Salmon Fishing

I’ve been thinking of salmon fishing lately.  Not salmon fishing the tribs off of the great lakes, although that, too, is special. I have some fond memories assembled in my mind of fishing on both sides of Lake Michigan with good friends and the Lake Erie feeders with my dad.   But no, lately I’ve been thinking of the more traditional form of hunting the king of fishes, the Atlantic salmon.

The thoughts first crept into my mind the other day as I was packing my gear bag for a day trip to the local trout waters.  For various reasons, some of which I don’t yet fully understand, I have around eight boxes of flies that that I juggle around each time I go out after the salmon’s smaller cousin.   This past weekend I was fumbling through them again as I packed.  By this time of year they are essentially a disorganized mess.  I can usually find a few split shot rolling around in a few of them and a couple strands of tippet still attached to the dry-droppers (as if I was planning on re-using that 7x again). I think there is a broken fly in there somewhere and certainly some mangled ones, and maybe a gum wrapper that should come in useful sometime, somewhere.  The useful flies that are in there are certainly not lined up all nice and pretty like they were at the end of the fly tying season, lined up like polished fighter jets on the aircraft carrier waiting to get called into action.

In general there are a few dry fly boxes, a few sub-surface boxes and usually a few specialty boxes.  The funny thing is, of all these flies, I probably use only 5% of them throughout the season.  And even then I usually go for the same few patterns.  There’s the bushy dry with a highly visibly wing used to hang the dropper fly in rough water, there is some sort of tiny thread midge with a bit of flash on it, a bead head pheasant tail, and a black wooly bugger.

All of this chaos brings my thoughts to salmon fishing because one of the reasons I love salmon fishing is its relative simplicity.   One box of flies tucked into the inner wader pocket, forceps and clippers hanging from a boot-lace lanyard, a spool of tippet in the shirt pocket, a wading staff belted around the waist and a net.  Add a double-handed spey rod and large arbor reel and that is all that is required.

I also love salmon fishing because of the fly box, singular.  The fly box is really one of the two forms of color brought to this game of chase.  It’s lined with beautiful flies of a decent size in oranges, bright greens, blacks and purples.  There are usually a few rows of tube flies, a few rows of doubles, and a few of singles all in size small, medium and large.  Together with the fly line it is interesting that these are the main forms of color that link the fish to the fisher.  All else - the water, the sky, the streamside and even the fish - are shades of grey in my memory.

I also love salmon fishing because of the casting.   One hand placed above the reel and one hand loosely cradling the rod from below.   Line held between the cork and the index finger as the rod is lifted back over one shoulder, across the chest and up over the other shoulder before being snapped forward.  Swish… swish….shoot.  Over and over the sequence is repeated as the line shoots across the river, leaving a trail of water drops falling behind it.  Cast….cast….step, step, step.  Over and over the sequence is repeated as the fisher works down stream.  Down and across and the line falls in loose wiggles.  A mend or two upstream controls the flight of the fly in the water column.  It seems like a ballet of sorts and it’s all a rather meditative experience.  So much so that, many times, I have been so totally mesmerized by the casting sequence that it really did not matter if a big salmon slowly pulled at the color at the end of the line or not. 

My mind quickly reverts back to today’s reality as I snap the fly box closed and toss it into my over stuffed gear bag.  Disorganized or not, I love trout fishing just as much.

Trout in the Classroom Fry with Egg Sacks

I week after hatch - Alevin (sac-fry) stage - with egg sacks attached

October 2, 2010 - Boulder Creek

Got my October fish.  On Saturday, I had a few hours suddenly present itself around 2:00.   I quickly got my gear loaded and pushed through 15 minutes of traffic across Boulder to get a mile up into Boulder Canyon.   By 3:00 I was in the water with my 1 wt.  Low & clear with boulders making it a pocket water game.   Had at least six strikes on the surface that I missed.  Landed three browns between 8 and 12 inches - two on attractor dries and one on a golden caddis pupa dropper.

