Bruler

I was going through some pictures and stories, and found this. The pics and stories are about one night in a string of 60 where I missed only 3 or 4 days all Hex season. Enjoy.

Hex (hecks) v.t. to put an evil spell on; bewitch.

We sit in a circle, 3 other fly anglers and I, ages from 25 to 80. Sweet night air is surprisingly calm, lightning bugs dance throughout the meadow we sit in, turning the waves of grass into a diamond strewn seascape. The night is young, but the fishing is over, luck for the group varies slightly depending on whom you talk to, a bottle of Chivas is passed. One of the old-timers says, “I’ll have a snort.” I think everyone agrees when his brother says, “Tonight was tough.” I know it was tough on me, for I have been bewitched…

Tuesday night I entered a part of the stream which I suspected the hexes would be on. As they migrate upstream the truly dedicated can follow their progression. I pick sections, when they are tapering down in one of them, they are usually picking up in another. Thus when they are in full swing, I can be relatively sure that I am in the only place they are going fully gangbusters. This works very well in theory, but sometimes life gets in the way, and dang if I didn’t get thrown off my loop, and had to guess like a Johnny-come-lately.

Apparently I guess better than most. There were no cars at the bridge I parked on, which isn’t too surprising, less people fish here, and I come early as I like to hike in a good ways from the access, less pressure = more fish. On the path of my upstream saunter I began to fish a light Cahill in likely looking runs, with limited success. When I come around a corner and see a favorite log jam of mine coated with yellow scum. “What devilry is this?” I walked up to get a closer look (thinking about getting a sample of the sludge in a small Tupperware I carry in order that I would have something to verify my story to the DNR.) Imagine my shock when I realized there was no pollutant, just thousands and thousands of hexagenia spinners.

A branch snaps on the bank and my concentration violently shifts. Eyes screaming upward, adrenaline beginning to course, when I see a friend standing on the bank, watching me so intent on the spent mayflies.

“Hiya Kuby, you scared the daylights out of me.” He laughs. “Looks like I missed a hell of a hatch last night.” He laughs harder, and I can see that gleam in his 79 year old eye, as bright as the day he was born. “You sure did.” We conversate for a few minutes, trade notes and flies, and agree to separate runs of river, it’s much too small here to share. I like a section that is a slightly longer walk for me, Kuby knows the farmer, and no walk is long for him here, which is good, it allows him access to some good fishing, even with the limitations of his age.

“My” run begins on a grassy corner. It has a large, centrally located stump which has served as a chair and a table. There is a slight gradient to the streambed here barely rippling the water as it runs through the large boulders interrupting the flow like bad punctuation. Here I plant my tail on the chair/table temporarily on loan to me, and I wait for the hummingbird size mayflies which I can only hope will come again tonight.

Upstream from me the river disappears underneath some massive oak trees, growing up from the bank and sheltering the river with their strong arms, giving the whole river the appearance of a train tunnel through a mountainside. As you look into the tunnel, you hear the gradient behind you, but there is none in front of you, the water is slow and slack; the bottom gravel on the far left underneath the roots of the guardian oaks, but the bottom is silt for the 2/3 of the river on the right. The wading is difficult in the dark, as there are many deadfalls hidden well by years of silt. The casting is next to impossible with the top of the leafy corridor barely above your head. The hexes come off thick as May mosquitoes. Underneath this mess, amongst the roots, above the gravelly bottom, ahead of a nasty deadfall, it lives. I say it, for I have never seen him/her, still it has bewitched me, and I have named it Gustafson.

