining and redefining what is the “best rod.” In 2021, the best rod depends on a seemingly infinite number of variables, including the size of the flies, anticipated range, species, water type, depth, lines, strategy, and the list goes on. Witness the new crop of rods in this issue from American rod manufacturers G.Loomis and Orvis. Instead of rolling out one-size-fits-all fly rods, they are

both upping the ante with a universe of specific rods designed for exacting situations.

The NRX+ SF “swim fly” rod (page 36), designed with help from outfitter Mike Schultz, is a tool intended to help cast large, articulated flies into tight spots, and properly swim the flies using sinking lines with 33.5-foot heads.

The 11'3" 3-weight Blackout rod (page 34) is a stealthy matte black Euro-nymphing rod, created with help from former Fly Fishing Team USA coach, and current Penn State fly-fishing instructor, George Daniel. Daniel was involved in competitive fly fishing for many years, and he wanted a rod that could compete with other rods at the FIPS Mouche world championships in terms of sensitivity, but still deal with the brawling waters and powerful rainbows of the Madison River.

What this all means, of course, is that there are many good reasons out there to buy a new fly rod. They are guilty pleasures that everyone—from W.D. Coggeshall forward—continues to enjoy to this day.

Ross Purnell, editor ross@flyfisherman.com

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PARENTING IN THE OUTDOORS

While reading Hilary Hutcheson’s article “Protecting Montana Headwaters” in the Aug.-Sep. issue, I was struck with the idea that there was more to the story than the business of protecting our rivers.

Like Hilary, I also spent years with my daughter on the water.

At the time, I was happy just to be spending quality time with my child. As time went on, she went from a spinning rod to a fly rod, and learned to tie flies and read water. Then she went on to enter tournaments, and won some impressive awards.

Much like Hilary’s daughter Ella, my daughter took the skills that she learned fishing, and applied them to life. Ella is going to college, and may wind up influencing legislation to protect our environment. But while we are raising our children in a fishing environment, we are doing other things as well. Teaching a skill like fly fishing requires dedication and concentration for both the student and teacher. That concentration reinforces the ability to learn both physical and mental skills.

My daughter had an interest in fishing, followed it with an interest in science, and now she is a nurse, studying to be a doctor.

Fishing for her required a certain type of stick-with-it mentality that developed into a strong work ethic. The time I spent playing on the water with my child influenced her life in ways I never imagined.

I’m sure that Ella will go on to be a leader in society, and all of the efforts that Hilary put into this will benefit not just Ella but all of her peers in the future. Hilary should be proud of Ella for her personal accomplishments, and at the same time take joy in the fact that her brand of parenting is making a better future for us all.

ED RIDGIK

W il ming t on, Del awa re

SLIP LIFT PICKUP

JOE MAHLER - ILLUSTRATION

I just finished reading Joe Mahler’s excellent article “Sharpen your Shooting” in the June-July issue. Once again, Fly Fisherman and Joe have cast it out of the park! While I found the whole article informative, the discussion of the “slip lift pickup” was the most intriguing. I have never seen this described before—and was happy to discover on my next outing that I was already unconsciously doing it. With the help of the article and the purposeful application of the technique, I was able to maximize the effect of the slip lift to immediately improve my shooting skills and my distance.

DIRK FISCHBACH

Sou t h Lyon, Michiga n

MICRO TROLLING

What constitutes fly fishing? Is it the need for a fly line? Use of a “fly” that in theory resembles a fly made from various natural and/or artificial materials? A special rod? Maybe if I was better at it, or enjoyed the process more, I might be a fan of the Euro nymphing Howard Croston described in the Aug.-Sep. issue. It’s definitely a very productive, sensitive technique, and much is to be learned from it. I appreciate the skill level and practice it takes to master it.

I have friends who are very enamored with Euro nymphing, and they generally outfish me when they are doing it. I get it . . . it works. But if all I wanted to do was to catch lots of fish—while standing very close to the fish—bait fishing is also very productive. I prefer to fish at a farther distance.

In Euro nymphing you don’t need a fly line. A long leader seems to be the ticket. Flies like the Perdigon are basically tiny, heavily weighted lures, covered with plastic or epoxy. Feathers and fur are eliminated or minimized in many Euro-nymphing flies. The Perdigon is almost a miniature Michigan Cricket, which basically was a treble hook coated with lead. The process is micro trolling a small area, and repeating the process sequentially to cover the entire bottom. I think of it as vacuuming the river floor. I am curious about how other people perceive this technique.

CLIFF SNYDER

L enox , M a ss achuse t t s

DROP US A TIGHT LINE, EBON ROBINSON - PHOTO

WE'D LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU!

Email your letters to tightlines@flyfisherman.com or message us on social media, please include your city and state. @flyfisherman @flyfishermanmagazine

10

FLY FISHER MAN

Due to the amount of correspondence we receive, we regret that we cannot respond to each letter. Mailing addresses are required.

The Lockwood Dam in Waterville, Maine is the lowest of four remaining dams on the Kennebec River blocking access to upstream Atlantic salmon spawning grounds on the Sandy River.

ABANDONING MAINE SALMON ighteen years ago, I lived in central Maine . I used to whitewater canoe on the

Sandy River, gliding over its freestone bed and through its pristine, clear water. At one time it was one of the most prolific Atlantic salmon nurseries in the United States, but now four dams on the Kennebec River make the Sandy—a tributary—inaccessible to salmon.

Brookfield Renewable Partners, a hydroelectric juggernaut based out of Toronto, Canada, operates and/or owns around 5,300 power-generating plants worldwide. They own and operate the four offending dams on the Kennebec, from north to south the Lockwood, Kennebec, Shawmut, and the Weston dams. All are between Waterville and Skowhegan, Maine.

“There is no downstream [spawning] habitat south of the 12

FLY FISHER MAN

Waterville dams—in the entire watershed,” says Nick Bennett, staff scientist and healthy waters director for the Natural Resources Council of Maine (NRCM). He argues that without passage to the Sandy’s spawning territory, wild Atlantic salmon in the eastern U.S. face imminent extinction.

“The Kennebec was once the most productive spawning Atlantic river in the eastern U.S., based on ledgers from the mid-1800s.

Sponsored by

PVC FREE SINCE 1984

J.MONKMAN/NRCM - PHOTO

Dam owner refuses to take action on the Kennebec BRIAN IRWIN The river used to support runs in the hundreds of thousands, in addition to runs of shad and herring, in the millions,” says Bennett.

In 2020 only 51 salmon made it beyond the Lockwood Dam in Waterville, a town situated on the Kennebec between Augusta and the Sandy. Brookfield’s solution to the problem was almost humorous in its viability: Collect running salmon in holding tanks and load them in trucks and transport them upstream.

There is no evidence that this technique has ever been successful. In addition, their operating permit mandated that they erect functional fish passages, which they failed to do.

This set of barriers has not only cut deeply into the Atlantic salmon population, which, at one time, was rooted in the Kennebec as its life source, but other species such as shad and river herring.

The salmon and other diadromous fish that thrive in the Gulf of Maine play a role in the general food web. These rivers need to be sending literally billions of baitfish into the Gulf to support populations of cod and other species. Without this migration, populations of many other species of fish have suffered.

In 1999 the Edwards Dam on the lower Kennebec River was demolished in the name of fish conservation. And it worked. A flood of alewives, eels, and herring ran up the river. Since 2009, according to the NRCM, 36 million alewives have reached spawning habitat upstream in the Sebasticook River. And as a corollary, the largest concentration of bald eagles on the East Coast followed suit.

This success has proven, in no uncertain terms, that dam removal works. But the salmon still can’t reach the Sandy due to the impasses. flyfisherman.com

13

J.MONKMAN/NRCM - PHOTO

In the Kennebec River downstream from Skowhegan, Maine, fly fisher Jack Gibson can catch resident smallmouth bass and brown trout, but he likely won’t see migratory fish like the Atlantic salmon, shad, and herring that used to number in the millions.

Brookfield argues the dams are valuable and should stay, despite their disrepair and inefficiency, but according to NRCM, “The sum of authorized capacity of all four dams in the lower Kennebec River is 6.4% of all hydropower in Maine and accounts for 0.43% of the annual electricity generation in Maine. Half of Maine’s current hydropower capacity comes from nine large dams that aren’t in migration areas, and the projected solar build-out in Maine in the next five years will provide five times what the Kennebec dams generate annually.”

LOCAL OPPOSITION But it’s not just Brookfield opposing dam removal. Some local communities along the Kennebec, including Skowhegan, Norridgewock, and Madison, do not support dam removal, citing loss of tax revenue for their towns and employment for their residents.

The removal of these dams has proved complicated, but is rooted in a 1998 agreement between the Kennebec Coalition, 14

FLY FISHER MAN

a collection of conservation groups, and Brookfield, that insisted on building “a comprehensive settlement governing fish restoration, for numerous anadromous and catadromous species, that will rapidly assist in the restoration of these species in the Kennebec River . . . ” The italic emphasis was in the original document. To date, there is no evidence that any of this is moving forward. Of note, this agreement was signed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which oversees these dams.

To execute the removal of these four obstructions, the State of Maine, through its agency the Department of Marine Resources (DMR), sought to halt the FERC renewal of Brookfield’s permits to operate the dams. They did this through the release of a new Kennebec River Management Plan Amendment which, according to the Natural Resources Council of Maine “ . . . recognized the need for removal of at least two of the four dams” [to continue restoration of the Kennebec River.]

Brookfield’s permits to operate the

dams are granted initially for 50 years and then need to be renewed for 30- to 50-year terms. The DMR attempted to deny the renewal of these permits, based on the fact that Brookfield has failed to make the dams compatible with the upstream and downstream migration of Atlantic salmon from the Gulf of Maine, which are listed as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Brookfield’s position was that the regulations put in place by the original agreement were not feasible or realistic in their scope. These regulations included the construction of functional fish ladders.

It’s well known that fish passages rarely contribute significantly to the restoration of migratory fish, but regardless, Brookfield failed to build functional fish ladders in the more than 30-year period from when the regulations were levied, and agreed to

by Brookfield.

The DMR stated that Brookfield was overdue in construction of these upgrades, which are required to comply with the Endangered Species Act. The problem is that

FERC, not the DMR, holds the authority to mandate dam removal, and so far they have not insisted upon it.

The DMR, backed by Governor Janet Mills, is trying to enforce the agreement in an arena they aren’t, under law, authorized to do.

Bennett explained one of the many complications that occurred: “Due to procedural errors, between the attorney general, Brookfield, and the DMR, the project was halted for reconsideration. The Brookfield dams are under the supervision of the federal government and are granted, in turn, leases.

States weigh in, but do not enforce, dam removal. In a way, we are at the mercy of the feds, and Brookfield doesn’t seem concerned about levying a death blow to Atlantic salmon in order to save a faltering project.”

Under the heat lamp of a lawsuit, Governor Mills and the State of Maine withdrew the amendment to Brookfield’s operating agreement that would force removal of the dams. This isn’t to say the State of Maine has abandoned restoration of Atlantic salmon and many other migratory species to the

In response to Brookfield’s inaction, three conservation groups announced on May 13, 2021 that they intend to sue Brookfield for violating the Endangered Species Act. The Conservation Law Foundation, Maine Rivers, and the NRCM note in their press release that “Brookfield’s authorization to ‘take’ Atlantic salmon trying to pass upstream and downstream through the dams expired in 2019, and since that time the company has continued to kill fish, in clear violation of the ESA.” Kennebec. It did, however, send them firmly back to the drawing board. The entire approach to overcoming Brookfield’s grip on the upper Kennebec has to be redrafted.

The DMR is now in the process of generating a new plan that will hopefully allow for restoration of a meaningful salmon migration, but one that

would also be deemed acceptable for not only Brookfield, but the towns that are stakeholders in this battle. This would include the upstream hamlets along the Kennebec that claim it is critical for their economies. Skowhegan’s Town Manager Christine Almand told NPR, “We’d like to see successful fish passage. I think the goals

on

ater pp com

J.MONKMAN/NRCM - PHOTOS

of many different groups and interests [including Sappi, a large upstream paper mill who claims they’d shutter if the dam was removed] could be met, possibly without dam removal.”

In response to Brookfield’s inaction, three conservation groups announced on May 13, 2021 that they intend to sue Brookfield for violating the Endangered Species Act. The Conservation Law Foundation, Maine Rivers, and the NRCM note in their press release that “Brookfield’s authorization to ‘take’ Atlantic salmon trying to pass upstream and downstream through the dams expired in 2019, and since that time the company has continued to kill fish, in clear violation of the ESA.” The press release starts the clock on the lawsuit, which under the Endangered Species Act mandates a 60-day waiting period from announcement to the time a suit can be filed.

“State and federal agencies have already called out Brookfield’s negligence,” the press release states. “In July 2020, the federal government rejected Brookfield’s proposed Species Protection Plan (SPP) for Atlantic salmon. At the beginning of 2020, the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) and National Marine Fisheries Services (NMFS) both opposed Brookfield’s relicensing application for the Shawmut Dam and recommended removing it. In addition, DMR and NMFS have both told Brookfield for years that the fish lift at the Lockwood Dam does not pass either salmon or American shad effectively, but Brookfield has done nothing to remedy the problem.”

Only removal of these four dams will give Atlantic salmon a fighting chance to recover. Even if this did work, it would take decades for Kennebec River salmon to recover.

It appears that in a tangle of legal red tape, the embattled theater where the DMR, Brookfield, and Mills fought continues to smolder as everyone gathers their strategies for the next round of closely watched proposals that could save, or decimate, what was once the strongest run of migratory salmon on the eastern seaboard.

“Central Maine has the opportunity to become an example of one of the most inspiring river conservation projects in the world,” said Bennett. “The question becomes, will it choose to do so?”

From top to bottom: The Weston Dam in downtown Skowhegan, the Kennebec Dam in Waterville, and the Shawmut Dam in Fairfield. Together with the Lockwood Dam (also in Waterville), the dams account for less than 7% of all Maine’s hydroelectric power production.

16

FLY FISHER MAN

Brian Irwin is Fly Fisherman’s New England field editor. He is a medical doctor and lives in North Conway, New Hampshire.

The Lake Erie steelhead fishery in Pennsylvania alone was worth $40 million in 2016, but catch rates are plummeting.

And the bad news isn’t just in Pennsylvania. Fly fishers all over the Great Lakes are wondering what’s happening to a world-class fishery.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE STEELHEAD GONE? arty Grazco has been President of the Pennsylvania Steelhead Association (PSA) for seven years, caught his first steelhead in 1976, and lives less than a mile from what some would consider to be the highest concentration of steelhead in Pennsylvania—the lower section of Walnut Creek . Stream improvement projects sponsored by the PSA, monumental stocking efforts by the Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission (PFBC) and 3-C-U Trout Association, and a set of high falls found just upstream from the Manchester Hole that blocks migration, make this PFBC Access Area a heavily fished destination for in- and out-of-state anglers.

Grazco likes to do it the old-fashioned way, casting $2.97 knockoff Walmart spoons off of what locals call The Wall, a boat channel leading to Lake Erie at the lower end of the creek.

18

FLY FISHER MAN

This is drive-up steelheading at its finest, when fresh fish stack up with predatory instincts still intact, crushing hardware and cartwheeling through other anglers’ lines. It’s quite the show,

JACK HANRAHAN - PHOTO

Is it predators or climate? drawing onlookers from all over Erie County.

But Grazco hasn’t been catching as many steelhead as he used to. Neither have thousands of other fishermen who flock to “Steelhead Alley”—the south shoreline of Lake Erie stretching from the city of Buffalo in New York all the way west to Toledo, Ohio. The reduction of steelhead numbers returning to these tributaries is evident not only on Steelhead Alley, but throughout the Great Lakes region.

