Mile: 3,825
“THHHHPP!” My fly line in a fraction of a second ripped out of the water and into the air as my rod tip flew high into the sky. Simultaneously my left hand having gone from relaxed to instantaneously pinching the fly line with full force between thumb and finger, pulled the line down and away from the rod. This caused the fly line to go from loosely riding on the surface of the current to be pulled straight as an arrow at full tension, quivering lightly like a plucked bass string. From high at the end of my nearly “candy-caned” rod, my line descended down into the clear surface water and downward into the deep blue beneath it. Somewhere down there attached to the end of my line is a fly no larger than the cuticle on your pointer finger. Within that fly is a size 20 hook, roughly 5.5 mm in length. All the tension of the line, the rod tip, my hand, and forearm is relying upon the bend of a hook smaller than Abraham’s head on a penny. Pulling against that little bend is the force of a Missouri River 17” cutthroat trout.
Standing in water up to my knees I am fishing a little side shoot that an island has quarantined away from the main section of the river. Only 45 feet across, I fished this run walking from the top to the bottom, maybe 30 yards in total where it met back up with the main current of the river, with no action. Not even a bite. Having faith in my double nymph rig I believed that it wasn’t my flies that were the issue. Which, so much of fishing relies on belief. There are many factors when it comes to successfully fly fishing for trout. I mean, most anyone can catch one or two fish but I’m talking about figuring them out, catching the big boys, really dialing in on them. Of those factors, the first is to be knowledgeable of what to fish with. You must consider the river you are fishing, time of year, time of day, what the sun is doing, the depth, speed, and color of the water. The second factor is knowing where to fish. Do you choose to fish structure, drop offs, swells, flats, holes, riffle water, eddy’s, above the run, below the run? The third is knowing how to fish the fly that you choose. Do you choose to drift it, swing it, strip it, float it, or a combination thereof? But sometimes the hardest part of fly fishing well, is having belief. I had just fished a double nymph rig that I believed would catch fish down a stretch of water that included drop offs, swells, a hole, an eddy, above the run and below the run. Additionally, I had fished it in a way I believed should have caught fish. But yet, I didn’t receive one bite down this 30 yard stretch of mixture of water that I just knew had to hold fish somewhere in it. Something like that makes you second guess your belief. Am I fishing the right flies? Am I fishing in the right spots? Am I fishing them the right way? Am I wasting my time or do I believe in what I’m doing and how I’m doing it enough to stick with it?
Then it hit me. The words of Josh Hampton rang in my ear, “Look for the river within the river.” I took a few steps back to where only the bottom of my fly fishing boots were under the water, crossed my arms, and examined this stretch of 30 yards. I studied the top of the water and assessed what the underwater hydraulics must be doing. Where the water changed color due to depth changes. Where the smallest change of a ripple on the surface meant a large rock or some underwater structure displacing water. I began to see the river within the river. Walking back into the river I visually drew an oval 3 feet wide and 6 feet long where I believed that a fish, at least one, would have to be holding in the current. I drifted my double nymph rig ten times through this section and still nothing. “The river within the river.” His words came to mind again. I mentally drew the oval smaller, 1 foot by 4 feet using the change of the water color to help draw my imaginary lines.
“THHHHHP!” For the next 20 out of 30 minutes big cutthroat trout were trying to pull my fly rod out of my hands. I pulled 5 cutthroat between 15 and 18 inches in length out of this 1 foot wide by 4 foot long run of water. Afterward, I took a step back and laughed as I rested, worn out by twenty minutes of combatting some of the hardest fighting fresh water river fish there are. I looked at this section of the Missouri. It must have been 60 yards wide and I could see a couple hundred yards of it looking up and down the river. The little section segmented by the island that I was fishing was 15 yards wide and 30 yards long. And yet, it wasn’t until I honed in on less than one square yard of it that I caught 5 of my 6 fish that afternoon. As I walked the half mile of railroad tracks back to Pearl parked at Mid Canyon Access I laugh and said to myself softly, “Look for the river within the river.”
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