Pro Tips

The last time she and I fished together I learned a new fishing strategy. I remember because she wore a bikini top in the bow when the sun came out, and I became distracted because that is one of those things I really like, bikini tops in the bow of fishing boats. I also remember this day because she caught more fish than I did, using a technique I had never really considered up until that point. Not one that she had invented, but one passed onto us by the lucky guide oaring the boat down the Snake River, who I suspect was enjoying the bikini as much as I was from the stern.
An outfitter friend had procured a deal for us on a guided trip, where he ate the cost, paid the guide, and we got a deal. I jumped on the offer, thinking how nice it would be to un-tie my own tangles, be the client for a day, and not have to concern myself with artfully constructed compliments on my girlfriend’s casting and tactful suggestions about how to do this or that. That was the guide’s job, and we both felt that her receiving instruction from another guide rather than me would be one of those good things for couples, like going to a marriage counselor, or doing what you do after making up after a bad quarrel.
However, that morning at the ramp I began to reconsider our decision when the guide opened up the one box he had, which was packed with the same fly, in the same color and the same size, all red Chernobyl ants and nothing else. Then he told me how she needed to fish this fly.
“Katherine,” he said, “cast this thing at the bank, then mend it, but I mean big mends, and don’t stop mending it.”
The effect of course was that of a bass popper, and though I secretly doubted it at first, I soon realized that she was catching the hell out of the fish, and that I was becoming increasingly jealous over the fact that this other man’s ploy had worked so well making him look like the hero while her saggy-ass boyfriend sat with a limp rod in the stern, a pupil to his own ignorance.
Regardless, it worked. The large degree of terrestrials on the bank, beetles, hoppers, ants, and the like, would on occasion fall into the water and in a desperate attempt to get out make such a ruckus that the fish had become accustomed to this popping motion, and apparently craved it. While this may not be news to everyone, it was for me, the consummate Colorado-dead-drift nymphs-and-dries-and-everything-else fisherman. I mean really, how often do you see boats working banks by ripping big foam things through the water as if they were floating streamers?
The day ended, and she hammered fish until her arm was sore, and though I had not come up with the witty tactic that had brought so many trout to the net, she assured me later on that I was indeed still her hero.
Life’s lesson number one: When fishing with a significant other…GET A GUIDE! You can be the hero later on, when it counts.
I recalled the popping of the foam the following summer, and tried with minimal success on my home rivers with clients and friends. They all looked at me like I had just asked them to remove their trousers and fish the next bend naked when I suggested they throw larger mends and make that bug move. It didn’t work so well, not like that day on the Snake, so I forgot about it like so many other fishing tricks that I have learned over the years.
I still happened to be with the same wonderful woman, and though we had been too busy to fish together things were going great and as far as I could tell I was still the hero I wanted to be, until that following spring when I told her I would be guiding in Chile next winter. So began the slippery slope of the break up so common to those who have a hard time staying in the country while beautiful significant others wait at home for them. She was not about to wait, and as I eventually learned, had grown quite tired of my angling lust making my four month disappearance to Chile the final straw.
It ended and I became just another single fishing guide that summer. I made attempts at popping the foam, but it brought back more memories than hooked fish, so I again quit this tactic citing emotional reasons. That is until I met my new boss several months later in Patagonia, Chile.
“You do what?” I asked rhetorically.
“Yep, we pop it. And I mean fast. The faster you move that Gypsy King across the surface, the bigger the fish I say.”
And he was right. The first time we went out, he suggested I tie on the big, black foam thing with hair known as Rance’s Gypsy King. I threw it at the bank, and made over exaggerated mends as my now ex-girlfriend had done before, giving the fly an injured limp across the surface.
“No.” My boss said, “Move it faster.”
So I made bigger mends and more of them, and the fly retained its injured limp motion, only quicker now, like an old man in a walker trying to out run a pit bull chasing him down the street. I looked like an idiot.
“No, faster, damn it!” A snarl came from the oars, “Make it kick some water.” And with that he jumped up, snatched the rod and began sweeping setting the foam fly across the surface, which no longer looked like a man in a walker outrunning a pit-bull, but like a Hemi truck running down a pit-bull in a snowy field. That is when the giant brown trout erupted from the clear water in a shotgun style leap, slamming the Hemi truck fly into the air and down its gullet.
Over the season, I analyzed this technique, and found other ways to pop the foam. I was feeling better about my ex-girlfriend, and the popping of the foam, which soon became almost therapeutic, like anything that catches fish. However, it wasn’t just that this pop, pop, pop, caught fish, but unlike the grabs my ex got from the cutthroats on the Snake, these fish absolutely exploded out of the water, launching into the air Shamu style with the foam treat hooked into their lips.
Here, again, I found myself in a terrestrial fishery. But unlike those in rivers in the states know for their hoppers, this one had larger more obnoxious bugs to present. First of all, the lack of aquatic insect life meant that the fish relied more heavily on what came from above. Beetles and hoppers and dragonflies (though I am not sure this exactly falls into the terrestrial class). Second: that many of the beetles and dragonflies didn’t just plop in the water and wiggle their ass. They moved like Cale Yarborough down the speedway. My boss would tell me stories of trout chasing the flying dragonflies as they zipped over the water’s surface, so intent on the moving bug that they would swim through your legs, and eventually you would see the fish explode into the air and eat the dragonfly a foot or more above the surface.
I eventually deduced that the popping of the foam worked so well in Chile because percussion sound travels better in water than in air, so when a fly splats on the water and then raises hell moving across the current, the fish can pick up on that movement, that excitement, perhaps better than a silent string leach moving by.
And in order to create this noisy attraction, I drew upon the lessons I’d learned from the bass pros when fishing top water baits. Lower the rod tip until it almost touches the water, then strip and sweep low, this will drive the buoyant fly down, creating a bigger splash, more noise, and hopefully more fish.
However, it doesn’t work so well on rivers where fish don’t need to chase their food, or when they do it is the plentiful smaller fish stupidly gorging on drowned tricos that they chase. But I have had big looks by big fish on the Yellowstone and the Madison with this same approach, though it seems to work best…well, in Chile. However, this angling ploy serves as a reminder of a more poignant point. That tricks and tactics are products of their environment, they work well in the situations that are most conducive to that particular trick or tactic. So, when learning new schemes to catch the wily trout, don’t just learn the moves, but look at why the moves work, look at the environment around the trick. Or something wise like that.
Which brings me to life lesson number 2: Fish are predators and like things that move. Women, however, don’t.