Trout in the Classroom Egg Hatch

Our Trout in the Classroom project underway...and the little eggs have started to hatch today.  The teacher called me to say that in the morning there was just a basket of eggs in the tank, and a few hours later one of the students looked in and discovered a few fish popping out.   The class was jazzed!

St Vrain Creek - Sept 25, 2010

Nadya, Stefan and I went for a ride in the mountains to see the fall colors.   Although we were a week late, it was still beautiful to see and be out in the fall afternoon.   We drove the Peak to Peak Highway from Nederland with intentions of making it up into The Moraine in Rocky Mnt National Park to see the elk herds strut their stuff.  Fortunately, we got sidetracked and never made it that far.

As we drove the twisty two lane highway across the tops of the mountains, viewing expanses of green dotted with aspen yellow we saw a road leading off the left and decided to see where it would take us.  With signs directing us to Wild Basin we discovered a previously unknown to us access into the park.   After about 1/4 mile we came upon Carter Lake and stopped to have a snack under a ponderosa pine watching the view of the lake with mountains in the background.  I got talking to a guy who was just finished fishing and he told me the road continues for a while more.

After a few miles over the dusty road were at a trail head walking along the upper reaches of North St Vrain river.  The air hovered at the autumnal inflection point between coolness and warmth as we moved between dark pine shadows and sunny bluebird sky.  Golden aspens, grey boulders, light green moss and a bluebird sky broke the evergreen dominance into a thoughtful patchwork of colors.

We shot off the main trail down toward the river, ducking under pine boughs and walking over soft needles, and found a likely looking spot for me to cast a line.  As Stefan and Nadya stayed on the bank building a fort and a dam I fished tiny dry flies to eager fish.  The first one, a brook trout in it brilliant  spawning uniform, took my #18 parachute Adams and was reeled in by Stefan.  I caught a little brown and a smaller brookie before moving up to a small waterfall.   Here, I tossed a long cast into a far eddy and watched a cutthroat raise up and examine the fly before refusing it twice due to drag.  After a minor adjustment the fly floated true and I had Stefan reeling in a cutthroat.

Tricos

I was out for a walk yesterday morning about 7:00 on the North Teller Lake trail where is passes over South Boulder Creek.  Stood on the bridge looking upstream and saw thousands of tricos swarming over the stream.  There were also some very very tiny midges and #22 baetis duns in a spider net.

South Boulder Creek - Walker Ranch

Hiked in a little over a mile starting at Walker Ranch trail head at 7:00 am today with my large backpack filled with waders, lunch and rod.   Fished downstream from the South Boulder Creek picnic benches.   It was a bluebird sky morning with temps in the upper 60s.  I caught about 6 or so browns, including two chunky and brightly colored ones.  Some on an attractor dry about size 14 of the Royal Humpy variety, and some on the #14/16 sunk bead head pheasant tail that was dragged behind it.  Lots of caddis on laying eggs on the surface.  Saw a small snake.  Ate a lunch streamside and then hiked for 35 minutes - all up and steep.  Water flows at 110 cfs and dropping like a stone to around 60.  As I sat on a mid stream boulder, I could see hundreds of tiny caddis worms wiggling in the wet algae left behind by the receding water.    Home by noon

Trout in the Classroom - Phase 2

Trout in the Classroom Equipment in Place

Crickets

The crickets have been out the last several weeks, and in the last few nights they have been very active.  We've been sleeping with the windows open nearly every night this summer and have had the pleasure of hearing these little creatures call to one another as the cool night air slowly wafts across the bed.

You all know the sound so I won't try to explain it, especially since I could not do it justice.  Let's leave it at the fact that these beautiful sounds are much more complex than can ever be described in a few words.

Cricket sounds are a gentle potion of both happy and sad at the same time, and remind me of the title of a Pink Floyd song, The Delicate Sound of Thunder.  At first, when you hear the crickets its often a small, faraway sound, and then it slowly creeps up closer to you until they are infiltrating your ears with that wonderful rumble...but you know from experience that the rain is not far behind.  As I listen to the crickets, I am thinking that this is one of the glorious sounds of summer, like the cicadas, the ice cream truck, and the joyful screams of kids playing in the sprinklers, yet it also means that autumn is not far behind.

