Halloween Muddler

On the day before Halloween I went to Yellowwood. It was a gusty day and the leaves were coming down all around.

I shared the lake with a couple and their kayaks. No other fishers.

I started out subsurface but the summer haunts for fish were deserted.

I crossed to the west side and tied on my secret weapon, a Halloween muddler. Time to see if a bass or two would be attracted to this orange and black treat.

It's a tradition. In Washington I always tied up something in Halloween colors and fished it on Halloween, which was also the last day of the season. Most years I found trout with a taste for orange and black.

I worked the HM down the shoreline giving it plenty of time to get noticed.

But alas, it was ignored. Maybe it only works on Halloween day itself.

I came to a downed tree whose submerged branches sometimes hold a school of bluegill. The last time I was at the lake I found some who wanted a small fly. My cinnamon ants from the Henry's Fork filled the bill. So I tied one on again. It worked.

Then I noticed bugs on the water. Lots of bugs. What do you know, it was an ant fall. I thought for a minute that they were cinnamon ants--what a serendipitous turn of events that would have been--but they were black ants.

Even though my cinnamon version had caught fish up against the weeds, it was shunned by the bluegill rising out in open water. So it goes.

As dusk fell the bluegill went down. I tied the Halloween muddler on again and worked it down the dam. It felt so right in the spooky, misty gloaming. I could picture a monster bass looking up, seeing the fly's enticing shape slicing across the surface, and turning for it with blood in it's eye.

That would have been a treat, but it was just a trick of my imagination.

This Is Fly, No. 69

Right over HERE.

"Wakeful Things" by Michael Prior

"The Stag At Bay" Richard Ansdell (1815 - 1885)

You should never put the new antlers of a deer

to your nose and smell them. They have little

insects that crawl into the nose and devour the brain.

—Kenkō, Essays in Idleness

Consider that the insects might be metaphor.

That the antlers’ wet velvet scent

might be Proust’s madeleine dipped into a cup of tea

adorned with centrifugal patterns of azalea

and willow—those fleshing the hill behind this room,

walls wreathed in smoke and iron, musk

of the deer head above the mantle. He was nailed in place

before I was me. Through the floorboards,

a caterpillar, stripped from its chrysalis by red ants,

wakes, as if to a house aflame. Silk

frays like silver horns, like thoughts branching from a brain.

After the MRI, my father’s chosen father squinted

at the wormholes raveling the screen

and said, Be good to one another. Love, how inelegantly

we leave. How insistent we are to return in one form

or another. I wish all of this and none of it

for us: more sun, more tempest, more

fear and fearlessness—more of that which is tempered, carved,

and worn, creased into overlapping planes. The way

I feel the world’s aperture enlarge in each morning’s

patchwork blur of light and colour while I fumble

for my glasses beside the bed—lenses smudged

by both our hands. When they were alive,

those antlers held up the sky. Now what do they hold?

The Henry's Fork: Days Four and Five

The morning of the fourth day found us sharing the water with a pair of swans.

They were nervous about our proximity, calling to let us know of their displeasure. The honks increased in frequency and intensity until they took off to find some privacy. They created an unforgettable image as they passed by. These are the moments that make this place more than just the fish.

We waited for the hatch to signal the beginning of the day's fishing. A brief shower pattered on our hats.

Then the bugs came. This is my favorite time on the river.

I made my way to the grassy bank and fished to the waves of risers that came and went. I got lots of near misses and brief hookups before catching another fine healthy rainbow who couldn't resist a cinnamon ant.

We took breaks, sitting in the comfortable "recliners" the banks provide. It's a time to repair leaders and tippets, go through fly boxes searching for inspiration, and watch the river flow by around your boots.

As the sun went down I was still fishing the backlit grassy bank. You could call it a fruitless obsession with one spot in the entire river, or devotion to the place that gives you the strongest feeling of fishiness and sense of possibility.

Meanwhile, you should know, John was ranging far and wide and each time we would meet up he would give me his catch report. He was fishing rings around me. Many 12 to 16 inchers and a handful of fish at the 18 inch mark. He would often catch them in places I had just fished. Once as he was wading back to the bank he flipped his fly out right into the mouth of a good 16 inch fish.He hadn't seen any sign of it; he just happened to throw the fly to the right spot at the right time.

As we headed for the car I knew my work was cut out for me.

On the morning of the fifth day I waded over to the island in the back channel and crossed over it to the back back channel. We have often fished along the front of the island, but in some years long ago the back of the island held what we were looking for.

