Photo: Landon Mayer

By: Landon Mayer

The sun is bright, glaring off the water’s surface, forming distinct viewing lanes in clear water as long and wide as an opening on the highway. A breeze creeps in from the west, creating protective chop on the surface of the bay that my eyes have been sorely searching. Finally the prize arrives, a slow-moving pod of fish cruising in formation like a SWAT team on a raid. While many fly fishers envision tarpon, permit, or bonefish when they think of sight-fishing scenarios like this, it’s also common along stillwater shorelines in the Rocky Mountain West, especially in early spring just after ice-out. And here’s the good news: you don’t need a boat.

Reservoirs, lakes, and ponds can seem overwhelming at times because there is so much water to cover, it can turn into a guessing game. In the spring, as the ice separates from the shore, the warmer water along the edges brings trout into the shallows where they feed for weeks even after the ice melts completely away. This provides concentrations of fish accessible to anglers on foot, as trout cruise within casting distance of the banks.

Unlike their river-dwelling counterparts that hold in feeding lanes awaiting a meal, stillwater trout are in constant motion. Finding the correct location to wait and ambush these cruising fish, and having the right presentation and tackle, are the keys to rewarding days from the shore.

Rigging
There are numerous ways to rig for shoreline fly fishing. One of the easiest ways to manage your fly depth is using an indicator to suspend your flies. Whether the trout are hugging the bottom or cruising near the surface looking for emerging insects, you can adjust your indicator to position your flies at the correct depth.

This becomes vital during ice-out because the trout cruise in shallow water near the shore, and you can use an indicator to keep your nymph or chironomid imitation up off the bottom. For the nymph game, start with a tapered 9-foot fluorocarbon 2X to 4X leader. At the end of the leader, attach an 18- to 24-inch fluorocarbon tippet one size smaller. For example, if you are using 3X leader, add 4X tippet to the end. Tapering down in diameter helps with a smooth transition from thick to thin, allowing the flies to turn over more effectively.

Attach your first fly using an improved clinch knot or Eugene bend knot. I usually fish with two flies by attaching a second piece of 18- to 24-inch fluorocarbon to the bend of the first hook using an improved clinch knot.

Chan’s Ice Cream Cone Hook: #12-18 Mustad C49S. Bead: White metal. Thread: Black 8-0 UNI-Thread. Body: Black Stretch Flex. Rib: Red small Ultra Wire. Photo: Charlie Craven

My favorite indicators for stillwaters are medium or large Thingamabobbers. These plastic balls suspend heavy rigs in even the toughest waves.

To complete the rig, you need to supply weight to sink the flies without introducing the unnatural element of split-shot. Try using a tiered system of tungsten beadheads with the heaviest flies on the bottom and lighter ones up top. Weighted flies like Garcia’s Tungsten Rojo Midge, McLellan’s Hunchback Scud, or a Hot Wire Prince Nymph (#12-16) are some of my favorite flies for the bottom.

Also carry Copper Johns (red, green; #12-18), Rubber-legged Hare’s Ears (#12-18), Mayer’s Purple Things (#12-18), Jumbo Juju Chironomids (#14-18), Chan’s Ice Cream Cones (#10-16; coated with cement), McLellan’s Hunchback Scuds (olive, tan, orange; #10-16), Barr’s Meat Whistles (olive, rust; #6-10), Rickard’s Seal Buggers (olive, burnt orange; #4-10), Pyramid Lake Tadpoles (purple, chartreuse; #6-10), Griffith’s Gnats (#14-18), and Red San Juan Worms (#12-18).

An alternative to suspending your nymphs with a strike indicator is to retrieve nymphs and streamers actively to keep them off the bottom and in front of feeding fish. Crayfish, leeches, and damselfly nymphs are just a few food sources that actively swim.

To be effective with swimming flies, line selection plays a big part, and you need to match your line to the structure and water depth you are fishing. Along shallow shorelines I use a floating line with a weighted fly, or else an intermediate sinking line that slowly descends a few inches per second. I use a fast-sinking shooting head that drops like a rock when I probe the drop-offs along deep ledges like those on Pyramid Lake, Nevada.

In a suspension nymph rig, put your heaviest fly on the bottom, and lighter flies on top. Your indicator keeps the flies off the bottom, and with a little chop on the water, lifts and drops the flies enticingly. Photo Landon Mayer

With the challenge of spring conditions, you want a line that has a front taper design that cuts through wind and matches a 6- to 8-weight, fast-action rod. The best floating line I have found is Scientific Anglers Mastery Series GPX Textured. The line surface has a pattern similar to a golf ball, reducing the amount of friction as it travels through the guides. The rough surface makes the line shoot better and the peaks and valleys in the texture trap air between the surface of the water and the line, allowing it to float better. This is vital when your line is moving up and down like a roller coaster over the waves.

For intermediate sinking lines, RIO’s CamoLux intermediate line has a sink rate of 1.5 to 2 inches per second. It is a clear, camo-tinted line with a low-memory core and supple coldwater coating. It almost disappears subsurface, allowing you to fool warier trout. This is important in clear water along the edges when trout are prowling slowly, and any unnatural object they see above or below the surface sends them fleeing to the depths.

For deeper water, Teeny T-200 or T-300 lines are good choices. These fast-sinking shooting heads reach depths of 15 to 30 feet at a rate of 4 to 6 inches per second. They are best when you are trying to cover deep drop-off zones close to shore. You’ll need an 8-weight rod to effectively cast the heavy 300-grain line.

With intermediate or sinking lines, attach a 3- to 4-foot piece of straight 0X fluorocarbon. The constant thin diameter helps the fly drop with the sinking line. With large mobile streamers like Barr’s Meat Whistle, use a no-slip mono loop knot. This strong knot allows maximum movement on heavier line when the fly is swimming or slowly crawling on the bottom. Keep the loop a half inch in size or less, to prevent wary trout from detecting the knot. [See “Hop It & Drop It” on page 42 for details on using the Meat Whistle with a floating line. The Editor.]

Big trout are hungry in the weeks after ice-out, and their metabolism increases rapidly as the water begins to warm. Spring is the best time to target these shoreline cruisers. Photo: Angus Drummond

Another popular fly is the Pyramid Lake Tadpole (purple, chartreuse; #6-10)

with a foam overbody. The floating fly swims higher in the water column as you search the bottom or deep drop-offs with a fast-sinking line.

Where to Start: How To Be Successful Fly Fishing Shorelines
The first plan of attack if you are not familiar with the terrain is to locate a topographic map for the fishery, or get some where-to-start advice from local experts. A map can show key drop-off points and shallow bays where trout cruise after ice-out looking for food and warmth. Midges hatch first in shallow water that warms quickly in the spring, so shallows and especially the nearby drop-offs that provide security are vital starting points.

If these drop lines are in deeper water, use the method made famous at Pyramid Lake and fish from 3- to 6-foot stepladders. You gain height for longer and easier casting, and more important, gain a better vantage point for sight-fishing in calm or sunny conditions.

