TRAVELINGWITHTOOLS

Some Fish, Some Bugs and a Bugatti

When I only have to go back three posts to find last year’s story about brown drakes on the Henrys Fork river, it’s a pretty clear indication I’ve not been keeping up with the demands of my little stake on the Internet here. Well, I’ve been busier than usual in the last 18 months or so!

The Maserati that I helped prepare for Classic LeMans is now in France and halfway through the event. No word has yet reached me on how that’s going.

The Bugatti Type 35 that I’ve been doing some work on should have been ready for this year’s Rolex Reunion, but we had a surprise issue come up at the test day a few weeks ago and I’ve got to go back to SoCal to install some new steering parts before August.

Which is a pity, because I was hoping to stay here on the perimeter of the greater Yellowstone ecosystem for the whole month of July! Last year, I was similarly pressed for time, relative to the previous years of my full-time RV life, as I signed up to go back to work at Laguna Seca in August to look after a Lotus Cortina. I can’t complain, because I did it last year to try and grow my customer base a little, and I did pick up some new work. Still, it’s a break in the system that I’ve gotten used to, of having basically June to October to mess around in the mountains, free as a bird.

Work, man. What a drag!

So here I am again, camped at the Gravel Pit on the Henrys Fork, chasing fish and looking at bugs under rocks. When we last visited, I was lamenting that the much-hyped hatches rarely, if ever, live up to the hype. I was here the first week of July and the brown drakes hatch was impressively large, but the fish weren’t as interested as I had imagined. In 2021, I was hoping to catch the green drake hatch, and though I did get some nice fish to eat a big size 10 drake pattern, it wasn’t phenomenal.

This year, there are remarkably fewer fish looking up and eating off the surface, so far anyway. I’ve been here since the 25th and have walked the bank from the campsite upstream towards Osborne bridge each day, and seen very few rising fish. A couple of days ago I rode to Last Chance and walked all the way out to the islands section of the Ranch water, and I didn’t see a single fish. On the way back to the parking lot, I did spy a group of fish nosing up to eat caddis that were coming off the banks, but I couldn’t convince any of them to take my offerings.

Two days ago, I came across a couple of fish rising to eat the green drakes that were coming off the water, and I managed to catch both of them inside 30 minutes. That was a satisfying end to a long walk, and I later explored another half mile of river upstream that I’ve never walked before.

Yesterday, I focused on targeting the bank feeders that slowly cruise the shallow water upstream of the Gravel Pit. I found a spot where two fish were rising fairly regularly, though I couldn’t see precisely what they were munching on. There were a few drakes here and there gliding by, but they seemed smaller than the ones I’d photographed last season.

I crouch-walked into casting position, something I rarely succumb to. The notion that you have to belly crawl around to fool an animal with a pea brain never really makes me all that enthusiastic. But yeah, these fish are in 18″ of slow clear water and you have to cast to them from upstream so they don’t see your line before they see your bug. I’ve spooked plenty of them inadvertently just walking along the bank.

My first few casts were off target, but I managed to not alert them. Despite having a large drake pattern on my tippet, it wasn’t floating well and I lost sight of it, so of course when I saw a nose come up in the general vicinity, I set the hook into empty water, making a big “ploop!” sound as the fly came out of the water. Shit, that will put them down for sure, I thought. But I cast again, just out of wishful thinking, and the same fish came up to my bug again, and I got him this time! For about 3 seconds, anyway. It was a pretty big fish and when he rolled the first time the tippet snapped. Whaaaa!

I shuffled over to the bank and sat down in the tall grass to retie, and took a while choosing what to replace that fly with, as I only had the one example. While sitting there, with my boots only a couple of feet away from the water, a big rainbow sipped a bug not two more feet away from my boots! I sat there with my mouth agape, like, “What? Seriously?”

I sat dead still and watched it slowly fin upstream until it was a rod’s length away, and I flicked my new bug (pictured above) just ahead of it. The fly drifted by a couple of times with no flinch on the fish’s part, but on the third cast it came up and ate it! I lifted the rod in amazement and just yanked the fly right out if its mouth… As you do.

Last night I went out to see if anything was happening in the last couple hours of daylight, as that’s when the brown drakes do their thing (and the caddis). There was nothing obvious happening, and as I walked through the tiny little spring outflow that spills into the river here, I was surprised to see the amount of bugs darting around my feet. I knelt down to have a closer look, putting my glasses on and getting my camera out. They were mayfly nymphs that I haven’t seen before, and they were pretty big. Normally when I pick up a rock and get a nymph in my palm to snap a pic, it just sits there wondering like, WTF, man. They don’t move around much, like little stoners. These nymphs wriggled like they KNEW WTF, man! They were on meth.

I got some underwater pics and looked up brown drake nymphs when I got back to the computer later, and damned if that’s not exactly what they were. Last year, the big brown drake event seemed to peak around the 4th of July, so perhaps this was a signal that things are on target. The brown drake is a burrowing nymph that lives in silty bottoms, so the fact that I witnessed them swimming around freely must mean they are about ready to fly.

I guess I’ll find out later tonight.