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Fly Fisherman Throwback: John Gierach's "Hog Holes"

Developing more quality fisheries can reduce overcrowding and provide economic benefits.

Fly Fisherman Throwback: John Gierach's "Hog Holes"
Your typical hog hole is a blessing and a curse. There are big trout and lots of them, so the fishing is great, but the crowds are often horrifying, so the fishing is lousy. (Ben Pierce photo) (EDITOR'S NOTE: This photo did not appear with the original article, but many of the same issues exist today like on Montana's Madison River, shown here.)

Editor's note: Flyfisherman.com will periodically be posting articles written and published before the Internet, from the Fly Fisherman magazine print archives. The wit and wisdom from legendary fly-fishing writers like Ernest Schwiebert, Gary LaFontaine, Lefty Kreh, Robert Traver, Gary Borger, Joan & Lee Wulff, Vince Marinaro, Doug Swisher & Carl Richards, Nick Lyons, and many more deserve a second life. These articles are reprinted here exactly as published in their day and may contain information, philosophies, or language that reveals a different time and age. This should be used for historical purposes only.

This article originally appeared in the December 1991 issue of Fly Fisherman magazine. Click here for a PDF of the print version of "Hog Holes"


If you fish for trout, you're either part of the ongoing debate over hog holes or you've been overhearing it. We all know what a hog hole is, though some use other names for it: It's a piece of water-usually a tailwater river–that's filled with big wild trout. The local wildlife agency probably describes it in florid terms-"a jewel in the crown of the state's fisheries," or something like that. It's also public and every fisherman in a three- or four-state area knows about it.

Your typical hog hole is a blessing and a curse. There are big trout and lots of them, so the fishing is great, but the crowds are often horrifying, so the fishing is lousy.

There are some tricks to fishing hog holes. An old one is to go during lousy, cold, rainy weather, the kind that scares off all but the most rugged fishermen. This is an old trick because it doesn't work like it once did. Trout fishing is often at its best when the weather is bad. Also, modern fly fisher­ men have become wise in the ways of the sport. They're also somewhat tough, despite their yuppie reputa­tions. After all, a lot of these guys live on grain and water, and run like horses every morning, so a little foul weather doesn't bother them.

You can go during the week, care­ fully avoiding weekends and major holidays. That doesn't always work, either, but it's at least an even bet.

On the other hand, I spoke with a man not long ago who said the best time to fish a hog hole is precisely on holidays like the Fourth of July or Memorial Day. "Everyone assumes they'll be crowded," he said, "so no one goes, and voila!"

I've never had the guts to try it myself, but I admire that kind of thinking.

If you know the river well, or have a good local source, you can sometimes arrange to slip in at odd times during the season, between the famous hatches that draw the worst crowds. If the place really is a hog hole, the big fish will still be there and they'll still have to eat. As a guide on a famous crowded river once told me of his off­ season, "There are fewer rising trout now, but there are more rising trout per fisherman."

Sometimes you can camp onsite and get in a few uncrowded hours in the early morning while everyone else is driving out from town. Or you can show up late, have a leisurely shore supper while everyone else is leaving, and then fish at night. Naturally, this works best in areas where the majority of fishermen day-trip.

Two fly anglers wade fishing a serpentine bend in a river with mountains in the background.
Colorado's South Platte River between Spinney and Elevenmile reservoirs. (Editor's Note: This image was colored in Adobe Photoshop)

When a new hog hole opens up in the same general area as an old one, you can ignore it and keep fishing the old one. With everyone going nuts over the latest hot spot, the crowd on the old river will sometimes thin out significantly for a season or two.

You can become sociable and cagey, as some have done, speaking nicely to all the other fishermen, sharing advice and coffee, while staking out your spot like some bait fishers.

Recommended


Or you can bag the hog holes for the most part and fish the loneliest little creeks, mountain lakes, and beaver ponds you can find. That's still possible in the right parts of the country, and I highly recommend it. You'll rediscover a sense of adventure; you'll slow down, chill out, catch some fish, and usually meet few enough other anglers that you'll want to stop and chat with them. Then if you want to hit the big famous river for a change, you can do it philosophically. On bad days you can even feel sorry for the poor saps who think this is fishing.

There are a lot of things you can do, but the problem remains: Many of our best public fisheries are just too crowded. The fish themselves are usually protected by some kind of tackle restrictions and no-kill or slot-limit regulations, although even that can result in some fish mortality, as well as hook­ scarred and otherwise beat up trout.

And even when the fish fare well enough, the quality of the experience is often badly marred. Fishing is–or should be–a quiet, solitary, contemplative sport. Doing it in a crowd is not unlike taking a shower in a raincoat.

For years there's been talk of solving the problem by somehow limiting the number of fishermen per day on some of our most popular trout streams. The Nature Conservancy has done that on some of their preserves and proved that it has the desired effect, but nothing much has been done yet on public water. To populist-­minded American fishermen, limiting access is a distasteful idea, even when we recognize the necessity of it. Some complain about the fees that will surely be part of any limited-access program, but it's mostly a matter of principle. This is the United States of America, by God, and public fishing should be free and unlimited.

So, for now at least, many of us have accepted the idea that if we're going to fish some of the country's best and most famous trout streams, we'll have to do it with a lot of company.

Maybe I've mellowed some in recent years, or maybe I just got tired of the lopsidedness of having infinite patience with fish and almost none with my fellow humans, but I'm beginning to get a somewhat different perspective on crowded trout streams. It turns out that there is more than one way to look at this.

