Montana TR- Rematch

Jacci and I have the opposite instinct when it comes to breaking camp
or packing up at the end of a vacation. I get up and start packing
right away. Jacci gets up but just can't get in the spirit until she's
had her coffee, smoked a cig and generally gets in the mood. In
actuality this works out well. I'll often have the majority of things
packed before I run out of steam. Then while I take some time off
(usually defined as "go fishing") Jacci hits her stride and finishes
packing and sometimes moving stuff out to the car. This is the pattern
that we fell into on our last morning on the West Boulder. I woke up,
made coffee and then packed up bags and boxes of Cleveland junk.
Around 10 am I was ready for a break. The decision to be made was
whether I would fish the water upstream from the cabin, maybe moving
up from the bridge where I caught the big cutt and brown a few days
previous, or fish the WBRA water again and maybe find and land the big
fish that broke me off the day before.

At first I decided to go up but just as I was ready to hike the trail
upstream I changed my mind and instead walked back to the "beach" and
fished from there downstream. At 10 the water is still pretty cold and
the fishing was slow. By casting way underneath the fallen timber I
hooked fish, but they were tiny. All browns they ran about 4 inches
and really had their mouth crammed when they took the Madam Xs I was
using. I hurriedly cast my way down to the blue snow fence hole. Again
I tried deep nymphs with no success. Then I tied on a bead head soft
hackle hare's ear. I tossed it back into the brush pile on the
opposite side. The first few drifts brought no response. Then I had a
short hit from a small fish, darting out from the cover of the
cottonwood limbs that dangled over the hole. Another drift and another
slightly bigger fish took a stab and missed. The next cast wrapped the
tippet and fly in a triple looped knot around an exposed limb. No
tugging could free it and the limb hung over the deepest part of the
hole. Breaking off and re-rigging took a while and the replacement wet
fly brought forth no more strikes. Already it was getting on toward
noon, my promised return time. I headed up stream, having retied a
yellow Madam on my leader. As I approached the fallen spruce where I
had picked up the cutthroat the evening before I had another hit and
miss and the next cast brought a hook up. I brought the fish to hand
and soon found myself looking at the same jaw scarred trout I had
taken from the same spot on the same fly the night before.

http://fishskicanoe.tripod.com/geopics/IMG_0035a.jpg

I slipped the abused fish back into the water. Looking the fly over I
saw it was getting pretty beat up. Remembering a film canister full of
yellow foam hoppers I had bought on eBay the week before, I uncorked
the milky container and tied one on. I had a fish miss it as I drifted
it past another fallen tree but the next tree up brought a big splash
and then a good fight from another 14" brown. Again, as the fish
draped itself across my palm before it was I released, it struck me
that all these trout were very well fed, firm, strong and heavy for
their length. There obviously was food here... where were the trout?
Why just the occasional fish instead of a river full of them. Where
were the 8, 9 and 10 inch fish? Why the little guys and the big guys,
with so few mediums? Was it a case of a couple of years bad
recruitment. Or did the fish migrate down to bigger water and then
return with the heat of summer?

My questions unanswered I approached the "beach" again from
downstream. The home of the previous night's breakoff was just to my
right. I cast the hopper up into the water alongside the tree and...

No, I didn't check my tippet or even better replace my perennial 5x
with something stouter. Yes, I knew this spot held a big fish, maybe
the biggest brown of my life. No, I didn't slip into "big fish" mode
(do I even have a "big fish" mode). And yes, on the first cast, the
fly drifted less than an inch, the water exploded again, there was a
great wake from the fish's shovel of a tail...

And with the softest *ping* the tippet snapped.

Reeling in, dejected, I checked the leader. The 5x had broken right
where it had been tied to the little Moser leader ring that was tied
to the main body of the leader. I had been silently congratulating
myself over the week at the few number of wind knots I was getting.
The tight loops from the fast 5 weight I had settled on as my go-to
rod helped. Even on the soft 5x tippet the bulky flies I had been
using weren't giving me the tiny overhand knots that were at times a
bane when I used my slower rods. Except, occasionally, a knot would
get formed were the tippet tied to the ring. And thats probably what
happened this time too.

So the big fish probably sported a new piercing on his lip. Maybe that
same lip still held my little Adams Parachute. Hopefully the foam on
the hopper compensated for the weight of the hooks he was wearing, I
joked to myself. But the clock was my boss now. Fishing would have to
wait til later after we set up camp on the main stem.

We cleaned the cabin, chatted with a Forest Service guy who came to
check out its condition and then, with more than a little regret,
drove the Subaru through the gate, locked it and left the West Boulder
valley behind us. A couple of nights camping on the Boulder proper
still stood between us and the long ride home. But in a real sense,
our western vacation started to end when that brass lock clicked shut.


Geo.C.

"George Cleveland" wrote in message
...
A couple of nights camping on the Boulder proper
still stood between us and the long ride home. But in a real sense,
our western vacation started to end when that brass lock clicked shut.

Thanks for bringing me along,