Fly fishing when even the sun seeks some shade

Summer slammed me in the face the past two weekends, necessitating some shifts in my fly fishing routine.
It’s no longer wise to bask in soft sunshine during the middle of the day while waving a flimsy graphite stick back and forth. The sunshine is no longer soft as a May breeze but has turned hard and mean. Gone are those pleasant days of April and May when it was always a perfect 75 degrees.
Now, I fish late in the evenings. Sometimes, it is almost dark before I drag myself off the porch with rod in hand.
The fishing in May had been almost too easy. Mayflies and caddis flies hatched in the mornings, the afternoons and evenings. About the time the sun began to dip, the air would explode with sparkling yellow and white insects hatching over a river bubbling with rising trout.
Pleasant was the word for May fly fishing. Wild violets dotted the banks, and honeysuckle sweetened the air. Even the persistent rain showers that kept me dodging clouds while moving from spot to spot were mostly refreshing. Thunderstorms were rare.
In May one could almost set his watch by the evening hatches that sent the fish into feeding frenzies at 8 o’clock. Boy, was that fun.
With a recent heat wave that has the sun itself looking for some shade, my normally frenetic fishing pace has slowed. Last Sunday I spent several hours just sitting under the hemlocks — eating lunch, washing lunch down with cold beverages, rigging the fly rod, tying on tiny flies, lacing up the wading boots, reading the NY Times, napping — and almost anything else that did not require any strenuous effort with a chance of sweat.
Now, with cumulus clouds piled all around the mountaintops like fluffy pillows, I am lulled into a false sense of goodness. Last Sunday looked like a perfect day.
Then those friendly looking white puffs darkened. The hills began to rumble. Thunder boomed like drums signaling all sorts of approaching unpleasantness. The ground shook. Time to get out of the way.
At least the intermittent sprinkles cooled the air.
When the rain stopped and the sun peeped through a crack in the clouds, a spooky mist rose over the water. Shards of light stabbed though the vapors like golden swords. An eerie silence fell like a curtain.
And with the cooler water, trout became hungrier.
This is the time of year when I mostly fish hoppers, beetles and ants during the daylight hours. Grasshopper flies are fun and are fished in an indelicate manner by splashing them on the surface to get the trout’s attention. The fly goes ka-plop, the fish looks up and sees a sub sandwich and attacks it with the vigor of a teenager.
You can’t do that with little mayfly dry flies. You just scare the fish. But hoppers are different. And trout love them.
Ants and beetles, when fished carefully with no drag in the line, will catch trout through the summer and into the fall.
I fish the ants pretty small, sized 20 or 22. You can barely see these little flies, so mostly I just watch for movement in the line and then set the hook when it jerks a little. It works.
And if it gets too hot, I can wait for the evening hatch while sitting in the shade, waiting for the sun to find its own shade behind the mountain.
Really, dusk is the time of day in June when the action begins.

