Fishing Throwbacks

This month’s throwback comes to us from the Library Congress’s Biodiversity Heritage Library. Published in 1883, Fishing with the Fly featured exerpts and articles written by various fly fishers of the day and peppered with illustrations featuring flies offered by the Orvis company. Salmon flies from the plate above: 1. Prince William of Orange, 2. Butcher, 3. Jock Scott, 4. Silver Doctor, 5. Fairy, 6. Silver Gray, and 7. Curtis.

Trout in the Classroom By: Julie Haselden 2020

On February 25, 2020, Trout in the Classroom (TIC) coaches and support folks waited in a Berkeley Marina parking lot for delivery of fertilized rainbow trout eggs. This year, Eagle Lake Rainbow Trout eggs were transported from the Silverado Hatchery in St. Helena. There were packets of 50 eggs, chilled and wrapped in wet cheesecloth, for each classroom.

I collected 4 packets of eggs for my 4 kindergartens. I took my precious cargo to each class and placed the eggs in each classroom’s chilled and aerated aquarium. The kids were so excited! It was a great opportunity to talk to the kids about SCIENCE (learning about our world), life cycles, habitats, skeletons, and what each life needs to live. So many things to talk about! The enthusiasm about TIC is important! Each class will nurture the new trout and learn about the value of healthy wetlands. Fantastic program!

Thank you to Grizzly Peak Fly Fishers for your support!

Above: Julie ready to pick up eggs in her rainbow trout hat and little cooler Right: 50 packets of trout eggs Both Images courtesy of Julie Haselden

Looking Around:

An Old-Timer's Tips for Catching more Fish

By: Kirston Koths

Irecently began re-reading a fly-fishing classic; John Gierach’s memoirs entitled “Standing in a River Waving a Stick”. This eminently amusing book is also studded with nuggets of old-timer’s fishing tips, such as in the following passage:

“When I first started fishing, I noticed that a lot of the older guys would do this: Instead of wading right in and starting to cast, they’d hunker down and study the water for a while…so I started doing that, and it wasn’t easy at first, but I eventually realized that it can take ten minutes to spot something like the subtle rise of a nice trout in the shade of the bank – a fish you can spook without ever knowing it was there, if you’re too eager.

Those old fishermen: they’re slowmoving, and sometimes talk to themselves, but they catch trout. I may not always catch a lot of trout, but just last month I was accused of talking to myself. I said, we all talk to ourselves, we just don’t all move our lips!”

Well one thing that got me talking to myself, years ago, happened while taking a class from the late and great angling legend, Andy Puyans, on the Henry’s Fork of the Snake River. He had set up his chair on the bank of this wide and deep spring creek and had instructed his three guides and their six clients to not cast a fly for a full 30 minutes. He just wanted us to look around, even using binoculars to identify rise forms and hatches. Some of the younger guides and most of the clients were grumbling. I didn’t fly out to this class just to sit around, griped one well-heeled angler.

But Andy was right, of course. After 30 minutes of looking around, we knew where the biggest rising trout were feeding, that they were taking Trico spinners and caddis emergers, and we had planned out the best approach for an effective presentation (in my case wading into the center of the river and casting back

to the bank). Henry’s Fork trout are perhaps the world’s hardest trout to catch, and I am convinced I would not have caught a single fish had I ignored the “look around” rule.

Over the years I have added a number of other things to the checklist for Looking Around: 1. How will the wind affect my all-important first cast? 2. Are there live insects in the streamside spider webs that will help me with fly selection? 3. What is the size of the average nymph on the bottom of the rocks in this run? 4. What’s in my one-minute surface net sample? 5. What do the paths along the bank and the scuffs in the streambed tell me about how the average angler has fished this pool? I may want to cast from a different location to fool the most experienced trout in the run.

While I probably won’t spend a full 30 minutes Looking Around (unless I find myself on the Henry’s Fork again), I have never forgotten Andy Puyan’s advice. And if it helps me to catch more fish, don’t be surprised if you see me on the river some day, talking to myself!

After some very careful observation, a Henry’s Fork rainbow is finally fooled into eating. Summer, 2002.