Grazco noticed the decline in returning steelhead starting around five years ago, on Walnut Creek in particular. “Last year The Wall was dead, and nobody was catching fish from the short jetties. We don’t get good lake and stream temperatures anymore until late October or early November. Everything has a cause and effect,” he said.

K ARL WEIXLMANN

“The fundamental thing is that overall numbers are way down,” explained fly fisher Jeff Blood, who is well known for his steelhead acumen. “The decline started when the PFBC changed its stocking program. Steelhead are now stocked 18.6 miles upstream from the mouth of Elk Creek. There used to be lots of fish in Cattaraugus Creek in New York, but the numbers have plummeted. The steelhead are not straying anymore from Pennsylvania into New York. Perhaps there is a correlation between the change in stocking practices and the survival rate of smolts returning to the lake. As fishermen, we don’t see state lines. State agencies care about state lines. All I can conclude is that something has happened.”

Steelheaders like Grazco and Blood know things. There simply flyfisherman.com

19

DENNIS PASTUCHA- PHOTO

Great Lakes steelhead stray beyond state boundaries, and many do not return to the streams where they originated. This makes it difficult for state agencies to quantify the successes or failures of their own strategies. can be no better observations of what is happening on our tributaries than those from anglers who spend innumerable hours on the water through decades of experience. The better question may be how to accumulate these observations using angler-collected data about where steelhead are caught, and catch rates per hour.

Pennsylvania uses one time-honored source for this type of information, the Lake Erie Cooperative Angler Logbook (LECAL). Volunteer anglers are provided with a pamphlet-style hard copy logbook with a stamped return envelope to record the dates and times their fishing occurred, the locations fished, and number of fish caught. Used by the Lake Erie Research 20

FLY FISHER MAN

Unit of the PFBC, its mission is to “Collect quantitative data from fishermen in steelhead and brown trout fisheries in tributary waters of Pennsylvania. The collected data allows us to estimate the numbers of fish returning to each tributary during the season to see the impact of changes we make to the management of the fishery.”

Blood thinks the LECAL data, “measures a fisherman’s skill, not how many fish are in the water.”

The PFBC acknowledges this, saying that, “Those who make many trips and catch many fish obviously bias the conclusions.”

Local fly fisher and PSA board member Sam Zacour, a volunteer in the LECAL program, saw his catch per hour drop

significantly, down from 0.42 in 2014 to 0.19 per hour in 2019.

Michael Hosack, a PFBC Lake Erie Unit Biologist says that while, “We don’t have any reliable data about returns, we pushed for a wire-tagging study that the Lake Erie Committee (a consortium of all the states and Ontario) did not approve.”

Without a mass marking initiative, the number of steelhead returning to Pennsylvania tributaries may never be known, even though the PFBC has changed its hatchery-rearing practices to produce and grow larger steelhead smolts.

Stocking numbers continue to be high, with just over 1 million one-year-old juveniles going into Pennsylvania tributaries annually. Conditions were ideal on Lake Erie during the early 2000s for optimal steelhead growth and return rates, but that was before the current walleye explosion. Based upon anecdotal information from anglers, steelhead return numbers today do not compare to the high-water mark previously set by the fishery. Pennsylvania’s steelhead fishery may just be a victim of the success of the thriving walleye fishery.

The LECAL program is just one tool used by the PFBC to manage steelhead.

Hard data from the Lake Erie Boat Anglers Survey has also showed a decline in catch and harvest rates. In 2000 the catch per angler hour on the lake was 0.54 with a 62% success rate, and a harvest rate per angler hour of 0.34. By 2007 those numbers went down to a 39% success rate per angler hour and a 0.06 harvest rate. If there are less steelhead available to the open-water fishery, there are certainly fewer steelhead returning to the tributary fisheries. However, this a small sampling size out of the total number of boats fishing out on the lake.

MICHIGAN In Michigan, things aren’t looking any better, and the decline started more than a decade ago when the spring steelhead count at the Little Manistee River fish weir dropped from 4,191 in 2009 to 1,961 in 2010. In that same time period, the fall run count went from 343 down to 91. Compare this with historic highs from 1997, when 10,480 spring- and 2,031 fall-running steelhead returned to the weir. The Little Manistee River provides a wild-strain steelhead egg source and hatchery production, not only for Michigan but also for Indiana and Ohio.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, no eggs were taken from returning fish in 2020,

and in April 2021, only 1,611 steelhead came back.

“In my opinion, we have a couple of things going on here when it comes to declining returns,” says Heather Hettinger, fisheries biologist for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. “First, the Dreissenid mussels show up in the early 90s and change everything. Water clarity increases, we lose the frequent setups of offshore surface scumlines for steelhead to feed along, alewife numbers begin to drastically decline . . . things like this in combination are impacting steelhead from a dietary standpoint. As diverse feeders as they can be, steelhead really like to eat alewives. That is their preference.

“Second, the past five or six years have seen record high water levels in the Great Lakes. Lake Michigan’s shoreline has a ton of drowned river mouth lakes, most of which coincide with our good steelhead rivers. High water means more flooded shoreline available for spawning, which is very good for pike, bass, and walleyes.

“Long story short, I believe we have an increase in predatory fish that these steelhead have to swim past, to even make it out to Lake Michigan. There used to be an advantage of safety in numbers.

Steelheaders like Grazco and Blood know things. There simply can be no better observation of what is happening on our tributaries than from anglers who spend innumerable hours on the water through decades of experience.

We used to stock more Chinook, more coho, more brown trout. We’ve cut back stocking of everything except steelhead, and now these fish are trying to out-migrate without the bonus of those other species in high numbers to run interference. Yes, there are wild fish of those other species going out with them, but stocking used to significantly inflate the numbers of fish leaving these river systems.”

Hettinger also mentioned an “interesting contrast” between Michigan and Wisconsin. “Most anglers who troll Wisconsin waters from Milwaukee to the

north catch a lot of steelhead along with salmon. The differences are that Wisconsin has no drowned river mouths and is much more productive, nutrient-wise, on the northern shoreline. They don’t have the abundance or quality of rivers that we have over here in Michigan, yet they are still seeing good numbers of steelhead in the open-water fishery.”

Fly fisherman and guide Matthew Supinski—who wrote the book Steelhead Dreams—said the problem is simple: “We are killing too many wild fish in Michigan.

“A textbook model for good steelhead

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FISHING LIFE , FISHING HOME F u e l y o u r p a s s i o n f o r g a m e f i s h w i t h a w a r d -w i n n i n g p r i n t s f r o m m a r i n e b i o l o g i s t a n d a r t i s t N i c k M a y e r.

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MATTHEW SUPINSKI - PHOTO

Record high water in the Great Lakes over the past five or six years has provided additional spawning habitat for pike, bass, and walleyes. It could be that climate change is favoring these warmwater species, and they are eating or out-competing the steelhead. management is the Pere Marquette River with a 100% wild population. It is closed to fishing from September 30 to the last Saturday in April—that’s 7 months of closed sanctuary water with no harvest. But with climate change, warmwater predators are going through the roof. We’re just feeding 50% of out-migrating steelhead to other species like walleye.”

Supinski thinks its imperative to get the three-fish steelhead limit reduced. “Protect it and they will come,” he said.

BIGGER SMOLTS Michigan biologist Paul Seelbach’s studies showed that stocking smolts from 6 to 8 inches long, higher up in a tributary system, helped them imprint better, increase smoltification, and avoid predators that want to eat them. However, this may not be working in Pennsylvania during an era of climate change, where a lack of precipitation has produced extremely low water flows in shallow, shale-bottom creeks during the spring season. These smolts get trapped in upriver pools and cool-water refuges, making them easy prey for avian predators like great blue herons and cormorants. They also suffer 22

FLY FISHER MAN

the negative thermal effects of high water temperatures from record-breaking heat in recent years.

A 2017 dissertation from the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University examined straying of steelhead in Lake Erie using otolith chemical signatures to identify where the steelhead came from.

With four U.S. states stocking approximately 1.8 million juvenile steelhead into Lake Erie tributaries, the research was used to identify straying populations of steelhead, survival and return rates, and practices that increase straying.

The adult steelhead collection sites were on Cattaraugus and Chautauqua creeks in New York, Sixteen Mile Creek in Pennsylvania, the Vermillion River in Ohio, and the Huron River in Michigan. The research found that, “ . . . the large proportion of Ohio and Pennsylvania fish present in Chautauqua and Cattaraugus creeks in New York suggests that large numbers of individuals from Ohio and Pennsylvania are choosing to spawn in New York tributaries.

New York, meanwhile, confirmed that “ . . . return rates for fish stocked at a size of 140 mm (5.5 inches) by New York are poor.”

The Bowling Green State University

study showed that “juvenile steelhead stocked below 150 mm (5.9 inches) were more likely to remain in Lake Erie tributaries for an additional year where they are exposed to high mortality risk due to high summer water temperatures.”

Research like this is extremely valuable to hatchery managers and biologists for managing Great Lakes steelhead populations. In a new five-year study, Michigan started mass-marking steelhead with an adipose fin clip and a coded wire tag inserted into the nose of the fish. Each tag has a regional assignment for the river systems into which they are stocked. Hettinger says that while straying isn’t a big problem on Michigan tributaries, “This five-year study will definitely help us reaffirm and better understand what our hatchery fish are doing.”

In addition, a 2020 Michigan Sea Grant Extension project allows steelhead anglers to track wild and stocked fish in Michigan rivers. The Great Lakes Angler Diary is a simple smartphone app and online reporting system. It has codes for fin clip designations that help in determining whether the steelhead comes from a wild or stocked source. Canonical information on length of fish, which relates to age and

MATTHEW SUPINSKI - PHOTO

In Michigan, steelhead guide Matt Supinski believes that half of the outgoing steelhead smolts are being eaten by walleyes. He says the solution is to reduce the state limit of three steelhead per day. growth, along with where, when, and how long you spent fishing, are also recorded using the app.

Once you register, agency partners from the Michigan DNR also provide information on previous research, stocking history, and river conditions. App users are even invited to Zoom meetings with local biologists and other steelhead anglers. Programs and studies like this help nurture and promote Great Lakes resources that boost economic growth.

According to the 2016 report “Assessing the Economic Impact & Significance 24

FLY FISHER MAN

of Recreational angling on Pennsylvania’s Lake Erie Waters,” the annual economic input to the economy is $40 million. Anglers visiting the region reported spending $503 on expenditures such as overnight lodging and accommodations, gas, and food and drinks at restaurants and bars. The fishery supports approximately 539 jobs in Erie County and provides more than $13 million in income for Erie County residents.

The steelhead fishery is the biggest segment of this economy, with 27% of fishermen targeting them, and 26% identifying

themselves as walleye fishermen.

Steelhead make money—not just in Pennsylvania but in all Great Lakes states.

The reality now is that many of these coldwater fisheries have to be supported through stocking and sportsmen’s dollars, and many state agencies have funding shortfalls.

There are many intricate, complex, and variable factors that might be contributing to a fishery that has historically been known to go from boom to bust. One solution to diminishing returns of steelhead could be the pen rearing projects that have become an important component and management principle in Lake Ontario’s coldwater fisheries for more than 20 years.

Sportsmen in cooperation with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) have raised more than 111,000 Chinook salmon fingerlings annually in pens to protect the fish from avian predation.

It’s been so successful that NYSDEC is now trying the technique with Atlantic salmon, a native fish that once f lourished in Lake Ontario. In a press release from April 2021, NYSDEC Commissioner Basil Seggos wrote, “We hope to increase the survival of stocked salmon smolts for greater returns of adults to tributaries and improved angling opportunities.”

Pen rearing is a process in which young salmon (smolts) are stocked into protective net pens at the river mouth and held at the stocking site for approximately three weeks while the smolts imprint on the river water and prepare to out-migrate to the larger lake system.

Perhaps this is a strategy that should be considered for steelhead as well, in an age when stream temperatures and a thriving population of predators are not conducive to steelhead survival.

When we think of steelhead, endangered populations of native steelhead in West Coast rivers immediately come to mind, but many of the same problems are also impacting our Great Lakes sport fisheries. Sadly, things always seem in a state of decline. Unless we create change—reverse the weather patterns, improve the habitat, or else change our fisheries practices—it seems that trend is likely to continue.

Karl Weixlmann is a longtime Lake Erie steelhead guide and author of Great Lakes Steelhead, Salmon & Trout: Essential Techniques for Fly Fishing the Tributaries (Stackpole 2009).

REMEMBERING A MENTOR

eigh Perkins was CEO of the Orvis Company from his acquisition of it in 1965 until his retirement in 1992 . To write about him, a man whose full life was guided by his

passions for fly fishing and bird hunting until his death in May, 2021, where could I possibly start? I could begin with a summary of his place on the honor roll of North American fly-fishing giants, highlighting his accomplishments, which were many and important: Articulating the outdoor community’s obligation to protect the places where hunting and fishing take place and setting an example with his personal work and dedication of corporate earnings to conservation; originating the concept of fly-fishing and wingshooting schools, thereby creating customers while also building the ranks of defenders of fish and wildlife.

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FLY FISHER MAN

Leigh H. Perkins bought Orvis in 1965 when it had 20 employees and $500,000 in annual sales. Today Orvis has approximately 1,500 U.S. employees and has donated more than $20 million to conservation. His grandson Simon Perkins is now the company president, and the third generation to lead the family business.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF ORVIS, & ANNIE PERKINS

Leigh Perkins, 1927-2021 There are the distinctions bestowed on him by way of conservation awards and honorary degrees, and the fact that he’s every outdoor person’s hero for continuing to fish or hunt 250 days a year well into his 90s. I could also remind you of his stature in the business world, where he is regarded as a “mail order genius,” who transformed Orvis—in 1965 a small New England company with annual sales of $500,000—into a $90 million company.

But those are just facts.

Instead, I’ll start in my parents’ front yard in Edmonton, Alberta, in the fall of 1965. I was 12. Leigh acquired Orvis earlier that year, and shortly after sent my dad a gift of an 8-foot, 8-weight Battenkill bamboo rod. That autumn day Leigh took me

JIM MCLENNAN

out on the lawn and taught me to double-haul with that rod. It was about the only thing he ever intentionally taught me, but it was just the first on a long list of things I learned from him.

He was in Edmonton that fall to continue a custom he’d begun several years earlier. My father owned a company that sold products made by Harris Calorific, the company for whom Leigh was sales manager in his days before Orvis. Leigh and dad had found a common interest in bird hunting, and every year Leigh made sure his sales trip to Alberta occurred in October, which was prime time for the waterfowl and upland bird hunting they both loved. I was too young then to accompany them on their hunting escapades, but I loved to hear about flyfisherman.com

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PHOTO COURTESY OF ORVIS

In the 1980s Leigh Perkins began dedicating 5 percent of Orvis’s pretax profits toward conservation. Since then, Orvis’s 5% for Nature campaign has donated more than $20 million to nonprofits including Sportsman’s Alliance for Alaska, Stripers Forever, Trout Unlimited, Wild Steelhead Coalition, Project Healing Waters, California Trout, American Rivers, and many more. them afterward, and also loved to talk to Leigh about fly fishing, with which I had recently become inexplicably fascinated.

His trips to Alberta became less frequent after the acquisition of Orvis, but he kept in touch with my dad, and by association, me, mostly by mail.

Leigh noticed my growing obsession with fly fishing, and even back that far encouraged it. When I was a teenager I broke the bamboo Battenkill rod on a fishing trip in Jasper National Park. I wrote Leigh a letter, apologetically telling him what had happened and asking how we could get it fixed. A few weeks later a new rod arrived in the mail.

Lynda and I were married in July, 1977 and naturally—to us at least—we planned to spend our honeymoon fishing in and around Yellowstone Park.