For one thing, fisheries conservation–as a subheading under conservation in general–is a serious political issue that will only get more important with time. With that in mind I can now sometimes look up and down a river and see not so much a crowd as a constituency: a mob of people that any politician would be happy to see at a rally if they supported him, or terrified to see if they didn't. There are days when I even wish there were two or three more people on the water, like maybe the governor and a couple of congressmen. Not even the President of the United States is immune to "the environmental thing."

Exchange the politician for an investment banker and another perspective kicks in. Call it environmental economics or, if you prefer, economic environmentalism.

No fly fisherman has to be shown studies to know that large amounts of money are spent on the sport–not just on tackle and licenses but also on travel, food, lodging, guides, beer, and so on. Nor does he have to be told that trout are an indicator species that need cold, clean, unspoiled water.

When most of us look at a hog hole on a normal day, we see a fine piece of trout water that's 20 times more crowded than it should be, but a sharp investment banker sees something else: He sees a situation where a healthy natural environment is not an impediment to the development of industry; he sees that in this case a healthy environment is the industry.

Yes, I have been hanging out with some of these guys lately. A lot of them like to fish.

When access is finally limited on some of these waters, most fishermen will see it as a shame, but already some businessmen are saying things like "Wait a minute. You mean you have a product so good you have to turn away customers?"

I cringe at the thought, but if we assume for the moment that wild trout are a product and fishermen are the customers, there may be some interesting implications.

For instance, maybe the raving radical environmentalist who was running around a decade ago demanding that the environment be saved and sighting truth, beauty, and poetry as rea­ sons can now come back and say, "My associates and I would like to show you how minimum flows and special regulations on your stream could bring somewhere between one and three million dollars a year into the local economy."

As an earth-hippie you were treated with strained politeness at best, but now, suddenly, they're calling you "Mister" and paying for lunch, even though your agenda hasn't changed a bit.

To put it another way, you can make conservation work by convincing people that preserving this forest or that river is the right thing to do, but it works a hell of a lot better if you can show them how they'll make a profit at it.

What we're talking about here is a modest local industry, but it's one that involves no factories, no pollution, no new housing, schools, sewers, water taps, fire trucks, police, etc. Or you can see it as a tourist attraction that doesn't have to turn the town into a carnival and half its citizens into hucksters in coonskin caps. A decent trout stream won't bring in the wealth of an oil field or a factory, but it will be clean, quiet, dignified, and lucrative enough to make looking into the water rights worthwhile.

"Will this actually work?" asks one of the skeptics in the group.

Cover of the December 1991 issue of Fly Fisherman magazine, featuring a fly rod and reel held in a hand next to a rainbow trout.
This article originally appeared in the December 1991 issue of Fly Fisherman.

"Well," you can say, "look at that quality stretch of the Such-and-such River. So many people fish it they're trying to figure out how to cut down on the crowds." At that moment you remember being elbowed out of your favorite run fondly, because you can say with conviction, "Trust me. If the trout are here, the people will come."

They won't even have to advertise. You know how hard it is to keep good fishing a secret.

To many activists, this kind of thing amounts to swimming with the sharks. I suppose it does when you think about it, but it's still possible that the most environmentally meaningful thing you can do right now is teach a banker how to fish, and then take him to the jewel in the crown of the state's fisheries on a Saturday afternoon.

From an economic standpoint, this kind of thing requires some radical thinking. After all, what we're talking about is existing in some kind of long-term harmony with the natural environment and making a decent living at it, but we're not talking about getting fabulously rich overnight. In other words, we're looking at the possibility–or maybe I should say the necessity–of being reasonable for a change.

Still (believe it or not) there are some businessmen out there who understand that our old boom-and­ bust, exploit-the-resource-and-move­on program is just not going to work anymore. The problem is, even if you can bring yourself to sanction rape, there's getting to be a crucial shortage of victims.

And I think being reasonable should include us fishermen, too. Unfortunately, some of us have gotten into a kind of junk-bond mentality from fishing the hog holes. I've actually talked to guys who won't admit the fishing was "good" unless they were tuna-boating 20-inch trout all day long. But the fact is, many of our best hog holes are tailwater fisheries that have been artificially inflated by the effects of bottom-draw dams. Some of them weren't as good when they were wild rivers. A few actually held carp instead of trout before the dams went in.

On the other hand, a normal, run­of-the-mill, healthy trout stream that's managed properly with minimum flows and appropriate regulations will likely produce something less spectacular: say, 12- to 14-inch trout with the occasional 16- to 18-inch torpedo. Some of us could easily live with that, and maybe a few more of us ought to.

If we spread out a little more, we'll not only have more room to fish and more solitude to enjoy, we'll also spread the tourist dollar around in more businesses in more towns, maybe even generating a few new enterprises in the process. And the local chambers of commerce will begin to make the obvious connection: The better the fishing is, the more money they'll make.

It is just conceivable that if we developed all of our fisheries to their full potential, the economic benefits would be enough to make it worthwhile. In the end it's a matter of attitude. (Remember that much of life, not to mention some great ideas, depends on nothing more than your point of view.) Crowded hog holes can be seen as proof that the sport is headed for ruin, or they can be used as evidence of just how much a good trout stream is worth.

I know this sounds like an oversimplified romantic idea, but then so did catch-and-release fishing a generation ago. I know there is a handful of businessmen who like the economic approach to conservation (or vice versa), and it's easy to see how this could be used to lever chose politicians who are telling us we can have a healthy environment and a healthy economy. Many of those guys made that promise off the tops of their heads. Imagine how relieved they'd be to learn that it could actually happen.


John Gierach is a fly-fishing author who lives in Longmont, Colorado.




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