Weekend Walleye

This passed weekend involved two floats. Each was primarily focused on searching for walleye, but also looking for trout and maintaining a fly rig to cast to tailing carp.

Saturday began bright and early. Well, no, it was dark. Temps had dipped to the upper 30s overnight thanks to a cold front that had graciously volunteered to push the nasty smoke out the region from wild fires across the West. The trip had been planned for more than two months. Erik, the friend I was with, works in the medical field and has very limited time to hit the water. I like to make our opportunities to fish as productive as possible, but he's always quick to remind me that floating down a river amid gorgeous scenery is already more than productive.

After running our shuttle, we slipped the Stealthcraft into the river in a balmy 40 August degrees. Snow dusted the mountains from the night before. A nippy wind forced the need for jackets.  The preceding day had been in the upper 90s. Today we would be lucky to hit 70.

We began by floating along nice banks and riffles and passed the better part of the first hour without a hit. Erik hadn't caught walleye before. Because of that and how infrequently he gets to fish these days, I certainly wanted to get into some action.

We came into a run where a side channel dumped back in from behind an island - good depth, good flow, and a nice distinct seam. I called it out as the best run for walleye we'd seen yet this morning and started pointing out where I thought they'd be holding. Very gratifyingly, and almost instantly, I had one on. It was massive, bigger than anything I anticipated catching today, and even at my first glimpse of it through the steely water I wasn't convinced it was a walleye. Turned out to be 27 inches and pushing 7 pounds. First fish of the day!! After a few pictures and some oohing and aahing back it went to live life in the river.

The drift down that run produced other solid fish in the 16 to 20 inch range. Once we seemed out of the holding water, we motored up and redrifted. One of the first fish on this second pass was Erik's big catch of the day - a hefty walleye of 25 inches and well over 5 pounds. The summer walleye in this river I've caught before haven't been on this scale at all. We anchored up and took some more smaller ones, some of which landed on the ice in the cooler.  Fish tacos were now on the menu....

Glass minnows ruled the morning.

The day began  to warm  as we drifted on.  We continued to take a walleye here and there, but the action slowed as the sun grew higher and the clouds thinner.  We started seeing some carp along the banks and in the shallows.  We tried our hand at stalking a few by foot.  We made casts from the boat into foam lines where they were skimming the scum.  No takers. Should have just brought the archery equipment.... 

After casting to a thick pod under the afternoon sun and having them eventually scatter, I lifted my line and layed out a cast to a current seam behind a point of rock just downstream, kind of laughing to myself that I was intentionally casting to carp.  My fly was picked up by a heavy fish and it was quickly apparent it wasn't a carp.  Ironic I should be casting with carp on my mind and pick up a 20-inch rainbow.  After a quick net job by Erik and a couple photos, the trout slipped back to where he'd come from.

Erik tied into a large trout later on but it was off before it could be netted. 

I launched again the the next afternoon with a friend named Jeremy to repeat the upper portion of the previous day's float. The plan was to drift down and motor back up.  I had brought the gas motor for that purpose - the versatility of Stealthcraft boats.  I generally try to do motoring floats in reverse order (as in motor up and float back) in case of motor trouble, broken props, etc.  You can always float back.....  But the water we wanted to hit was downstream of the nearest launch, so we took the risk. 

After an entire spring and summer of flawless service, and on the only downstream run of the year, the motor jammed. Fortunately we were early in the float, and it was sooner than we would have normally fired the motor up.  But after catching a couple small walleye we had decided to motor up for a second drift and discovered the problem.

A cow moose came out of the woods and stood in the middle of the river to mock us while I dismantled the motor with my Leatherman.  She was so amused that after crossing and climbing the bank, she came back down to watch some more.

Parts were physically broken, so we beached the boat, strapped on some gear, and hiked the high water mark. We took a couple walleye in a likely-looking side channel. Plenty of carp were tailing in the shallows, but we ignored them having left the fly rod in the boat.

We eventually came to a nice run on the main river that dominated the time we had left. It was a couple hundred yards long with a good mix of ideal flow and depth.  Glass minnows were again the big producers, but we also took some on plastics and a couple on plugs.

We selectively started amassing a stringer to carry out.  When it was time to go, we hung the stringer on a pole between us to pack back to the boat.  We hadn't even kept full limits, but the chain broke as we hiked along. Jeremy said it was the best walleye action he'd had in 15 years.