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FLY FISHER MAN

And just as naturally, I wrote to Leigh, asking for suggestions on where we might fish. Along with that advice, he told us to call Doug Gibson at Three Rivers Ranch, a fly-fishing lodge nearby in Idaho. We thought Doug might also suggest some good places to fish, but instead he insisted we come over to the ranch. Upon arrival we found that they were expecting us, and we were treated like guests. After dinner at the lodge, Doug took us out on Warm River (which might have been the watershed event that securely and permanently hooked Lynda on fly fishing), and insisted we stay the night at the ranch.

After packing to leave the next morning, we tried to settle up but found that there was no settling up to be done. I was puzzled about this, but only for awhile. I soon realized that it was all orchestrated by Leigh.

I never asked him if he’d paid for it or called in a favor to our benefit, and he never said anything about it. But it was his doing. It was his way.

Much later, when my dad passed away, our family received a report from the charity we directed donations to. There, on the list of donations made in the name of Doug McLennan, was Leigh Perkins, Manchester, Vermont. It was his way.

When I was attending the University of Alberta in 1976, I began guiding fly fishers on the Bow River in the summers. The Bow at that time was unknown beyond Alberta. I invited Leigh to come to fish the river several times, and though he seemed sincerely interested, it didn’t work out for some time. In about 1979 though, I offered again, advising that we were finding a lot of good-sized rising fish on the Bow. That did it, and in September he and son Dave arranged a single day with me.

We did a short float on the river, starting at the edge of Calgary and finishing about five miles downstream. The fishing began slowly, but I had planned to be on a particularly good dry-fly island about midday in hopes that the fish would do their thing. After lunch the daily hatch of Blue-winged Olives began, and the fish began to rise. We spent the rest of the day there, casting to a seemingly endless supply of big rising rainbows.

When the fish started working in the quiet water behind the island I placed myself at Leigh’s shoulder, as I always did with clients. But this was different. Everything I had learned about fly fishing so far had come from books, a few friends, and experience. There were no other options. But now, here was a real expert, casting dry flies to rising trout on my river. I watched closely as he covered rises more quickly and efficiently than I knew it could be done. Using an 8-foot, 3-inch All Rounder—one of the original Orvis graphite rods with the spiral ridges—he dropped cast after cast about two feet above the fish. I didn’t know you could do that. Back then, when I cast to such fish I always made a dozen or so false casts to get everything organized and then tried to drop the fly about 10 feet above the fish to avoid spooking it.

But of course when I did that, the fly often dragged just as it got to the fish. Leigh produced five perfect drifts over a fish in the time I would have gotten one. Deposit the fly just upstream of the fish; let it drift six feet or so; make a careful pickup and one false cast off to the side of the fish; repeat.

This sequence was interrupted only when a fish took his fly, which was often. Each time

this happened, Leigh set the hook and giggled with delight, but then quickly lost interest in that fish, casually dropping his rod tip to a downstream position and directing his attention back upstream to check if the other fish were still rising. He wanted to make sure there was another candidate available when he was through with this one. He did this often while a 20-inch rainbow was leaping and running downstream into the backing. He’d long ago come to understand that the most important moment was the one at which the fish ate the fly. It’s the insatiable thirst, and a universal trait of truly experienced fly fishers.

The impacts of this day were two-fold.

After Leigh wrote a story about it in The Orvis News, the company’s in-house newsletter and fly fishing’s largest circulation print publication at the time, describing it as “the best day’s dry-fly fishing we’ve ever had,” word was officially out on the Bow. His story got our guiding business off the ground, and fly fishers began to come. So did outdoor writers like A.J. McClane, Lefty Kreh, Charles Brooks, Ernest Schwiebert, Gary Borger, and more, some at the urging of Leigh. Second, a multi-day trip to the Bow became an annual event for Leigh, who often brought members of his family, friends, or business associates.

Leigh always arrived in a rental car with a big pile of tackle, and left with a much smaller pile. He was known for generously scattering gear throughout the fly-fishing world—sometimes to the dismay of his employees. One of our guides recalled Leigh asking him at the end of the trip which rod he’d like to keep. Rick said he really liked that new Henry’s Fork—an 8½-foot, 5-weight. Leigh said, “Oh-oh.

That one’s a prototype. I’m supposed to bring it back to the factory. I always get in trouble with the rod shop when I give away prototypes.” He then added, “Ah, what the hell, they’ll get over it. Here, take it and have fun with it.”

One year his fishing trip to Alberta was in August. We fished the Bow, and also made a side trip to a smaller Alberta stream. There he reprised his initial Alberta fly-fishing performance, catching a number of Trico-eating brown trout one after another in quick succession. This happened in a much-loved piece of water that has been known since that day as the Perkins Pool. Many local fly fishers still refer to it this way—some know the story, some do not. I expect there are other Perkins Pools, Perkins Runs, and Perkins Flats throughout the fly-fishing world, informally named in the same way.

Along the way he passed on his thoughts on how to engage our children in hunting and fishing. He believed that if we introduce them to these things when they’re young, they’ll learn to enjoy them early. They may leave them for awhile when careers, spouses, and perhaps their own children enter the picture, but they’ll often come back to them later.

It was during an October visit to Vermont in about 1980 to learn about rod building that Leigh’s influence on my bird hunting took root. One afternoon we took a walk in the woods with one of his Brittanys for a brief grouse and woodcock hunt.

I had hunted plenty previously, but mostly without dogs, and this day I was along as a gunless observer. The dog went on point and Leigh said, “She’s got a bird pinned there.

Here, take my gun and flush the bird, and you’ll be able to say you shot a woodcock.”

I took the gun, flushed the bird, and thereafter could say I shot at a woodcock.

The shot was a miss, but the seed that was sown that day scored a direct hit. It was pointing dogs for me from then on. Leigh was thereafter one of the people I looked to for advice on canine matters. My education on this subject included Leigh’s strong recommendation that a bird dog (or three or four) should live in the house with the family.

Over the years he invited me to join him on a number of outdoor adventures of one kind or another—bird hunting in Montana, fly fishing in Wyoming, quail and duck shooting in Florida. I quickly learned that the only sensible reply to these invitations was, “That sounds great.

Tell me where and when and I’ll be there,” for I knew that whatever was on the menu should not be missed.

In about 1995, he invited me to join him to hunt grey partridge and sharp-tailed grouse for a few days with Ben Williams in Montana. After a day of great dog work and great company, we were having a drink in Ben’s living room, going over the events of the day. I babbled on about what a thrill it was to hunt with two of my outdoor heroes. Then the discussion turned to the usual topics, which for Leigh and Ben meant mainly the work of the dogs.

Leigh knew as much as anyone about the technical side of bird hunting—guns, loads, shooting methods—but at the end of a day he wanted to talk about birds and dogs rather than hits and misses.

It was after one of these days that my Brittany got a little rambunctious and broke a nice vase in Ben’s house. Ben and his wife Bobbie were very gracious about it, but after we left, Leigh sent a bouquet of flowers to Bobbie, thanking her for her hospitality and signing the card from both of us. When I found out and thanked him for smoothing things over on my behalf, he said, “No problem. I figured you needed all the help you could get.”

His time outdoors was shaped by three things. First, his immense curiosity. After a day on another Montana hunting trip he said what he always said after a day outdoors: “What a great day!” and then added, “But the best part was watching that falcon stoop on the birds we flushed. You almost never get to see that!”

Second, his relentless enthusiasm. In Florida I was among several guests joining him to hunt at his May’s Pond Plantation. After everyone arrived, he gave us a rundown of the next day’s events. “We’ll hunt ducks at daybreak, then come back here for breakfast. Then we’ll take the quail wagon out. After lunch in the field we’ll hunt quail some more, and then I’ve got a dove shoot lined up for late afternoon.” He was 76 at the time.

Third, his sense of humor, especially when the brunt of the laughter came at his expense, as when relating to others his somewhat questionable attempt at cleaning ducks in my mother’s kitchen sink. When that option ceased to be . . . “available,” he adapted nicely, and tried plucking ducks in a rental car as it raced down the highway toward the airport— about which he later reported, “It didn’t work that well. I tried to push the feathers out the window but they just got sucked back into the air vents and swirled around inside the car.”

For Leigh the story after the event was as important as the event itself, especially if it involved some chaos. When remembering and describing oddball things like the antics of the pet goat that lived in his flyfisherman.com

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PHOTO COURTESY OF ANNIE PERKINS

Leigh Perkins (with author Jim McLennan in Montana) started the first Orvis fly-fishing and wingshooting schools, brought the Orvis Dog Nest to market in 1976 (and sold more than a million of them), and continued to hunt and fly fish well into his 90s. house, Leigh would laugh till he almost unexpected places. Perhaps most impor- pretty good dog trainer. couldn’t talk. And neither could the rest tantly, he showed me how to enjoy huntI recently read the story in the June-July of us. ing and fishing fully, whether the results issue of Fly Fisherman titled “Our Mount Along the way he passed on his thoughts are stellar or not. He once said, and I Rushmore.” The article made me realize on how to engage our chilthat everyone has a Mount dren in hunting and fishing.

Rushmore—a small group of He believed that if we inpeople who stand above the “ If you’re not happy with the troduce them when they’re rest in their influence and young, they’ll learn to enjoy in our admiration. First and hunting or fishing unless it turns them early. They may leave tallest on my Mount Rushout perfectly, you won’t be happy them for awhile when camore is Leigh Perkins. reers, spouses, and perhaps Dry-fly season is just very often. The key is to expect and their own children enter starting on the Bow as I appreciate partial success, because the picture, but they’ll ofwrite this. I know a good ten come back to them later. spot. I’ll go there, and if I that’s what we most often get.”

Lynda and I have followed find some fish rising nicely -Leigh H. Perkins this advice with our daughI’ll do my best to catch one ter, and as we babysit her for Leigh. I’ll try to drop my family’s Brittany puppy tofly about two feet above the night, I can vouch for its soundness. paraphrase, “If you’re not happy with the rise, and if I hook up but lose the fish on Leigh Perkins is by far the largest influ- hunting or fishing unless it turns out per- the first jump, I’ll laugh a little and think, ence on just about every part of my outdoor fectly, you won’t be happy very often. The “What a great day.” life, from the type of fly fishing I like best key is to expect and appreciate partial suc(casting dry flies to rising fish), to the type cess, because that’s what we most often get.”

Jim McLennan is a Fly Fisherman contributing edof hunting I like best (hunting prairie birds His legacy in fly fishing, bird hunting, itor. He was one of the first guides on the Bow with pointing dogs) to the breeds of dogs business, and conservation is massive, River, wrote the authoritative book Blue Ribbon I’ve owned (pointers, setters, Brittanys) to widespread, enduring. But when asked Bow (1987), and opened Calgary’s first fly shop, the way I cook ducks (medium rare, sav- once what he’d most like to be remem- Country Pleasures. He teaches fly-fishing schools ing the carcasses for soup). He showed me bered for, he said, “My duck soup recipe.” and seminars in southern Alberta, and he’s a muthat the essence of the outdoor experience He once also mused that if he hadn’t end- sician. You can hear and learn more about his can be found in both the expected and ed up with Orvis, he might have made a music at www.mclennanflyfishing.com.

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La Jara Creek, CO | CHRISTI BODE

When we buy a river, it belongs to everyone.

Western Rivers Conservancy buys land along the West’s greatest rivers to keep them healthy for fish and wildlife and open to all. When we set out to protect a prime stretch of salmon habitat, or conserve a life-giving tributary stream, or create new access to miles of outstanding trout water, we do it with permanence in mind. Our goal is to keep our rivers healthy not just today, but for generations to come.

We count on support from people like you, anglers who know the value of clean, cold water, healthy watersheds and public access. Learn more about our work and contribute at westernrivers.org.

NEW & NOTABLE Simms Fall Run Insul ated Jack e t Winter is coming, but before it gets here, the Fall Run Insulated jacket ($150, simmsfishing.com) will get you through the best fishing season of the year. The jacket is warm without bulk, making it a perfect fit for under waders or bibs. The PrimaLoft Black Eco insulation (60g body, 40g sleeves) keeps you warm even when wet, and is made from 60% recycled material. The 100% recycled polyester ripstop shell is treated with a durable water-repellent finish, with internal quilting on the top front and back body to provide a smooth exterior. The jacket has zippered handwarmer pockets and an internal chest zippered pocket. The Fall Run is also available as an Insulated Vest ($120).

Simms He av y weight BaseL ayer The asymmetrical zipper on the Heavyweight Baselayer Hoody ($90, simmsfishing.com) zips up on the side of your face to create a built-in balaclava so your nose, lips, and chin stay warmer, and more comfortable. The Heavyweight Baselayer Hoody and Bottom (also $90) are designed to be worn next to your skin to provide maximum warmth and moisture management. The Flatlock seam construction keeps the baselayer smooth and comfortable next to your skin. You can add a lightweight layer underneath, but in extreme conditions it’s usually better to just add extra insulation layers.

The smooth, jacquard face fabric with grid-fleece backside adds stretchiness and creates micro-pockets to trap heat. The extra-long sleeves have thumb holes to keep the them in place under your insulation layer, and to help keep the backs of your hands warm. The top is 96% polyester, 4% elastane; the bottoms are 88% polyester, 12% elastane. Both are treated with a powerful antimicrobial to keep the stink away.

Cos ta The untangled 2.0 collection - Antille frame

Every year, the sheer weight of lost and discarded fishing nets in our oceans grows by an estimated 640,000 tons. That’s approximately 1,700 tons a day. Abandoned fishing nets are the most harmful form of plastic pollution in our seas because they entangle fish, birds, turtles, and sea mammals such as whales, dolphins, seals, and sea lions.

Costa’s Untangled Collection of sunglasses uses NetPlus material sourced from Bureo in four new high-performance frames—Pargo, Antille, Caleta, and Santiago. The new NetPlus material is made from 97% recovered and recycled fishing nets with a 3% performance additive that makes them stronger and more durable than frames in the original Untangled Collection released in 2018.

The Antillle frames ($206-$226, costadelmar.com) are named after the Antilles archipelago, which includes Cuba, Cayman Islands, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico. They have vented nose pads, micro top shields, and hooding to prevent light leaks. They come with gray, green mirror, or blue mirror 580G lenses.

C& F Design Rotary hackle Pliers The proper tools can make the difference between a job well done, and a job “well . . . kind of done right.”

C&F Design has long been known for its high-quality fly box systems, chest packs, and fly patches, but many overlook the exacting, Japanese-made, quality tools they offer for avid fly tiers. I’ve used the Rotary Hackle Pliers ($53, anglersportgroup.com), for more than a year, and they’ve become a go-to tool on my fly-tying desk. The pliers are constructed of high-grade stainless steel with an elastomer rubber damper to absorb shock and keep even pressure when palmering hackle feathers. The jaw interior is sandblasted to firmly hold even small feathers. The free-angle rotary function, located throughout the textured handle, allows for faster and more precise palmering by keeping the feather from twisting. The solid steel handle feels good in your hand and adds just enough weight to hold your feathers in place without breaking the stems.

—Dennis Pastucha

Patagonia Stealth Hip Pack The 11-liter Stealth Hip Pack ($160, patagonia.com) is lightweight and designed for fly fishers who prefer to move quickly, cover water, and fish far away from trailheads and boat launches. Unlike vests, sling packs, and backpacks, hip packs leave your arms and shoulders free for unrestricted casting, and keep the weight comfortably located on your hips.

The Stealth Hip Pack is built from 100% recycled ripstop nylon on the exterior, with a 100% recycled polyester lining. These materials are tough, but they’re also quiet, and the hip pack conforms to your body better than most packs, so there’s not a lot of swishing and whooshing noise when you hit the trail, and it’s easier to slip through branches and other obstacles without getting snagged. Inside the corrosion-resistant zipper there are two big compartments (with a divider) for your XL-size fly boxes; two stretchy mesh pockets to organize your leaders, tippet, and other small, flat items; and a removable, zippered waterproof pocket for your phone, key fob, other small electronic items, or your wallet.