Memorial day a good time to hit the river

The merry month of May this year has fully compensated for hateful February and March, for the fly fishing has been awesome. May is now my favorite of the calendar dozen.
May even had five weekends for fly fishing. Now, that’s compensation.
Last Monday was typical, with little mayflies hatching sporadically during the day and trout lazily rising to sip them in here and there. I had some luck. For the weekend’s fishing five creeks in my neighborhood, I caught wild and hatchery rainbows, some energetic and colorful browns and a couple of little brook trout. All hit dry flies of a pale persuasion.
Brook, brown and rainbow … that’s a hat trick.
In the evening, just before dark as the sun slipped behind the Mount Hardy, my home creek exploded with mayflies sparkling in the waning sunlight like flecks of gold.
They were in a hurry, and while I was studying the water from a bridge, the little sulphur flies bounced off my face and arms. I caught a couple, looked real close at their No. 16 hook sized bodies, and attached the appropriate offering to my tippet.
Then I caught a ton of trout.
At the end of a turbulent ribbon of water splashing cheerfully over ancient rocks, a pool smooth as glass beckoned. I never catch fish there but I always try.
As the moon poured a silvery sheen on the water, I flipped a perfect cast that settled softly as a sigh and disappeared almost immediately. On the next cast, I lost sight of the fly, but when the line moved, I lifted the rod and brought in a brown.
I fish alone, mostly. Sometimes, my mind wanders, especially near Memorial Day.
Flashback 42 years and join us in the Raven bar in Virginia Beach. Our faces are lobster red and the beer ice-blue cold.
Johnny was with one of our school’s cheerleaders and I was with the beach girl I later married. Johnny was just out of Marine boot camp at Parris Island, S.C., and I was getting ready to enter that hellhole of sweat, bugs and cussing. He was having a ball regaling me with boot camp horror stories. I began to think it may not be a bad idea to try and join Air Force.
Johnny and I had been teammates on the Maury High School wrestling team. I was the littlest and usually the most nervous, and Johnny was the biggest and calmest. He wrestled guys in the heavyweight division who were bigger since he weighed in at about 185. It’s amazing today to think at that size he was all-district in football and won a scholarship to the University of Tennessee. He had a big heart.
At a high school dance about seven years before, he probably saved my life by helping me lose the pint of gin I had imbibed with way too much alacrity. I don’t recall a heck of a lot more about that dance.
Guess I’ll always remember that night at the Raven in the summer of 1967.
Within a few days, Johnny took off for Officer Candidate School at Quantico, and I got on the bus to South Carolina.
I never saw him again. Johnny died in Vietnam of gunshot wounds in combat.
I got the word first from my Dad: "Your friend Johnny got killed in Vietnam."
It felt like I had been punched. It must have been an awful mistake. I thought the same thing three decades later when I visited the traveling Vietnam Memorial. I could not find his name. Perhaps there was a mistake.
Then a kindly camo-dressed vet showed me. There were little crowds of people around, children playing and laughing, adults weeping as they traced the names of loved ones and comrades on that black marble. I almost lost it right there.
A couple of years ago I had a dream that Johnny showed up on my front porch. It was the middle of the blackest time of night. I heard a knock. I opened the door. And there was Johnny … for a few seconds before the apparition faded into a mist. Mistaken again.
What a waste. While watching a football game or a wrestling match today, I cannot help but speculate what a fine coach Johnny would have made. He’d be a granddaddy by now too, with a bunch of little guys crawling all over him.
So, the merry month of May ends on a melancholy note, as it has for me the past four decades. I can’t forget.
Today I’ll also remember Sarge and Jerry who fought the demons inside for years after Nam. I’ll remember Lewis B. Puller Jr., the son of the most decorated Marine in history who came home crippled and maimed. Demons got to Puller, too, and he finally took his life.
That war killed those boys just as certain as it did Johnny. Just slower.
What a mistake that war was. It would be a bigger mistake to forget, though sometimes, I think we have.
I’ll fish the yellow and red dry fly tonight. I really have no name for it, but I could call it a "Chesty."
You Marines know what I’m saying.
Semper fi.

The Hatch - Bug buffet in May

They call it the Mother’s Day Hatch out West also. I read about the hatch in Montana that really lights up those trout on those big rivers during May when the air fills like a golden bug blizzard. It’s one of those magic moments on the water when fooling fish with a fly becomes almost too easy.
We called the yellow stonefly hatch on the Davidson River "The Mother’s Day Hatch" because we discovered the marvel on, you guessed it, Mother’s Day about 20 years ago. It began around 8 and lasted until it was too dark to see the fly. We could almost touch the madly feeding trout that splashed next to us in the rushing water.

And it’s that time again.
The flies are coming off the water on the Davidson, the French Broad and everywhere else there’s cold water and trout. Often, those hatches explode in the waning light when it’s least expected, like after you’ve been on the water all afternoon with nothing to show for it other than wet boots. One must be patient.
I spent a good portion of Sunday afternoon chasing rising trout in the Davidson, missing quick little wild rainbows in Looking Glass Creek and in general just getting a plain old-fashioned skunking everywhere else.

The water tumbled over Looking Glass Falls like a glistening crystal curtain. I paused for a second, thinking perhaps I should give that plunge pool a stab with a heavily-weighted wooly-bugger. But the crowd was too much. I wasn’t exactly looking for company.
The sun was bright and warm. Sudsy clouds fringed a perfect bluebird sky. The wind was a mere whisper tickling the laurel.
Fishing Looking Glass Creek, though, gives me the feeling of vulnerability. The water is so close to the highway I sometimes expect passersby to toss soda cans from car windows at me just for fun. It could happen. I guess I could throw fish at them in retaliation.