Summertime Kids

Much of my fishing this past spring and summer didn't find me with a rod in my hand.  I have been on a string of little adventures with my kids.  We have camped.  We have floated.  We have hiked.  And we have waded streams.  Usually the actual endeavor of fishing gives way rapidly to other more interesting and pressing activities.  Such as catching bugs or collecting rocks. Chasing minnows.  Climbing rock walls.  Even playing legos on the floor of my drift boat.

I don't really relate to this diversion. Of course I did my share of catching frogs throughout childhood, but by the time I was the age of either of my children I was begging my dad to take me fishing.  I craned my neck from my car seat as a toddler when we went over bridges and asked like clockwork "Are there fish in there?"  I practiced casting rubber plugs in the yard at home for fun before I was in kindergarten.  I fashioned tiny hooks from straight pins with needle-nosed pliers and caught minnows in the creek by the house.  Neither of my two little ones have been bitten by the bug quite like I was, but hopefully it will come.

I'm increasingly convinced that its harder to teach fishing to one's children than it is to any other member of the human race.  Or maybe its just my children.  I didn't really expect that.  I'm sure there are lots of reasons.  A primary one is probably that just about anyone else I take fishing wants to go.  They've gone through effort to make a trip happen.  They made it a priority, and probably worry that if they don't give their best "they're wasting my time".

In contrast, my little guys probably see fishing the same way they see taking a bath or eating supper - facts of life.  Both have to happen, and both can be fun, but not always.  To them, fishing is probably just as "normal" an activity as checking the mailbox.  Not necessarily something special.

To my son, fishing is merely a trip to the grocery store.  And he views it the same way most men view a trip to the supermarket - get in, get the goods, get out.  One of his absolute favorite meals in the world is fish and corn on the cob.  He'd probably be just as pleased to pick corn from the garden as he would be to hook a fish.  Not to say there aren't plenty of smiles once he's got one on the end of the line, but so far, the pursuit of it brings him no reason to get excited.  And trying to convey catch-and-release to him brings only weeping and wailing.  Plus, he's awfully perfectionistic.  He can't stand to be wrong, and he can't stand it if he's not instantly the best there ever was.  Which is never.  He doesn't seem to understand that I've been fishing longer than four times his entire life span and that of course it should mean that I'm better than he is.

My daughter shows signs that she may spark real interest first. Her casting and her questions are more intuitive. She actually has asks to practice in the yard sometimes.  Fishing works its way into her play - she'll make rods from sticks and string for pretend, she'll play in the drift boat in the driveway.  And she's eager to be the one who personally gets to let every fish we catch go.

One thing that they've latched onto more strongly than anything else is fly fishing.  Floating a fly and trying to keep up with it is a game in itself, and very visually satisfying.  Having a fish take the fly right in front of their face is thrilling. Even the fight is almost entirely visible.

Several folks may balk at this, but I think fly fishing is also simpler to teach.  At the most basic level, it is very simplistic and straightforward.  No casting and reeling.  No guesswork. No bait.  No lures to bring life to.  Just fling and float. 

So far the only catches either of my kids have made unassisted have been on flies.  And don't tell my son, but his little sister is beating his pants off.  On a recent trip to a prolific little stream loaded with small cutthroat, I had them trade off.  One would cast till they caught a fish, the other would net it.  Then they would trade gear.  Lets just say that my daughter had plenty of time to net butterflies....  And when she had the rod, I mostly just stood by and gave pointers.  When my son holds the rod, direct interaction is usually required.

On a recent float my daughter hooked and landed her first trout from the casting brace in the bow of the drift boat. At dusk the hatch became so thick and the trout activity so heavy that even my son put down his legos and picked up a rod. I anchored on a good seam that was loaded with feeding fish and put my daughter to work in the bow. My son moved to the back and started making his own casts - earnestly flopping his fly toward every rise within his reach. I was on a steady march back and forth from bow to stern untangling lines, digging hooks out of flesh, and facilitating casts on occasion. It was mayhem, but they were really getting after it.



Our adventures by no means involve only fishing.  There's lots of tree climbing.  Holes to dig. Fires to build.  Rocks to turn over. Buckets to fill.  Bikes to ride.  Bike crashes to recover from.  "Caves" to explore. Bears to chase.  Stuff to watch in the binoculars.
You know, summertime.