The front of the pack has two main tool docking stations, and multiple latch points for pliers, hemostats, floatant, and other accessories. There are also two zippered compartments on the belt, and powerful magnets on the belt straps to help hold your nippers in place, or temporarily store flies for quick changes. There is a large dual-entry sleeve to hold a large water bottle, or to use as a stuff sack for your jacket, and there’s also a stash for a net handle that works with either left- or right-handed retrieve.

Hill sound FreeSteps6

dry fly dis tilling cocktails

Rubber-bottom boots with a good tread can power through mud, snow, or along a dusty trail to the river, but they don’t always have the best traction on mossy, weedy river bottoms. Metal studs are a possible solution, but then your friend won’t let you in his raft, the guide won’t let you in his drift boat, and the pilot certainly won’t let you in his float plane. An

A cooler full of cold, adult beverages is part of the fun of owning a raft, skiff, or drift boat.

You can bring a lot with you, but you can’t bring whole bar with mix—and not everyone nks beer. Dry Fly Disng Canned Cocktails dryflydistilling.com) ude classics like Gin Tonic, Moscow Mule, yhound, and Bloody ry, as well as original ations like HuckleberLemonade, Spicy Lemde, and for the holis, Spiced Cranberry. ll the cocktails use either Dry Fly Distilling Vodka or made in Spokane, Washington using grain sourced m local family-owned farms. The cocktails are availe at grocery stores and liquor stores nationwide.

Blackout 8'5"

A longer truck takes wider turns. Likewise, a shorter fly rod cuts tighter corners, making it easier to change directions at the bow of the skiff, and make one-shot deliveries to bones or redfish coming from unexpected angles. This 8'5", 8-weight was designed for flats fishing, but it’s a good choice anytime you’re in a boat, whether you’re chasing pike or striped bass. Of course, a shorter rod helps you tire fish quickly for a quick and safe release.

Blackout 9'5"

Slightly longer rods have advantages. On the technical dry-fly waters of the upper Delaware, this 9'5", 5-weight makes accurate casts from a drift boat and allows you to make big reach casts and long-range mends for demanding rising trout. On smaller spring creeks, that extra length allows you to creep and cast on your knees, and still keep the line above obstacles on your backcast. On the flip side, the Blackout doesn’t exact a price for those extra inches. It’s got ultralight components, and a light swing weight to keep you in the game all day.

Blackout 11'3"

Penn State fly-fishing instructor George Daniel helped design the 11'3", 3-weight Eurospecific Blackout and says the biggest difference with this rod is that it’s well . . . a little more “American?” While many Euro rods have a thin butt section designed primarily for sensitivity, the Blackout has a beefier butt section to set the hook with more authority and handle 18-inch rainbows in the heavy currents of the Madison River. The tip section delivers the sensitivity to feel every nook and cranny along the bottom, and the length gives you the reach you need for longer leaders and specialized Euro techniques.

“The ability to make super-accurate, split-second shots as a fish changes direction or speed is key, especially around features like mangroves, logs, or rocks.”

—Hilary Hutcheson

“On big Western rivers like the Big Hole, I found it was easier to mend the line all the way to the indicator, and in that fast-paced scenario, it meant catching more fish.”

—Ross Purnell

“I believe we have struck a balance with this rod. I have used it for everything from ultralight rigs on small spring creeks in Pennsylvania, to drop-shot rigs in raging snowmelt waters in Idaho. It is truly a rod designed for all nymph fishers.

—George Daniel

NICK KELLEY - PHOTO

Hel ios 3 Bl ackou t F ly Rods hese aren’t just Helios 3 rods with a Goth paint job. Orvis developed new construction techniques to elevate the Helios 3 series into hyperspecific designs for real-world fishing situations. Like the Helios series, Blackouts are light, smooth, and above all, accurate. But the new tapers developed for these three specific rods will also make you more efficient and effective, whether you are at the bow of a flats skiff, casting Hendricksons from a drift boat, or probing the contours of the Madison River with a Perdigon.

All three Blackout rods ($998, orvis.com) are midnight black with black accent wraps, and black reel seats with a matte black carbon insert. Helios 3 and Blackout blanks are rolled at the Orvis factory in Manchester, Vermont, and the rods are assembled there as well. Most U.S. rod manufacturers use components made overseas, but the Blackout is a little different. The type III anodized aluminum reel seats are made in New Hampshire.

flyfisherman.com

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NR X+ T 2S One-piece rods have been popular choices in saltwater tournaments for years, but they are difficult to transport.

The “tournament configuration” of the NRX+ T2S means it has a 22" butt section, and a 86¾" tip section for a total length of 8'10". It’s still a long rod tube, but more in the realm of skis and golf clubs, and much more economical and sensible for shipping, checked luggage, or fitting into a rental car. The single ferrule is before the first stripping guide,

so the extra buildup isn’t noticeable like it is when the joint is in the center of the rod, and the potential for a weak spot is also moved to the strongest part of the blank. Micro-tapers closer to the tip help the rod load quickly for casts close to the boat, but it’s also got incredible reserve energy in the butt section for driving long casts into the wind. G.Loomis’s Dynamic Recovery Technology basically increases the effective top and bottom ranges of the rod—sort of like going

from cassette tape to digital audio. The 8- to 12-weight rods ($895, gloomis.com) have two Titanium SiC Stripper Guides, RECoil Snake Guides, and a low-glare matte black finish.

saltwater rods designed for floating lines.

He helped Steve Rajeff design the NRX+ SF ($795, gloomis.com) for modern subsurface fly lines like the SA Sonar Titan, so you can deliver the goods and maintain a straight-line connection to the fly for maximum sensitivity.

He uses the 7-weight NRX+ SF for 3to 5-inch flies, and uses the 8-weight for flies 5 inches and longer.

The reel seat is more compact, and the cork handle of this rod is also shorter and with a narrower diameter than most

7- and 8-weights. This is to improve sensitivity, reduce line tangling on the fighting butt, and to avoid hand cramping Schultzy calls “The Claw.”

IMX-PROe rods ($575, gloomis.com) help lift the leader off the water and control the drift while the delicate, sensitive tips of the rods allow you to feel each “tick, tick, tick” as the nymphs tumble near the bottom. The slender cork handle is designed to hold the rod close to the reel while casting, but for greater sensitivity you can slide your hand forward and

hold the rod so your index finger is right on the blank—almost like you’re taking the pulse of the river. The hook keeper is relocated forward and out of the way on this rod exactly for this purpose, and the engineering team at G.Loomis arranged the guide placement on the IMX-PROe to reduce line sag, which dulls your contact with the flies.

are short (7'9") and they load quickly at close distances so you can fire quick casts under the rhododendron canopy or into short pockets in miniature boulder gardens.

Using G.Loomis’s Conduit Core Technology and Multi-Taper Design, the 2-

through 4-weight creek rods are designed for distances ranging from 15 to 40 feet with small to medium-sized flies.

The 4-weight can handle some wind and a hopper/dropper rig in the Rockies.

The 2-weight is perfect for native brookies in Appalachia.

“I was blown away by the rod’s unsurpassed ability to power a cast right into the teeth of a stiff, gusty wind. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

—Brandon Cyr

NR X+ SF Articulated, “swimming” flies have a realistic, lifelike motion that trophy fish can’t resist. Whether you’re fishing for smallmouths or big browns, big fish love a meaty fly that moves correctly in the water. You’ll also need a rod that can deliver these big flies into tight spots, and still transmit every twitch and bump sensation into your hand so you can deliver a precise swimming motion. Mike Schultz (“Schultzy”), owner of Schultz Outfitters in Michigan, says too many bass or streamer rods are merely repurposed

“When it comes to loading this rod, I’ve found this series to be just as good up short as it is long. From short, awkward-angle punchy shots into cover, to backhand long pokes from the back of the boat, the SF series tracks true and delivers.”

—Mike Schultz

IMX-PRO e In highly pressured rivers where the trout see a lot of flies, there’s likely no more effective way to catch trout than drifting small nymphs near the bottom with zero drag. Euro nymphing is a highly refined strategy for creating these kinds of perfect drifts and detecting strikes, but it requires a highly specialized set of tools.

At 10' (2-weight) or 10'6" (3-weight),

IMX-PRO c Because of heat and crowds in the summer of 2021, more and more anglers found themselves hiking away from the big rivers, and discovering seldom-fished mountain streams. G.Loomis’s new IMX-PROc “creek” rods ($525, gloomis.com) make the most of these tiny trickles because they

T

he newest advancement from G.Loomis is what they are calling Dynamic Recovery Technology. It uses a proprietary carbon fiber package called Mega Modulus+ together with a new GL8 resin to roll blanks that are 15% lighter than original NRX, but with equal strength and impact resistance.

As usual, technology is only one element of a great rod, and rod designer Steve Rajeff has used these building blocks—along with extensive micro-tapers throughout the length of the rod—to engineer lighter rods with a smooth, rapid recovery so you can more easily shape better loops in tactical situations, and with less fatigue. Less material means you also get greater feedback and sensitivity while fishing so you can “feel” your f ly even if you can’t see it. Dynamic Recovery Technology is in both the NRX+ T2S two-piece tournament configuration saltwater rod, and the NRX+ SF swim f ly rod.

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ith rods like the new IMX-PROe and IMX-PROc, you don’t need the lightest, fastest graphite package on the planet, because the rods are already designed to be light (4-weight and under) and you are dealing with short casts and finesse fishing.

G. Loomis handcrafts IMX-PRO rods with high-modulus, highstrength graphite prepreg, and GL7 nano-resin to yield a light, sensitive blank that is perfectly suited to a specific purpose. G.Loomis’s Conduit Core Technology creates a thinner blank to reduce its overall weight, and a series of micro-tapers within the rod allows engineers to use more material on potential stress points and less material elsewhere to strike a balance between durability and performance.

ALL MEALS ALL RENTAL EQUIPMENT

BOOKSHELF PERFECTING THE CAST

Perfecting the Cast: Adapting Casting Principles for Any Fly-Fishing Situation by Ed Jaworowski. Stackpole Books, 2021, 224 pages, $40 hardcover, ISBN 978-0811739719.

F

or fly fishers, casting well is one of the most important—and for many of us, one of the most difficult—skills to master. You may own the finest fly rods, reels, clothing, and equipment that money can buy. You may craft beautiful, high-quality flies and tie solid, virtually unbreakable knots. Your water-reading, fish-spotting, and stealth-wading skills might be top-notch. But if you can’t cast well enough to present your fly to the fish accurately and without spooking them, all the rest is for naught.

Ed Jaworowski’s new, large-format (8½ x 11 inches, printed on heavy, glossy paper and copiously illustrated with hundreds of high-quality color photographs and diagrams) book Perfecting the Cast is different from many other instructional fly-casting volumes you may have read. The author’s focus is not so much on casting per se as on fishing—or, more precisely, on developing and improving your casting skills for the purpose of presenting flies to the fish you’re trying to catch. Jaworowski maintains that the casting principles he advocates apply to all fishing situations, whether you’re stalking a burbling backcountry stream in search of native brook trout or casting long distances from a boat’s casting platform on a tropical flat, hoping to deceive a bonefish, tarpon, or permit.

The late, great Lefty Kreh (1925–2018)—renowned worldwide for his own mastery of fishing, casting, and instruction—once wrote: “Ed Jaworowski is the best fly-casting instructor I have ever met.” That’s like having Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly say you’re a superb dancer.

Jaworowski’s book is not about a different way of casting. On the contrary, it is about a different way of thinking about casting that will allow anglers to adapt to any situation they may find on the water, no matter where they fish. The author details four principles that he feels are essential to quality fly casting: tension on the rod tip; continuously accelerate to an instant stop; the stroke length will vary; and the line travels in the direction the rod straightens and stops. The author explains each of these in detail in Chapter Two: “Casting Principles.” In the 13 chapters that follow, Jaworowski expands upon these four principles, and explains how fly fishers should apply them to any actual fishing situation that might arise. “This book is all about adapting a few select principles in countless ways to make any required cast under varying conditions,” he writes.

Always adhering to those four fundamental principles, Jaworowski devotes entire chapters to important subjects such as line-to-rod angle (Chapter Three); single and double line hauls (Chapter Four); tailing loops (Chapter Five); backcasts, which he considers absolutely vital to the process (Chapter Six); changing planes in mid-cast (Chapter Seven); roll casting (Chapter Eight); Spey casts (Chapter Nine); casting in windy conditions 38

FLY FISHER MAN

Jaworowski’s book is not about a different way of casting. On the contrary, it is about a different way of thinking about casting (Chapter Ten); casting large and heavy flies (Chapter Eleven); increasing distance (Chapter Twelve); throwing curve casts (Chapter Thirteen); and mending and slack line casts (Chapter Fourteen). The final chapter discusses fly lines.

Throughout his book, Jaworowski encourages fly fishers to apply the four principles in countless and creative ways, allowing them to make effective, fish-attracting casts regardless of the prevailing conditions. “First, there is no such thing as one ideal or perfect stroke. That can only be determined after deciding on what each situation calls for. There are scores of ways to cast, dependent on many variables. Casting must be endlessly modified and adapted, depending on the particular fly and the result sought, meaning that the speed, length, and direction of the stroke will constantly vary,” he writes.

Jaworowski’s chapters on backcasts (Chapter Six), casting in the wind (Chapter Ten), and casting large, heavy flies (Chapter Eleven) seem particularly helpful. A solid backcast is the foundation of a good forward cast. All casters have to deal with challenging, windy conditions at one time or another. Oversized and/ or heavy flies have become popular in recent years, particularly for anglers in search of muskies, northern pike, and striped bass.

And we’d all do well to follow the author’s (and his late friend Lefty’s) sound advice: Watch your backcast. And practice—a lot.

Ed Jaworowski’s Perfecting the Cast is a high-quality, beautifully illustrated book from one of our sport’s master instructors, and will make a fine addition to any fly fisher’s library.

—Bill Bowers

Please Don’t Feed the Lake Trout

NEAL HERBERT/NATIONAL PARK SERVICE - PHOTO

H

ow exactly nonnative ciscoes got into Yellowstone Lake is the latest mystery to plague Yellowstone Lake and Yellowstone fisheries personnel. Park officials revealed the discovery of ciscoes at Yellowstone’s 2021 Annual Fish Meeting. It’s likely more bad news for the beleaguered haven of native Yellowstone cutthroat trout.

According to Todd Koel, Yellowstone’s Native Fish Conservation Program lead, one three-year-old female cisco (likely Coregonus artedi) was discovered during routine lake trout gillnetting in August of 2019. Subsequent otolith testing revealed that the fish was born in Yellowstone Lake, which indicates that there is a viable, reproducing population of ciscoes in the 85,000-acre lake. To date, only one has been found and positively identified.

Ciscoes are baitfish that are native to the Great Lakes and other coldwater lakes in the Upper Midwest and Canada. They are a well-known favorite forage fish of lake trout. The nearest nonnative population to Yellowstone Lake is in Montana’s Fort Peck Reservoir, about 250 miles away. It is this distance that led Koel to believe the ciscoes were likely planted in Yellowstone Lake intentionally.

“It took a lot of time and care to move those fish in abundance great enough to establish a reproducing population in the lake,” Koel said at Yellowstone’s 2021 Annual Fish Meeting. “Ciscoes did not swim there on their own. They did not get dropped in there by an eagle or anything like that. They were intentionally brought to the lake, intentionally by humans. Do we think that the ciscoes were brought here intentionally as a food resource for lake trout? I don’t know why ciscoes would be brought there for any other reason.”

