Montana Woods N Water May 2016 Print Edition | Page 23

FLY FISHING CONTINUED
When fresh
snowmelt hits
the river, you’ll
find trout like
that along a
bank at the
inside of a bend,
in slow moving
water.
Sometimes
they’ll be in side
channels that
Trout like this brown often cruise flooded
are dry the rest
gravel bars during high water. Approach
of the year. That
cautiously, and hang on…
favorite run, one
you’ve taken fish
from all summer long in seasons past, becomes a swift, noisy sluice
during high water. That big long gravel bar which borders the run may
be under less than a foot of water. Until they get spooked, the trout
from the run will move onto the gravel bar, where food is washing into
them and where, at the same time, they sense that they are exposed.
To approach them, you have to forget the roaring torrent beside you,
and fish to them cautiously, as if they were in a mountain meadow
stream. Stealth and caution are too easily abandoned to the din of swift
current right beside you, but are absolutely essential. The fish in such
lies are vulnerable, not settled into their new surroundings. They will
hold or cruise in the shallows until spooked. They may not be available
again until the following day, the window of opportunity slammed shut
until conditions are right for them to be in position and feeding again.
Don’t waste your opportunities. Wade or row cautiously. Cast carefully.
This is not flood stage “Yee-haw!” slap-the-banks-with-Bitch Creeks
fishing. That will come later.
Bitch Creeks and other large nymphs will work, though, if swung into
the quiet lies from the main currents. So will smaller nymphs, which I
prefer, as they are easier to control during the drift than larger ones.
Trout will position themselves where migrating (or helplessly washed
away) nymphs will be brought to them by the natural flow of the
current toward shore. Spend some time studying the river. Find such a
place. Fish there.
A favorite trick of mine is to use a small streamer, about size eight or
ten, which looks like a baitfish. I clamp a piece of split shot a foot above
it. I make a kind of casual flop of a cast into a roaring torrent, and let the
small fly swing into a lie where I think there is a fish. Sometimes this
might be right below a submerged willow. I get hung up a lot, and lose a
lot of flies. Thank goodness small streamers are easy (and cheap) to tie.
I’ll let the small fly sit and swim in the slow current for a few seconds,
maybe half a minute if my nerves are up to it, adjusting the depth and
position of the fly with my rod tip, raising and lowering the shot. After a
while I’ll lower the rod tip and move the fly.
Continued on page 28.
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