If you’re not sure of where these drop-offs are, look for a distinct color change from light green to dark green, for instance. These color changes indicate crucial depth changes that trout tend to prowl in the spring.

If possible, try to find high ground to scout the shoreline, as it can be harder to see the exact drop-off when you are standing in the water. In the early season when the ice just starts to thaw on the edges you may see three color changes going toward shore: white ice, green or blue deep water, then shoreline colors that are typically brown, tan, or red. All these transitions are logical ambush points for predators like trout because they provide safety and a steady food supply.

Pyramid Lake Tadpole (Purple) Hook: #10 Tiemco 2499SP-BL. Thread: Black 140-denier UTC Ultra Thread. Tail: Black marabou. Carapace: Black Northern Lights Loco Foam. Body: Purple Estaz chenille. Photo: Charlie Craven

In the spring as the shallow edge water warms up, the first midge hatches start near shore. Always look before you wade, especially during the first two weeks after ice-out, as trout hug the bank to take advantage of the warm water and food. This is when you will have to remind yourself that this is freshwater sight-fishing, not the salt.

Once you locate these drop-offs that follow the lake contours, try to find structural points that intersect these travel lanes. The tip of a point of land, or the mouth of a bay puts you closer to the fish as it forces them to funnel around you. In rocky terrain, these points can sometimes save the day during heavy wind. Use them to find shelter from the wind for easier casting and better sight-fishing.

The last thing I look for is erratic structure that doesn’t show up on maps. Rocks, boulders, and weed beds supply habitat for insects, and cover for the trout that feed on them.

When fish are more exposed in shallow water, any extra cover they can find is attractive. My favorite spots along known shorelines are usually isolated large rocks, or rocky points. Trout cruise below, around, and through the rocks using shade, the structure itself, and extra surface disturbance to remain undetected. This is where I find some of the largest trout of my year.

Follow the Wind
Spring wind can be frustratingly unwelcome, but experienced stillwater fly fishers welcome it because it produces “big fish chop.”

Scuds in olive, tan, and orange are good early season flies, as are chironomid imitations, Woolly Buggers, and Pyramid Lake Tadpoles. Photo: Landon Mayer

Trout are spooky in flat water, and especially in flat, shallow water near shore. Windy chop on the surface supplies cover, and the small waves add a constant jigging movement to your flies. When I dead-drift nymphs and chironomids with a strike indicator, this up-and-down movement triggers more strikes, and it’s difficult if not impossible to replicate this action with a standard retrieve.

In the spring, the surface of the lake has the warmest water. When the wind blows, it can move this warmer surface water to one end of the lake or the other, or into various bays where the trout follow.

The wind also blows food around, creating scum lines and other collection points. Concentrate on these “food banks” and target the clearwater near the scum or dirty water which contains extra stirred-up food. Fish school up in large numbers searching through the muck for food.

The ideal chop is around 1 to 6 inches. This is just enough vertical motion to add movement to the flies and provide cover for the trout.

When fishy chop turns into full-on waves, fishing become more difficult and you’ll need to need to add more weight and length to your rig to adjust for the lift as your flies begin to move drastically up and down. Whether it is subtle or intense, these wind conditions are the key to productive fishing on stillwaters.

On calm days when you pray for a small puff of wind every now and then, add movement to your nymph rig by using a slow strip every 30 seconds or so to remove slack from the line and mimic the lift and drop of the flies that takes place in the wind.

Mud lines provide security for fish and often contain extra food stirred up from the bottom or gathered by the wind. A little chop on the water also makes the fish less spooky. Photo: Landon Mayer

Dry Days
For those magical days when the wind dies down and the clouds cover the sun enough that the trout think it is a good time to rise, you’ll likely find them feeding on individual midge adults or midge clusters. More dependable surface fishing comes later in the year when mayflies and damselflies begin to hatch, but midges can and do offer dry-fly fishing in the early season.

Use a Grifftith’s Gnat or Parachute Adams (#16-20) and don’t focus on where a trout just rose. Concentrate on the trout’s head and what direction it is pointing or moving as it breaks the surface. Because these fish are on the move for food, they will not rise in the same spot twice. Lead the fish by 3 feet or more, allowing your fly to be in view as the trout approaches. Too many stillwater fly fishers spend their time casting just behind a trout because that’s where it just rose.

For pinpoint presentations, cast beyond the feeding lane of the trout, and slowly pull the fly in front of the fish as it approaches. This small retrieve for accuracy will increase your success dramatically.

Stillwaters are often overlooked by fly fishers looking to get out into moving water after a long winter. But the rivers will be there later in the year, and spring is the best time for wading fly fishers to walk the shoreline. If you are looking for rod-bending battles, nearby lakes, reservoirs, and ponds can start the season the right way.

Landon Mayer (landonmayer.com) is author of Colorado’s Best Fly Fishing (Stackpole Books, 2011) and Sight Fishing for Trout (Stackpole Books, 2010). He is a Colorado trout guide and does speaking engagements across the country.

×

1. Practice

Practice. I know everyone is hoping for a magic bullet to speed up their tying immediately, but frankly, I never encourage anyone to try to tie quickly. Speed comes from familiarity, and familiarity comes from practice. Knowing the pattern at hand well enough to tie it from memory, knowing the materials and order of steps, and feeling comfortable and at ease with the process leads to easier, more efficient tying. Practice, practice, practice. The more flies you tie, the better you’ll get, and we all know there is no such thing as too many flies. Branch out and tie a wide variety of patterns, even if you may not think you’ll fish them. Each pattern contains a lesson, and the more patterns you master the more techniques you’ll become familiar with.

2. Never Put Down The Scissors

Never put down the scissors. Ever. Carry your scissors looped over the ring finger of your dominant hand, inserting your thumb into the opposing loop when needed to make a cut. This leaves the rest of your fingers available for normal tying procedures, with the tool stowed safely, and at the ready, in the palm of your hand. Keeping the scissors in your hand at all times eliminates losing them amid a pile of errant materials, and has them ready for any job, from clipping the butt ends of a tail to separating hair clumps for a wing. Carrying the scissors may feel a bit awkward at first, but it quickly becomes second nature, and is a tremendous time saver.

3. Get Organized

Get organized. Stopping to search for each tool and material is a speed killer. Set out only the essential tools and materials on your bench and place them in the same spot each time you tie. Dubbing goes on my left, my whip-finisher at the base of my vise, and my hooks are spread out on the right. Having only the required materials available, and in the usual spots, eliminates hunting down everything. The tying process becomes much smoother and more efficient without a gigantic pile of slag to sort through after each step.

4. Start With a Short Tag

Start with a short tag. I have saved at least $4 in thread over the duration of my 30 years of tying by starting my thread with just a short tag. Because I don’t have to stop and trim a longer tag end, this little rule has saved me much more time than money. Small things like this make a big difference in the long run. Save a step wherever you can, and flies start to fall out of the vise much more quickly.

