TRAVELINGWITHTOOLS

My spot on the Green River at the Slate Creek campground just didn’t look very fishy. A few smaller fish would rise erratically, eating bugs that remained unidentified. Sure, there were some trico spinners in the morning, and some tiny PMDs in the afternoon, but I never saw either bug on the water in numbers that would get fish to rise consistently. There was that one huge disturbance in the water… which could have been a brown trout eating a seagull, for all I know!

After a couple of days scouting the river by bike and mostly fruitless wade fishing, I decided to drive up to the dam with my pontoon boat in the RV, and use the bike to shuttle back. I figured that I could find some better looking water, current seams, riffle shelfs, back eddies… slots where you just knew a bigger fish would hang out.

I put the boat in between the dam ramp and the Weeping Rock ramp and chatted with a couple of regulars while gearing up. They both agreed that I was missing the best water by skipping the stretch below the dam. The numbers of fish are highest in that half mile, they said. Well, it was a Saturday morning, and there were a lot of boats on the water. A couple of them were anchored on one of the good runs just above where I put in, and there were several waders staked out on the likely spots. So I didn’t worry too much about missing out. I really don’t care for crowds.

Just below my put-in, there was an island, and the slot to the left of it had a really good looking shelf where a riffle dropped into deeper water, with a big back eddy on the outside. I beached the boat and waded over and swam a bunch of different flies through the best looking part, but there were no fish interested. I spotted a couple of rises on the seam between the eddy and the deep water, so I planned to row over there and see if I could tempt them with a yellow sally. The small stoneflies were the only bugs that seemed to actively be hitting the water.

As I was getting the boat off the beach though, a couple of fishermen in kayaks paddled up into the slot I wanted to fish, so I had to wait a bit. When they moved on, I went over and gave it my best shot, but could not get a fish to look at my fly.

I continued down river, thinking that I’d try to target the side of the next run that has spring water flowing out of Weeping Rock. A cold water seam, perhaps? As it happened, the current was too swift for my anchor, a ten pound dumbbell that works great in still waters. This was only the second time I’ve taken the boat on a river, after the Missouri River float last year. I was moving too quickly for me to really target any specific spot, and if I wanted to change flies or switch rods, I’d float past potentially great water without having a fly in it. A real anchor with holding power would have been useful.

I was carrying two rods, a five weight with a floating line for dry flies and hopper-dropper fishing, and a six weight setup for a bobber and nymphs. I mostly cast the hopper with a nymph about 4 feet below it, and all the way down the stretch from Weeping Rock, nothing happened. I was starting to feel a bit dejected.

There is a part of that run that has large boulders breaking up the current, and my anchor finally got lodged behind one, so I could spend some time working the water with more than one cast. But still, nothing…

After that long straight stretch, the water changed a bit. Passing a wild camp on river right, the water became a sort of 4 foot deep riffle for a stretch, and finally a fish came up to take a swipe at my hopper. It looked like a decent fish, but I missed it, if it even had the fly in its mouth. A few moments later, another fish came up for another lunge, but my hopper again failed to find the fish’s jaw.

Dang it, the only two fish in the first hour and a half, and I’m about to float on by this run! I paddled over and beached the boat, so I could walk back and wade through the run a second time. But it was fruitless.

I had another cow encounter though. There were cattle on both banks of the river here, and the ones close to me were mooing it up at the ones on the other side. One of them was a bull, and he was looking straight at me as he bellowed and walked towards me. Great, I thought. I’m going to get trampled by a bull, on top of a frustrating fishless morning!

A man drove up in a pickup and got out, walking over to me. I half expected it was going to be a rancher, telling me I was trespassing, as there is private land on one side of the river through here. I turns out it was the guy I’d chatted with at the put-in. He told me that he’d caught one nice fish, I think he said a five pounder (!) on one of his first casts after I floated off. But that was it.

I got back in the boat and continued downstream. The depth of the water changed rapidly, so that my short dropper would be too shallow, and I switched rods frequently. I approached the tail of an island, where the two current streams joined and made a fishy looking slot. I had the hopper on, and midway through the slot, something grabbed my PMD nymph and when I lifted the rod, I actually felt the headshake of a big fish! WOOT, finally! But it was only on for a moment, and my line shot out of the water as it came unbuttoned. I checked the fly, and the damn hook had broken, and it was a fly that I’d bought instead of tying myself. Figures!

And that was just about it. I thought from the scenery, I was just one bend away from camp and my takeout point. I misread it though, and had another mile and a half or so to go. There were no more fish floating past the ranch with the posted signs on the fence. I got to the last bend before camp and beached it on the inside edge of an island so I could work the shelf that I’d spotted from the cliff top the previous day.

I floated the hopper dropper through once, then switched to the bobber with a deeper setup, and neither produced. The wind had come up fiercely, and it was blowing a good 20 mph in my face from downstream, so casting was becoming a challenge.

I decided to try one last thing and I tied on a black and white bunny streamer. I was at the bottom of the run, and I flicked the fly into the water and turned to walk back to the head of the run. Behind me, while I was not really even fishing, a trout came up and grabbed my fly! What the hell?

It managed to hook itself, and after a brief fight (I only had a few feet of line out!) a beautiful cutthroat was in the net.

So that was it. Almost seven hours on the water, covering about five miles. I had stopped quite often to focus on the good looking stretches, but all of that for one fish, and that one wasn’t even really caught properly! Sheesh.

I rowed out and around the bend, opting to not fish the last 100 yards or so before camp, in the screaming headwind. I met a nice couple from New York in a rented adventure van at the spot where I landed the boat. Tim and Isabella were super nice, and offered to give me a lift back to the RV so I didn’t have to hassle with loading the bike.

After getting back, we were sitting in our camp chairs chatting over a glass of wine, when a drift boat floated up with a young woman on the bow. I shouted out, “You guys do any good today?” and just as I’d gotten the last word out, the gal on the bow raised her rod and set the hook into a fish, a big fish. It took off running upstream, her reel was screaming as the fly line disappeared. I’ve never had a trout take me into my backing, but here on this river, there are some big browns that can do it.

Her guide coached her though the fight, and she managed to recover her line and get the fish to the boat. Tim ran down with his iPhone, filming the battle and the landing. When he came back, he showed me his picture of the grip n grin; she was holding a brown trout that had to be 28″, a monster.

Right in front of where I had been camped for five days!

The next day, as I was packing up to leave for my next spot, another drift boat floated up with another lady angler on the bow. I didn’t ask how it went this time, but still, she hooked into another big fish right in front of me. She wasn’t as skilled or maybe as fortunate as the previous gal, and the tippet snapped as her guide was about to net it. “24 inches, at least!”, he told her.

Right in front of where I had been camped for five days!

Ugh. Up the road I go, La Barge creek is the next stop.

PS: That last night, while chatting over drinks by the river in the dark, a huge crashing and smashing sound came from the next campsite upstream, splintering wood followed by shouts of “OH MY GOD!”. What the hell was that!? I thought it sounded like a tree smashing into a camper.

Tim went over to see, and we could hear some of the conversation from our chairs. “Dude, that was a widowmaker!”, someone exclaimed. A very large dead branch of a cottonwood had broken free and fell directly onto the wooden drift boat that was parked on its trailer under the tree. A tent setup next to the trailer was also demolished. The couple that were about to get into the tent had just said goodnight to their companions when the branch fell. Wow!

Pay attention to where you camp, and check the trees overhead! Lesson learned.