                                                 

Blue Moon Brown Blues

I had big aspirations for July's second full moon.  I made an effort to set time aside and managed three outings.  Once on the waxing moon, once on the full moon itself, and once on the wane.  Each was a very different experience.  My intention was to target browns on mice, and I spent the bulk of my nighttime hours slinging them.  I've been tossing them on a stiffer 5-weight 9-foot rod that I loaded with a weight-forward 6-weight line.  I've kept my leaders heavy and around 9 feet.  I had some disheartening break-offs earlier in the summer and decided the leader just takes too much abuse in the dark not to go heavy.  But, looking back over my summer so far, my best action has been with a lighter leader.  Maybe under a bright moon the leader has more visual impact than I might think. But the jury is still out. Those earlier trips were also on darker nights.

I had my only blue moon action from browns on the first night.  The mouse was hit three times, and I hooked up with one.  It was a decent brown around 22 or 23 inches, my second biggest mouse fish of the summer.  Later

that night I actually saw a natural mouse get taken.  It skittered out from the bank onto a weed mat, then back in.  Out and back.  Out and back.  It was so fast that it took two or three times of going in and out before I realized what I was looking at.  Then, on its fateful trip to the outer edge of the weed mat, the water exploded, and there was no return pitter-patter to the shoreline.  I roll-casted my mouse onto the spot within the second and swam it along the weedline and over the same place the real one had met its demise moments earlier. But the fish had cruised on.
There's no way I could mimic what that mouse was doing.  But I logged it away that perhaps redundant casts onto weed mats would be worthwhile.  I love the bassy-ness of chasing big browns with topwater.....

The next time out a couple nights later on the full blue moon was a different approach to the water altogether.  I'd hooked up with a new friend who fishes with the same crazy intensity I do and we headed onto one of the lakes in the series of dams here on the Missouri.  His forte is jigging the lakes, and he makes his living doing it though specialized tackle production and guiding. The thought was to toss mice, among other things, to the canyon walls in the moonlight.  So far he has been unable to dial in the nighttime bite and wanted to see if maybe mice would be the ticket. We passed the night working the shorelines without a hit. Still no leads on solving the lake's nocturnal feeding habits for browns - unless they just don't. But how could that be...

It wouldn't be fair to say we caught nothing.  Before the sun went down and we reverted to the mousing-a-lake experiment, we took several fish on jigs - rainbows and few walleye.  One beast of a fish hit a beast of a plug right at dusk, but we didn't get to see what it was.  Likely it was our one encounter with the brown we were hoping to meet that evening.

My last night out was in awesome conditions. A perfectly beautiful, windless 72 degrees.  Moonlight like daytime. I hiked along the river where I'd caught my last two biggest mousing browns.  I fished 5 or 6 hours without a hit.  Yet fish were very active, more so than most nights.  Typically you'll hear the occasional fish hit the top.  But tonight there was lots of feeding all over the full width of the river.  I came to a spot where it was apparent that larger fish were present judging by the consistent heft in the sound of the takes.  They were holding in an obvious current seam, its boundaries illuminated by the silvery moonlight's crisp sparkle where the two flow speeds met.  After no action on the mouse, I set the fly rod aside and started launching plastic jigs into the seam.  I'd packed along a spinning rod, holstered in the waist pack behind me.  I was quickly into fish, and good ones.  I landed half a dozen rainbows that were all above the twenty inch mark.  Comically, I dropped the biggest one while trying to pose for a snapshot. I don't know what they were taking from the water surface, there was no overwhelming hatch.  But they were more than willing to inhale a passing minnow in the moonlight.  Big rainbows were definitely active.  A couple small walleye came to hand as well.  

Rejuvenated with some solid fish action I resumed slinging my mouse.  Its soft "splat" onto the water seemed too enticing to pass up.  But the night ended without one take.  I suppose it was only too enticing to me - one more cast, one more cast, one more cast.

I peeled myself off the water and made it home for a nap just before the sun came up.  Maybe if I'd stayed till daylight......

Still, I suppose the stats are looking pretty good.  It was the first night this summer I'd spent mousing on the river without any action at all.   Every other trip has resulted in multiple takes, and I go home satisfied if I only get one strike in a night.  A brush with a big brown is a thrill.  Fishing for them in this manner is like somehow combining the hunt for steelhead with bass tactics.  Or does that describe musky fishing?  What's not to like!

Big moon. Big mouse. Big fun.

A major goal of mine for this year is to do more night fishing than I usually do. Rather than let it be haphazard, make it a priority. All the full moons of the year are marked on my calendar.  I hope to make at least one trip per moon between now and winter.