I tagged a couple wild rainbows with a cream-colored caddis fly, but both were too quick. Almost 6 o’clock and no fish.
Leaving Looking Glass and the Davidson behind, I hit the Blue Ridge Parkway. I had a few special creeks, places where I can get away with drive-by casting, that hold a few special trout. They are not easy to fool.
Approaching 7 p.m., there still was no hatch. I decided then that I would go to the cabin … after one more stop.

My fire station pool almost always saves the day. There are a lot of stockers in there and a few browns. On Sunday I discovered the really huge brown trout that lurks under overhanging tree limbs and I almost missed it entirely.
Light was fading like old blue jeans. I could barely make out the fly, and then the water exploded like an old tire tossed into the river.
All about my face little bugs danced aerial jigs. They looked as if they were being shot from little Polaris submarines.

And the trout acted like frisky puppies scrambling for food. There’s no line at this bug buffet.
The biggest fish took the fly, ran upstream and then turned back as if it forgot something. I stripped line like mad, then let the fish run while the reel clicked like crickets on meth.
I had caught a dozen so far, and lost one biggie, from my spot below the bridge.
The fish began to tire. I brought it close and held it with my left hand while fumbling for the camera. The brown sagged heavily in my hand, its hooked jaws moving like it was cussing me out.

Or perhaps just laughing that quiet trout laugh.
The fish snapped the line. The hatch was over. I could go home now.
I’m glad they have this much fun out West too.

You remember the trout you lost

The river stretches before me like a shimmering, silver quilt covering secret gifts piled under a Christmas tree.
I know there are big, even giant, trout waiting for me under all that sparkling, smooth water. They are there hunkered next to a rock or thick laurel root, lazily sipping nymphs and the occasional oblivious mayfly sailing over its nose. You can see them from the bank. You imagine they are laughing at all the foolish-looking people standing waist-deep in the river waving sticks over their heads with a string with a bit of hook and feather attached.
I know they laugh at me.
Strangely, my most memorable fish at the Davidson are the ones never landed. Certainly, we all remember that huge rainbow caught and netted years ago, but for me those fish pale in comparison to the monsters that broke my tippet and my heart the past 20 years splashing around the Davidson River.
Only on the Davidson do I have such a problem.
Noted by Trout Unlimited as one of the nation’s Top 50 trout streams, the Davidson that I fish has three classifications — the Hatchery Supported section at the lower end near the intersection, the Catch and Release section upstream past the ranger station and the Wild section far upstream.
So, you have your fat food fish at the lower end, your trophy trout in the middle and the quick-as-lightning wary wild trout up the mountain toward the headwaters.
Something for everyone, so to speak, awaits the anxious angler on the Davidson. She has all sorts of ways to break a fisherman’s heart.
I hit the water late in the darkened afternoon with a heavy gray sky threatening to spit all kinds of rain and mischief. By the time I had rigged the rod and donned the waders, a soft spring rain began licking my face. My thoughts immediately turned to Blue Winged Olives, those little mayflies that love misty rain on cool days.
A passing fisherman said the rises were ‘sporadic’ but that the trout had been hitting cream-colored caddis flies all day.
I tied on a cream-colored dry fly.
The rain, unlike the bull of a storm of a few weeks ago, had a soothing sweetness and soon passed.
A piece of sky peeked through the clouds, escaping from the darkness like a frightened bluebird.
The threat of rain and spotty showers kept most people away from the river on Monday, and I all but had the water to myself. I cast upstream on the mirror-smooth water. Trout rose downstream, across stream and upstream. They ignored my fly.
There was a little breeze, what the poet called trout-colored winds, whispering through the trees, but if you waited for a pause, you could flip a fly a good ways. I used a long leader, which helped get a more natural drift.
I chased rises for awhile, even though I know that is not the proper way to fish these fish, and I missed the few hits I got. I turned my head to cast upstream again when I felt a tug from behind and almost lost the rod to a struggling brown trout who thought I wasn’t looking. Fooled you, I thought.
I laughed at that trout.
About 15 minutes later another trout hit my fly with a vengeance. A passerby shouted, "I heard THAT," and I knew I was into a pretty hefty fish. I could not tell you which was shaking the most, my rod or my legs.
When the trout rolled with the fly, I caught a glimpse of an enormous belly the size of one of my shaking legs. I had him hooked solid. All I had to do was play him awhile, give him enough time to get tired and then get him up close for the obligatory photo.
I fought that fish forever. It splashed and whirled and ran with the fly.
And then he broke my heart.
The tippet went ping.
And he was gone.
I could almost hear him laughing.