5. Be Efficient

Be efficient. Make short circles of thread with your bobbin. A short length of thread between the end of your bobbin and the hook is easier to control and faster to wrap. Don’t make more turns of thread than are necessary. If two tight wraps will secure a material, don’t make seven. Be conscious of wasted efforts and steps. Rather than clipping off fine wire with your scissors, simply grab the end tightly in your fingertips and snap it toward the bend of the hook. It will break off cleanly and save the more precise step of trying to trim it flush with your scissors (and it won’t dull your scissors).

6. Separate Your Hooks

Separate your hooks. Shake your hooks from the package so they fall loosely on the table and are well separated. It’s quicker and easier to reach over and grab loose hooks, rather than having to untangle them one at a time from the box or from a knotted pile.

7. Use Good Tools & Materials

Use good tools and quality materials. Dull scissors and rough bobbins are time thieves. Any tool you have to fiddle with—or adjust—steals seconds away from efficient tying. Sharp scissors cut where you need it the first time, smooth bobbins don’t fray the thread and cause setbacks. Quality materials also contribute to efficient tying. Consistent, evenly mixed, and loosely separated dubbing adheres to the thread easily without having to take time to weed out unneeded guard hairs or knits.

8. Prep Materials

Prep materials. I usually cut all my strands of flash to length, and set them on the bench before I tie, so I don’t have a static-charged mess to deal with on each new fly. Select and size your hackle beforehand so the feathers go straight to the hook without any extra steps. I also prepare lengths of poly yarn for wings, spade hackles for tails, marabou, rubber legs, and foam strips, by cutting them to usable lengths so they are ready to lash to the hook. For weighted flies, wrap the lead wire onto all the hooks ahead of time. This way, you only deal with the wire one time. Install all beads onto their hooks in one step as well, so you don’t have to fumble with them. The best way to learn to put beads on a hook is to sit down and put beads on a hundred of them. You’ll quickly develop your own method to boost your efficiency.

9. Loosen Your Dubbing

Loosen your dubbing. Natural dubbings like beaver, hare’s mask, and rabbit fur typically come tightly packed in a baggie. The fur is often matted and hard to work with. Run your natural fur dubbings through a coffee grinder/dubbing blender, or use my canned air and Ziploc bag technique to loosen up the strands. Loose dubbing is easier to separate, adheres to the thread more evenly, and is more efficient to apply.

10. Skip The Head Cement

Skip the head cement. On most trout flies, head cement tends to goober things up and clog the hook eye. This not only slows your production, it causes frustration onstream. On small flies, head cement only serves as a backup if a poorly tied whip‑finish comes untied. Solution: Tie a good, tight knot, and call it good. When I use head cement on larger patterns, it is more from an aesthetic standpoint to create a glossy, “finished” look and it does little to improve the durability of a fly.

11. Think About It

Think about it. If you concentrate on making quick efficient turns of thread, not fumbling with materials, smoothly applying each piece to the hook, and moving your hands quicker each time, speed comes much sooner. The result will be not just fly boxes overflowing with flies, but better flies overall.

◄ Back

Next ►

Picture 1 of 11

Craven on Speed

◄ Back

Next ►

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Charlie Craven co-owns Charlie’s Fly Box in Arvada, Colorado, and is the author of Charlie’s Fly Box (Stackpole Books, 2011). He is also the featured tier in the iPhone app FlyBench, available in the iTunes store.

Permanent waterproof markers are always within an arm’s reach of my tying bench. Directly to the right of my vise sits a container holding about 50 markers of varying colors and tip shapes and sizes. From pale cream all the way to bright fluorescent, black, and muted earth tones, my marker stash has become an imperative piece of my tying program.

×

Markers

Prismacolor, Pantone, and Sharpie are some of the more popular permanent marker brands for shading, barring, and coloring flies. Photos: Charlie Craven

Artistic Touches

You can also add artistic touches to beads, cones, and anything metal. This Fish-Skull head has been dressed up with a dark top (brown), colored sides (orange), and black spots.

Polar Fibre

This baby brown trout pattern is tied with light cream Polar Fibre and a bit of pearl flash. The variation in color from top to bottom is created by shading the Polar Fibre with markers. Start with the lightest, lowest color and work from front to back, bottom to top. Add the barring last to the completed fly.

Add Stripes

To add stripes and bars to rubber legs, twist a rubber leg by rolling it in your fingertips, then draw a straight line down the leg.

Barber Pole Effect

When you release the tension on the rubber leg, you’ll see a barber-pole effect.

Antennae Speckling

A few quick strokes with a fine-tip marker on the antennae of this caddis pupa pattern contributes a natural speckling and the illusion of movement.

Hot Spot Marking

Use a marker to add a hot spot to the head or butt end of any nymph to make it stand out from the crowd.

Saltwater Patterns

Saltwater patterns for bonefish and stripers can gain much from a few marker strokes. Here the carapace of a bonefish fly has been striped with a wide-tip marker, adding mottling and definition. Barring is not limited to one color. Try highlighting the edges of darker bars with a contrasting lighter or darker shade for even more “pop.”

Reefer Madness

Brian Schmidt’s Reefer Madness has colorful barring, and accentuated pincer and leg tips, all achieved with colored markers. Dressing up a plain colored pattern is quick and easy and adds life to many flies.

Short Strokes

Rather than dragging a marker across a fur head, try making short strokes from front to back to work the ink deeper into the fur. Use a wire dubbing brush to blend the colors together for a smoothly variegated head.

Tail Outline

Create a well-defined tail outline on a mullet pattern by adding a black stripe along the back end, as seen on this EP Minnow.

Striped Wings 1/2

Use a fine-tip marker to mottle spinner and dry-fly wings by drawing the fibers taut, and adding stripes at right angles to the fibers. Keep the stripes spaced widely to allow for marker bleed.

Striped Wings 2/2

Use a fine-tip marker to mottle spinner and dry-fly wings by drawing the fibers taut, and adding stripes at right angles to the fibers. Keep the stripes spaced widely to allow for marker bleed.

◄ Back

Next ►

Picture 1 of 13

That's Gonna Leave a Mark!

◄ Back

Next ►

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

I didn’t realize how much I relied on markers until a gentleman at one of my fly-tying demonstrations asked how much influence markers and coloration had on my tying.

I had to stop and think, and then agree that I often don’t consider a fly finished until it has had a bit of makeup added to dress it up. Finishing flies using permanent waterproof markers can add extra realism to most fly patterns.

While I may not be completely convinced that it makes a huge difference to the fish, dolling up an otherwise bland and monochromatic fly pattern with spots, barring, or shading certainly makes the pattern more interesting to my eye, and I fish a fly with more confidence when it’s something I like.

Make no mistake though, breaking up a solid color profile by adding camouflage mottling and barring increases realism, and is a quick and easy way to set your pattern apart from the crowd.

Of course, markers have been used for years to simply darken existing fly patterns. Many years ago I recall pulling a black Sharpie from my vest and darkening a standard Pheasant Tail to better match emerging Baetis nymphs in Cheesman Canyon. The altered fly worked wonderfully, and the marker kept me from duplicating the standard versions in my fly box with other colors. This is perhaps the most common usage of markers, and it has been widely used for many years.