Invasive lake trout were first discovered in Yellowstone Lake in 1994—how they got there remains a source of great debate. But because Yellowstone Lake is one of the last significant refuges for native Yellowstone cutthroat trout, which are essential to the Park’s ecosystem and are prized by anglers, the National Park Service has worked for many years to reduce or eliminate the lake trout population.

Significant progress has been made in recent years, and cutthroat populations have shown signs of recovery prior to the discovery of the invasive forage fish.

Most anglers support efforts to remove lake trout, but there

Ciscoes (top) are a well-known favorite food source for lake trout in the Great Lakes and Canada. They were probably intentionally planted in Yellowstone Lake and are now reproducing. are pockets of anglers throughout the Rocky Mountain West who oppose the removal of the wild-born and gameworthy mackinaws. Because of this opposition, Koel believes it’s feasible that there could be a rogue group of monkeywrenchers actively (and illegally) finding ways to support the lakers by, for example, adding a population of baitfish for them to feed upon.

Regardless, complete eradication of the ciscoes is now virtually impossible, and they are a new reality in Yellowstone Lake.

How they will affect the lake and its treasured cutts remains to be seen, but the addition of nonnative species into Yellowstone Lake’s fragile ecosystem is likely a cause for concern.

Purple hearts on Lake Lanier COURTESY OF GEORGIA SCI - PHOTO

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he Georgia Chapter of Safari Club International (SCI) hosted 25 Purple Heart recipients during its annual Wounded Veterans Fishing Weekend at Lake Lanier in July 2020. The annual event, which has been hosted by Georgia SCI for more than a decade, provides a an all-expenses-paid weekend of meals, accommodations, and fishing.

The highlight of the weekend was an 11-boat fishing tournament on Saturday, when Purple Heart recipients chased striped bass, spotted bass, and catfish with some of Lake Lanier’s best captains. Later that day, awards were presented at a ceremony attended by Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, Georgia Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Commissioner Mark Williams, and DNR Law Enforcement Division Colonel Thomas Barnard “We want to show these veterans and their families that we care for them,” said Dick Caillouet, a Vietnam veteran and

Georgia SCI volunteer. “One consistent message I receive from them is that we are indeed helping and changing people’s lives.

It’s incredibly powerful.”

Historic Tackle Discovery going to Auction

COURTESY OF ANGLING AUCTIONS - PHOTO

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ackle collector Graham Turner didn’t know exactly what he was getting when he placed a bid by telephone on a lot of antique fishing tackle that came for sale at a general auction house in Dorchester, England in February of 2020.

He later wrote in the July 2021 issue of ORCA (Old Reels Collectors Association of America) that it came as a “pleasant surprise” when the items were delivered, and he discovered that the lot contained four rods made by the celebrated American rodmaker H.L. Leonard, the father of modern fly rods.

The rods were owned by Walter Durfee Coggeshall, and most likely used or inspected by his fishing partner G.E.M. Skues, who later ordered a duplicate 9-foot bamboo rod from H.L. Leonard.

Skues was a lawyer, chalkstream master, author of the book The Way of a Trout with a Fly (1921), and father of modern nymph fishing. He later called his own 9-foot H.L. Leonard rod the WBR, which stands for “world’s best rod.” His rod is now on display at the Fly Fisher’s Club in London.

Coggeshall was an American living in the U.K. when the two fished together at the turn of the 20th century. Skues called Coggeshall “America’s finest fly fisherman.” Coggeshall died in 1926, and his tackle was in storage for nearly 100 years until it was sold by an elderly relative in February 2020. Among other items, the collection includes 10-, 9-, and 7-foot H.L. Leonard fly rods, a 5-foot H.L. Leonard baitcasting rod, an H.L. Leonard raised-pillar trout reel, and a rare Redifor multiplying alloy bait casting reel, made in Warren, Ohio in 1904, the year the company went into business.

The estimated total value of the Coggeshall collection is more than $25,000. The items will be auctioned separately on Oct. 2, 2021 at anglingauctions.com.

A 7-foot H.L. Leonard fly rod, an H.L. Leonard raised-pillar fly reel, and a Redifor baitcasting reel are all parts of a tackle collection that came to light after nearly 100 years in storage.

Worst Steelhead Returns in History

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ROSS PURNELL - PHOTO

est Coast fly fishers are braced for what could be the worst fall steelhead season ever. As of Tuesday, Aug. 31, only 35,106 steelhead had been counted at Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River, and just 780 at Lower Granite Dam on the Snake River. The five-year average on that date is 67,973 and 2,679, respectively.

“One could argue, at least for this date, this is the worst steelhead run past the Bonneville area ever,” said Joe DuPont, regional fisheries manager for the Idaho Department of Fish & Game.

In response to the lowest runs in recorded history, the Oregon

There will be far fewer steelhead running through Whitehorse Rapids on the Deschutes River in 2021. That grim outlook is also true for most other Columbia River tributaries.

Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) closed the John Day, Umatilla, and Walla Walla rivers to steelhead angling for the remainder of the year, and closed the Deschutes River for at least the month of September. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) closed the Snake River from its mouth to Clarkston to all steelhead fishing. Both ODFW and WDFW were negotiating with Idaho Fish & Game (IDFG) to ensure portions of the Snake River with shared jurisdictions had equivalent closures.

As of Aug. 31, Idaho had made no closures, but proposed a reduced bag limit from three hatchery steelhead per day to one per day on the Snake, Salmon, and Little Salmon rivers.

Wild steelhead are listed under the Endangered Species Act and cannot be killed.

On British Columbia’s Skeena River, the outlook was similarly bad. In August, the Canadian government opened its borders for recreational travel from the U.S., but bad news from the Skeena Tyee Test Fishery could result in closures.

The test fishery has been used by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans for decades to predict returns of Pacific salmon on the Skeena, but steelheaders also use it as a predictor for the coming fall steelhead season. As of Aug. 25, the steelhead cumulative index was 19.95, the lowest ever recorded on that date. The previous 5-year average was 93.6 on that date, so the run is barely 20 percent of “normal.” flyfisherman.com

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The McCloud River is the granddaddy of all rainbow trout streams, and one of California's finest wild trout fisheries. It's a mix of public, private, and that glorious “in-between” water where access is carefully managed—all you have to do is make a reservation.

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MICHAEL WIER - PHOTO

R A I N B OWS California’s M cCloud River: The genetic home of the world’s redbands

DICK GALL AND

he McCl oud rise s in t he C a sc a de Moun ta ins of fa r nor t her n C a l if or ni a , a r egion domin at ed by t he soa ring pr e sence of 1 4 ,1 7 9 - f oo t M t. Sh a s ta . T he va s t aquif er a d jacen t t o t he moun ta in prov ide s t he spring f l o w s f or t his br e at h ta k ingly be au t if ul ri v er , a ri v er of l ong p ool s a nd p ock e t wat er in a w il d, wat er - c a rv ed c a n yon. I t is a r emo t e a nd m agic a l pl ace , w i t h t he a ncien t s t il l ne s s of t he ol d - gro w t h f ir a nd pine f or e s t. In t he spring, t he scen t of w il d a z a l e a a nd Sh a s ta l il ie s drif t s up s t r e a m on t he wa r m a ir . Be a rs a r e common. Gosh aw k s ch a se soo t y grouse in t he unders t ory. Moun ta in l ions hun t deer in t he f or e s t.

A Gift of Rainbows California’s McCloud River: The genetic home of the world’s redbands The same impulse that sent rainbow trout eggs around the world brought brown trout eggs from Germany and Scotland to California. By 1895 brown trout eggs were being raised at the hatchery in Mount Shasta City.

While not native, wild browns are firmly established in the river. They spend the winter feeding in the lake and move into the river in early spring, taking up residence in the deep pools and runs until autumn, when they begin their spawning rituals.

NYMPHING THE MCCLOUD While there are some big browns, native McCloud River rainbows are what attracts most anglers to the river. These deep-bodied, brightly colored fish, typically 12 to 15 inches, are usually caught with nymphs in the fast water, or on drys when one of the abundant hatches brings them up. The standard approach is short-line nymphing. This technique was pioneered on the McCloud and the nearby upper Sacramento in the ’50s and ’60s when Ted Fay moved to the town of Dunsmuir. He learned to fish the pocketwater from a local Wintu Native American. The technique involved casting a brace of heavily weighted flies upstream into fishy pockets and bringing them downstream on a tight line. Fay refined the technique and taught it to other fly fishers, and short-line nymphing was born. Ted lived on to become a local legend and open a fly shop, still in operation in Dunsmuir.

Short-line nymphing begins with a 9- to

10-foot rod for a 3- to 5-weight line, a leader and tippet of about the rod’s length, tapering to 4X, weighted nymphs or nymphs with BB split-shot on the leader, and a modest indicator.

A wading staff is critical to success on the McCloud. With its cobble and boulder bottom, there is very little gravel or sand to make wading easy. Getting into the right position to make perfect drifts is the key to success. Cast the shortest possible line, targeting your drifts precisely and working the likely water carefully. You will rarely have more than a rod length of fly line out your rod tip.

If you use the popular Euro nymphing technique—which takes the idea of shortline nymphing several steps further—you may have only monofilament outside the rod tip. In either case, remember the four “Ls” of short-line nymphing: Look at your target. Lob your fly at that target in an arcing overhead cast that penetrates the water column vertically. Lift the extra leader off the water and set up your drift with a very slight curve from your rod tip upstream to your flies. Lead the leader downstream by moving your arm and torso and keeping that relaxed curve constant. You will be almost—but not quite—pulling your flies downstream. In this way, you can react to the slightest twitch or pause just by a simple acceleration of your downstream motion.

In the shallow runs and pockets that the rainbows favor, the less you add to the leader the better. My own indicator system is three tiny bits of strike putty,

VAL ATKINSON - PHOTO

The river has sculpted picturesque riverside cliffs, ledges, and deep pools in the gray basalt. In the pocketwater, it flows among smoothed and variegated volcanic rocks, creating a tapestry of small pockets and seams. Unlike typical freestoners, which run high and turbid in the spring and gradually become low and warm by the autumn, the McCloud remains cold, clear, and constant most of the year, fed largely by spring water emerging through the porous volcanic rock, often in spectacular riverside cascades. About 9 miles southeast of the town of McCloud, a PG&E hydropower dam forms Lake McCloud, part of the McCloud-Pit Hydroelectric Project.

Below the dam, the McCloud River flows another 12 miles into Lake Shasta.

The McCloud holds a unique place in the history of American angling.

McCloud River redband rainbow trout were so admired by early fish culturists that in 1878, their eggs were sent to hatcheries in the eastern United States and, in subsequent years, around the world, establishing rainbow trout as the most popular trout on earth.

If you were to catch a rainbow anywhere in the world, and could magically look into its DNA as you held it in your net, you would see genetic markers of McCloud River rainbow trout. Admired for their brilliant colors, fighting qualities, hardiness, and tolerance of a variety of water conditions, no other North American trout species has enjoyed such widespread distribution and acceptance.

McCloud River rainbow trout are prototypical redbands because their forebears were used to stock streams across the U.S., in the Great Lakes (and Canada) as well as in New Zealand, South America, and Europe.

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FLY FISHER MAN

VAL ATKINSON - PHOTO

wild and threatened MICHAEL WIER - PHOTO

T

he McCloud River ranked number 7 on American Rivers’ 2021 Most Endangered Rivers list. The threat comes from a proposed project to raise the height of Shasta Dam by 18 feet. If completed, this project would inundate 5,000 acres of land and nearly a mile of the McCloud River above Shasta Lake.

It would also flood 39 sacred sites of the Winnemem Wintu, the Native Americans whose ancestral lands encompass much of the lower McCloud watershed. The portion of the river that would be flooded is currently owned by Westlands Water District, who purchased the entire Bollibokka Club property in anticipation of the dam being raised. While the project would theoretically add about 70,000 acre feet of water per year for agricultural use in the Central Valley, this is literally a drop in the bucket of the 30 million acre feet agriculture uses annually in the state.

The Trump administration provided $20 million for additional studies on the feasibility of the project. That prompted a lawsuit by California’s attorney general and a coalition of environmental and fisheries groups, to block Westlands Water District from assisting in the planning and construction of the project.

“The project poses significant adverse effects on the free-flowing condition of the McCloud River and on its wild trout fishery, both of which have special statutory protections under the California Wild and Scenic Rivers Act,” the Attorney General Xavier Becerra wrote.

In 1989 the state legislature, in California’s Wild & Scenic Rivers Act, declared, “maintaining the McCloud River in its free-flowing condition to protect its fishery is the highest and most beneficial use of the waters of the McCloud River.” The Act protects the river by prohibiting any agency of the state from assisting or cooperating in the planning or construction of an enlargement to Shasta Dam if the enlargement “could have an adverse effect on the free-flowing condition of the McCloud River,

A proposal to raise the height of Shasta Dam by 18 feet would drown more than a mile of the McCloud River. It would cost the government about $2 billion, and deliver an additional 70,000 acre feet of water to downstream agricultural users. or on its wild trout fishery.”

Dr. Jeffrey Mount, senior fellow with the Public Policy Institute of California’s Water Policy Center, thinks the likelihood that the project will actually happen is slim. He points out that the $20 million is to study the project—not a commitment to begin work. The final project is estimated to cost $2 billion, and the federal government would have to pay half. Fifty percent of the cost has to be paid by another funding partner. Westlands Water District cannot be that partner because state law prohibits a public agency from funding such projects. Mount also noted that California would have to approve the project, and issue the permits. The state has shown no interest in raising the dam and has numerous ways to stop it.

MICHAEL WIER - PHOTO

A Gift of Rainbows California’s McCloud River: The genetic home of the world’s redbands

The McCloud River runs clear and cold most of the year, thanks to the numerous springs flowing into the river—many of them in the form of spectacular riverside cascades. each about the size of a #18 Pheasant Tail nymph, rolled onto the leader starting 3 feet above the top fly, and spaced at about one-foot intervals up the leader. These are easy to spot in the water to help you align your leader from your rod tip to your flies.

Another popular and stealthy indicator among Euro nymphing advocates and tenkara specialists is a 2-foot section of highvis monofilament tied into the leader 3 feet above the top fly as a sighter. This reduces drag to the flies and is supersensitive.

The nymphing technique known as the 90-degree nymph rig or puff ball nymphing was developed in the 1970s, specifically for the McCloud’s deep pools and runs. It has gained worldwide acceptance among steelheaders and trout anglers as a way to get a fly deep and drag free. This technique uses a marble-sized, bi-colored yarn indicator—the puff ball—tied to the end of a 5- to 7-foot 3X leader. Tie the tippet around the leader—above the indicator—and slide it down against the indicator, creating a 90-degree angle. Use 4X or 5X tippet, and set the length about one and a half times the average depth of the water you are fishing. In most of the McCloud’s pocketwater, that’s about 4 feet.

In the deeper pools and runs, lengthen the tippet to accommodate the increased depth. In either case, cast upstream and immediately mend to flip the indicator 46

FLY FISHER MAN

and weight above your fly, taking the tension off the fly. Watch the indicator carefully as it drifts down, and continue to mend to eliminate drag.

Accomplished fly fishers detect most takes by looking for tiny twitching or erratic indicator movements. A two-color yarn indicator helps spot these tiny movements before the indicator actually stops or dives. Trout inhale and eject drifting nymphs many more times than we think.

The dry/dropper variation of the 90-degree nymph rig substitutes a buoyant dry fly for the puff ball, with the tippet tied onto the bend in the hook. Popular patterns for drys are the Parachute Adams; the Chubby Chernobyl, Yellow Humpys, and various stoneflies in the spring; and the October Caddis in the fall.