Cheating anglers

Professional athletes do it with chemicals. Texas angler Robby Rose did it with a fish.
Did what? They cheated, though only Rose was trying to cheat by stuffing a 1-pound lead weight down the gullet of a fish that he had caught last October in a bass fishing tournament.
Rose, a Texas business owner and bass tournament competitor, was caught stuffing his catch in a tourney at Lake Ray Hubbard in Texas. The Dallas Morning News reported the dastardly deed, mentioning that the prize for biggest fish was a $55,000 bass boat.

This was more than just a fish story shared with buddies at the local tavern. Hey, with enough time and beer all fish grow in size, and it’s generally accepted that a trophy trout or bass will gain a couple of pounds after the weekend’s glow wears off.
But this turned out to be a felony. Rose insists he was not really cheating to win that nifty boat and he sorta apologized for it and admitted he could have handled the whole thing better. The judge handed him a $3,000 fine and 15 days in jail. He also lost his fishing license for the five years he’s on probation.

Rose was not exactly repentant. Even with the extra weight, his fish was not enough for the top prize, but if he had left it alone he had second place locked.
"Second place was mine to do with as I pleased," the newspaper quoted him.
Others disagreed.
"Cheating is cheating," the lead prosecutor said. "And neither the fishing community nor this office will tolerate it."

Rose continued his defiance by asserting he had been bullied by tournament officials in the past and had to pass numerous polygraph tests and the rumors about how he won other contests in the past were based on jealousy.
Back in another century when I did a little part-time guiding, I helped with a trout fishing contest. We had all the safeguards, we thought. Each participant would get a disposable camera to photograph the fish stretched next to a ruler, to show how big it was. Of course, the biggest fish would win a considerable amount of cash, and folks will go to all sorts of trouble to win cash.

A couple of good ‘ol boys tried to pull one over on the fishing guides and the good ‘ol boys got caught. The fish, a monster rainbow, had been a faded dead for several days. You could actually tell from the photo. Tempers flared. Threats were issued. But the good ‘ol boys did not go home with the prize.
I said from the beginning that a fly-fishing tournament offering money for the biggest trout was a dismal idea. It smelled of trouble like a fish dead too long. We never held another.
Smallmouth bass fishers have their summer-long contests where each angler chips in an entry fee. At the end of the summer, the guy who brought in the biggest "live" smallie would walk off with the bucks.

Just about everybody cheated in one way or another, though I know of nobody who stuffed a fish with lead weight. Too obvious.
The smallmouth fishermen were more imaginative.

A big fish was caught and kept in a private pond all summer. At the end of the summer, the pond was drained, the fish scooped up and the top prize was claimed.
Funny, I know.
But it was still cheating.

Fishing like a kid

As a boy I began fishing with little more than a hook tied to a string with perhaps a washer or bolt attached as a sinker.
I would impale some poor sea creature, mostly shrimp, on the hook and sling it all as far as my 8-year-old arm could into the Elizabeth River in Virginia. I didn’t even have a rod; I used a short stick, and pulled in my quarry hand over hand, like Hemingway’s Santiago in "Old Man and the Sea."

But, hey, I wasn’t fishing for marlin. I caught croaker and spot. The croakers made funny noises and were a big hit with my friends.
Then I graduated to using a rod and reel. I used big ol’ lead sinkers to get the bait into the deep water. It was years before I discovered bobbers, which dance on the gentle waves until a fish strikes and pulls its red-and-white body violently underwater.
Boy, that was fun.

