"So how was it," asked Mike Kelly as he helped Randy and me load my boat. Mike was a fishing guide and so were Randy Berry and I. But Mike had been with clients that day while Randy and I were taking a busman's holiday: floating and fishing Montana's Big Horn River by ourselves. It was the end of long windy day on the river. A wide band of glowing orange light was gaining strength over the Pryor Mountains in the western sky. We were tired, sticky-eyed and hungry. "It was pretty slow this morning," I heard Randy say as I cranked the winch handle on my boat trailer. "They wouldn't look up at anything. So we fished little stuff deep and we got into'em pretty good." Randy glanced over his shoulder for a moment, grinned sheepishly and said: "And then we tried tossing these big foam minnows Sandy's been tying and we really got into'em for a while."
Foam minnows?" asked Mike.
"Yeah, just mattress foam and few feathers...I kid you not," shrugged Randy while gesturing with his rod tip. Mike snatched Randy's line out of the air and ran his hand down the leader until a gloppy-wet blob of tan colored foam and white marabou appeared in the palm of his hand. Mike knitted his brow, glanced briefly at both of us and said: "You gotta be kidding!" It all started early that morning at the after bay fishing access near Fort Smith Montana. Randy, who had been a Big Horn fishing guide ever since the river re-opened to public fishing in 1979, had been telling me about the Big Horn for years. He wanted to get an early start. The top of a fuzzy red sun was just crowning a ridge over by Crow Agency in the Eastern Sky. An early morning fog still hovered over the water but it was dissipating fast as a sharp gusty wind was punching down out of the Big Horn canyon to the south, pushing streaks of high flying mallards like blowing leaves in an autumn sky. It felt more like October than June. I heard the hollow splash plop thud of waves against the side of my driftboat as we pushed off into the misty currents. "They'll be looking up soon," predicted Randy. "You'll start to see pods of rainbows cruising the slack water pockets, rolling on nymphs, picking off midges. This is tail-water fishing!" expounded Randy as he dropped the oars and spread his arms. "You'll never see anything like this on the Yellowstone."
An hour or so later--when we still hadn't caught a fish--I found myself thinking I had indeed seen this kind of fishing before. Randy announced it was time to change tactics. "They don't always look up when it's windy like this," he explained. "We'd better try looking a little deeper." Randy rigged us both up with split shot on an extra-long leader, about 12-14" up from a tiny flashback nymph of some kind. We anchored up at the head of a side channel where the river split left and west around a brush covered island about a mile upstream from the Three Mile Fishing Access. I watched Randy hold his rod tip high overhead, keeping as much fly line off the water as possible. He twitched the rod once or twice--to test the feel of the line--and then boom, he had one hooked on the very first cast. I fell in below him a little further downstream. I caught a fat rainbow myself on the second or third cast.
I waded downstream around a willow-choked corner and ran into Ron Grannemon who had two clients working the edges of a deep drift line where a shelf of shallow, riffley water dropped off into a rolling, roilly run. I could see by their extended arms and high pointed rods that Ron's customers where rigged up the same way Randy and I were. I found myself admiring Ron's immaculately maintained wood-fiberglass driftboat. I had built that boat myself--for Ron--almost ten years earlier.
"Where'd you get that funny looking boat?" I asked. Ron turned his head and looked at me like a hawk. "That boat," said Ron, with narrow eyes and a sharp tongue, "is one of the best rowing driftboats ever made!"
"Hey Ron, it's me, Sandy," I said, with a big grin. "I built that boat ten years ago!" We both laughed. I wanted to swap stories and ask a million questions about Ron's boat, but one of his clients let out a war whoop as he pulled back hard on a sharply bent rod. Ron waved at me with his net. "Catch you next time," he said.
We never did find any fish any where near the surface that day, but the deep water nymph fishing was excellent. We caught fish every time we parked the boat and waded the river, dead drifting nymphs through the riffles and drift lines. It's not easy to fish deep with small nymphs from a moving boat however, and we knew we had to make some progress down the river or it would be long after dark by the time we made the Big Horn fishing access, 14 miles downstream from the afterbay dam. I had noticed too that each time we passed through the tail end of a large pool there would be a fan shaped band of clean weed free gravel where the flat water at the tail end of the pool met the faster riffle water the head of the next run. And sitting on that clear clean gravel, like dolphins riding the bow wave in front of fast moving boat, where shifting schools of large, very active brown trout. There had to be way to catch those fish. I had an idea about an experimental fly I had been working on.