STREAMER FISHING The McCloud’s brown trout—fish often measured in pounds rather than inches— are in the river all year, but they become particularly visible in late October and November as they dig redds in the shallow tailouts. They are easy to spot, but they should be left alone so we don’t impair their ability to spawn successfully. When fishing for rainbows this time of year, avoid wading in the spawning gravel, so as not to crush brown trout eggs.

John Rickard (wildwatersflyfishing.com) is a McCloud master guide who’s been studying the river for 20 years. He likes to say that the McCloud has two groups of fish—the native rainbows, and the brown trout that eat them.

In order to catch a big brown, offer them a fish. One of Rickard’s favorites is Andy Burk’s Hot Flash Minnow. Rickard uses a sinking-tip line, and casts the fly up into the current at the head of a pool, or along the cliff face of a deep run. He mends immediately to get the line and fly to sink deep, then he strips it along the bottom and along the edges of current seams, or swings it in front of rocks.

In the early spring and late fall, when the water is coldest, keep the fly deep by stripping slowly. In midsummer, strip fast.

Sometimes the fish chase the streamer and then turn away at the last moment. When you see this, don’t just cast back in with the streamer. Show the trout a smaller nymph on the next drift, rather than continuing to pull your streamer through the pool.

John’s clients catch the greatest number of large brown trout in the summer, when angling pressure is lower and the fish are abundant. In addition to streamers, the 90-degree nymphing system is the perfect way to get a fly down into the deepest water and drift it in a drag free way. Here, the

JEREMIAH WATT - PHOTO

A Gift of Rainbows California’s McCloud River: The genetic home of the world’s redbands

The best way to target the McCloud's browns is to use streamers that imitate small rainbow trout. In the fall, you may see big browns on spawning gravel in the tailouts of pools. Don't harass these spawners, and avoid wading in these areas. modest mends used in pocketwater become stack mends.

Begin by casting your puff ball rig upstream, and then wiggle your rod tip to stack small loops of line above the indicator to create turnover points, the neutral moments when the fly is directly below the indicator and drifting freely. With the 90-degree rig, as with short-line nymphing, take care not to add too much weight to the tippet. The fly needs to respond to the current as it drifts, appearing natural.

One key to success in the McCloud is the visibility. Ordinarily, the McCloud is clear enough to spot large fish holding on the bottom or at the tailouts of pools.

However, the aptly named Mud Creek flows from the Konwakiton Glacier on Mount Shasta’s southern flank. A thunderstorm on the mountain can send a slug of glacial silt into the creek, down through Lake McCloud, and into the river. This sometimes causes the river to go milky, but this condition typically lasts only a few days. This is the time to concentrate on shallow water, where the sunlight can penetrate the water and the trout can more easily see your fly.

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RISING TROUT The McCloud has excellent hatches, including big bugs that bring big fish to the surface. Salmonflies, Golden Stones, Green Drakes, Gray Drakes, and October Caddis each appear in their season. [See the hatch chart in the digital version of this story at flyfisherman.com. The Editor.]

Beyond these big bugs, there are abundant hatches of smaller insects all year, specifically Blue-winged Olives, Yellow Sallies, Pale Morning Duns, and numerous small caddis such as Brachycentrus and Rhyacophila.

While you are nymphing through the day, keep alert for rising fish. Sometimes a hatch appears along a shady bank for a few minutes and then just stops, as ephemeral as the little bugs themselves. An interval of casting little drys to eagerly rising trout can truly enliven a day.

RIVER ACCESS Since the early 1900s, the McCloud has been protected by miles of private ownership. William Randolph Hearst built

Wyntoon, his fairytale Bavarian retreat on the upper river, in 1900. At the same time, wealthy San Francisco sportsmen created private fishing clubs on the middle and lower river. It was not until the completion of a hydropower dam and the creation of Lake McCloud in 1965 that the river became more accessible to the angling public.

Access to two sections of the upper river, including the upper falls and middle falls, is via U.S. Forest Service roads south of Highway 89 outside of the town of McCloud. The area provides many miles of small freestone stream fishing with both wild and stocked trout. Private property is well marked and begins a short way below the lower falls and continues all the way to Lake McCloud.

Below McCloud Dam to Shasta Lake is strictly wild trout water with artificial flies and lures only. Check wildlife.ca.gov for particulars. There are 4 miles of public water from the dam to the U.S. Forest Service AhDiNa Campground, then 2 more miles of public water until you hit The Nature Conservancy property (nature.org).

The upper 3 miles of the Kerry Landreth Preserve at McCloud River are open to catch-and-release fishing for a maximum of ten rods per day. To make a reservation, email mccloudreservations@tnc.org or call (415) 777-0487.

Below the preserve, the McCloud is private water all the way to Shasta Lake. The Bollibokka Club holds the final 7 miles above the lake, and fishing there is for club members and their guests only. Annual memberships are $500, and all the memberships are handled by The Fly Shop in Redding, California. For details, visit theflyshop.com or call 800-669-3474.

The McCloud is a river of many parts, and as worthy of a pilgrimage as the Beaverkill or the Madison. Come for the history, the special beauty of the canyon, the clear cold water, and the bright rainbows in their native habitat. You may well fall under the spell of the McCloud, as so many anglers have over the past 150 years.

Dick Galland founded and operated Clearwater House on Hat Creek from 1982 to 2005, a fly fishers’ inn, school, and outfitting service.

He was West Coast field editor for Fly Fisherman magazine during that time, writing extensively about Northern California fisheries and fishing techniques. He has been a CalTrout member since 1980 and has served in various volunteer capacities, including as a board member since 2011.

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No fish is more famous or more important to the world of trout fishing than the wild McCloud River rainbows! Fishing the McCloud is a bit more than just another day on the water. It’s a brief connecton with the single most significant rainbow trout on Earth.

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Call us today for more info or reservations at 800-669-3474 or travel@theflyshop.com. www.theflyshop.com

BLANE CHOCKLET T

Fly fishing for muskies has come a long way since Larry Dahlberg first showed how it was done on Saturday morning cable TV. If you use the right flies, and learn how to draw reactions from the fish, it’s no longer the fish of 10,000 casts.

JOE WOLTHUIS - PHOTO

Tack l e a nd s t r at egies to improv e your success uskies are often called “the fish of 10,000 casts” because they have historically been misunderstood, not widespread, and difficult to catch.

But unlike species such as West Coast steelhead, their distribution in recent decades is actually expanding. And because anglers today know more about these fish, and when and where to target them, and because we’ve got better flies and tackle, it’s not as difficult to catch muskies on fly as it used to be. It’s now like the fish of 500 casts if you learn their habits during seasonal changes—maybe even the fish of one cast if you’re there at the right time with the right fly.

Muskie Hunter

MY MENTORS My first time seeing a muskie was on a trip with my uncle. We borrowed a canoe and set out for a day on the river chasing smallmouth bass. We had hellgrammites, soft plastics, and different crankbaits set up on our conventional spinning and baitcasting rods. I don’t remember much about the fishing that day, other than when my uncle hooked into what looked at first like a log. I’ll never forget watching that fish go airborne with crazy gill-rattling headshakes. Unfortunately, the battle didn’t last very long due to my

uncle’s light nylon monofilament, and the sharp teeth of the muskie, but that memory lasted a lifetime.

A few years later, I was staying at my grandmother’s house watching Saturday morning fishing shows. Back then I wasn’t able to get cable TV at home. A big part of a trip to grandma’s house was watching my favorite TV shows like The Hunt For Big Fish with Larry Dahlberg and The Walker’s Cay Chronicles hosted

by Flip Pallot. One morning, Larry targeted muskies with a fly rod and his own Dahlberg Diver. That episode brought back memories of my uncle’s encounter,

and inspired me to start chasing muskies on my own.

When I started fly fishing for muskies in Virginia back in the 90s, there was very little information out there. At that time, I had just opened a fly shop and was guiding for trout and smallmouth bass.

I also started to attend and tie at The Fly Fishing Shows during the winter. That’s where I met fly tier Bob Popovics. Watching him demonstrate his revolutionary fly designs like the Hollow Fleye and Beast Fleye helped steer and shape my guiding and fly-tying career.

One of the biggest challenges of fly fishing

Tackle and strategies to improve your success for muskies is learning what to cast, and how to engage them to strike the fly. I’ve learned much of that alongside my longtime friend David Gahrst. When I first started my fly shop and guide service, David got into muskie fishing with conventional tackle. We often met in the evenings after I finished guiding, and we went to areas where I knew there were muskies. Our fishing relationship was perfect because I could see and learn how the fish reacted to David’s lures.

I spent many days and hours trying new f lies and techniques, but I had little or no interest from the muskies.

Meanwhile, David caught a fish just

about every time we went. It greatly shortened my learning curve. I was learning from each outing, and started piecing together what seemed to catch the muskies’ attention. I found that the f lies I was using didn’t have much erratic movement, and few of the triggering qualities that muskies looked for.

When you are learning to catch muskies on fly, nothing beats this kind of time on the water. This is when you can observe fish behavior, whether it is reacting to baitfish or other prey items, how they interact with each other, or how they

react to our flies/lures. These observations provide clues that you can build on to make your times on the water more productive. Many people do not have the luxury of a lot of time to spend on the water. Why make 10,000 casts when you can make 1,000 and get the same result? This is where your understanding of what makes this fish tick comes into play. The key is knowing how to trigger the fish into an attack.

Larry Dahlberg started as my TV idol and turned into my mentor and a good friend. He has always advised me to look into the mechanics of what we’re doing

TUCKER HORNE - PHOTO

Muskie Hunter Tackle and strategies to improve your success

COURTESY OF LARRY DAHLBERG - PHOTO

inches to make the fly noticeable, and to make it worthwhile for muskies to pursue. Muskies are sometimes in shallow water where you can sight fish for them, but often you are blind casting to likely spots, and a larger offering generally gets more attention.

If you are dealing with heavily pressured fish, and clear low water, smaller flies can sometimes be better. This is especially true if you know exactly where a muskie lives or may be holding. In these cases, you are not prospecting, so you don’t need a fly that grabs attention from a long distance.

Sometimes color comes into play and can be a key attracting quality and also a trigger. Bright f lashy f lies will often get a fish to look, but most often, a more natural imitation color triggers a bite.

Water clarity and water volume play key roles in color selection as well.

Generally in turbid and in highervelocity water, I choose bright colors and/ or contrasting colors. In low, clear water, I favor natural colors that closely mimic natural food sources.

FLY MOVEMENT While fly fishing for muskies has grown in popularity in recent years, it’s not a new phenomenon. Larry Dahlberg (shown here on the St. Croix River in 1974) made it a part of his TV show The Hunt for Big Fish, which first aired on ESPN from 1992 to 2004. on the water, the attracting and triggering qualities of our lures or flies, and how the fish respond to those flies. Larry constantly references Doug “The Bass Professor” Hannon on the subject of the attracting versus the triggering qualities of lures. Hannon wrote that lures with a mechanical action (for example crankbaits and spinnerbaits) excel at attracting bass, while lures with a more random action (plastic worms, tube baits, and jigs) are more effective at triggering a strike.

Hannon’s theories have been hugely formative in how I approach fly tying, and fly fishing, for muskies.

MUSKIE BIOLOGY Muskies have long snouts and heads, with sharp teeth built for slashing, grabbing, and maiming their prey. They also have long bodies built for short bursts of electrifying speed, but not for endurance. Their eyes are situated on top of their heads, an evolutionary adaptation that allows them to attack from below and behind their unsuspecting quarry.

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Many freshwater apex predators—everything from arapaima to taimen and bull trout—have eyes set on top in a similar way. It helps make them effective predators.

Muskies are so efficient at killing and capturing prey that this in itself makes them tougher to catch than most fish. Tailwater trout are almost always feeding, constantly snacking on tiny food items. In comparison, muskies grab a huge meal occasionally, and spend most of their time lying around sleeping and digesting.

I compare muskies to snakes, as they may feed only once or twice per week depending on the size of the food sources available to them. The size of these foods should dictate the size of your fly.

Muskies prefer larger, soft-fined fish like suckers, chubs, and in some lakes, larger gizzard shad. They have also been known to eat rodents, frogs, crayfish, and ducks. But to be effective, fly fishers need to focus on the most common foods, not the exceptions.

I generally use larger flies from 8 to 15

Doug Hannon believed that all lures need both attracting and triggering qualities, and I use a similar philosophy for fly design. However, I’ve found through decades of observation that the most effective way to trigger a strike is through lifelike, non-mechanical movement.

I prefer flies that have a side-to-side motion and flies that hover when I pause the retrieve. This imitates the swimming motion of real baitfish, and provides ample opportunity for an ambush strike.

The best part of this style of fly is its random, erratic action. It represents a wounded or dying baitfish, which is a major triggering quality. Most of this is done in the retrieve by starting and stopping the fly with quick strips of the line, then a pause, then a long strip and another pause.

This technique requires you to constantly see the f ly in your mind’s eye as you are retrieving it. You need to imagine what the f ly is doing at all times, and believe a fish is stalking it. Faith is a big part of this. If you’re not putting everything you’ve got into the retrieve, the f ly will move in a mechanical, unappealing motion.

Sometimes a more swim-style fly with more speed can produce a bite. This is most often driven by water temperature.

GET OUT

MADE FROM OLD NETS.

Muskie Hunter Tackle and strategies to improve your success Muskies are spring spawners and usually start spawning when water temperatures get into the high 50s or low 60s.

They are broadcast spawners, meaning the female pairs up with multiple males and they swim around shallow areas depositing eggs on grass shoots, leaf debris, or whatever is available. They do not build nests or stay around to protect their young like smallmouth bass or some other gamefish. This is nature’s way of keeping this apex predator in check.

Muskies are ambush feeders and sometimes hunt in packs to corral shad or schools of suckers. Most often, however, they are solitary hunters and they haunt logjams, shallow bays, drop-offs, and weed beds where baitfish are seeking shelter. They feed and hunt most actively when water temperatures are below 70 degrees.

In their southern range, warm water and low dissolved oxygen levels can be fatal to muskies, especially with the added stressors of fishing for them, so just as with trout, I don’t fish for muskies when water temperatures rise into the danger zone.

BLANE CHOCKLETT - PHOTO

BEYOND THE KEYHOLE

Muskies have a massive native range that includes roughly half the continent—from Hudson’s Bay south to Tennessee and North Carolina. They grow to more than 60 inches, but any muskie over 50 inches is exceptional.

Remember, muskies are like snakes— when they are warmer they eat more and attack more. In warmer, 55- to 65-degree water, you’ll get more of these “f leeing-the-area” type bites. Never run from a predator—they can’t stand to let their prey escape. Sometimes clear water will also require you to go for the f light-or-fight response, and in these conditions, you don’t want to give them too long to inspect the f ly.

Rattles built into flies help with many types of predator fish, especially in murky water, and they can also improve your muskie flies. But generally, flies don’t compare well in the sound category.

Lures with spinner blades, bills, and other mechanisms definitely outshine flies.

You can add collars on flies for diving, and to create bubble trails. You can also add rubber curly tails to give off vibration, and multiple body segments that help aid in movement. This adds a presence in the 56

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water that muskies can sense with their lateral lines.

DISTRIBUTION Muskies can be targeted in Canada and many U.S. states, and they grow to very large sizes. I no longer measure the muskies I put in the net, but their top size in most watersheds is about 60 inches, and anything over 50 inches is an incredible trophy. The muskie on the cover of this issue of Fly Fisherman is a dream fish for anyone, and was caught by my friend and client Rob Smith of Atlanta, Georgia.

Muskies are native to the Mississippi River basin and its tributaries, the St. Lawrence River, the Great Lakes and all their tributaries, and the Hudson Bay Watershed. These areas basically cover from Tennessee and North Carolina all the way up to Canada’s far north and through the U.S. Midwest.