Our relationship started that fateful Tuesday when I sat on my stump. I hadn’t yet seen many rising fish, and so I was waiting. First the smaller trout start to eat. They chase anything and everything on the water, spinners, shucks, emergers, duns, it doesn’t matter, they will all get splashy, hollow sounding rises. Then usually the next class of fish will start to eat, they are less enthusiastic, and mostly chase emergers, so they are still whacking the surface hard, but the sound is less hollow sounding, more like a fist sized rock being dropped into the water. Then the big trout come out, usually only to eat spinners, unless the hatch is extremely prolific. They can be marked by much slower feeding, leaving very small ripples on the surface. The sound they produce is again very hollow, but different than the young guns, this is a larger chamber making the hollow noise; it is more resonant, and deeper. The larger the trout, the deeper the tone. The largest trout make a slurping sound, if they make a sound at all, like a wet-dry vac briefly touching the surface of a pool of water. This is the sound that brought me off the stump.

Now of course this is not a science, and on any given night this will need adjustment depending on what is eating, and what is available for them to eat, but in general during a good hex hatch there are spinners and duns available at the same time, and the biggest trout are going to be eating the spinners (or crippled / sunken duns…hint hint).

I slide into the water, being excessively careful not to put waves up to where I heard that vacuum; one step at a time, waiting between each one for the waves to dissipate and the feeding to continue. If you can hear yourself moving through the slack water, you are going too fast. It takes me something like 20 minutes to get into a position where I can attempt a waterload cast into Gustafson’s strike lane, but it won’t happen as I can’t use that technique to get that fly there and manage the line quickly enough to keep the drift dragless. My first roll cast ends up in the canopy, my 2x tippet saving the fly for me. I can only see 2 ways to do this, one is from upstream, but I am parallel to him right now, moving up is going to put a massive pile of silt into his feeding lane. The other is the helicopter cast, kind of a sideways waterload. On the third drift past him I hear the vacuum, and I set the hook.

I caught 3 fish that night. Two brown trout that were 14 inches or so, one nice female that was 18+, and then I hooked this one, and it was big. I fought it for 10 seconds. I lived through a couple of massive headshakes and then the beast hunkered down on the bottom. I couldn’t move it. I had my rod nearly doubled, I think more would have snapped it, I pulled and pulled, trying in vain to get it to move, thinking perhaps I was snagged; that the goliath trout had wrapped me around one of those jail-bar oak roots. Then, when I had all that pressure on it, there was one more headshake, and Gusty was gone. Only once in my life have I felt a trout fight like that one, that trout was 28” long and 7 or 8 pounds. This Gustafson character, he or she is surely a grand trout.

Wednesday night, I am back, I hope Gusty is too. Did I dream that? Perhaps I had a snag to start with, and it was the water coursing over my line which felt like headshakes, then the snag just gave way and I got my fly back. No it was real, it had to be real, that trout exists. Tonight I sit on my bank and wait, and wait, and wait. Nothing happens. About 9:30 a very light spinnerfall begins, but it is not enough to bring big trout up. I move upstream to a narrowing in the river where a small waterfall channels spinners and in the slack behind it nice trout will eat as though at a buffet table. Two small trout are fooled by my imitation, a finely dressed dun pattern fished in the film.

About 10:30 I realize I have forgotten my headlight, and the walk back will be long, and slow. 15 minutes later I am still walking out when I find myself in a cloud of Hexegenia subimago. My heart races as I methodically walk back upstream toward the home of my adversary. I get to my spot, and I believe him to be home, as fish are rising all over the place, consistently, except where he lives. There is a 15 foot radius of dead water around his oak tree. Sometimes it is not what we see, but what we don’t which is important. Think about it this way, when we see color on something, what we are seeing is the only color not absorbed by what we are seeing. It isn’t the color of that item; it is closer to the anti-color of that. Realize sometimes that what we see in the world is often a negative image.

I caught 2 of the risers outside of Gusty’s realm of influence, and went home pleased with myself, though even more intent on the trout that I could have dreamed, but believe to be real.

