June 2013 – Fly Fishing Lifestyle in Salida, Colorado

They have sex appeal, as much as any ungainly, prehistoric looking creature with four wings, six legs and long, probing antenna can, and this time of the year, anglers will go to great lengths to seek them out. And of all the stoneflies, none are sexier than Pteronarcys, the big, hulking salmon flies.

It is a shameless display of duplicity on behalf of the angler, because ultimately its not the stonefly they are really after, but the fish who feed on them – rather like making friends with the plain looking girl in order to get to know her good looking friend.

Just like no one told the bumble bees they shouldn’t be able to fly, adult salmon flies push the limits of physics as it relates to aerodynamics. Their ungainly flight and heavy, clumsy water landings make them irresistible to a trout in the mood for a serious shot of protein.

June is the month when they are most active, and sometimes seeking them out means going to lengths an angler may not normally contemplate, like scaling sheer cliff faces, scrambling loose scree fields, crossing rivers nipple-deep in water so cold it burns, walking miles on uneven boulder fields, just to get yourself to a place where the hatch should, by rights, be.

Except sometimes its not. Sometimes the salmon flies are being coy, not behaving at the behest of the ultimately ignorant angler, instead moving to rhythms and cycles only they are privy to, rhythms and cycles that have served them well for thousands of millennia.

It was still, of course, a great day on the river. Fish were caught, if not on the finger-sized dry flies we’d hoped. Limbs and joints were stretched and contorted, used in ways they don’t get used often enough. Solitude was found, good company enjoyed, and at the end of the day the appetite had been whetted to come back next year, same place, same time, and try again.

I gave up waiting for the wind to stop blowing. The days were getting warmer, and sooner or later the river will blow out and become unfishable for a week or two. I decided to head upstream from town to a place where the river widened out and braided around a few small islands. With the tea-colored water already running over 1000 cfs, I wanted to find somewhere where a fish could seek respite from the full force of the current, and braids, side channels and slower water along cut banks seemed like a good bet.

The first couple of pools I fished were uneventful, then looking upstream I spotted a side channel with several swallows working the surface. Nothing was rising, but it seemed like a likely scenario to find a feeding fish. After a few casts with a dry fly only, I tied on a bead head – when in doubt, tie on a pheasant tail should be one of the Angler’s Ten Commandments – and was rewarded first cast with a nice brown lying in some slack water below the main seam of the channel. Two casts later, and another smaller brown, sitting in front of a large, submerged rock. I fancied myself as Archimedes in the bath – I’d just cracked the code, and the best of the run was yet to come.

As usual, little did I know. I fished up through the meat of the run, working it over carefully, without sight nor sign of another fish. I could have tried a different fly, or fished deeper, but I’m lazy that way. I tie enough knots guiding to want to spend an afternoon doing it for myself. With the wind seeming to let up, I moved downstream a quarter mile to take advantage of some cut banks in a place more exposed to the elements. With the river having been so low only a few weeks ago, there is an increased likelihood when fishing the shallows of snagging on grasses, weeds and twigs that were until recently high and dry. So it proved. No fish took my offerings, but I caught plenty of snags. Then, near the top of the run, I noticed casting was becoming more difficult, even though the wind was receding. It was then I noticed the tip of my rod hanging forlornly from the line, neatly severed below the first line guide.

The mystery is why, given the delicate nature of today’s graphite rods, such things don’t happen more often. That’s why you buy rods with lifetime replacement warranties, and always take an extra along. I thought of the spare lying in the back of my truck, a couple of hundred yards away. Nah, I’d had my fun. Time to head home for an afternoon beverage.

Month: June 2013

Desperately Searching Stoneflies

Two fish, a broken rod, and a lot of hot air.