The first  moon of summer just occurred - and I had been anticipating it's arrival. It roughly coincided with the July 4th holiday weekend, so I figured that surely I could squeeze a night or two out of it. As it happened, we attended a July 3rd fireworks show in Butte, MT. Butte traditionally fires them off on the 3rd. After arriving home and tucking the family into bed about 1am, I loaded up and headed to the river. More than half the night was already gone, but I still had two solid hours of moonlight before the sky would start to glow again.  The moon was only a day into waning and the mountains were glowing ashy white.

I eagerly made my way along the river, searching for some boulders I knew held browns.  They weren't hard to spot, glowing white against the black water, murmuring and roaring off the canyon walls. The air was still. The temps had barely dipped into the 70s after a high of around 100 for the day.  Perfectly pleasant and wonderfully ideal.  I came prepared to experiment with several techniques, but what I really wanted to do was mouse.  After a couple hundred yards of picking my way along the shoreline I zeroed in, stowed the second rod behind me, and focused on working a mouse.

The first hit was like electricity.  I'd long ago lost any sense of being tired.  As soon as I'd slipped into my waders and cinched my boots I found a second wind. But now my senses were abuzz.  When fishing at night you become so in tune with senses that you normally don't rely on.  Listening for the hit. Deciphering what little bits of movement and trails in the water you can see.  Letting your fingers glean more from what is telegraphed through the line where your eyes might have taken over before.  Trusting that your imagination teamed with your skill is really putting your fly where you think it is and making it do what you think it's doing - more than just a shot in the dark.

When the hit happens all of that slams together into a sensory overload that makes your heart want to explode.  I may have been on a second wind, but the first hit sent me to a heightened level of alertness and anticipation that you can't manufacture on your own. It takes the jump-starting jolt of water erupting in front of you on what you know is your fly.

I'd missed the fish.  Didn't even feel it.  Maybe it missed me.  But it was exactly what you are looking for at night - the kind of explosion in the water that only a big nocturnal brown makes when he thinks he just found a steak dinner.  Whatever little bugs were hatching were just tossed aside by the rolling wake as the mouse was sucked under and lost in a sea of white foam.

I moved on, no longer questioning whether the fish would be in these rocks.  Browns are browns.  When they like a spot, they like a spot.  If one was here, almost certainly there'd be more in similar positions.  I keyed in on slots similar to where that one had been.  As the next six hits proved, they were holding close to structure in relatively shallow water.

The banks were crawling with raccoons.  The noise of their busyness among the rocks and scrub was seemingly constant.  I nearly stepped on a young one once.  Had to shoo it off the boulder we were sharing so I could move on.  I flipped my red light on at one point and counted six at once in the reach of my glow.

Bats too, were everywhere.  I fully predicted that I'd hook one before the night was out but never did.  They constantly were running into my line and swooping at my mouse.  The distinct tap of them bumping the fly line was like a fish pecking a jig, and I had to train myself not to react.  Something about the click of the fly reel drove them crazy, and whenever I gathered line back on they'd concentrate like moths on a bug zapper, all over my rod and face, then dissipate when the reeling stopped.

I finally connected with a hit that stuck when I plopped the mouse alongside a boulder and let it dead drift to the downstream side and into the eddy behind it - or at least that's what I envisioned my fly doing. When I supposed it was in the eddy, I gave a couple twitches and it was promptly engulfed in what was one of the least explosive strikes of the night. The brown showed himself immediately by going into a series of jumps and kerplunking belly flops. He didn't bulldog his way back down into the boulders like they so often do. He mostly stuck near the surface and made a couple strong tail-walking runs. I set my tripod on a rock behind me and deployed my net. It was a smallish net.  Most any net I have of appropriate size isn't easily carried. I folded him in just fine though, head and tail sticking out of opposite sides. I gave him a quick lift to the camera, shouted a voice command three or four times to trigger shots, and then slipped him back in the water. It was only then I realized I'd forgotten to turn my headlamp off. The only pic not completely washed out in red light was one where I was looking slightly down toward the fish.

As I got my gear back together I noticed the first light of dawn. It came quickly, and the bite shut off as the stars faded away. Regular surface activity picked up as rainbows started sipping bugs. I envisioned the big browns slipping back to the depths for their daytime holding routine.

