I remember thinking when I was young and first walking a river with a fly rod that this is hard and not something that works as well to catch fish. The first few times I walked to the river from the car with my flyrod, it felt like such a handicap that I might as well accept before we even start that I am not catching a fish today. This is harder and less effective, and some things have to go right for me to get a fish fairly describe how I felt from a confidence standpoint. That said, I had decided then and have never changed my mind that the fly approach is the one I enjoy and will likely never deviate from during the remainder of my fishing life. The understanding that this was something harder but rewarding presenting a unique challenge is still what keeps me passionately committed to the fly today.
From a dry fly standpoint, I can recall a specific evening 5 or so years into my fly-fishing life where the fish were being tough and on emergers. I couldn’t get the fish to take, so I tied on a small caddis dropper a foot or so below my dry. The first fish I put it over after seeing it rise took the fly on the first drift. I saw my dry fly sink, I set the hook, I landed it. I continued covering fish I saw rise with this dry dropper set up that evening and almost every single fish I saw rise in the pool that night, I hooked and landed most of those fish.
As I walked back to my cabin that night, I should have felt happy and content. But I didn’t. I was trying to work out the way I felt and my thoughts on that walk back to my cabin. I knew I landed a lot of big fish that night, but I also knew that it was too easy and just required lining up the drift, and the fish were not as selective and technical just having to run the dropper over them before the dry fly sank and I set the hook. It oversimplified the process and technical game of chess I was accustomed to with tough evening hatch fish rising in a complex hatch situation with numerous insects coming off on the surface. I took the shortcut, it worked, but there was not that much skill involved and I knew it. After I landed 5-6-7 fish on the first drift that all individually should have required some time invested to fool on the surface, I knew this was a cheat code and not the same. There was no visual take, there was not the same challenge involved to get these fish to take. Mulling this over, I decided as I got back to the cabin that night that I wasn’t going to resort to the dropper again with rising fish, even if it was a great fish and I was running out of ideas for getting that fish to take my fly off the surface. You win or the fish wins. I was ok with that scenario and traditional process that kept the playing field level.
Over the years since then, I have grown to appreciate set ups where the fish are especially difficult and trying to work through the challenges during a tough hatch event to get a few fish that I want out of the group. I’ve become comfortable with accepting that maybe I don’t get those fish, but if I do I’m going to do it by confronting the challenge head on, not a cheat code that bails me out when my offerings on the surface have continuously been rejected. There’s no “but” for me to create an exception. I either get them or I don’t.
Recently, my feelings on this were tested and the progression of decisions I made during a two day effort to trick one of numerous extremely large trout during a condensed and intense evening rise in New Zealand epitomizes to me what is enjoyable about it all.
THE OPPORTUNITY:
On my second to last day of the trip, I was walking a section of river and came to a pool that was a classic dry fly pool with a nice gentle run leading into a dog leg left bend and cliff pool that had a nice gentle gradient/speed to it and great depth and structure. At first sight, it was clear that the pool had to hold several quality fish, and that was confirmed within the hour I first encountered it as light started to fade and a few isolated rises from scary sized fish started to become noticed. The fish were actively cruising and it made sense why given the way the currents lined up and played out from the start of the pool down to the tailout. There were a couple of big soft eddies at the head of the pool, and several odd soft pockets on the inside/just off the cliff where these fish were most often cruising to and from as they rotated around and just picked a random bug or two off the surface every so often.
I knew I had an hour or so before the evening hatch really got going, so I considered first what was the best location for me to set up at and wait for the real event to get going. I considered the drifts I would have at each potential location, how each location in the pool would position me relative to the fish in the area from a distance standpoint. A couple of areas put me right on top of them, and I didn’t want to spook them so I ruled those out. There was an area on the inside bend portion of the pool near the head of the run where I thought ok I can cover most of the areas the fish seem to be using and rising in right now, and have some flexibility to move and tweak my position depending upon what area of the pool the fish focus in on when the bugs really get going later. I got out of the water and set up there on the bank waiting for things to get going.
45 Minutes or so before dark, a mayfly looking similar to a Hendrickson started to trickle off in better numbers and the fish started getting a bit more steady. Then shortly after this, a wave of size 14-16ish caddis started showing and I think there was a lot of pupa that entered the drift at this time as well as the eddy’s started showing a lot of subtle emerger like activity that was too steady with very consistent rises every 1-3 seconds from fish starting and continuing up through dark. There were not enough mayflies on the water to explain the feeding I was witnessing.
I thought to myself ok I think the fish are eating caddis pupa. I have 45-30 minutes of daylight where I can realistically see my fly before it becomes dark thirty and fishing general area to try and draw a take. Let me start with the tougher to see patterns now to see if I can fool one early on with what I think they are feeding on before it gets too difficult to see the the low floating pupa pattern in a foam line and funky swirly pool/back eddy. I didn’t have my sparse caddis emergers with me, but had some caddis emergers and spent caddis that I thought could pass and check the box for this insect and stage the fish were on. I was wrong on that. I covered numerous fish repeatedly as they were cruising around in a fairly consistent pattern that allowed me to anticipate where they would likely be and rise next. No love or takes.