I have been chasing muskies most of my life. I have been successful by being persistent and by trying new things. Larry Dahlberg is one of the greatest fly fishers I know, but he always tells me, “Don’t look through the keyhole of fly fishing.”

It’s okay to learn from other fishermen and other techniques—including live bait and artificial lures—to truly understand our target species and improve our fly-fishing success. This has been a valuable lesson in my entire angling carrier, not just in fly fishing.

In today’s rushing and chaotic world, we have less time to pursue our favorite hobbies and passions due to work, family life, and everything else that comes along.

We don’t have time to make 10,000 casts for every fish, so it’s okay to learn from all possible sources and make your recreational time more enjoyable and more productive. Muskie fishing using any style of angling isn’t for the faint of heart, but if do your research and grind it out, it can be some of the most memorable and rewarding fishing you’ll ever find.

Blane Chocklett guides for trout, smallmouths, muskies, and stripers. He’s a Fly Fisherman field editor, and his most recent story was “Snakebit” in the April-May 2021 issue. He is the author of the book Game Changer: Tying Flies that Look & Swim Like the Real Thing (Headwater Books, 2020).

To find the perfect king salmon river, you need a place with a low gradient, a sandy or gravel bottom for easy wading, and most of all you need fresh fish that are chrome, aggressive, and powerful. King salmon quickly turn red as they move upriver to spawn, so the most desirable kings come from tidal-influenced streams near the ocean.

A hush-hush new lodge on the Aleutian Peninsula he guy standing on the remote airstrip was a competent fly fisher . He was middle-aged, trim and tan, with sandy hair and graying temples. He radiated confidence, and you knew he could probably tell you about sea trout in Tierra del Fuego, Atlantic salmon on the Kola, and steelhead on the Kispiox. You also knew that once hushed word of a hot new venue leaks from privileged sources, and you scramble to put a trip together, he’s the guy who’s already been there.

JOE DOGGETT PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRISTIAAN PRETORIUS

King of Thrills A hush-hush new lodge on the Aleutian Peninsula He was part of an eight-rod group departing Lava Creek Lodge, and we were arriving. He shook hands with my fishing partner, Joe Turano, then turned and smiled. “You boys are hitting it just right.

The king salmon run started showing strong during our week, and the chromers are piling in now!”

Joe and I exchanged a significant stare—we seldom hit anything “just right.” We had booked two consecutive weeks starting late June into early July through The Fly Shop in Redding, California. In addition to our COVID vaccination cards, mandatory air-travel masks, duffel bags, rod cases, and twin paper sacks of survival rations purchased the night before at the Brown Jug liquor store in Anchorage, we were “armed and equipped as the law directs” to allow for a bump or two in the road. As any seasoned adventurer will agree, regardless of destination, you need Lady Luck and Old Man Weather to come arm-in-arm to the dance.

Lodge owner Phil Byrd loaded our gear, and we squeezed aboard a Piper Cub fitted with massive Alaskan Bushwheels. This was a plane intended for reaching the remote and rugged regions of Alaska.

Phil was born in North Carolina, but has spent the past 20 or so years flying and outfitting in Alaska. He’s 40-something, wiry and energetic, at the top of his game as an angler and big-game hunter.

“Several years back I was guiding in the Bristol Bay area, mainly for brown bears,” he crackled through the Cub’s headphones. “I started flying farther down the Peninsula and doing some exploring, checking rivers and looking for something that would be really good for king salmon and late-season silvers.

“The silvers are a slam dunk. The August/September silver season on this river is excellent. All you want, and great topwater action.

“Kings are different. They like bigger water. For a quality fly-fishing camp, it’s not just enough to find a river with a good run of fish. You’ve got to find a river that the average client can safely wade and reach fish. That means shallow bars with a low gradient and a hard bottom, no deep currents, no tricky boulders, no 100-foot casts.

“And you want bright chromers right out of the ocean, not red salmon way up the tributaries. The right river can be hard to find.” Phil glanced over at us and smiled, “We’ve found one.”

After several exploratory trips, Phil and

his wife Beth found the perfect river and started Lava Creek Lodge. The eight-rod operation started as a tent camp in 2019, but continues to upgrade each season.

Now, four double-occupancy cabins provide more comfortable accommodations.

Each cabin has a gas heater and a private bathroom with dependable hot water. A large lounge/dining cabin and various smaller structures for staff and supplies round out the camp.

The small lodge is booked completely full during the height of king season. The Byrds don’t need any more guests, and want to preserve the solitude for the existing returning customers.

Twenty minutes later, along a vast stretch of green and gray wildness rimming the Bering Sea, the tiny row of the camp buildings appeared below us. The panorama of emptiness was overwhelming.

Phil circled and then landed on a strip of dark volcanic sand. When he cut the engine, he nodded to a nearby creek and said, “We’re on high ground here, and the boats are beached right there on that side channel.”

THE FISHING The first day dawned clear and calm. Almost all f ly fishers here use two-handed rods with Skagit-style lines to deliver big f lies deep and slow. My setup was a 15΄2˝ CF Burkheimer rod fitted with a 4/0 Hardy Cascapedia reel and a 650-grain Skagit head. A 10-foot sinking RIO MOW sink tip and a stubby 2-foot, 20-pound Maxima leader completed the big rig.

King salmon here average about 20 pounds, with fish in the 25-pound class a daily possibility. A bragging fish might top 30. They can get twice as large in some other major Alaska drainages, but that’s often a much different type of fishing. A 20+ king salmon is still a lot of salmon when you are wading and fly casting.

The king salmon (often called a Chinook salmon in Canada and elsewhere) is the largest salmonid in North America, and the biggest freshwater fish most of us could dream of catching on a fly rod. These sea-bright kings are thick and deep, silver and green, peppered with small black dots, impressive to the experienced eye.

My partner Joe and I were teamed up with guide Christiaan Pretorius. He wears two professional hats, one as a guide, one as a photographer. We loaded into an aluminum johnboat with a Louisiana marsh

sweep-type propeller shaft capable of crossing shallow sand bars or mud. Much of the lower river is shallow and wide, making it easy to locate the deeper slots where the kings prefer to hold.

The basic tactic is to wade a midriver bar adjacent to a deep run—often along a grassy cutbank. These places provide narrow trenches for anadromous salmon to move and hold en route to their upstream spawning gravel.

Christiaan buzzed and churned and threshed downstream, and anchored in the moderate flow. We eased over the side of the boat and found shin-deep water with firm sand. The wading turned out to be mild in most spots.

I hadn’t touched a Spey rod in several years, so my two-handed game was sketchy to start. But with some prodding and coaching from Christiaan, I began banging out a fishable snap-T cast with a black-and-blue Intruder fly. Our first spot was an easy stretch to cover with a 60- or 70-foot quartering downstream cast. Hero casts are not required, and that’s a good thing because repetition is a key to success.

The goal is to drop the streamer tight to the steep bank on the opposite side of the river. If you are not occasionally plucking a strand of overhanging grass, your casts are likely too short. Getting the fly right on the opposite shoreline allows the fly time to sink and settle into the narrow slot where bottom-hugging kings gravitate.

Kings are not nearly as “grabby” as silver salmon (coho salmon). Silvers will smash topwater flies, or chase your wet fly into the shallows. But when you are fishing for kings, the fly needs to pass within a few feet—or better yet, a few inches—of the salmon.

Kings strike the fly from aggression, irritation, or curiosity. Who really knows?

It’s hard to peer into the thought process of a salmon. Most often, the salmon just ignore your fly with magnificent disregard. Change your fly, the depth, the speed of the presentation, and suddenly a king might change its mind.

At our first run, Joe and I waded about 100 feet apart and methodically worked down the run, casting and stepping down to cover all the water. Joe had the first pull of the trip, and I watched as a 20-pound chrome hen ran downstream, taking Joe and Christiaan with it. Ten minutes later, Christiaan put the big net on the gorgeous fish. It hosted long-tailed sea lice around the anal vent—a common parasite in salt water that quickly drops off in fresh water. flyfisherman.com

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King of Thrills A hush-hush new lodge on the Aleutian Peninsula

Phil and Beth Byrd started Lava Creek Lodge as a tent camp in 2019. Now there are four double-occupancy cabins, and a main lodge for dining. It is booked exclusively by The Fly Shop in Redding, California (flyshop.com).

“See those lice?” Christiaan asked. “This fish is as fresh as they come. It’s not more than a day out of the Bering Sea.” Fresh, silvery kings are not only the most beautiful to look at, they are also more powerful and energetic than older kings that turn pink and then red as they move upriver and prepare to spawn. Because the kings rapidly progress toward spawning and death, the fresh chromers are also rare, ephemeral moments for both salmon and f ly fishers, when everything comes together at the right moment.

After two hours of swinging, I was getting a little frustrated until Christiaan coached me to “try casting a bit more square to the bank, and throw a quick upstream mend.” This angle and the upstream mend helped the fly sink a little deeper, and sure enough, 10 minutes later, I made great presentation, great swing, and thought, “Right about now I should get a pull!”

The line surged tight with a sensation I can only describe as the king of thrills.

It is a gathering storm of life through the rod and into the grip, one of the high moments in all of my angling life.

The proper procedure on a solid grab like this is to pull the low rod straight back—like the saltwater strip-strike on a single-hand rod, and then powerfully bend the rod to the upstream side in an attempt to control the head of the fish.

The fish will invariably turn and run 62

FLY FISHER MAN

downstream with the current. Hold on, make the fish work for every foot of line, and once the run stops, use constant low-angle pressure to pump and reel, and coax the king back upstream. During this process, the kings have the alarming tendency to violently shake their heads—a nerve-racking, heart-pounding, hook-pulling exercise.

If the fish gets across from you, shift the rod to the downstream angle and use pressure to work it close. Of course, a big king will blast off again. And again.

Switching directions tires the fish out quickly, and when the fish gets closer, you should always be pulling in the opposite direction of the fish to make it work harder. Low side pulls are key to using the more powerful butt section of the rod. If you lift the tip of your Spey rod high, any guide worth his salt will start barking at you.

Our opening session yielded three kings apiece. My best was a long buck in the upper 20s. We each hooked two jacks (immature 5- to 6-pound kings), lost three solid fish, and had several other bump-bump-bump followers. We were stoked of course, but optimistically thought the fishing could have been even better in different conditions.

“Maybe it’s too calm, and too bright and sunny,” Joe offered at the end of the day.

“Yeah, we could definitely use more cloud cover and some wind riffle on the water,” I agreed.

As they say, be careful what you wish for, pilgrim.

That evening Phil pointed to the strange-looking horizon.

“There’s a weather system coming in tonight,” he said. “It might get a bit windy.”

In addition to being a first-rate bush pilot, he is a master of understatement.

The front hit us at 1 A.M. Our cabin shook as though we were loaded onto a railway car. The wind howled and thrashed and whipped our waders hanging outside. The long rods carefully racked on pegs along the wall were scattered on the ground like $1,000 pick-up sticks. Joe and I scrambled around in the wet blackness of the storm to secure our gear.

By breakfast, the wind was gusting to 35 MPH. The low ceiling was punctuated by chill drizzle. Most discouraging, the upstream mountains were shrouded in heavy rain clouds. I am a poor judge of coordinates in the wilderness, but I was correct in concluding that the river originated amid those gloomy crags.

Phil shook his head. “Not good. By tomorrow it’ll be up at least a foot and running mud. Try to make today count.”

We did. Despite the wind, Joe caught five kings, topped by a pair of chrome 30s. My day was decent, one 25 and two smaller fish. And, of course, we each lost several.

The next day, under glowering sky and whipping wind, the water visibility in the side channel at the lodge was 6 to 8 inches,

and the swollen river promised to be worse.

Being an astute judge of fishing water, I informed Christiaan that, “Unless you’ve got some bait for catfish, we’re screwed.”

The only action occurred during a brief midday burst when the fish mysteriously turned on. Naturally, during that magic window, I was hunkered forlornly in the skiff sheltering from a chill, damp wind, and waiting for a 50 mg Tramadol to kick in to numb my lower back.

I watched with a mix of admiration and envy as Joe waded past, loose and smooth, unfurling excellent loops within inches of the grass. I was half hoping he would hook a fish, and half-hoping he would overshoot and snag an irritable wolverine. Christiaan was trying my rod as I convalesced. Joe caught a 20-pounder, then 15 minutes later Christiaan hooked and landed its twin. I was on the net—the highlight of my day.

Weather conditions f luctuated day to day, with the only constant being the shrouded mountains. Occasional upgrades in water clarity were measured in scant inches. But kings were jamming into the river and rolling in the runs.

Rising dirty water is a boon to migrating salmon, and they took advantage of it. Even when we weren’t catching fish, we saw pods of high-tide runners plowing with staccato splashes across the gravel bars.

Our well-traveled informer back on the landing strip was correct about our timing. The run was indeed peaking. But he forgot to factor in a mutinous meteorologist. Despite the weather, all the rods in camp were enjoying consistent fishing.

Everyone knew that if you put swings tight to the bank in the proven runs, a pull would come.

And the grand solitude of wild Alaska remained. We had the river literally all to ourselves. There are few places in the world where you can have such quality fishing, and so few other fishermen.

My only outside competition occurred during the second week. I caught a pair of chromers, and prospects were looking strong for another grab when, down in the tail-out, the dark head of a seal popped up.

I glared at the intruder and felt like the unwilling participant in an old Aleutian indigenous fable: Brother Seal warns Brother Salmon of the nearness of the Evil Fisherman by lunging and splashing upon the sparkling waters.

Of course, Brother Seal did not give a rat’s ass about the Evil Fisherman;

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JOE DOGGETT - PHOTO

King of Thrills A hush-hush new lodge on the Aleutian Peninsula

Catching an ocean-bright king salmon while wading on the Aleutian Peninsula is always a thrill. Doing in it in a muddy river with a vintage reel is a moment worth celebrating.

Brother Seal was trying to poach the hole and snatch a fresh king for dinner.

Our guide shuff led over. “We’ve got to move. That seal is scattering the fish all over the river.”

On our final day, the black upcountry clouds once again belched another flush of frog water down the main channel. But it was all we had.

I switched to a smaller 14΄2˝ Burkheimer rod fitted with a classic Edward vom Hofe 4/0 reel spooled with a 570-grain Skagit.

The old reel sported a flowing S handle, hard rubber sideplates, and silver rims, elegant in its simplicity. It was state-of-theart equipment 100 years ago. I appreciate the people and things that went before, and my final day was dedicated to at least hooking a king on the vom Hofe reel and a smaller rod.

Christiaan uncertainly eyed the ancient reel and affixed a jazzy pink-and-blue tube fly he had whipped out the night before on the lodge’s bench. Joe was using another muddy-water killer, a chartreuse-and-blue tube.

My two-handed game had tightened considerably during our trip, and the 64

FLY FISHER MAN

tailwind casts were smooth and smart; to a certainty, I would qualify for my Junior Woodchuck Spey Casting Merit Badge.

Two hours into our muddy wade, the improbable but electric drama of a pull rang up the line. The fish flurried, and a small boil stirred the roiling surface.

“A jack. Think I’ve got a small jack!” I shouted. “At least it’s a fish on this bitchin’ old reel!”

A major king showed itself with a mighty splash and tore 100 yards of line off the reel as it raged downstream. The vom Hofe handle blurred and squealed, but nothing silver flew off, and the detent drag lever was holding.

“Yeah, acting just like a small jack,” Christiaan said with a solemn nod.

Fifteen minutes later, following a frantic race downstream, we had the big buck close. My rod was locked in a huge arc, and I felt the chugging king roll and yield.

Christiaan made a smooth stab, and the fish filled the mesh.

“Hell of a jack!” he laughed. “A conservative 30.”

The only blemish was a slight blush on the flanks. We released the king and

shook hands—my best fish, taken on the last day and with classic gear under adverse conditions.

