A nice brown trout from a special spot I share with thousands of other anglers.
I recently saw one of my favorite fishing spots featured as the cover photograph of an outdoors magazine. The spot also made the cover of a river conservation group mailer.
Seeing this spot in print was kind of weird, as I've always thought of this spot as mine -- despite the well-worn angler's path that runs along the bank of this very famous, angler-clogged Rocky Mountain river.
Maybe I've always thought of it as my spot because I found it all by myself about 17 years ago -- when I was on a solo flyfishing road trip. I lashed my aging 1974 Ford F-100 -- the model with the round headlights and deathless 360 V8 engine -- to the river in the evening for the legendary caddis hatch, and I was shocked to see so many anglers marching up and down the banks.
I just kept walking until I ran out of anglers -- and I then sat down on a big rock and put my feet in the clear, rushing water. Now, this shallow, rushing river has no shortage of rocks, so it all looks pretty much the same for miles and miles and miles.
The center of the river is usually a bouncy mass of riffles, standing waves and boulders. These boulders gash and scar the dozens -- sometimes hundreds -- of driftboats that carry guides and anglers down the river every day of the summer.
The music of moving water -- roaring or burbling -- never ceases. Most anglers fish from the bank to about 30 feet out into the river. It's too fast and dangerous for wading anglers to fish the middle of the river, although anglers in drift boats hook some big, beautiful rainbow and brown trout from mid-river gravel bars and the deep slots next to giant boulders that look like the backs of sunning hippos.
I'm sure some of have figured out the name and location of this river by now, so we share something. A few others probably have a good guess, while others, well, just don't know. I know this: If you've been to this river, you know exactly where I'm talking about.
This river gets pounded all summer -- but the fishing holds up. I suspect that is because most anglers drift the river and pepper the banks with casts.
Fewer anglers wade the river and sit on a spot for a couple hours for the full dissection of dry flies, small nymphs, heavy, bottom-scraping nymphs and even streamers. This kind of fishing -- exploring the water from the surface to the stony bottom -- is like peeling an old baseball apart. It takes some time -- and the patience of a bored kid on a hot, summer afternoon.
Anyway, I sat on that rock during that long-ago evening and stared at the water. After a few minutes, patterns started to emerge. I suddenly noticed that a shallow riffle poured between a maze of four or five big boulders. The current split amongst the boulders -- and created some fishy current seams.
Just below the boulders, the bottom dropped off to five feet or so -- which is deep for this river. As I looked, I realized that this spot has a near-perfect combination of food and cover. Paranoid, pounded trout could ease into this hole -- which is about the size of my old 1974 Ford F-100 -- and get their food delivered right to their greedy little mouths.
The current tongues folded between the boulders at the perfect speed to wrinkle the water slightly -- and concentrate those luckless, floating mayflies and caddis into tight feeding lanes. I figured that the trout would stack up in this spot when a hatch got going in an hour or so.
Stands of willows, half-buried boulders -- and platter-sized cow pies -- dotted the bank at my back, and a majestic mountain range rose from the river plain in the distance. An osprey -- another reason for the trout to feel jumpy -- rode the air currents above the river.
Thousands of spots much like this one hold trout on this long river, but this one seemed special to me.
I ate a sandwich, drank a warmish Coca-Cola -- and waited for bugs.
Soon enough, tan caddis began fluttering over the water. A few minutes later, an insane number of big trout stacked up in the current seams and porpoised for food. I remembered how this trout often look like they're feeding on the fluttering adult caddis -- but they're really rising for the hatching caddis that have bobbed up from the bottom rocks and are trying to pull themselves out of this old skins -- and through the rubbery surface of the water.
I tied on an X-Caddis -- a no-hackle Elk Hair Caddis that was the ultimate fly for hatching caddis in those days -- and cast to the trout that was furthest downstream from the rocks. A nice brown ate the fly on the first drift. The brown was nice enough to shoot downstream, so it didn't spook the other trout, which continued to feed.
I got so busy watching the feeding fish -- some of them were now in the soft water behind the boulders and sharking around with their dorsal fins out of the water -- that I lost that first brown to a downstream rock.
I fished until it was dark -- which was about 10 p.m. that time of year. I came back to my spot each evening for the rest of the trip. I fished other rivers during the day, but each evening found me back at The Spot.
It was easy to think of this little corner, where an accident of geology had created a mega trout paradise in the midst of a river full of trout paradises, as my own.
A year later, I was back.
To my surprise, the fishing was still fabulous -- maybe even better than the year before. The angler trail -- now probably a fraction deeper -- still ran right by the spot, but I was alone for the first two evenings.
On the third evening, I was playing a nice fish when another angler stopped at the bank, gave me a funny look and sat down. The trout ran down a shallow riffle and into the next deep spot, which was about 100 feet downstream. I waded to the bank -- barked my shins on a few sunken rocks -- and worked my way downstream and eventually released the trout.
When I turned around, that other angler was standing in my preferred casting spot -- which is slightly behind a half-sunken rock about 15 feet from the bank.
Hmmm. Now, taking another angler's spot -- standing in their footprints -- while a fish is played is pretty tacky. I waded to the bank and walked upstream.
I got madder with each step.
By the time I got back to MY spot, the R%QYU)! intruder was playing a fish. I noticed he was careful to stay in the spot. I guess he was afraid I would play a nasty game of musical chairs at this great place.
I waited until he landed the fish.
"Nice fish," I said.
"Yep," he said with the air of a man who was settling into his own, comfortable chair.
"You know, I was fishing that spot," I said.
"No, you left," he said.
"No, I was playing a fish," I said. "And then you just waded right in."
"Well, this is my spot, and I wanted to fish it," he said. "If you leave a spot, someone else can take it -- that's what we do in New York."
"Yeah, but this is the west, and we don't do that here," I said.
The guy gazed at me, shrugged and made another cast.
I eyed a softball-sized basalt rock on the bank and thought of the sheer pleasure it would be to hurl a rain of stones into the water and put down all the trout -- which were still busily rising.
I pushed that impulse away, which took some effort.
"You know, there are thousands of trout per mile in this river, and a lot of good spots along the bank," I said.
"Well, why don't you go and try them out," the guy said.
I eyed the rock again.
Then I looked down the bank, where clean, trout-filled water flowed between countless rocks. The sun was near the horizon, and caddis wings fluttered and glinted in the golden light. I also saw the rings of rising trout downstream.
There was so much water on this big river left to explore -- and all I had to do was turn around and put one foot in front of another.
Part of me hated to "lose" my spot to such a complete knucklehead. Yet, another part wanted to wash away the corrosive anger in my chest. I knew that other rocks and other trout were waiting just downstream.
I walked away.
I found more great spots downstream, and the joy of discovery chased away my anger. I realized that I didn't drive more than 600 miles to spend every evening fishing the exact same spot.
The next year, I fished that spot for about two hours one evening -- and then left. I wanted to see what was happening at another sweet spot about 400 yards downstream. I suppose I still think of that spot as mine, but I'm willing to share. If you know this river, you've probably fished that spot.
I suspect that thousands of anglers from all over the United States -- and the world -- love this sweet combination of rock, water, bugs and fish. Most of them are probably wonderful people -- and a few are probably knuckleheads.
No one can own a spot on a wild river. We just borrow them for a few hours.
But it still feels weird to see that spot on the cover of a magazine.