Light then went from totally fine and not limiting my fly selection to getting 1 shade darker to where now I’m thinking ok I probably need to be fishing something that is at least a 14/maybe a 16 with a visible wing now. I went to a couple of mayfly spinner patterns just hoping that the ole reliable might cause one of the fish to slip now that they were in the groove and feeding heavily. They didn’t budge and wouldn’t take a hackle wing spinner or other more standard synthetic wing/visible spinner patterns I tried. 10 minutes or so of these flies being over fish and being ignored caused me to move on from the spinner approach entirely. I went to a series of cripple patterns/knock down duns, funky floating nymph emergers trying to stick with the in the film theme the fish were supporting as relevant to their feeding as the evening rise continued on. Some of the more delicate patterns I had wouldn’t stay up and float in the complex currents these eddy’s had. The more buggy and higher floating cripples and emergers I had didn’t get touched and I knew they were too big. If the fish were going to make a mistake on these, they would have fairly early on as the flies were over the fish and I cut them off- moved on from this category of bugs with probably 15-20 minutes of fishable light left. My fly selection now with the tough drifts and need to have some clue where my fly naturally had a limiting effect. I tried as series of dun patterns that resembled the Hendrickson like mayfly I had seen coming off, tried some higher floating caddis adults I could pick up on the water, went back to some larger spinner patterns to see if with lower light the fish may just see them as relevant and make a mistake. None of these worked. I had a group of 4-5 fish all high 20’s/30’’ fish working on the far side eddy, I had one huge fish directly below me on the inside seam in the run as it ran below me and began to bend to the left into the pool itself, but this fish was less consistent and moving around with a large radius and zone where his distinct nose would show every 45 seconds or so. It was a lower percentage fish, but distracting and hard to ignore when you saw his huge beak come up often enough in the corner of your eye and I couldn’t resist throwing a few in the area where I saw him last rise when he did for a moment appear more consistent and rise a couple of times in a tighter interval than normal that evening.
As dark set in, the temps dropped quickly, and I could see a few fish still rising every so often, but in the most stale and difficult spots to present, and now trying to keep my fly in these zones with less of a sense of where my fly was and what was happening drift wise made it difficult. Last light turned to no light and I came up empty. I put on a mouse after dark and made some casts here, and got broken off on the strike with 15lb maxima which added to my frustration like wtf is going on right now. This was a silent take that as I went to pop the mouse on a fairly slow retrieve, I felt some resistance and then just slack. The fact a fish exerting fairly little energy could break that type of tippet confirmed what I already knew. These fish were huge. I left the pool that night frustrated and already made up my mind that I was coming back the next night to try and solve this puzzle before heading home.
Day 2: Before starting my day on this second and final fishing day of the trip, I looked through all the dry fly boxes I had brought with me and organized a cup of flies that I thought would potentially work on these fish given what I had seen in terms of insects and feeding activity the night before. I put 15-20 dries in a cup and put it in my front pocket so I knew where they were and was prepared for the evening hatch before it even got stated. I had some lower floating emerger patterns and smaller stuff that I thought I could see and use in the early start of the evening rise session, a few mid sized bugs that because they were funky and low floating I could maybe get away with even though they were a little big. They could serve a purpose as it got later and I need to go bigger, but still needed stuff that was technical and meant for fish subtly feeding in the film and surface. I found a few big drake style bugs that were just buggy and fishy that gave me more confidence as my last ditch bugs I had the evening before that were a bit too generic as well as oversized to pass the smell test on these fish that I knew for sure now were not easy.
I waded a lot of water that day before getting into the early evening hours. I saw quite a few fish but they were tough too and easily spooked after even 1 good cast over them on most shots I had. The evening hatch was in the back of my mind all day as I knew there were somewhere in the range of a dozen fish in that pool. All 10lb plus sized fish that were big browns and I saw my challenging day time fishing as a sign of what evening would be; equally challenging as last night.
I got to the pool a little earlier on day 2, giving me time to really think about my positioning in the pool before things got going. I decided to set up on the bank of the other side of the head of the run, which placed me on the bank where the eddy was that extended up to the seem of the far side of the run. When I set up there, I could see numerous big fish in the eddy laying low and moving around casually eating a bug or two on the bottom. They weren’t in the groove yet and it was still early. The pros of this position relative to being on the other side of the run where I was the night before was I was closer to the fish, and in water that was moving at the same speed as the water the fish themselves were rising in. The drawbacks of this location was that it was a little awkwardly close, I was on the eddy side which meant I was going to have to make casts that put the fly a few inches at most above the fish’s head, and hope they reacted and took the fly within 1-3 seconds because maintaining a drift there for long wasn’t going to happen. And third the few fish that were in the formal run and pool itself where current was more uniform and drifts were easier, were not really in play from this location given the eddy I was in and the amount of dead slack water that was between me and the moving portions of the run/pool lower down. I still felt it was worth setting up here though to extend the amount of time that I had to fish technical, hard to see flies to the fish closer to them.
