The Mainstream: Willing to Walk

I have most often been somewhat leery of the mainstream. If the crowds at school were all telling me I needed to try this or that, I was skeptical. I often walked away and found my own quiet place. This approach in life extends into my fly-fishing. 

If it seems that everyone is fishing a particular mainstream run I tend to shy away from such places. Of course, I know there are lots of fish in the popular holes and while guiding, I often feel a need to put my clients in these mainstream runs. Yet, when I am willing to wander from the mainstream, often I find nice fish holding in unlikely water. I learn to fish and live on the edges. I just have to be willing to walk.

This winter I spent $600.00 on a Summit County Ski Pass so I can ski the wide "main-stream" runs of Breckenridge, Keystone and Arapaho Basin. Yet, how strange that while I am skiing among the masses on these beautiful runs, I find myself looking for narrow, quiet little runs through the trees. Once again, I tend to slip away from the noisy crowds. I just have to be willing to walk a little.

I know of other fly-fishers who also have this approach to fly-fishing. I guess we are looking for a quiet narrow tumbling stream that we can call our own and offers us a true sense of belonging and solitude.

Sometimes we just have to be willing to walk. 

Winter FlyTying

My friend Scott Hartwig and I enjoy tying flies on a cold winter day while sipping on hot coffee and reminiscing of past days on the river. We look forward to warmer days ahead and what flies might work. I must admit, this is one of my favorite winter activities. Of course there is a time to brave the elements;  hit the river or to ski the slopes but sometimes it is nice to just sit, keep warm, and talk about life, in one of the local coffee shops. Tying flies is part of the ritual and the preparation of fly fishing.

Fly Fishing Deckers In Mid-January

It was cold with snow flurries but not as cold as last week when a friend said there was ice all the way across the river!  I was hopeful that the winter weather would keep other anglers home. I was wrong. I looked up river to the cable hole and I saw eight anglers. I looked down stream and saw 3 anglers. We were lucky to be in the parking lot hole and have some space. Hard to believe it was so busy on a mid-January morning.

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We found the fish willing to take a variety of midges. To me, there really is not a lot of true science to fly selection while on the South Platte River in the winter. Midges, midges midges. There was no "secret fly."  Black, red, white, olive. They all worked and none of them worked. Some with beads and some without.  When none of them worked, we went smaller;  22-26 hook sizes.

The South Platte River in Solid Form

It is a bit strange to look at the snow, or even ski or snow shoe on the snow, that will become the South Platte River. How strange to see the river in solid form; beautiful yet life-less, at the source.

Stranger still to look farther out into the clouds that seem to merge with the mountains. I think of a line from the book of Job, "Have you seen my storehouses of snow?"  I ask myself, Are these the storehouses of snow or are they still farther out, beyond the gray? 

The melting will begin soon forming rivulets moving down from the highest mountains, that will join and form the river that we will fish. How strange to be at the beginning of the river. It is quiet up here. Downstream, the noise has already begun. Fly-fishers, such as myself, looking for a hole to fish. I think I will sit here for a while; just a little while longer, and enjoy the quiet solitude. 

Snow pack is already exceeding normal levels. I try to picture what kind of a river we will be standing in and fishing in June.  We have had some dry years and the fires but we have also had some flood years. What will this year bring?

For now, I will imagine the fish moving under the snow.

The Year in Review: Guiding the South Platte 2016

What a busy year of guiding!  I am so grateful we had fabulous fishing on the South Platte, from the Dream Stream, down to 11 mile canyon, Cheesman Canyon and down through Deckers,  to provide fulfilling fly fishing experiences to fabulous clients.

I was most impressed with the willingness of folks to “get out” and fly-fish; many for the first time. As a guide of almost 30 years, and an educator of 31 years, I think it is healthy for us, both kids and adults, at least at times, to find our way to a river.  We need a break from the madness of our culture and the madness of our lives. Too many of us remain “stuck” on our couches, and rarely encounter nature.

How wonderful it was to take many folks fly-fishing who were looking for a reprieve.  On the river, we talked about why the fish took the fly on one cast but not another, and countless other questions we might encounter, while dealing with an ever changing set of conditions on the river.  We also talked about life.  I remember many great conversations with folks about hopes and dreams, along with some heartache that is also often a part of life.  These intense feelings often have a way of surfacing like the emerging mayflies and perhaps the river is the best place to talk of such things.

As we casted in the river, my clients were willing to consider what would increase our chances of catching a fish. We tried to consider every variable under the sun; from accurate casting, to proper drift and the right fly, to knowing how to play a fish once hooked. We constantly problem solved. Sometimes we solved the problem and caught a fish and sometimes we did not.

We often considered psychological factors. Does it help to stay positive and hopeful? Did it help to believe we were going to hook a fish? Did it help to pray? It was so exciting and rich for me to stand with folks in the river and together, while working on fly-fishing technique to contemplate these questions which, at the same time, are probably also the bigger questions of life.  

And then how almost magical it was, even when we might have been doing everything less than perfect, and we couldn’t see a fish within the stretch of water we were fishing, and I, even as a guide was not very hopeful, a large fish found its way onto the line and was suddenly pulling out line.

Perhaps, in that moment, we were “receiving the river’s grace,” and we caught something and took home something that could never be counted, measured, or photographed.

What a great season of guiding and catching the immeasurable.