I might have only landed one, but I'd accomplished what I set out to do. Over the next few days I got out twice more on two different streams, but never hit as clear and still of a night. I landed a couple smaller ones and lost a couple other brutes to broken tippet. I hate breaks.... but I've got four more full moons before November to try and redeem myself.

A little guy who wanted a head start  before the sun went down

King of the stream

Fish of the year (well, it's in the running at least) - and he won.  It's not that it was the biggest fish I've caught this year. Far from it. But this fish was uncannily large for the little stream it lives in. I fooled it twice, but was never in control, even for a second. I was out maneuvered from the start.

I can still see the flare of those orange slashes and the soft yellow glow of mature fish. It was the biggest cutthroat I've tangled with to date. It wasn't even a serious fishing trip - just a couple hours stolen during a family camping weekend.  After a day of hiking, the family was back at our campsite along a bold stream swollen with snow melt. It was clear, but powerful and full. Everyone seemed content to laze around, so I strung up a fly rod and started up the creek right out of the campground.

From the beginning our trip wasn't what we had intended, and as a result we were exploring somewhere new. The area we had planned to camp in was overrun. People everywhere. We ran our finger across the map, found the closest Forest Service, and decided to drive blindly up a new road. The adventure took us through old mining town long passed it's heyday. Once grand brick buildings lined nearly unused streets.  It took us up into a valley rimmed by ten thousand foot snowy peaks. People were still around, but finding a place to stuff our camper along the creek wasn't impossible. We'd settled in, made a grand supper, built a solid fire, and spent an evening under the stars listening the roar of the creek and the crack of the fire.
Not a bad salvage job.

The next day we crawled up an ever-narrowing road till we came to a spot high in the back of a valley where we could pull off and hit an old road grade for a hike. It was that hike we'd returned from with a couple hours to spare before supper time.

I started up the creek fishing a small dropper under a parachute. Fishing was tough with very little water to cast to since most of it shot by as if in a flume. I managed a few small cutthroat from a pocket here and there. One bank had an elongated run that was holding fairly still, and on the first float through an enormous cutthroat nosed the dry and moseyed back down. I brought the rod tip up anticipating heavy fight and was given an instantaneous break. A section of leader had come undone at the knot. Such an oddball thing, and so awfully untimely. I'd just hung a dry fly trailing a dropper in the jaw of a cutthroat pushing twenty inches in a small mountain stream.

I backed off the hole rather than walking through it and continued up the creek. I took the occasional small trout here and there, but overall was having a tough time drawing strikes in the swollen water.


 On the return hike to camp I stopped back by the skinny little run holding the big trout. I eased in and floated some flies through it a few times. On probably the sixth drift through, my dry abruptly sunk, and even before I raised in a hookset, I could see the same swirl of large trout moving back to where he'd come from to intercept my nymph.

This time he was on. He battled all over that little hole and then did the inevitable and shot into the raging current. He briefly held in it and then rocketed downstream. This fish was raw power, and in that current he was unstoppable. I was taken back instantly to my steelhead days where running downstream after a hooked fish was common. But here I had no room to run. Standing waves were slamming into tree trunks and the fish was deep under overhanging limbs and roots wads along an undercut bank. I knew the fight was done. I couldn't chase, and so rarely does a fish ever run back upstream in water like

this. But that's what I had to hope for. I wasn't swimming in that torrent.  I hung on longer than I expected too. I saw the fish a few more times. He ran upstream again once, but the surge forward was short lived. He surfaced and thrashed a couple times, and on his last airborne episode I could see daylight down his mouth and out through his flaring gills like a tail-walking largemouth bass.
Such a massive fish. Especially relative to the stream. No surprise when the line popped and he was gone. The hook of my tiny number 18 dropper had straightened.  I didn't think to hang on to the fly, but it occurred to me later that perhaps it should have been given an honorable discharge of some sort, like a permanent place in the visor of my truck where other worthy flies have gone to retire.

"I did well"  I consoled myself. I'd lost him once to the fluke unraveling of a leader. Then managed to hook him again later. Once he got below me, losing him to that current was to be expected. At least I got to watch him eat twice, and he showed me that big hooked jaw and orange slashes before bidding farewell and disappearing into the raging stream. I hope he finds his way back up to his quiet little feeding lane again....

I actually walked back by again the following day and wondered if he was in there. But I wasn't fishing this time, and he'd won anyway. I showed the spot to my wife as we walked along with the kids, and she just rolled her eyes. Another fish story to her, a brush with the king of stream to me.