Brook trout have always been a mountain fish to me. From my early years backpacking into the Beartooth wilderness, I remember camping in meadows and along creeks. Sharing time between catching brookies and cooling my feet in the ice cold streams they inhabited. Brook trout are granite peaks and snow lingering in grey rockslides. Long sunsets in Montana’s big skies above deep green and purple grasses. Lungs full of mountain air. My mind empty of worries. Talking with Nate, about his love for Maine and its many fisheries that hold wild, native brook trout populations, I felt connected. Reminded that these fish not only tie us to our own memories, they tie us together.
Fly fishing is problem solving in the pursuit of fish. Fishing a dropper solves many problems, but when and how to do it still “depends”. Upon what? For me, a lot ---
I fished the Bighorn River in August of 2018 with my father and brother. It was my first time visiting a river after my last combat deployment to Afghanistan. At the time, I did not know that it would be my last deployment. My decision to leave the A-10 behind after fourteen years deeply impacted my life. That trip to the Bighorn was cathartic. The fishing was excellent. The room was great. The food was outstanding. Everyone we talked to was genuine in their desire for us to have a great time.
“What fly you tying on?” It is a question asked on every day of fishing with my brother. He asks me, or I ask him. Sometimes we ask because we expect one knows more. Sometimes because an unexpected fly piques curiosity. Sometimes I ask, so I know what fly to switch to after watching him fight a fish upstream and out of earshot. I wonder if he caught that on his…
Nymphing had been good that morning. Enough takes and a few landed fish combined with being back on the South Platte River in surprisingly relative solitude made the sun seem a little warmer on my skin. When the blue winged olives began lifting in clusters across the river, I was reminded of how picky the trout can be on the South Platte and began slipping slowly into soft head shaking head and a smile that was part frustration and part commitment to figure these fish out.
The Yakima River Canyon was on fire. We had fished above with success, but the second day the wind left us drifting more than fishing. As the day went on the wind became stronger, the casts got worse, and the drifts without fishing grew longer. But I guess that is the way it goes with fly fishing trips. Mother nature, like trout, has a vote. And I was with my brother and father. That much was always good. And we caught some fish. That is the way it goes.
We had to pull the drift boat back upstream to reach the pull out. It was our first day on the Bighole River and fishing had been slow. I pushed and my brother pulled until we reached the concrete that jutted into the current and my brother handed the rope to my father and left to get his truck. It was not a far distance to move the drift boat, but combined with a slow day fishing, I stood waist deep in the cold water a bit deflated.
I knew the ending as soon as he started. The longer his story, the harder I laughed.