Any brand of permanent waterproof marking pens can be used to alter the color pattern of a fly. Prismacolor, Pantone, and Sharpie

markers are widely available in a range of colors and can be put to good use on both freshwater and saltwater patterns.

One of my favorite marker techniques involves barring a synthetic wing with a wide-tip marker to add color variation and contrast. I use this technique on patterns like my Gonga, marking the head and collar to break up the outline.

I also bar the synthetic wings on many of my bonefish patterns to create just enough contrast while retaining the overall light color of the fly. This added contrast helps the fly stand out against light-colored sandy bottoms. In some cases I go a little heavy with the marker, or use a dark brown or black marker on a light tan-colored wing to make the barring even more

pronounced so the fish can spot the fly from farther away. Conventional bonefish wisdom says that your fly ought to match the color of the bottom and in many cases this is true, but factor in a glassy calm calf-deep flat where you’ll have to land the fly a bit farther from your quarry, and anything you can do to help the fish find your fly is an advantage.

Another favorite technique is barring rubber or Superfloss legs with varying color bands. Much like the barring on grizzly hackle imitates movement, and makes your fly patterns seem more alive, barred legs, particularly when crafted of a lively rubber-type material, appear to shimmy and shake with even the slightest

of movement as well as matching up better to most naturals. My Charlie Boy Hopper patterns have barred legs to add both a bit of color and movement, and I typically add barring to any rubber-leg material on any fly for the same purpose.

Markers can also be used to shade and mottle both drys and nymphs. I frequently use a bright red or orange marker to add a hot spot to my nymphs, and have been known to sometimes color a thread head with a brightly colored shade just to change a pattern up a bit.

My Jumbo Juju Chironomid has a red butt that beautifully imitates the hemoglobin found in emerging midges.

You can add a similar hot spot to store-bought patterns as well.

A dark brown or black fine-tip marker is handy for mottling or even drastically altering the shade of a fly pattern and is a worthwhile addition to your vest or boat bag. Simply adding stripes to the wing of a Callibaetis spinner is an easy and effective way to increase the legitimacy of the fly, and can quickly be done at the bench or on the water. Just stroke the fine tip of a dark brown or black marker across the wing at right angles to create the bands of color, but be sure to space them out a bit as they tend to run together and blend.

My friend Brian Schmidt of Umpqua Feather Merchants puts markers to great use on his new Reefer Madness bonefish fly. Several colors combine to create barring and highlights on the carapace and claws of his pattern, with the unique and accurate use of blue tips on the pincers. I’m sure his fly would get eaten even in a plain vanilla flavor, but the variegated version is inarguably a lot sexier and really stands out.

Adding a small batch of permanent markers in carefully selected colors to your tying bench is a fun and easy way to add life to a variety of patterns. Merely having them at the ready will create all kinds of uses and just may bring out your hidden artistic tendencies. Look out, Dave Whitlock!

Charlie Craven co-owns Charlie’s Fly Box in Arvada, Colorado, and is the author of Charlie’s Fly Box (Stackpole Books, 2011). He is also the featured tier in the iPhone app FlyBench, available in the iTunes store.

Bristol Bay, Alaska is host to one of the last great salmon fisheries on earth. It’s our last chance to get it right the first time. We must protect this national treasure and its salmon fishery; incredible sport fishing and recreation; fishing jobs and economy; and a native way of life that’s thousands of years old from the specter of the Pebble Mine, proposed as one of the largest open-pit mines on earth. Pebble will generate up to 10 billion tons of toxic mine waste that must be stored, treated and monitored “in perpetuity” in the heart of the watershed. EPA has the power to stop this dangerous project under the Clean Water Act and we need you to urge them to do so now.

Because the issue to save Bristol Bay is so important to sport fishing jobs, Crystal Creek Lodge is offering a chance to win an incredible 4-day trip for two to fish Bristol Bay, Alaska. Win the fishing trip of a lifetime by using the Tell a Friend feature after you take action. When you urge a friend to comment, you’ll be automatically entered for this amazing trip to an award-winning lodge on the Naknek River.

Take Action

Jim Lepage of Orvis will move to Midland, Michigan, to manage both the Scientific Anglers and the Ross brands. Ross Purnell photo

The Orvis Company, Inc. of Manchester, Vermont today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the Scientific Anglers and Ross Reels businesses from 3M. Upon completion of the transaction, Orvis plans to continue to operate the Midland, MI based business independently under the Scientific Anglers brand. Ross Reels will also continue to operate independently under its brand name from its Montrose, CO headquarters. The transaction is expected to be completed in the second quarter. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

“We think both businesses have incredible opportunities to drive fly-fishing innovation well into the future,” said David Perkins, Orvis Executive Vice Chairman. “Jim Lepage will move to Midland and from there he will be dedicated to running both S.A. and Ross. He and the excellent teams already in place will build these strong brands for the future. Neither consumers nor the trade will likely notice much of a difference in the branding of these businesses under Orvis ownership. What they will notice is renewed marketing energy, well-supported sales and service staff and an even higher level of new product innovation.”

Ross Reels is well-known for an excellent line of mid-priced fly reels highly regarded by fly fishers. Scientific Anglers, founded in 1945, developed the first fly line to utilize a tapered plastic coating, the first modern floating fly line that could be fished without constant applications of messy line dressing, and the use of glass bubbles or micro balloons in floating fly lines, revolutionizing floating fly lines and still the major technology in floating lines today.

“Our goal is for Scientific Anglers to be the world leader in fly lines, leaders and tippet, and for Ross to be the leading innovator in American-made fly reels,” said Jim Lepage, newly appointed President of both businesses. “We plan to maintain strong investment in R&D at both businesses and we intend to bolster their sales and distribution resources here in the U.S. and build both brands internationally.”

Lepage, trained as an aerospace engineer, is a consummate outdoorsman and fly fisher, equally adept at hunting wild turkeys and trophy whitetails as he is with a fly rod. He holds a world record for Atlantic bonito on the fly rod and has fly fished from his home in Vermont to the spring creeks of New Zealand and most places in between. His proficiency in the field is matched by his business sense and his significant skills in managing complex manufacturing operations.

Joining Lepage and bolstering the new product innovations will be Bruce Richards, a 33-year veteran of Scientific Anglers responsible for many past new product breakthroughs. Richards had retired from Scientific Anglers in June 2009 but he says:

“When Jim Lepage called me to tell me that Orvis had acquired SA and wanted me involved again I was excited! I’ve known Jim for many years and have worked closely with him developing fly lines for Orvis. We see things the same way when it comes to fly fishing and fly lines and both have a passion for fly fishing and the outdoors in general. Jim is one of the most innovative product developers I know, it will be fun to work with him again. It will be great to work with the staff at the SA factory too, that was a hard place to leave.”

Both businesses will maintain their current operations, facilities, employees and independent sales representation. Lepage will relinquish his responsibilities as Vice President of Rod & Tackle with Orvis to be fully committed to his new role as President of both companies. Lepage is relocating to Midland, where he says he will consolidate R&D for both S.A. and Ross.