Christiaan held the rod and studied the reel. “Cool. Stepping back in time like that . . . very nice. Not normal but very nice.”

Running against a chill wind back to camp, I pawed through my dry bag to find a small flask filled with George Dickel Barrel Select. We took a pull and agreed the trip was great. The experience of wading and fly casting for chromebright king salmon in a remote Aleutian stream ranks among the best experiences a fly fisher can find. Over the course of two weeks, we averaged better than three kings landed each day, with many others lost. Next year we intend to find out what the river is like in perfect conditions . . . if there is such a thing way out there in the Bering Sea. Joe Doggett lives in Houston and was a fulltime outdoor columnist for the Houston Chronicle for 35 years. He has been fly fishing more than 60 years, and has made nearly 40 trips to Alaska. He retired in 2007, and at age 75 still enjoys fishing, hunting, and surfing.

xploring the world with a fly rod in your hand is the best way to see remote flats in the Caribbean, strange gamefish in the Amazon, and trout streams in Montana that are rich with American history. Brought to you by Fly Fisherman—America’s leading magazine of fly fishing for more than 50 years—Destinations magazine is an insider’s look at the finest fishing opportunities on the planet, places where you can sight-fish to 20-pound rainbow trout, catch giant Atlantic salmon, and learn from the best saltwater guides. We also provide critical advice and recommendations on the most comfortable, service-oriented lodges (so you can bring your spouse), the most experienced guides, and on the right gear for adventurous fly fishing around the globe. Destinations is a 120-page, square-bound fly-fishing travel guide printed on 50-pound Somerset Gloss paper to make outstanding photography come alive. It’s a book that will be cherished, saved, and read over and over again in living rooms, fly shops, and fine fishing lodges around the world. If you are thinking about booking a trip within the next 12 months, don’t do it until you read Destinations. Even if you don’t plan on traveling, Destinations can fill your dreams with stories of exotic fish, warm sandy beaches, and fly-fishing tactics and techniques from around the

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F LY F ISHER M A N.COM

NINE-POUND HAMMER

A fly fisher’s version of the Ned Rig CH A R L IE CR AV E N

n a recent fishing trip, my buddy Marty Mononi and I were talking about some of the old-school flies like Woolly Worms and Woolly Buggers and how—like a cool old house—they have good bones but can generally use a remodel . There

are so many good, but somewhat outdated, flies out there that this “remodel” idea really struck a chord with me. As you saw in the Feb.-Mar. 2020 issue, I revamped the venerable Chubby Chernobyl with a fresh look and called it the Elevated Chubby Chernobyl. Well, the Nine-Pound Hammer I’m showing here is really nothing but an improved, purpose-built variation of a Woolly Bugger. I have to say I both love it and hate it when the design process runs a wide circle and ends up somewhere back around where it began, along with some noticeable improvements in both design and usability.

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Mononi wanted a crayfish pattern designed to be fished under an indicator. He had been fishing Thin Mints with varying degrees of success, but wanted something a bit more imitative and with a wider range of colors. I was already thinking about coming up with something for him, when another couple of guide buddies asked me for basically the same thing. When three different guides/anglers of this caliber independently ask for the same kind of new pattern design, I listen.

Purely by coincidence, while all this correspondence was going on, another good friend, Brian Schmidt, had been showing me some of his hand-tied Ned Rigs he uses and sells for conventional bass fishing. The Ned Rig historically uses small plastic worms or crayfish with a light jig head so you can easily suspend it just off the bottom. It was originally created by outdoor writer Ned Kehde, who popularized it for bass fishing in the Midwest.

Schmidt’s new fly-fishing-inspired version of the Ned Rig has a horizontal, football-shaped lead jig head, and a sparsely tied collar of marabou and schlappen. It was taking the conventional tackle

Craven’s Nine-Pound Hammer GRAY & BLUE “MOLTING CRAYFISH” VERSION

Continued on page 69

1

2

Pinch the barb and slide the bead up to the hook eye. Arrange the bead so the slot is on the top of the hook, and build a thread dam against the back edge of the bead to hold it in place.

Add a drop of Zap-A-Gap or head cement. Build a thread base back to the bend, then pull a small clump of fibers from a gray marabou feather. Measure the fibers against the shank so they are about as long as the hook shank, and tie them in at the bend.

Repeat the process with a clump of purple and then blue marabou fibers, matching the length to the gray fibers.

You want a three-color tail of stacked fibers, with equal amounts of each color.

3

4

Wrap forward over the butt ends of the marabou feathers to just short of the bead, and clip them off. Tie in two strands of blue Flashabou at the center of their length and fold them back along each side of the tail. Trim the Flashabou to about 25% longer than the tail.

Peel a single strand of blue, and a single strand of purple Chicone’s Crusher Legs from the hank and even the ends.

Tie them in at about the center of their length at the center of the shank. Fold one strand of each color back along the near side of the tail and wrap back over them to the bend, then repeat the process on the other side. flyfisherman.com

67

5

Select a wide, soft, grizzly rooster saddle feather, strip the fluff from the base, and create a separation point near the tip. Tie in the feather at the separation point at the base of the tail, with the outside of the feather facing you.

7

Select a wide and webby coq de León hen feather from the saddle. Break the fluffy base off the feather and trim the fibers along the bottom to leave short bristles as seen here. These bristles help to anchor the feather securely in the next steps.

9

Take a strand of each color of Chicone’s Crusher Legs and tie them in along the near side of the hook at the center of their length. Anchor them with a few tight wraps and pull the forward-facing ends back along the far side of the hook and anchor them there with several wraps of thread.

68

FLY FISHER MAN

6

Dub a thick, shaggy body of SLF Prism Dubbing up to just behind the bead. Fold the hackle fibers back along the grizzly feather, and palmer it forward to the bead. Make a couple of extra wraps at the front of the body before tying off and clipping the stem.

8

Tie in the butt of the coq de León feather at the back of the bead. Pull the feather up and fold the fibers back toward the bend like a wet fly hackle, then wrap two or three turns to form the collar before tying off the tip and clipping it. The hackle fibers should reach back to the bend of the hook to form the carapace.

10

Dub a small collar behind the bead and whip-finish by letting the thread wraps slide off the back of the bead and under the dubbing. Clip the thread and add a drop of head cement. Trim the legs to about halfway up the tail, and the antennae to just slightly longer than the tail.

Continued from page 67 world by storm, and that gave me an idea. Let’s scale that kind of thing down and let’s see what we can do for the trout guys!

I started off with a sort of hybrid Woolly Bugger with rubber legs, but quickly realized that my guide friends had already fished patterns like this. If that was the answer, they wouldn’t be asking me for a new f ly, so I started to go a little off the books.

I sorted through my hooks and found the Tiemco 708, a 2X heavy-wire 40-degree, flat eyed jig hook that seemed to be the perfect undercarriage. I added a slotted tungsten bead for weight, enjoying the fact, that because of the jig hook, I wasn’t limited to a specific bead size. I tie the Nine-Pound Hammer with various bead sizes, and choose them depending on the speed and depth of the water, as well as how thick the weeds are. Anything from a 3mm to a whopping 5.5mm bead can be employed here.

I didn’t stray far overall from the Bugger design, but did adopt the tri-color tail of the Thin Mint, and built a slightly thicker dubbed body, more reminiscent of a small crayfish.

I stuck with a rooster saddle feather for the body hackle, more in an effort to build volume and to help support the coq de León hen saddle collar I use to form the shell. This oversized, soft, mottled feather envelope over the fly body forms an artistic carapace that reminds me of a van Gogh painting. It’s really the key to the whole pattern.

I finished off the fly with some of Drew Chicone’s micro Crusher Legs in the appropriate colors for both the legs and antennae, and included a few strands of matching Flashabou just for spice.

I realize that most tiers and fly fishers look at a Bugger pattern

and think “leech,” but the essence of this old pattern is its utility and flexibility to imitate so many different food items. Tied long and thin, a Woolly Bugger can be more like a damselfly nymph; thick and fat and it can be a stonefly nymph; and when tied upside down with a multi-colored tail, some wiggly legs, and a thick mottled collar that encompasses the body, it is a damn good match for a small crayfish.

As the pattern developed, I sent prototypes to all the guys, and got feedback on the parts and pieces, as well as ideas for color variations. The standard dark Thin Mint version of peacock and olive-brown-black was a given, as was a rusty brown tone, but the most interesting color turned out to be a gray-blue variant that imitates the molting stage of a crayfish. During this teneral period, crayfish are lighter in color and apparently soft and juicier than their hard-shell counterparts, and predators like trout and bass gobble them up. The gray-blue version immediately became the front runner for favorite color among all three of these guys.

It wasn’t until just last week that I myself finally got to fish the fly up in Wyoming. Rigged on a long 2X tether under a Big Fat Angie instead of an indicator, the Nine-Pound Hammer taught a few lessons to the kind of fish that make you lie awake at night. Angry, predatory brown trout and spectacular leaping rainbows both fell hard to the Nine-Pound Hammer, and this group project got an A+ on the final exam. Thanks for the inspiration, fellas!

Charlie Craven co-owns Charlie’s Fly Box in Arvada, Colorado. He is the author of four books, most recently Tying Streamers: Essential Flies and Techniques for the Top Patterns (Stackpole Books, April 2020).

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Continued from page 72 to the water’s edge, and together we’d release all the little fish I had captured. Even then, catch-and-release fishing pleased me.

I remember that when we dumped the little bluegills back in the pond, some of them would sort of mill around like people at a train station not sure of where to go. In time, they’d find their way home, just like me.

Later in life I moved up from a cane pole to a fly rod. I began targeting bigger fish that I caught less often, but that according to the grown-ups were a lot more satisfying. And I enjoyed catching bass and later traveling around the world fishing and hunting for everything from bonefish to kudu. But I have to admit, none of it thrilled me any more than a bucket full of bluegills.

Bluegills fill my fondest childhood memories. As I moved up to a fly rod and fishing the fast-moving and springfed Texas Hill Country streams, I began targeting other sunfish that all seem to fight outside their weight class and often look like they were painted by Vincent van Gogh. In time, I became a father, and I introduced my daughter Megan to nature via fly fishing and the short hikes we’d take to get back to the streams. Her first fish on a fly was a bluegill, which she caught in one of the ponds that line the headwaters of the Sabinal River. The fact that it was tiny made no difference to her. From that moment forward, she was forever a participant in nature.

Life is a circle, not a line. Circles describe nature from a bird’s nest to raindrops striking a pond. I’d like my life to be round, like that. I’d like my life to be natural. When we see ourselves as participants in the biome, nature and the best of human nature carry us forward. It all comes down to love and respect for self, others, and the Earth.

All across America this outdoor ethic is being lost to the e-generation who are existing in a virtual world, not living in an actual one. But this does not have to be, and frankly, if this trend continues, the nature of our nation, world, and humanity will suffer. The point here is threefold. First, we only protect what we

come to love, and we only love what we come to know. Second, a growing, rather than decreasing, supply of “nature participants” is needed to ensure the future of our wild spaces and wildlife. Third, introducing children to nature through angling and hunting as well as other less consumptive outdoor interactions such as nature walks, and even organic gardening is vital to our future, and beneficial to the health and well-being of the

children. Every time we introduce a kid to nature, we are planting a tree of sorts.

I don’t remember much about my early childhood, but I recall every detail of my fishing trips with my dad.

In her wonderful book entitled, Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative, Florence Williams makes a compelling argument about the importance of nature in our lives.

She writes, “The dramatic loss of naturebased exploration in our children’s lives and our own has happened so fast we’ve hardly noticed it. We don’t experience natural environments enough to realize that they make us healthier, more creative, more empathetic, and more apt to engage with the world.”

It seems to me that most American children and adults are suffering from what author Richard Louv has coined as nature-deficit disorder. We all see it, even in ourselves. We spend our time multitasking or sitting in meetings or

stranded in traffic and in the end, we are left fatigued, isolated, anxious, and depressed. It’s not natural.

Nature is restorative. Connecting with nature is a skill that requires practice like any other skill. As I write this, America is in the middle of a global pandemic, racial and civil unrest, massive unemployment, and environmental degradation, but I remain optimistic. Nature taught me to be adaptive, resilient, and present in the moment.

Not long ago, I returned to the Sabinal River with my little 4-weight glass rod and a desire to feel young again. I strung up my rod and walked to a clear, wide, lazy pool along the headwaters of the river. Not much has changed since my time as a boy fishing with my dad at that little pay lake. I still like to stand in the water as I fish; it seems that getting wet is all a part of the fun for me. It was early spring in the Texas Hill Country and the bluebonnets and scarlet paintbrushes were in full bloom, while the Texas mountain laurel f lowers were just coming to an end.

I could see a few fish out in the pool, and I began casually casting toward the closest ones. It didn’t take long before I got a follow and a take so that my little glass rod doubled over and throbbed to the pull of a hefty bluegill. I brought her to my wet hand, slipped out the barbless hook, and gently returned her to the river. At first, she milled about like someone at a train station, not sure of where to go. But in a moment, she turned and swam confidently toward the part of the river from which she had just come. When I saw her stop over a gravel bed on the other side of the big pool, I knew that she had found her way home . . . just like me. I smiled and then I cast forward, once again. It’s what I do.

Steve Ramirez is the author of Casting Forward (Lyons Press, 2019). His new book Casting Onward will be available from Lyons Press in April of 2022. flyfisherman.com

71

THE THINGS THAT MATTER

STEVE RAMIREZ

ILLUS TR ATIONS BY AL HASSALL

guess I was about five years old when my dad taught me how to fish and shoot, which is about usual for a kid growing up in the South . My love of fishing began at a lit tle “for pay” l ake that was stocked with bluegills for me, and bass for dad. He fished with his spinning gear, tossing those magical lures with names like Mepps, Shyster, Dardevle, and Jit terbug. I had a lit tle Zebco closed-face spinning reel and a kid-sized rod with a small br assy hook on the end of the line, and a red and white pl astic bobber about a foot or t wo above the hook .

The night before fishing, we’d go out into the yard with a flashlight and an empty coffee can looking for earthworms to use as bait the next morning. The worms never seemed edible to me, but the bluegills sure liked them. On those days when we didn’t have worms, my dad would just hand me a little jar of salmon eggs, which looked like candy to a five-year-old.

When we arrived, there was a ritual we adhered to where we’d go to the tackle shop, and dad would pay for the day of fishing. He’d also buy me a hot dog with yellow mustard, a soda, and a Dolly Madison fruit pie— usually apple. We did it the same way every time as if any variation would bring “bad mogumbo” to the whole deal. We arrived at our usual spot on the lake every time, and dad would look at me with his serious dad-face and say, “Steve, stay out of the water!”

“Sure dad,” I replied.

After I fell in—which I always did—he’d hang my britches on a tree limb in the sun to dry, and I went on fishing in my Fruit of the Looms, which worked out fine because it was getting hot by then anyway. You can get away with that sort of thing when you’re a five-year-old boy, but people seem to frown on fishing in your underwear as you get older. That’s a damn shame. Growing up is not all it’s cracked up to be. I guess that’s why as I get older I’m becoming more childlike. All I seem to want to do these days is play outdoors and eat junk food. It feels good to be back in my second childhood, although I’d joyfully skip the aches and pains that come with the mileage.

For all his casting and spinning and Jitterbugging, dad didn’t seem to catch many fish. Sometimes I almost felt sorry for him. I mean, every now and then he’d hook a bass, but I was hauling in bluegills like it was the easiest thing in the world to do.

Dad always brought a five-gallon bucket for me to fill with lake water so that I could entertain myself by filling the bucket with bluegills. At the end of the day, dad would look into my bucket and say, “Well, you sure did catch a lot of them!” Then he’d have me help him carry the bucket 72

FLY FISHER MAN

Continued on page 71