Indeed, the air is cooler now and a bit more crisp than it was a few weeks ago and I am reminded that we must yet again brace for winter's grip on us.  Yet at the same time the crickets take me back to wonderful boyhood memories of scouting for deer prior to archery season, to a last fling with a small Wisconsin spring creek not so long ago, to Canadian fishing trips, and that childhood anticipation that came with the promise of another school year ready to begin.

Boulder Creek and Blue River

I fished Boulder Creek again on the way over to Breckenridge, where we stayed with some friends from Kansas City.  I arrived before 6:30 and started at Roger's Park area but found it to be not real productive, so I moved upstream to where I fished a few days ago.  It was a little better here, though the fish were not nearly as aggressive as last time.   I picked up a few small browns and rainbows.  Very small grey caddis were swarming, and a handful of green drakes were coming off. 

I took the Peak to Peak Highway from Nederland to I-70 over to Breckenridge.  Shortly after arriving and saying hello to Nadya, Stefan and our friends we had a nice lunch together.   Afterward, Kevin and I went on a recon mission.  We stopped in the flyshop in Breck and then hit the Blue River near the Colorado Mountain College.   A storm had just moved out, and the skies were grey with some intermittent sprinkles.  I caught two nice browns - one smashed a Trude dry fly in the margin of the near  bank, and the other I saw flash at the #16 bead head pheasant tail dropper as it quickly slid under some overhanging willows on the far side. 

We fished down stream to the beaver ponds where Kevin was standing below the dam, casting up into the pond.  I could see some blue wing olive duns sitting on the surface across the pond, and fish were rising to them.  Kevin hooked one and I netted it as it slid over the dam's falls.

Just upstream from the dam the stream widened with a long riffled run.  I saw a few fish rising in 3 ft wide eddy on the far bank that was partially covered by an overhanging willow.  A good sized head slowly and repeatedly popped itself up out of the water far enough that I could see its eye.  I missed the takes after many futile drifts.

On the stream side of the eddy,  I later saw another fish rising to emergers in the current, sticking its nose out of the water that was clear enough to see that it was a large rainbow.   I tied on a #18 BWO emerger and after a few drifts I had the pleasure of seeing him rise up to it, open its mouth, and retreat down as I set the hook into the 20" fish - one of those fish that had a mouth that looked too big for its body.

Kevin was working some fish downstream from me.  One was a nice rainbow that was cruising the shallows near him,  slowly feeding on midges.   Kevin's dry was sucked under on one of the passes, and quickly pulled out of its mouth without stinging the fish.  A few minutes later we watched the fish come back and move up to the fly, suck it in, and Kevin put the hook into flesh.  A few minutes later I netted the 22" rainbow for him.

That afternoon, we took the kids out to the upper part of Dillon Reservoir where the Blue River entered.   Us, the kids, and the wives walked a good quarter mile through a willow thicket that paralleled the river and then opened up into a cool little beach.   As the kids played on the beach Kevin hooked a rainbow on Powerbait hung under a bobber, and walked to shore with it so Piper could reel it in.  After that, we drove around for a bit looking for another place to fish, only to end up back at the reservoir but at another spot.   The kids were entertained on the beach and rocks, and I hooked up with a nice rainbow that I caught on a sunk Powerbait that Stefan soon reeled in.  Kevin landed another.   Piper was a trooper, rolling up her pants, wading barefoot into the lake with us and casting quite well for a long while.  

Later that evening, Kevin and I went back to the Blue River, and I caught two more fish in the willow lined run - a small one on the BHPT dropper, and a nice strong rainbow on a Royal Humpy dry.   We fished until dusk, at which time there were fish rising all over the place in the beaver pond, yet we failed to get a strike.  I did have a hit, though, as I dragged a big mouse pattern across the pond just after sunrise.