“There is no plan for Orvis to carry Scientific Anglers-brand fly lines in its catalog, stores or website, nor are there plans to more widely distribute Orvis products through S.A.’s established wholesale accounts. Each brand must remain focused on being the leading innovator in their respective product categories and distribution channels,” Lepage said. “Maintaining that clarity will be the key to our success.”

Photos: Tom Rosenbauer

Passionate fly fishers dream of having their kids turn into their best fishing buddies. It often doesn’t happen at all, and when it does, the expectation seldom fulfills the dream—at least at first. Fathers dream of sons or daughters who spend hours on a Montana trout stream with them, quietly and patiently matching hatching mayflies with perfectly tied imitations they made themselves in the winter months. Mothers imagine the whole family on vacation in the mountains of North

Carolina, bewitching wild trout with flies that own colorful names like Royal Wulff and Pale Evening Dun.

Dreams don’t always come true. Sometimes it’s just mom and son, like my friends Jane and Ronan Cooke. Jane came into fly fishing from an unusual direction. As a young landscape architect, her mentor was Alice Ireys, who created many major public garden spaces, including designs for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, but later in life was unable to walk. Jane was her legs. One day Ireys had Jane inventory some plants along a river, requiring that she wear a pair of chest waders. She fell in love with the sound and feel of the water and decided on the spot to learn to fish, and it seemed like learning to fish on a stream meant learning to fly fish for trout.

Jane’s first husband had no interest in learning to fly fish, but after a divorce Jane attended the Orvis Fly-Fishing School in Manchester, Vermont, and then took to the sport with a passion, developing a circle of friends in New York and dating a noted fly-fishing author. When she remarried, her second husband, Patrick, already had plenty of hobbies that kept him busy, like cars, motorcycles, lacrosse, and reading, and had little interest in fly fishing, but he encouraged Jane to take her young son, Ronan, on fishing trips. First he just dapped a White Wulff around the dock at their lakeside cottage, still in diapers. “Doing that actually requires less motor skills than using a spinning rod,” Jane told me, “so it seemed like the right way to start.”

Even though Ronan began fly fishing at an early age, it was not a straight-line path and he still picks up a spinning rod if fly fishing gets too difficult or the wind froths the water. And Jane learned some tough lessons along the way. Figuring that since Ronan picked up fly fishing at such an early age, when he was five years old she decided to risk a saltwater fly-fishing trip to the Florida Keys with him and her friend, guide Paul Dixon. But all Ronan wanted to do was play with the live shrimp Paul had brought along for chum. The savvy guide taught Jane a valuable lesson, telling her, “It’s OK—all kids gotta start fishing with their head in the bait bucket.”

Patrick now accompanies them on fishing trips close to home, but Ronan is now twelve and he and his mom search for more exotic challenges like tarpon in the Florida Keys and trout and salmon in Alaska.

“We’d take him [Patrick] along more often because he likes to be with us on the water and read, but some of our trips are more remote and expensive, so we have to leave him home,” says Jane.

It’s worth the effort to involve your kids in fly fishing. Justin Coleman, a fly fisher and predoctoral intern in Counseling and Psychological Services at the University of California, Merced, looks at fly-fishing relationships both as an angler and as part of his professional development.

Fly fishing is a great way to examine the interactions between couples, and between parents and children. When I asked him to give me a professional overview of the idea of a family fly fishing together, this was his assessment:

Fly fishing with your children, spouse, or whole family not only provides an opportunity to have fun and bond over a pleasurable activity but can also have benefits for your children’s development.

Research indicates that parent role modeling of healthy physical activity and outdoor participation has a significant relationship to the amount of time that children spend playing outside and exercising (e.g., Beets, et al., 2007; Bois, et al., 2005). Through positive modeling and instruction in fly fishing, parents can encourage their children to exercise and develop a lifelong interest in the sport.

If kids want to catch frogs in the middle of a fly-fishing trip, let them!

Kids under Ten—Short, Sweet, and Simple
It doesn’t start with fly fishing—it should start with just plain fishing. In fact, as Ronan proved to his mom on their Florida trip, it may not always be about fishing at all. Nearly all kids are fascinated by nature and the animals they encounter, and fish are only one kind of creature they can catch. If the fish are too difficult, they’ll settle for frogs or turtles, and you ignore that fascination at your peril.

My father infected me with the fishing virus, not with a fly rod but with a worm and bobber, and for bullhead catfish and white perch in the bays along the southern shore of Lake Ontario. But my real quarry was frogs. Fish took too much patience for a four-year-old, but the frogs were always handy, just waiting to be pounced upon. I remember my father complaining to my mother that “all he wants to do is chase frogs.” Dad was not patient enough for the circuitous path I took to becoming a serious angler, and by the time I was ten, he had moved on to golf, even while I was spending all my paper route money on rods and lures, getting up at dawn to ride my bicycle to find new fishing spots that were miles beyond the boundaries my parents had set for me.

My own son, now seven, fishes with me, but most of our fishing trips turn into turtle expeditions and frog safaris. I can only hope that eventually he’ll develop the patience to fish for longer than six minutes, and I assume that he will develop the motor skills to cast a fly rod. Some kids can learn to cast a fly rod as young as three or four, but few have the patience to really fly fish in a serious way until they are over ten years old.

When I tell people in the presentations I do for fishing clubs that I believe a kid should be about ten before any expectation of serious fly fishing, invariably someone corrects me and calls out that their son or daughter has been fly fishing since they were in diapers. It may be true and prodigies do exist, but I wonder how many seven-year-olds are really serious about fly fishing for longer than a half hour.

Developing a child as a fly-fishing buddy takes years to ferment. It’s about nature first, then just fishing by any means, and finally fly fishing.

I have argued that, contrary to the way fly fishing is usually taught, with casting lessons on dry land for hours on end before getting fish on the line, the first step should be getting a fish on—otherwise the whole exercise makes no sense. And nowhere is this more important than with kids.

It is possible to start kids out right away with a fly rod. Find that spot where sunfish congregate near a dock, give your child a fly rod with a dry fly or tiny popper tied to a short leader, and let them dap for sunfish, where they can see the fish come to the fly, inspect it, and then finally inhale it. Dapping is done by just lowering the fly to the water directly under the rod tip, with no line or leader on the water. Only the fly touches the water. Dip the fly into the water, lift it out of the water, dip it in again, and then let it sit. This drives sunfish nuts, and they hardly ever resist it.

Jon Luke’s boys, Ben and Caleb, enjoy fly fishing with their dad because he started them out with lure fishing, and for their first fly-fishing trips he had them troll their flies behind a canoe, thus eliminating the complexities of casting.

Start With Bait
If you can’t find a suitable spot where kids can dap for sunfish with flies, grab a push-button rod, a hook, and a bobber. Go out and catch worms or grasshoppers. Don’t buy your bait at a bait shop, as catching bait is half the fun for most kids, and sometimes more fun than the fishing itself.

