I Stand Corrected--Somewhat

I've had an eye-opening moment so to speak. Now, I consider myself decently well-read on the subject of what trout in a river might or do see, near as we humans can tell anyway. (Snell's window is a crock though, but that's another subject for another day). I've read most of the respected authors' observations about what flies, bugs, shiny shit, and other things might or do look like from underwater.  Gary Lafontaine's underwater observations come to mind. And through my own fishing, I've developed opinions purely from those observations. "Anecdotal evidence" for my misguided friend in Florida.  

One of those opinions concerns the tippet floating over trout that are deemed picky or spooky.  For years I bought into the theory that the fly had to come first to the fish. Downstream. I mean, that's what I learned at Dead Drift U. on the Fork back in the 80s.  Then I watched Rene and others there catching these so-called tough fish by casting straight up over them, or up and across at a pretty steep angle. It took me a while to try it and learn it, but in the last decade my upstream game has worked on the Fork, the Livingston creeks, and most other places I've tried it.  I enjoy it and am successful with it.  So I concluded that the tippet going over the trout first wasn't near as big of error as some made it out to be.  Furthermore, I find myself fishing heavier tippet than most in these places. 4X works just fine on the Fork, Beaverhead, Green, and Missouri.  5x is plenty light on the Livingston creeks. Right over their heads.  I'm talking visibility here, not quality of the drift, which increases with softer lighter tippet. Recent discussions with TT on Depuy's about the English chalk streams further cements my thoughts.  He says he throws greased tippets right over their heads and they eat it just fine.  

Another related conclusion I had is this nonsense about whether your tippet is greased or sunk. Claims have been made in angling literature for a long time that a greased leader is more visible to a trout than a sunk leader.  Again, I can hold my own just about everywhere with the leader greased right to the fly.  And, it keeps the fly dry, and there's no noisy blurp when you pick it up.

Enter Silver Creek. Uh-oh.  In the bright sunshine and glassy surface conditions, I just happen to take notice of something on the bottom of the stream bed. What is that? This big long dark shadowy snake-looking thing as my leader floats past me.  Holy shit.  How could I have never noticed this before?  I mean, it is glaring. And the thickness of the shadow is much greater than that of the tippet.  While fishing some runs with clean gravel and a bunch of fish, I watch as the shadow approaches the fish. As soon as it gets within a foot or two of them, they scatter in all directions.  These fish can see that shadow coming?  Sure seems that way.  They certainly notice the shadow passing over their heads.  Every single fish reacts and moves.  Just for grins I sink the leader and let it float by in front of me, and there is no shadow at all.  Only about half of the fish I cover with a sunk tippet move out of the way.  Imagine that, all those authors, all this time, were correct.

Now, does the shadow have an effect on most trout in most situations? Not the ones I've been fishing.  And I'm still greasing my leader on this creek too, but you can sure as hell bet the fly is coming to them first from upstream. Depending on the sun angle, which now I'll have to pay even more attention to, they could still get shadowed before the fly resches the eat zone.

If there's a tough fish I really want to catch instead of spook, I'll probably rub some mud on the tippet so it sinks.  Kind of like the mud on my face.

That snake-like shadow is from the 6X tippet.  

It's so obvious!  Here, straighter with a curve.

Just Wandering

From between the lakes to between the hatches, or something like that.  I go searching for more late season trico hatches, but it appears I'm a little late.  So I do a little recon for later this season, or another season.  I drop in on Wyoming a couple times.  I purposely avoid the MO, though I passed dangerously close.  I wouldn't want to put an end to the season too soon, and there's nowhere to go after the best in the West.  The Fork remains turbid. A quick trip home to check in and make sure I still have one, take care of some appointments, and get a little recharge.  I'll be on Silver Creek by the weekend.  That's pretty close to an automatic winner. 

Walked 1.6 miles RT in search of . . . 

Water up due to irrigation gates closed?

The headwaters of sort.  Cloudy, but nothing doing.

Big water at the head of the gorge, even at lowest flows.

Rumors of epic trico clouds, but I found none.

Beautiful, quiet, shaded, free campsite 

Beautiful big riffles just below town.

Smaller above town, still no bugs

Quickly sampled this little creek before a brake line exploded on my pickup. I'll be back though. (Drove 60 miles to Butte with no hydraulics! Piece o' cake, I only had to stop once.)

This looked good, flowing at 380, not too many weeds, "Beaverhead clear." I saw about six BWOs float by in a few hours.  Just isn't happening yet.  Couldn't even Leech one up.

BTL

I've generally only fished this spot in passing over the years.  It has a Green Drake hatch in June.  The water really drops from one lake to the next.  At the mouth are a few short runs that are fun to fish when you can get on 'em.

I run into a good post-rain baetis hatch on the first evening, and the mornings have a good late-morning trico hatch lasting almost until noon.  It's crowded, like everyplace that's good, but I find a place each morning and evening.  There's some good fat fish too.  And . . . No floating weeds!

Trail down to mouth

Lots this size

Baetis winner, whatever it is. Chewed up Harrop midge?

Tricos

Lots of tricos!

Magic morning slow riffle

The other magic riffle edge, main channel side, a little harder to get to.

The trico winner, easy to see, relatively.

Bank side of the lower island.

Looking upstream at the magic morning run

For the baetis, of course.

River in Peril

There's an overwhelming consensus that the Fork is in serious, dire trouble."The worst I've ever seen it." "There's hardly any fish left." "I've caught nine good fish since July 1st." These are the quotes from the seasonal regulars, some of whom fish it or attempt to fish it on a daily basis, June-Sept.

I just attended a 90-minute talk in West Yellowstone from Rob Van Kirk, the biologist in charge for the Henry's Fork Foundation.  He began his talk saying, "We did not have a fishery on the ranch this summer." Toward the end he said, "We didn't get any fishing this year, and we're not likely to get any next year."

The main culprit affecting the dry fly fishing as we know it is turbidity of the water coming out of Island Park Reservoir.  It gets drawn down to filthy water.  As drawdown progresses, nothing is left but warmer dirty water. As flows increase, the water in the river actually becomes warmer.

Rob did not address fish numbers specifically, but did say the turbidity would cause different fish behavior, including fish not rising for insects.  The hatches themselves are much lighter as well.  Water temperatures are higher than the threshold for pmds to live, as one example, and that has been the case for several years now.  Low winter flow is the culprit for reduced fish numbers.  Only so many fish can survive the winter.

He covered many other issues all leading to the same grim prognosis that I won't go into in depth, but every factor we need for a good healthy fishery is negative.  Cold, clean water with good winter flows for example. I wrote about it here years ago, and was even accused of crying wolf when I talked about the decline with some of the regulars.  It was easy to see coming a decade ago, even in the high water years.

So I spent a morning and two evenings at Last Chance and another morning on Millionaires before departing.  The water has been dropped and is pretty clear now, but bugs were non-existent and I counted four decent one-time rising trout.

I shall return, and maybe there will be some blue wings. The fish are not all gone, there were some in June, though nobody saw as many as in any previous season. As I told Fred, Ed, Larry, and Steve the other morning at the round table, if there's one trout left I'll wade out there and try to catch it.  

PS.  Hey, the next post will be upbeat and positive.  I'm on some fish just over the hill!

So Smoky the Sawtelle's are invisible

Log jam fish

And dredged up this one too

Smoky sunset

Slightly less smoky sunrise. 

More weeds/moss than any other season on record

This little guy is all I could find on Millionaires.