Last Sunday I had a guide trip with Mike, his brother Mark and his son Matt (monograms must be simple in that family). It was a close knit family and all were accomplished fly fishers. As I have written about before, three person guide trips can be troublesome (especially when in a boat) but this time it worked out incredibly well. After twenty five years of professional guiding I have finally figured this thing out.
The basic problem is that three people casting at the same time in a twenty foot long boat is an invitation to disaster. The big problem is the back cast when your lines cross, when you cast at the same time. You are generally facing forward when casting and you don’t see the other angler’s back cast. It can produce a bird’s nest that would make the Gordian knot look like child’s play. The solution is to have one of the anglers not fish, when the other two are actively fishing. This allows the two anglers to be farther apart and it is a lot easier to keep up with what one other angler is doing rather than trying to keep up with two other casters.
It is important that everyone catch some fish so the idea is to change places from time to time. After one angler has had a very successful drift or two, where he or she has landed several trout, it is time to relax for a while and let the angler that was not fishing give it a try. If you do it right, everyone has caught plenty of trout and the catch is basically even, at the end of the day.
The other problem is netting fish in the front of the boat. When the angler, in the front of the boat, hooks a fish, I have to move from the back of the boat from my seat by the motor to the front to net the fish. On the way, I have to move past the other angler in the back of the boat and the non fishing angler in the center of the boat without tripping. The solution is simple, carry an extra net and have the non fishing angler in the middle of the boat net the fish for the angler in the front of the boat.
I figured this out, when I was preparing the boat to launch that morning. I noticed my wife, Lori’s, boat net in the back of my Suburban. It is a big boat net like mine that she uses, when she guides on Dry Run Creek. We use it, when we fish together, in the boat, so that we can both net our own trout. If one of us hooks a big fish (over twenty inches long), we help the other one land it, of course. I put it in the front of the boat so that the non-casting angler could net the fish hooked by the angler, in the front of the boat, while I concentrated on the fish hooked by the angler, in the back of the boat. It worked flawlessly. It gave the non fishing angler something to do and kept him in the game.
We began early when there was a heavy fog on the river. I rigged them all a little differently but had all of them on a ruby midge dropper. The lead flies we used were a hare and copper, pheasant tail nymph and a cerise San Juan worm. It was quickly apparent that the cerise San Juan worm was working the best. I changed them all to a Cerise San Juan worm with a ruby dropper and we began to really catch fish. Half on the fish caught were on the ruby and half on the worm.
The action was non-stop. We caught as many as eleven trout on one drift and had several doubles. The least trout caught on a single drift was three. I didn’t count but estimated the total number of fished brought to the net to be well over a hundred. The guys enjoyed it immensely. The highlight of the day was the banter between them as they fished or netted trout. It was a definite bonding experience and it will go down as one of my most enjoyable guide trips ever.
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