Worms are found by digging in rich soil, turning over logs and rocks in damp areas, or by going out after dark to catch night crawlers—if you’ve never done this, your education as an angler is not complete.

Water your lawn until it’s soaked, or find a golf course where they water regularly, and then go out after dark with a flashlight with a piece of transparent red film over the lens. The flashlight should not be overly bright because too bright a light scares the night crawlers back into their holes. Grab the crawlers as close to the ground as possible, and don’t pull immediately or you’ll break the worm in half. It will pull hard against you, then will relax its muscles—that’s the time to pull in order to get the entire night crawler out of the ground.

Grasshoppers seem to prefer the edges of fields and along paths or roadsides, and if you go after them in the morning, before the sun warms their bodies, they move slowly and are much easier to catch. Once the sun warms the grasses, you will be better off using a butterfly net to catch them. And you will need a butterfly net on all of your fishing trips, as you should ensure that you have something handy so kids can go off and catch critters as soon as they get bored.

Take a fly rod along on these bait-fishing trips and just treat it as another way of catching fish. Make sure you take a box of flies with bright colors and patterns that really look like mice or frogs or minnows. Show your child the flies, tie one on, and make a few casts. If they’re at all interested in fishing, they’ll soon ask if they can use the fly rod, too.

A word of caution on rods for children: Don’t be tempted into buying a really short, novelty “kids’ fly rod” and don’t make a tiny fly rod out of just the tip section of a longer rod. These short rods are much tougher to cast and will only frustrate your child. A rod between 7½ and 8½ feet long for anything from a 3-weight to a 5-weight line will be perfectly fine for even the smallest child, and it will be easier to cast. Even the biggest rod in this size range will weigh less than 3 ounces, and although the reel also weighs a little more than the rod, once the reel is attached to the rod, the balance point when the rod is in hand reduces the overall weight a child has to handle to less than a good-size frog.

When fishing with kids, never forget to bring a push-button rod in addition to the fly rod. The objective is for the kids to have fun fishing by any means.

Holding Their Attention
Gauge both the time of fishing trips and time with the fly rod in hand to the age of the child. When kids are under eight years old, thirty minutes of total fishing may be the maximum attention span, with perhaps an additional five minutes of fly fishing thrown in. If your kid shows an inclination to spend more time fishing (even some very young children have the patience to sit on a dock for hours), then by all means keep going. But never push it, never keep a kid fishing longer than they show interest. It’s not about you at this point.

Parents should avoid fishing or fish sparingly on these trips. Resist the temptation to “show her how to do it.” Demonstrate once and turn the rod over to your child, whether it’s a fly rod or a conventional rod.

They learn better by discovering in their own way, on their own time.

And when they start peering into the cattails by the end of the dock, looking for frogs, it’s your cue to take out that butterfly net and suggest a frog or turtle hunt.

Fly-fishing guide Colin Archer, in a letter to me, expressed the regrets of a father who taught his kids the wrong way. He wrote with the hope that he might guide the way for parents of future fly fishers. It was a poignant exclamation point to the idea that, especially for kids, fly fishing is just another way of fishing.

I realized I screwed up. I am a fly fisherman. I am a fly- fishing guide. I love fly fishing. I believe in catch and release. I’m a little bit of a snob when it comes to bait fishermen and using things other than flies on “sacred waters” where I fish and guide. I have felt this way for about 10 years.

I started trout fishing about 25 years ago in New Jersey. I started with worms. I moved into spinners. I graduated to mealworms.

Then PowerBait came out. I used to leave the streams and rivers with full creels almost every time out. I had more thin aluminum foil coffins in the freezer with hatchery trout fillets than I could eat.

I was a harvester. I had a blast. Then I started fly fishing around 1990. Soon after, the movie A River Runs Through It came out and I was gut-hooked.

I married and had kids, two boys, and two years apart. If I could have I would have named them Norman and Paul after, you know, the two sons in ‘The Movie.’ As they got older and out of diapers I introduced them to fishing and of course they loved it.

Then I moved them quickly into fly fishing. I got them neoprene waders. I had Fran Betters custom make them rods at his shop on the West Branch of the Ausable. They had the vests and hats to boot. I taught them bugs. I taught them hatches. I taught them trout. And here and there they would catch a stocked trout or two.

I could never take them to the ‘big’ rivers like the Upper Delaware because they weren’t ready for that, even though I always see kids throwing big Blue Fox spinners into the West Branch and catching big browns!

It took me a few years before I realized they didn’t want to go fly fishing. In fact they didn’t want to go fishing at all. When we would go away for a week in the Poconos I would take out my fly rod and catch 300,000 sunfish and bass. They didn’t care. They made me get worms and hooks and bobbers. My thick head didn’t get it, until I got it. I robbed my kids of all that fishing was and is supposed to mean.

I fish all the time, for work and pleasure. I live blocks from the beach. When and if I have one of my boys in tow when I go out with the fly rod, they look at guys throwing poppers and plugs and metal during a blitz while we’re getting skunked on our fly rods and they ask me, “Dad, don’t you like to catch fish?”

I have done more harm introducing my fishing “ways” to my boys than I know. I hope they don’t make the same mistake with their kids. If I now want to spend quality time with my sons I have to sit down with an Xbox controller in my hand and play Call of Duty.

The reason I wrote this today is today is my son’s 15th birthday, and I fished alone.

Hopefully you’ll be in a better position to get your kids excited about fly fishing. My friends who have sons and daughters as their fishing buddies are some of the happiest, most fulfilled people I know. It’s hard to overemphasize the importance of a shared passion between parents and children. When I pressed Colin to summarize what he would have done differently, here’s what he told me:

If I could do it over again, I would have kept them with their push-button rods longer and then moved them into spinning rods. I would have started them on worms and lures, and then introduced poppers and slowly worked in flies. I would have mixed in some stream and river fishing with more pond and lake fishing. I might have even taken them to the Upper Delaware for a chance for a big brown on a spinner! I would have focused on the time spent between a dad and his kids, not on entomology or casting lessons. Fishing should have been an experience, not a task.

In general, the best way to get children interested in fly fishing is to follow their lead and offer gentle guidance. If you’re already a fly fisher, resist the temptation to delve into every minute aspect of fly fishing while they’re young, as Colin Archer learned. If you’re learning together and want to attend a fly-fishing class with your youngster, I’d advise holding off on a full-blown multiple-day school, which often involves some classroom time, until your child is about ten years old. Instead, look for a short, one-hour casting lesson, and although you will enjoy the shared experience, don’t criticize your child’s progress. You’ve hired a professional for that, and it will go down much easier coming from someone else.

Regardless your own skill level, here are some suggestions to help guarantee success.

1. Keep all fishing trips short at first. When your child’s attention span begins to wander, pack up the fishing gear and move on to something that holds their interest.

2. When picking a fishing spot, find a place that also has good frog hunting or turtle chasing or minnow netting. These critters are usually found in shallow, weedy areas, so avoid deep water and quick drop-offs if possible. Don’t forget a butterfly net!