Without saying anything to Randy I tied on a large soft-bodied foam streamer as we pulled out into the current again. I made a quick short cast with the foam fly. I laid it down right on the bank below some overhanging willow roots. I watched a long dark streak emerge from the weeds along the bank. Randy was still working hard on the oars, trying to get the boat under control as we pulled out into the faster water. The Big Horn water was so clear I could see the fish's jaws open as he swirled sideways on the fat, soft streamer. I could see his jaws still working--like an Atlantic City tourist chewing on a mouthful of salt water toffee--as he turned and ran back toward the bank. I set the hook hard and like Ron Grannemon's client a little earlier, let out a war whoop as I felt the fish of the day throbbing at the end of my line. That was the first fish we'd caught from the moving boat all day. In another dozen casts I boated another 2-3 fish while Randy pulled on the oars. Casting a big water-logged foam fly took some effort. I found myself using an exaggerated, slow motion double haul that occasionally splattered me with a mist of water as I made my backcast. But I was getting plenty of strikes, and I was getting plenty of second and third strikes too. Randy was beginning to notice--big time--and he wanted me to take a turn at the oars. I handed Randy the rod and took over the oars just as we rounded a corner where the river bent sharply to the north and east in front of a large vertical cliff of loose gray shale. Randy made his first cast as we rounded the corner: into a swampy backwater just upstream of the cliff wall. His line straightened out nicely about 12" above the water, shuddered momentarily and then plopped the surface of the still backwater, just to the left of some emerald-green early summer cattails. A long dark shadow followed his fly as it swung out into the current. I took my eyes off the action and pulled hard on the oars to avoid washing sideways into the rocks at the base of the cliff. I heard Randy yell out load: "Did you see that? That was a biiiiig fish!" he said. "He followed it, he, he...hey he's still got it!" I got the boat under control and turned my head just in time to see Randy desperately jerking in arm lengths of slack line. I saw the fish too--just as it seemed to see us. The big fish turned and ran with an adrenaline swirl. A shadow caught my eye. I looked up and saw a pair of golden eagles soaring overhead. Randy finally got the hook set and grinned at me as the fly line started hissing out through his fingers. "I thought he was just following it," he said. "But he had it in his mouth the whole time. You could see his mouth working on it. You could see him chewing on that fly!"
It kept up that way for the rest of the day. We never did see any rising fish. It was just too windy. But we spanked'em with tiny nymphs, fished deep, every time we parked the boat. And we nailed one big fish after another with the big foam streamer as we drifted by the juiciest banks and backwaters. We even managed to catch one or two of the fast moving brown trout at the tail ends of the pools. Mike didn't have any trouble with our story about the nymph fishing, but he was having a very hard time believing what Randy had just told him about the wet foam fly he was still looking at. "I'll believe that when I see it," said Mike with big Montana grin.
Streamer fishing, like fly fishing in general, is an on again off again business. But even when the fishing is slow a determined dry fly or nymph fisherman can usually coax a fish or two--if (s)he works at it hard enough. But when the fish aren't biting streamers they just aren't, no matter what. On a hot sunny warm water day in late summer, for instance, if you want to fish with streamers you might as well stay home. You'll have just as much success casting over the crab grass in your back yard. But at dawn or at dusk or on a cloudy day or almost anytime anywhere in a gentle rain or a slow wet snow fall there are times when the streamer fishing is fast and furious. When the really big fish are feeling frisky and chasing after flashing baitfish, no other streamer will result in as many hookups as a soft squishy streamer. Fish don't spit soft streamers out after the strike. Or, if a fish does let go of a soft streamer, it will often come back to hit it again and again and again.
Soft streamers feel to fish just like they expect it should. The second strike on a soft-bodied streamer is so often stronger and more ferocious than the first, I often find myself wondering if first strikes don't tend to be a tentative, piscatorial exploration of sorts, followed immediately by either a quick rejection or a more decisive, more confident attack. Perhaps even more interesting than the ferocious hits, however, are the mysterious ones. There are times--when fishing with soft flies--when your leader starts to move in strange directions even though you didn't feel a strike. It still surprises me, even now some 10 years after I first saw it happen, when my leader suddenly takes off zig-zagging through the currents, when I never felt even a hint of a strike. It makes me wonder how many thousands of secret bites and rejections I've missed over the years.