Thursday afternoon. Driving between jobs for my employer, the brakes go out on the work truck, thank god the parking brake works, I limp the truck to the shop, my mind on only one thing. Gustafson. When I get home there is a message on my answering machine from my friend Tim; “hey, wondering if you are going fishing tonight, I have a tip for you.” I have know Tim for a long time, though for many years he lived somewhere else, it was a pleasant surprise to rediscover him at last years WFFP fall conclave. His tip is quite interesting. It is to fish the same section of river I have been fishing, and it comes with some good news, he knows the landowner, and we may be able to drive right down to the river, have a beer, and begin to fish. Between my walk in and my walk out, this adds an hour to my night.

It was a pleasure to meet the man whose land I have been fishing through since I was a boy. I don’t know why I didn’t go introduce myself earlier. We get down to the river, still very early, and there is my favorite nocturnal mayfly, starting itself an evening emergence. This is the coldest night we have had in 2 weeks, I was sure there wouldn’t be a hatch tonight, and here they are starting at 7:30. Tim and I start slightly downstream of where I like to, and trade rods for a bit, he wants to get someone else’s take on his 5wt Redington. In my estimation, it is a quite capable fly rod, but has limitations as far as a nymphing rod. Now it is time to sit, I head to the chair/stump/table, and leave Tim a bit of river to work.

Duns and spinners coat the water. A full range of sounds emanates from the river bottom; slurping, splashing, put to rhythm by the whirring of bats around ones head. Occasionally I am startled into setting the hook when one of these bats collides with my fly rod or fly line. Again I sneak into range of the trout. It is actively feeding tonight; the wet dry vac working overtime in the deepest recess of that run. I fish to him for at least an hour and a half, and I can’t get him to rise to my cripple. I dare not turn on my headlight to re-tie. Finally I drop the fly a solid 4 feet upstream of the noise, and put an upstream mend in my line. At this point I am basically hi-sticking the fly to him, by raising the rod as the water carries my fly to its destination, but I can’t see exactly how much slack there is and when the vacuum sucks it down, I feel nothing, I can’t even be sure it was my fly, perhaps it was one right next to it. Regardless, I was over anxious and ripped the fly up, tattooing it onto an arm of the warrior oak above me. As I am flyless, and spellcaster Gustafson has retired for the evening, this is my cue to go.

Friday. Tim has mortgaged his weekend in order that he may fish again tonight. He had been on a bit of a dry spell, and took a nice 16” brown last night, and his vigor is renewed. (Much to his girlfriends chagrin.) We pull into the spot down by the river, and behind us pull in Kuby and Kuby, brothers who jest with us, “we thought this spot was reserved for old timers.” Together these men have accumulated better than a century of flyfishing knowledge. While we may have been first here this evening, they were definitely here first; while we talk about who wants to fish where and there are no conflicts, there would not have been anyway.

While everyone gears up, I can’t pass up skittering a caddis fly across the top of a riffle I see risers in. I take one little one, and decide the time has come to cut back my leader and tie on 2x again. Organizing, gearing, checking knots, nets and nicotine, its time to fish. Tim again heads downstream of me, and I set up base camp at the foot of Mt. Gustafson. I know this is nearing the end of prime hexing here, this is definitely the best window in which to summit. Today I get into the run early, before the feeding starts. I position myself above where the trout has been feeding, and let out enough line to drift it just past there, so when it drags, I know I am done with the drift, hopefully without putting gusty down. I take a detailed survey of water currents, and airspace, for this will be valuable information later. Now I wait, the closest thing I do to deer hunting anymore.

A chill fills the air as darkness seems to rise from the earth, combating the failing light from our descending star. There is no moon to speak of yet, and I trust my ears as much as my eyes to tell me when this event is to start. As I mentioned earlier, in the meat of a hex hatch, there is likely both a spinnerfall, and an emergence. Beginning and ending the hatch are more likely to be one or the other, emergence at the start end, and spinnerfall in the tail end (not always, but mostly). What you are fishing to can be discerned even in the dark by the timing of it. I know as I sit here that I will be fishing a spinnerfall.