3. Find a location with a playground or other kid-friendly attraction nearby so you can quickly move on to something else.

4. Pay attention to the way you dress your kids so they’re comfortable. Slather on the sunscreen. Pack extra clothes if they fall in, and take long pants and a sweatshirt in case it gets chilly on the water.

Take child-friendly bug repellent. Make sure they wear hats and sunglasses to protect their eyes from hooks, especially when they first pick up a fly rod.

5. Take drinks and snacks. Pack a cooler. Kids get hungry and thirsty much quicker than adults.

6. Let kids fish with a fly rod any way they want. Put a worm or live grasshopper on the leader. Let them just dap for sunfish. Watch that they are at least safe with that fly whizzing around in the air, and then step away and let them make their own mistakes.

7. Never take kids fishing with only a fly rod. Kids need action and your goal is to get them catching fish by any means. Pack a spinning rod or push-button rod, bobbers, and some bait.

Preteens and Teenagers—Make It Hands-On
You’ll be happy to learn that from the youngest child to well into the teenage years, there seem to be few gender differences between boys and girls when it comes to fly fishing. The sport requires some hand-eye coordination but little upper-body strength, and professionals who teach children fly fishing have seen few variations in how boys and girls pick up the sport. This is not the case with adults, where real gender differences in how men and women learn and enjoy fly fishing are observed, but kids are kids when it comes to the natural world.

If you want to introduce a teenager to fly fishing, hopefully your child has already shown some interest in fishing with conventional gear.

As Colin Archer learned, conventional gear should always be close at hand, even if you want your fishing trips to be pure fly-fishing trips. And you have to understand that some kids take to fishing and some don’t, regardless of their parents’ interests. You can find kids from completely urban households where no family members have ever shown an ounce of interest in fishing who just seem to decide, out of the blue, that they want to go fishing. On the other end of the spectrum, you’ll find kids from fly-fishing families that want no part of it—but in that case it’s probably because they’ve been taught the wrong way in the past.

Evan Griggs, a fly fisher who is now in college studying environmental education, founded a high school fly-fishing club in inner-city Minneapolis and can vouch for the appeal fly fishing has for teenagers, even among those who did not have a parent or grandparent to take them fishing when they were younger. He saw that kids today were too busy with other activities to think about fishing, and it never even crossed their radar screens. He showed them videos like the Trout Bum Diaries, which are more like snowboarding movies than what we usually see on Saturday-morning fishing shows. Before he knew it, he had 15 to 20 kids at every meeting, and soon they were out on the water casting, helping with river surveys, and even helping state crews with their electroshocking fish-sampling gear. Evan’s secret was to get the kids immediately out in the field one way or another. “The worst thing you can do is drive three hours to a trout stream to fish for an hour and then come home,” he told me. “I got them right out onto lakes in the city limits fishing for bass and sunfish.”

Of course, learning from their peers is an ideal way for teenagers to learn fly fishing, but few places are lucky enough to have someone with the vision and organizational skills of Evan Griggs. But we can learn from his wisdom. “Get them out on the water. The more hands-on, the better,” he advised me. “And don’t preach to them. They’ve just spent six hours having teachers talk at them, and the last thing they need is another structured lesson.”

Simon Perkins, who ran a kids’ fly-fishing camp in Montana, has seen mistakes parents make in his experience as both a soccer coach and a fly-fishing instructor and guide, and he agrees. “The last thing a kid needs is to be lectured to or learn the way his parents learned,” he tells me. “It’s so natural for parents to pressure their kids, but it’s a terrible thing to witness from the outside. My best advice to the parent of a teenager is to let someone else start them out. It could be a formal class or camp, but it can also be a grandparent, aunt, uncle, or fishing guide. I’ll often guide a kid and parent together and I’ll make a suggestion on the kid’s technique, and often it immediately fixes the problem. The parent will say, ‘That’s exactly how I told him to do it,’ but it’s always better coming from someone other than the parent.”

Embrace the Complexities With Older Kids
Unlike their younger siblings, teenagers thrive on the complexity of fly fishing. Caleb Parent, whose relationship with his father has blossomed since they both learned to fly fish together, feels it helps him deal with the immense pressures looming over today’s teenagers. Even though Caleb lives in northern Vermont, no high school today is a Norman Rockwell painting. “I like the freedom of it,” he told me. “I like to be on my own. I don’t like the commitment of high school sports. When I’m out there fly fishing, my mind and body are so involved, I can’t think about homework and grades. It’s a good stress reliever, it’s a healthy outdoor thing, and it’s good exercise.”

He likes fly fishing as opposed to conventional fishing because it’s more involved, more hands-on. He loves the complexity of the sport.

“You’re not just sitting there. You’re casting, reading the water, picking out the right fly. It’s just more fun. And although it’s a good bonding experience with my dad and a good self-bonding experience and helps me deal with family and emotional issues, I still get frustrated. I get my leader tangled, or I go out multiple times and get skunked. But it’s the great days that keep me coming back.”

If you have any doubt about the appeal of complexity to teenagers, look over the shoulder of a teen playing a computer game. Their minds thrive on solving complex puzzles, and rather than complaining about how much time they spend on the computer, it’s our duty as parents to gently guide them into something that provides an equal degree of problem solving and complexity, but completely removed from any electronic device. Fly fishing does fit the bill.

Today’s teenagers have peers as fly-fishing role models, unlike kids in past generations. What was once the province of old guys smoking pipes and drinking scotch has been discovered by the ski and snowboard crowd, particularly in the Rocky Mountains. In the winter you’ll often find fly fishing and snow sports coexisting in the same areas. Every ski resort in Colorado has a trout stream nearby, so naturally some of the ski bums in the area, who were already outdoors-inclined, discovered something fun to do when snow conditions weren’t perfect, and fly-fishing requires a little more mental stimulation than running or mountain biking.

And they made movies that mimicked the high energy of skiing and snowboarding films, with fly fishers traveling to places like Mongolia and living in yurts, or fishing their way across the United States in a fashion that would make Hunter S. Thompson smile.

Not all of the films coming out of this renaissance have been home movie quality. Fly-fishing movies by such brilliant filmmakers as Felt Soul Media have won film festival awards across the United States and Canada, and they are as artfully produced and as visually attractive as any modern documentaries. And filmmakers have given back to the resource. Felt Soul’s Red Gold was a stunning, crafty rail against a monster gold mine planned for the Alaskan wilderness, and did more for raising awareness about the fight against Pebble Mine than any other form of media.

If you have a teenager you’d like to interest in fly fishing, I can think of nothing better than renting a copy of one of Felt Soul’s fly-fishing films, like Running Down the Man, The Hatch, or Eastern Rises. They’ll take you and your child from Colorado to Baja to Kamchatka, and your teenager will see fly fishing in a whole new light, from their own generation’s perspective. The personalities in the films aren’t teenagers, but the excitement level and production techniques are more in tune with music videos than A River Runs Through It. And don’t rule out the value of fly-fishing videos on YouTube and similar crowd-sourced media venues, in terms of both entertainment and education. Granted, the educational value of many YouTube fly-fishing videos is a crapshoot, but many of the 20-something fly fishers I know learned most of their fly fishing from YouTube.