It was a little windy and a bit cold as we entered the witching hour on evening 2- but the bugs fought through it and started kind of coming off. It was different already relative to the night before. I didn’t see the Hendrickson style mayflies showing like I saw them the night before. There were a few caddis, but not waves of them like the night before. The fish started rising consistently though nonetheless. I thought ok it has to be some type of emerger and I’m going to with small caddis again. Put it right on the heads of numerous fish and saw their reaction being somewhat -but not overly interested and I quickly cut off a series of flies trying not to burn too much time with the same menu as the night before. I went to a few terrestrial patterns just to see, and because I wasn’t really seeing bugs on the water in great numbers. I started seeing a few smaller mayflies that looked like some type of olive- something I hadn’t seen the night before. I knew tying on a size 18-20 olive as light was fading was just inefficient and something I was only going to be able to kinda see for 5—10 minutes max- so I avoided going to this bug. I went to to some garbage feeder patterns like oversized Griffiths gnats, bivisible, buzzball, some half and half style emergers in mid sizes I could see but reasonable relative to the bugs that were now a little more visible and showing on the water. No love. The giant I had seen below me on the other side of the run the night before was back there, and I saw his huge head coming up fairly steady now that I wasn’t positioned right above him in his feeding lane. It was a tough cast but doable to get it over there and cover him drag free. With some of my larger patterns that gave me a realistic chance to see them/hook him if he took at such a far distance- I tried him with 2-3 casts per bug and each time one drift covering him caused a noticeable change in the frequency that he rose after that for several minutes. He was smart and aware when he was being targeted.
The trout on the eddy side I was on were not in the same grove as they were the night before. I saw them coming up, but not in consistent every few seconds fashion like the night before. I could still make out the outlines of the fish themselves as they cruised around the eddy and picked off a bug softly from the surface often enough, and at that moment the temptation became real. I should just tie on a dropper and pick these fish off they are 15 feet away from me lazily cruising in this eddy. I engaged in an argument with myself at this point with the other side of my brain saying “you are such a pussy you have big fish rising right in front of you and because it’s tough and you’re running out of time, you want to just pass on the challenge entirely and do what you need to do to catch a fish. Figure it out or don’t”. I opted to stick with the dries with that side of my manic brain winning the debate. I said ok 20-30 minutes left tops for fishable light stick to spinners keep rotating til you find one that works. I did just that, big spinners, small spinners, hackle wing spinners, one wing spinners. Nothing in response. For the 10-15 minutes I could see under the water, I saw the fish sharking right below the surface. Gun to my head then and now, I still think the actual bug they were on and eating was caddis pupa. The fact is that the currents and drift and low light situation that presented on both nights to get these fish on top didn’t really make it possible to fish a small dialed in pupa pattern and get the fish to take. They wouldn’t slip on caddis adults or higher floating pupa patterns. And other garbage feeder bugs and relevant patterns I thought were justified in that setting didn’t cause a fish to slip.
I turned on my flashlight as I admitted defeat, looked in the eddy as I was walking out, and saw hundreds of weird dead bees that were spinning around in the eddy. These had not been there the night before, I looked then too. I never saw bees flying around that evening. Have no clue when they fell/got on the water, or whether the fish were eating them. But there were hundreds of bees in the water. I shook my head in disgust as I walked out talking to myself “fucking bees, are you serious. Bees!?!” Does it drive me insane that I had nearly a dozen fish of a lifetime rising around me two nights in a row, and I couldn’t even get one to take? Definitely. Do I regret not putting a dropper on to stick one of those fish? Not at all. I didn’t catch the fish, and flyfishing is a sport where sometimes you don’t get the fish even though they are there. It is not a method designed or intended to be the most effective way to catch fish. It’s hard and we handicap ourselves on purpose by choosing it. When big trout are rising in front of me, I will never change my mind that I’m either going to fool them on the surface where they are eating and providing me the opportunity to fool them, or I don’t get them because they were smarter or I was wrong in deciding/determining the variables that mattered and necessary ingredients for getting one to the net. Accepting the challenges the sport presents to you is part of being a fly-fisherman, and taking shortcuts that simplify- and really circumvent the most enjoyable classic challenges this sport can present is to reject the entire premise of fly-fishing itself. No matter how long you have enjoyed this sport, it still remains hard and there are days the river wins. A fly rod is not the most effective way to catch fish, and that is not the motivation for taking up the sport in the first place. It’s the method and process of trying to catch fish with the flyrod that justifies sacrificing some level of success for truly rewarding moments when it does come together. It’s hard and we agree to make the sport of fishing harder on purpose when opting to flyfish because in a sick way it becomes more enjoyable. How you catch them matters. Back peddling on that logic and core principle that served as the sole basis for going this route in the first place negates the purpose of doing it. Watching a dry fly sink and lifting a fly rod is not the same thrill as watching a giant hooked jawed male brown come up and eat your fly off the surface. The later is something I wanted to witness, and the former situation is as underwhelming as it sounds reading it. The moments you want to have happen to you on the water require fishing in a way that provide the possibility of that outcome. I will always fish for those moments, not photos and the urge to project/experience constant success on the water. Even when we are talking 30’’ brown trout. Stay the course.