I see the abnormally huge mayflies well before I hear any feeding. What this means to me, is that there is a point at which enough mayflies are on the water that trout will finally turn on to them. Anthropomorphically speaking, until this amount of food is presented, trout are not “convinced” there will be enough food to make it worth the switch from their current arrangement, whatever it may be. Conversely, I know I will not be fishing an emergence because of the same event. When mayflies emerge, they swim up from the bottom, where the trout are already sitting. The nymph makes for easy food, and I believe that the nymphs of a mayfly are taken in mass quantity before we ever see a fly hit the surface. As more and more mayflies emerge, as a group, more numbers of them make it to the surface, until we see the feeding there. It is only after enough emerge to overwhelm the numbers of predators, that we actually see the mayfly. Thus, to make a long story short; if you see flies before you hear rising, you are fishing a spinnerfall; if you hear rising before you see flies, you are fishing an emergence. Make no mistake, there can be and is crossover between the two events.

Perhaps 10 minutes after I see the first doomed mayfly, I hear some splashy, overzealous rises from upstream. It is likely 20 minutes until I hear more methodical, slower rises. My best guess is that I have sat here, in this one spot, without moving my feet, for one half hour before the beast I hunt comes to eat. I let it feed a few times before I attempt a cast to it. I drift over the fish a half dozen times, and it does not rise, so I pause. Gustafson takes advantage of my lull in casting and feeds twice more. I resume casting, my cast from here is not much more than a drop into the water on my left, then lowering my rod as my fly floats away from me; I can nearly dapple. Again my extended body spinner fly is repeatedly refused, so again I pause. I watch as intently as light will allow me, and I realize gusty probably actually breaks the surface only 1 out of 5 times it feeds…

I get out the smallest weight I carry, and by feel, attach it to the monofilament 15” above my fly, I then hold the fly underwater and work the wings and foam with my fingers, removing all traces of flotant, and getting it as saturated with water as I can. In doing this I am looking for some sort of neutral buoyancy, I want this to ride just under the surface, as though the fly had drowned in some of the faster water above Eli’s run. I let out about two feet of line, as I don’t think my drift gets quite far enough past him, and since most of the line will likely be submerged, there are somewhat fewer problems with varying water speeds, and thus fewer problems with drag.

It seems I hold my breath, with my preparations done; anticipating the next rise of the fish, but it never comes. I wait until I begin to fear my window of opportunity is closing. I can still hear fish feeding elsewhere, but the pace is slowing. Finally, against all of my better judgment, I present my offering anyway. Nothing. Again. Nothing. 3rd time, I hear nothing, and see nothing, the line doesn’t do anything funny, but something feels “off” and I set the hook. It is heavy. The heaviness courses past me upstream, and I let line through my finger, knowing full well from past experience what a fish like this will do if you don’t give it line. (In the past, I have been lulled into complacency by catching many small fish, only to have the bruiser break me off at the end of the night because I didn’t properly respect its strength or size.) Gustafson rips to the end of my slack line, and just as I grow confident that I now have it on the reel, and have a chance, the leader just snaps. I curse myself for wanting to build and fish my own leaders, I curse maxima, I curse Lamson and St. Croix, I continue to curse until I look down at my reel, and see the line wrapped around the outside of it once. The loop between my finger and the reel must have slipped back over the reel when I set the hook, I gave the fish line, and the fish just tightened that loop.

My shoulders slump forward, I am beaten. I can see a light go on in a vehicle where we parked, and I make my way toward it like a beacon for those wayward at sea.

We sit in a circle, 3 other fly anglers and I, ages from 25 to 80. Sweet night air is surprisingly calm, lightning bugs dance throughout the meadow we sit in, turning the waves of grass into a diamond strewn seascape.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

The tail of September

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

The time comes

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

The trials of Mom continue

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Adventures in Mountain Hiking

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Fishing for Gustafson

Monday, June 13, 2011

May 2003

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Gimper ties