Tom Rosenbauer is vice president of marketing with The Orvis Company of Manchester, Vermont. He is the author of many important books, including the best-selling The Orvis Fly-Fishing Guide, which was revised and updated in 2007.

The Deschutes River near Maupin has plenty of access and campgrounds for anglers who want to stay near the water. From Pelton Dam to the Columbia River, the Deschutes offers 100 miles of excellent steelhead fishing with traditional techniques. Photo: John Nordstrand

The Deschutes River drainage is immense. It begins as water seeping from volcanic rock that forms the backbone of the Cascade Range in central Oregon. Heading northward to the Columbia River, the Deschutes flows through half the state. However, the steelheading portion is the Lower Deschutes, about 100 miles of prime water from Pelton Dam to the Columbia, and it’s some of the finest steelhead water in the lower 48.

It’s a wide, brawling river, sporting broad riffles, flat runs, and rapids that range from mild to dangerous. Harsh desert winds etch the brows of bold, tannish-brown canyons that overlook the river. Here and there on the hillsides, patches of lush greenery attest to springs percolating up through ancient lava rock that is the framework for this wild country. Although the rough dryness of the desert is only a few yards away, shoreside trees, bushes, and other plants thrive by sucking moisture from the river. Under an endless blue sky, desert sand anchored by pale-olive juniper and sage gives way to vivid greenery and the flowing blue Deschutes.

Photo: Courtesy of Creekside Fly Fishing Shop

Recent Steelhead Runs
After spending one year feeding in the ocean, Deschutes steelhead return weighing from five to seven pounds, while those that feed for two years in the sea return in the 6- to 11-pound range. With the return of the high-water cycle in 1995, fish counts taken at Sherar’s Bridge (about halfway up the Lower Deschutes) indicate a range of from 1,662 to 3,800 returning wild steelhead per year (see chart on page 53). From a yearly release of 160,000 hatchery smolts from Deschutes-parentage stock raised at the Round Butte facility, adult hatchery returns range from 2,708 to 5,932 fish.

Alarmingly, though, the number of adult hatchery strays from other river systems ranges from 11,110 to 23,618 fish annually, counted at Sherar’s. In three of the last four years, the number of strays has been more than double the combined total number of wild and Deschutes-parentage hatchery stock. Though in essence, strays double your chances of hooking a steelhead, biologists worry about genetic pollution of Deschutes wild stock, since it’s inevitable some strays will spawn in the system. Whirling disease is also a concern, and at least one steelhead has tested positive.

Photo: Courtesy of Creekside Fly Fishing Shop

Biologists cannot pinpoint why hatchery strays migrate up the Deschutes. They cite two probable factors: downstream transport via truck or barge of smolts from other hatcheries, and greatly mixed hatchery product. Smolts with parentage of assimilated or unknown parentage are raised in a facility in a different watershed than where they are eventually released. They become confused fish. Since they don’t swim downstream (they are transported by barge or truck), or they swim downstream in a totally different river than the one in which they were hatched, they have no chemical memory to plot a return course to their birthplace. They have virtually no homing instinct other than to go upstream. With no “home river” to seek, many are attracted to the cool, oxygen-rich waters of the Deschutes.

The last two years on the Deschutes provided some interesting fishing. The fishing was slow in 1998 because of what biologists call a “thermal block” in the Columbia. Although July fish counts at Bonneville Dam were high, the fish didn’t swim up the Deschutes because water temperatures were too high. When water temperatures dropped in mid-September, the steelhead moved upriver quickly, giving anglers little opportunity to catch them.

Most wild and hatchery steelhead in the Deschutes range from 5 to 11 pounds, but some fish weigh into the teens. The Green Butt Skunk fished with a classic wet-fly swing will take the fish, and the author’s Halloween Matuka with its wide profile is particularly deadly with a greased-line presentation. Photo: Deke Meyer

Cooler water temperatures all summer in 1999 made for excellent fishing because the fish moved upriver steadily, beginning about mid-July in the lower reaches of the Deschutes. If the wet cycle prevails in 2000 and water temperatures stay down, angling will roughly follow this scenario: The lower 25 miles of the river will be good starting in mid-July, the lower 50 miles will be good in August, and by September and October the whole river will have steelhead. Die-hard steelheaders can chase steelhead until December 31, especially in the upper reaches.

Tackle and Tactics
A typical steelheading day on the Deschutes might go something like this: In the dawn twilight, you slip into your waders, shrug into your vest, grab the rod you strung the night before, and head to the river. The desert air is crisp, cool, and calm. You’re ready to battle steelhead with your 7- or 8-weight 9- to 10-foot rod and a floating line with a 9-foot leader tapered to 0X or 1X (8- to 10-pound tippet).

Mayer's Halloween Matuka HOOK: Steelhead, #4-#10. THREAD: Orange 6/0. TAIL: Hot orange hackle used for wing. RIB: Round gold or silver tinsel. BODY: Black chenille or dubbing. WING: Hot orange hackle. HACKLE: Hot orange. Photo: Ross Purnell

You cover the water close to you first. Because the brush is right behind you and you need a little room to make easy roll casts, you wade in ankle-deep. You pitch a #6 Green Butt Skunk across the riffle, then let it ease back across the current slowly, mending your line when necessary to control the fly’s speed. Steelhead usually react best to slow-moving flies; they seem to need time to see and follow the fly before striking.

You wade farther and extend your casts, covering the water with a classic wet-fly swing, showing your saucy Skunk to every fish in the riffle, then the run, and finally the flats. Your fly glissades across the current until it sweeps the final bit of water in the tailout, just ahead of the next patch of rock that forms another riffle.

Magicicada

Magicicadas—also known as 17-year cicadas—are expected to emerge from their underground burrows in the spring of 2013. The large insects hatch when the ground temperature reaches daytime averages of 64 degrees F., meaning the hatch will start in April in North Carolina and continue through May up into New England.

“In places where they’re going to be present, it’s going to be spectacular. There could be as many as 1 billion cicadas emerging per square mile,” said Michael Raupp, a professor of entomology at the University of Maryland. 

After living underground for 17 years, their life above ground is relatively short. They clumsily fly into trees where for a week or more they make a loud chirping sound to attract a mate. After mating they fall dead to the forest floor or into nearby streams and ponds where trout and other fish will quickly learn to recognize them as food.

East coast fly fishers should prepare their fly boxes for this unusual occurrence. Magicicadas are the  are 1.5 to 2 inches long with black bodies, red eyes, and orange wings. To find more out about the insects themselves, visit cicadamania.com or click here to see a map of exactly where the species is known to exist.

For fly patterns, there are many to choose from. My favorite for many types of cicadas is a Cathy’s Super Beetle. Tie it on a size 8 heavy-wire hook, and for extra cicada realism, use oranage thread and orange Hi-Vis for the wing instead of white Hi-Vis.

Cathy's Super Beetle