Right back here is the magic place where I caught my first 20 inch Henry's Fork rainbow. And it wasn't the only one I caught here. They were holding under stationary weed mats, and would delicately sip in a cinnamon ant drifted along the edge. Once my fly sank under the mat and when I began to pull it in to recast I found myself in a tug of war with another big old rainbow. Once after I had lost the last cinnamon ant I had on me I saw a big heavy rise bloom just out there in mid-channel. I pulled out my fly box, selected an Adams dry, and clipped it into an ant shape with my nippers. I showed it to that fish and he took it. Another 20+ fish.

This year I was alone with my memories. There were no fish or rises to be seen. I still fished my way down that shoreline paying close attention to the blowdowns, but to no avail.

On this day I did some ranging myself and covered some new water.

New water for me, that is. John had already been there and he was still outfishing me.

Then something happened that would cause us concern for the rest of the trip: the wind started blowing early in the day, around 10 or 11 o'clock instead of holding off until 1 or 2 o'clock. It made the conditions more challenging. I still have a soft hackle stuck in the back of my jacket. And I'm still glad it wasn't stuck in my ear.

We headed back to the cabin early hoping for better conditions the next morning.

The Henry's Fork: Days 1 - 3

We're home safe and sound and the trip to the Henry's Fork is now a memory--and lots of photos. Time to be processing those.

What we call the Back Channel was our primary destination on the river. We'd get there early so John could walk the banks on his never-ending mission to scout for the rises of big fish.

Like clockwork the Tricos would pop and festoon the shoreline. In addition, Callibaetis were soon swooping up and down over the water, and a few Mahogany duns showed. We were especially happy to see some cinnamon ants on the water that first morning. Sometimes referred to as "trout candy" they are usually a harbinger of very good fishing.

Once the bugs showed up it was time to wade out to meet the fish who were meeting the duns on the water. Many smaller fish were constantly active, so you had to look hard to discern the heavier rises in their midst.

I tended to haunt this grassy bank where I have had success in the past.

That's where I found this lovely fish on our first full day on the water. It seemed like such a promising beginning. It simply popped up within easy casting range and happily took the cinnamon ant I offered.

Incidentally, my brother the wildlife biologist and all-around naturalist, identified the growth on that bank as sedge, not grass. So we tried calling it the "Sedge Edge" for awhile, but I soon reverted to the somehow more pleasing "Grassy Bank."  

This is where we would cross over to the island that forms the Back Channel. It's a historic site for us, the first place we laid eyes on the Henry's Fork and entered its salubrious waters. And it's the place we met "Miss Missouri," a young and comely woman from Missouri fly fishing the Henry's Fork back when female fly fishers were rare. We sometimes call it the Miss Missouri Pool in her honor. It was a prime location in those early days. I remember evenings when big fish would smack a caddis dun over along that far bank and quickly outstrip the reel in a breakneck run. We checked it carefully with each crossing for signs that it may have returned to its former glory. Not yet.

On the third day we went to another favorite spot, the Last Chance stretch downstream from the famous observation deck. John loved to prowl the banks for "bank sippers," large hungry fish rising steadily in one prime food-producing spot. He found some to cast to but did not find a hook up.

I looked but did not find any so took opportunities to become a "bank sipper" myself.

We spent the morning there on that third day then went back over to the Back Channel.

Later we came back to the Last Chance stretch, this time upriver from the observation deck. We might be in the city limits of Last Chance there.

All these locations have good memories of good fishing. One afternoon three years ago after a blizzard PMD hatch I found a fish actively rising in the riffle behind this rock. It was one of those big fish you sometimes find methodically mopping up after the chaos of the hatch is over. I hooked him and he was a heavy fish. He quickly bested me. This time the riffle was empty.

We stayed until the sun went down.

I caught a handful of "pleeps" on a swung soft hackle.

We were alert for a caddis hatch but were at the wrong place apparently. So we spoke the mantra of early fishing trips fully believing in its conjuring power: "Maybe tomorrow."

Let the Best Man Win

I'm in Idaho with my brother John. We're going to fish the Henry's Fork for ten days. We got here yesterday afternoon. By the time we were all settled in there was still time to get on the water.

This was my first fish this trip. Not so big but it's the first trout I've caught since moving to Indiana.

There were lots of  fish this size eager to chase a fly.

We fished until the sun went down in a blaze of glory.

This morning we went to one of our favorite spots on the river. There were multiple hatches going on throughout the day--pmd's, tricos, callibaetis, and cinnamon ants--and enough fish working to keep us busy and happy.

This was my best fish of the day, a fifteen incher.

But my brother landed an eighteen incher. Let the best man win.