A fly that fish like to hang on to and chew on is an advantage at any time of year, but there are times when soft streamers really make a difference. There are three streamer seasons here in Montana: spring, early summer and fall. The early summer season, when the rivers are high and strong and first starting to clear after weeks of snow-melt runoff, is an ideal time for driftboat fishing. Aggressive brown trout that hide below bank side boulders logs and brush piles can often be coaxed out from the edges of deep, un-wadable runs by
slapping and stripping large, flashy streamers. Later in summer, as the high waters recede, large predatory trout can often be found prowling the tail ends of large pools at dawn or at dusk. Stalking these fish is best done away from any boat, while wading slowly and quietly, making long, reaching casts across and down. But in either case these mid-season fish tend to hit streamers with such ferocity there is seldom any doubt about the hit. Missed strikes, rather than unnoticed ones, are the streamer fisherman's biggest challenge during these mid-summer periods of peak activity. Sharper hooks, quicker reflexes and soft squishy flies that don't get spit will all help decrease the number of missed strikes.
But the colder deep water streamer fishing that comes early and late, from March through May and from late September through freezeout in late November, is different story. Stripping streamers near the surface in cold water seldom brings much success. Late October brown trout spawners often congregate in deep runs below riffle drop-offs where they compete for and guard access to gravely redds. In deep roilly water even savage hits can be hard to detect. To catch these fish, depending on the depth of the water, I use a floating line and split shot on an extra-long leader, or a sink tip line with a shorter five or six foot leader. In either case I cast upstream to give the fly a chance to reach some depth. While the fly is still upstream I give it as much slack line as it needs to sink well, but as soon as the fly hits the bottom I straighten up the line so I can feel the strikes. Deep dead-drift fly fishing takes maximum concentration. I try to project my senses out the point of my hook like a beam of psychic light following a fiber optic fly line. It's important to set the hook frequently too, when fishing deep; if you wait until you're certain you've felt a strike, it's usually too late...unless you're fishing with soft-bodied streamers that is. For as much concentration as I try to muster, I still hook as many fish (when fishing soft streamers) when I pull my line up in casual unsuspecting preparation for another cast, as I do because I felt a strike and reacted.
Everything I've just said about late season streamer fishing holds true too--but even more so--for deep water fishing in the cold clear currents of late March and April. The early season is when most of the really big fish are caught here in Montana. After a long lean winter, when the ice starts to recede from the edges of the river and the big rainbows start to congregate at the mouths of feeder streams in anticipation of the coming spawn, the big fish are still largely mid-day active. Because of the colder water temperatures, early season fish aren't at peak activity and they don't move quickly. But that doesn't mean they aren't hungry. The photo archives of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle hold more pictures of 12 year old boys holding 12 pound brown trout--caught in April--than any other month. Secrets to early season streamer fishing include a deep-slow drag free presentation, quick reflexes, intense concentration and soft squishy flies fish hold onto after the strike. In spring in particular, there is no more effective streamer than a soft one.
Predatory fish in general and trout in particular seldom swallow a bait fish that isn't oriented head first. In his 1991 paper on the 'Evolutionary attributes of headfirst prey manipulation and swallowing in piscivores,' T.E. Reimchen observes that "cutthroat trout often attack prey near the center of mass, which tends to be closer to the head than the tail in most fishes," and then, a few sentances later: "prey that are attacked at mid-body are generally rotated into headfirst alignment for swallowing."(1)
That's an interesting observation, especially when you consider that trout usually swirl and strike at minnows from the side or behind. Head first swallowing happens because fish bite first to stun and disable a minnow. Then they bite again, head-shake, juggle and swallow--like a heron swallowing a frog--head first into the gullet. That's why you miss so many more strikes when streamer fishing than any other method: that first hit usually comes from the side, as a quick hard bite and release, prior to a second and more determined sequence of biting and swallowing events. When you're fishing with a traditional streamer, the second attack seldom, if ever, happens, because that first hard bite is usually enough to convince any finny top-of-the-food-chain predator they've made a bad mistake. But when you're fishing soft squishy streamers, it's a different story: you'll often feel one, two or even three or more tugs on the line. Once, when fishing among a school of spawning rainbows on Montana's Nelson Spring Creek, on bright sunny day in April, I watched one particularly aggressive rainbow attack my soft foam streamer about a half a dozen times before finally rejecting it. On another occasion, while fishing the vodka-clear riffles of a cutthroat creek in Yellowstone Park, I watched a large male cutthroat attack my soft streamer, swim away, change his mind, turn around and attach again, several times in succession! I remember thinking then that soft-bodied streamers didn't turn out to work as well as I'd hoped. They were, in fact, quite a bit better than that.