Often when you are fly fishing things are not always what they seem to be. There are times when the trout will fool you or make you imagine something is happening, when it not.
Just the other day I was fishing with a client at Rim Shoals on high water. The fishing had been good in the morning but the bite had dropped off in the afternoon. We were fishing double fly rigs (pink San Juan worms and eggs) with a lot of lead and a strike indicator. We were drifting near the bottom of the Catch and Release section, when we had a violent take. The trout took off like a scalded dog taking us almost to the backing on the first run.
My client, Abel, was very new to fly fishing (it was his second day), so I was beside him in the boat and was carefully coaching him on how the fight the powerful fish. The fish hugged the bottom of the river and took run after run away from the boat. He came perilously close to the chain I was dragging, so I hauled it in to prevent the trout from wrapping it and getting tangled or worse yet breaking off.
As the fight went on, we drifted downstream. I looked up and noticed that we were heading for a very shallow stretch that had a pretty rocky bottom. I moved to the back of the boat and moved my motors lower unit up out of the water to prevent any damage to my propeller. After about a solid fifteen minute fight that included several long runs, we finally got the fish to the net. When we got a good look at him, we were surprised to see that the trout was only sixteen inches long. It had fought valiantly and convinced us that it was much larger than it was. We surmised that the trout thought that he was bigger than he was.
On another occasion, I was wade fishing with my longest standing client, Richard. We were on the Norfork River on low water. I had taken him to my favorite big fish hole. A year or two previous to this occasion he had landed the biggest brown trout that he had ever caught in this particular hole. It is a spot that I spend at least thirty minutes in every time that I wade the Norfork. It has produced some spectacular fish for me and my clients over the years.
This occasion was no different. As the morning went by, we caught about four or five quality fish in the eighteen to twenty one inch range, in this hole. The problem was that the trout were holding in heavy cover and we lost a fly for just about every fish that we caught. In fact, it seemed that the only way that we got the fly back was, if the fish took it. Despite the loss of the flies we kept fishing in the heavy cover.
Every time Richard got hung up he would hand me the rod to see, if I could get it out. Sometimes it would work and other times it would not. On one occasion, Richard was hung up and violently pulled the rod up and down in a vain attempt to loosen it. He handed me the rod and I waded upstream a bit to see if I could free it by changing the angle of attack. I was pulling and jerking on it. When I was about ready to break the tippet, I felt movement on the end of the line.
I quickly handed the rod back to Richard and told him he had a fish on. The trout took an immediate long run. It must have taken the fly and settled in the heavy cover. Our attempts to loosen the fly eventually caused him to move out of the cover. It was a sustained fight in heavy water that ultimately resulted in the fat twenty four inch brown surrendering to the net.
In both of these instances things did not turn out to be what they seemed. It is what makes fly fishing for trout so interesting.
John Berry is a fly fishing guide for Blue Ribbon Guides in Cotter, Arkansas and has fished our local streams for over thirty years.
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