I fished like that for years. One time in South Carolina, I fished for bass with a fellow who used long rods and bobbers. I thought that was weird at the time. Still do.
About 20-some years ago I discovered fly fishing, bought a rod and a bagful of flies and attacked the nearest river 225 times out of 365 days. I kept a record.
I forgot about bobber fishing.
But within the past couple of years, I began to zero in on nymph fishing under the surface. At first, I just watched the fly line for twitches that indicated a strike. Then I began tying on a dry fly with a nymph or wet fly attached to about 6 to 8 inches of tippet. When a trout nudged the nymph, the dry fly got dunked like a bobber. Fish on.

But a lot of anglers today use yarn tied to their leaders as strike indicators, while others use a fluorescent colored putty on the line. And there are indicators like the Thingamabobber that’s supposed to be easy to put on and remove.
On the MidCurrent fly fishing Web site, they say strike indicators have three primary jobs: they must float well, be easy for anglers to see and small enough not to scare all the trout. Big roiling water requires a much bigger indicator than slow pools.

Last week I tried fishing a blood midge attached by a skinny 7X tippet and a No. 16 dry fly. These little nymphs, about the size of a little girl’s freckles, are usually deadly on the Davidson River, and huge trout will gobble them like corn chips all day. It was way too early for any major mayfly or caddis hatches, so I fished the little nymph.
And you know what? I caught trout … on the dry fly. They ignored the nymph, which I thought was odd.

The next day I bought some bobber indicators. They’re as bright as fire trucks’ flashing lights and may startle some wary trout in quiet pools.
But bobber fishing makes me feel like a kid.
If I catch fish, so much the better.

Always on the lookout for more feathers for flies

Anybody who ties his own trout flies is always on the lookout for new sources of material. All those piles of feathers and fur do not come to the fly tying desk easily or cheaply, even though it’s really just a bunch of dead animal parts. It is a wonderful feeling to discover a newer, less costly supplier.
Virginia Beach, Va., may be the future for feathers.

The story, as related to me the other day, goes like this. Two brothers, age 6 and 8 ½, crashed into their parents’ bedroom to demand, beg and cajole politely without too much volume for a big piece of cardboard.
What on earth for? They were asked at 6 a.m.
For a business sign, of course, the fledging entrepreneurs replied. Get up.
Patrick and Spencer decided they would go into business for themselves by taking advantage of all those wild ducks flapping through the air that visit the many ponds, lakes and waterways when they tire of dodging Navy fighter jets.
The boys were ready to sell ducks.

"Duck Co." reads the sign, which also mentions the open-air store begins each day at 7 a.m. and goes until 7 at night.
Now, most fly tiers use some ducks feathers. Others might use a lot and the messiest of us spray the room with bits of feather while actually using very little for the fly being fashioned.
I’m one of the messy ones, so I’m on the lookout for new duck feathers that haven’t been trampled by my boots.

So, naturally I thought that the Patrick and Spencer Koontz Duck Company could fill that need.
One problem. No inventory. The boys have no ducks in stock.
When informed of this shortcoming, they disappeared for a long time. Apparently, they found the Pepperidge Farm bread, ripped it out of the bag and put the crumbs inside a big bucket, all with the intention of luring unsuspecting ducks from the air. Once inside the bucket, the boys could do what they wanted — maybe pull some feathers for Papaw or sell whole ducks to the neighbors.

I’m not going to rush my first order. Fortunately for our feathered friends, the inventory remains low.
I’ve had miserable, or perhaps just ironic, luck tying flies this year. One week the trout slam the wooly bugger, so I tie a pocketful for the next weekend only to find nothing is interested in the big ugly flies when the time comes. Instead, they gobble the last of my blue winged olives, so for the next weekend I tie a bagful of BWOs. You guessed it, armed with the BWOs that were so effective just seven days ago, I get skunked. The trout were looking up for light hendricksons and blue quills.

And I still have two dozen teeny midge flies that I needed way back when on the Davidson River. Perhaps today will be the right time to fish those little guys low and slow where the big rainbows go.
I almost expect the trout to be rising to little yellow sallies, of which there is a paucity in the fly box.
Do I tie a boxful? Should I place an order with the grandsons for dyed yellow duck feathers?