Days 91-94, August 19-22, Missoula to Meeteetse via Beartooths

I'm not a big fan of delayed gratification.  Like just about everyone else, I prefer to have what I want when I want it - i.e., right now.  However, reality dictates that most of us must earn what we get - the rest of us hire really good political lobbyists or are just plain lucky.  So I spent 30 years working very hard to build a retirement fund and start fishing as much as I wanted to.  It was a gamble because I could have died of stress-related diseases or some other malady or accident before I reached my goal.  But I looked at life like an actuary or a top-tier poker player might - that is, the odds of payoff looked pretty good if I took the long view.  I embraced the delayed gratification approach whole-heartedly.  Eventually the payoff happened and I'm now fly fishing to my heart's content.

Trish and I were talking about this topic while at the airport in Anchorage.  We agreed that if we were to die tomorrow, we would pass in a state of fulfillment.  If misfortune should happen to us, we hope everyone we know will realize that.  I don't mean to sound morbid.  We hope that we will have several more decades of life together.  But no matter what else happens, all the effort we put in was worth it.  There's a lot of merit to the "live for today" argument, but I feel it's wise to play the odds and delay receipt of most of life's rewards.  I used to advance that position with the young people who worked with me in our accounting firm.  I believed it and I still do.  I love the song by Cat Stevens (aka Yusuf), "Father and Son."  It articluates the two life approaches quite nicely.  The son desires to live for today, while the father counsels patience and hard work.  The dialogue embedded in that song might have been a conversation between my father and me when I was young.  In the end I think my father, and the father in the song, were right.


What made me think about delayed gratification was that I had to practice it when I was fishing on the East Rosebud River in the Beartooth Mountains of south-central Montana yesterday.  After catching up on sleep in Missoula Friday after a redeye flight from Anchorage, I drove to the East Rosebud south of Roscoe, MT Saturday and set up Camelot in a quiet campground in a spectacular canyon mouth.  The canyon walls lead up to the highest mountains in Montana, including the tallest - Granite Peak.  The headwaters of both the East Rosebud and the West Rosebud originate on the slopes of those mountains, eventually combining and flowing north to the Yellowstone River.  The walls of the lower canyon above the campground are steep and craggy, places where you might expect to see mountain goats in the krummholz.  I didn't actually see any goats, but they may well have been there somewhere, hopping around on narrow ledges and preparing to shine in the next morning's sunlight.  Here's a view of Camelot and my evening campfire:



When I arrived Saturday evening I caught a few trout within sight of Camelot, so I decided to rise early Sunday and fish for a few more hours before departing.  My strategy was to hike down the road for a mile or so, then fish upstream.  A salient fact I hadn't remembered was that the road veered away from the river in that direction, so that by the time I left the road for the river, I found myself trekking through a broad field of 5-foot-high pines and a lot of underbrush.  It was difficult.  When I finally made it to the riverbank, I realized that the entire section of river from where I stood to the campground flowed down a relatively steep grade.  The river was basically one long rapid through that stretch, almost unfishable.  I then had little choice except to return to the road and the campground, which meant I first  had to hike back through the thick pines and a massive tangle of old fallen logs.  I started thinking about delayed gratification about them, and kept thinking about it for the rest of the morning.

Sometimes you choose a course and it's a dead end, but if you remain patient and strive to find a better course, the end result may be the desired one.  When I eventually made it back to the campground and stepped into the quieter waters near there, I soon located numerous rainbows and browns willing to rise to a carefully presented elk hair caddis.  In short order I caught a dozen or so trout, captured some nice video on the GoPro camera, and was back on the road in Excalibur by noon.  Here's a peek at the gorgeous East Rosebud River and the canyon from which it emerges:

Early on Sunday afternoon, Excalibur charged into nearby Red Lodge, MT, which was jammed with tourists, and started the climb up the steep grade of Highway 212 - the Beartooth Highway - into the mountains.  I've traveled on many a scenic American byway in my time, but it's hard to think of one as breathtaking as the Beartooth Highway, which tops out at an elevation of almost 11,000 feet.  From Red Lodge, the drive is exhilirating and vertiginous.  The narrow road hugs the steep slopes above Rock Creek Canyon in a maze of switchbacks.  Evidence of dangerous rockfalls lies around every hairpin bend.  High up on the plateau among the high peaks is a calvacade of small lakes and tumbling brooks emanating from large snowfields that remain unmelted even in late August.  After 60 miles or so, just east of the Matterhorn-like Pilot Peak and the northeast border of Yellowstone National Park, the Highway intersects with the Chief Joseph Highway above the Clark's Fork of the Yellowstone River - another amazing stretch of road.  On this occasion I took the Chief Joseph Highway east toward Cody, WY, stopping along the way to ponder the rough majesty of the Sunlight Basin, a place where you can see impossibly deep canyons in several directions and spectacularly tall, sharp-ridged peaks in other directions.  In the late afternoon I climbed another set of switchbacks up and over the slopes of a spur of the Absaroka Mountains and down to the highway that led me into Cody.

Now I'm in Meeteetse visiting my friends Chip and Julie.  You may recall from one of my posts of several weeks ago that Chip had an accident while working on a new deck at his place, breaking a leg and a wrist.  Although he's still wearing braces to protect his injured limbs, the healing process is going well and he's hobbling around effectively these days.  Enough so that we decided to take a picnic and a canoe to Upper Sunshine Reservoir west of Meeteetse and attempt to catch some trout for his smoker.  Catch them we did.  Upper Sunshine teems with cutthroat and cuttbow (cuttbows are rainbow/cutthroat hybrids) trout of all sizes and is lightly fished by comparison with most lakes of comparable productivity.  While Julie read a book on shore in the shade of the car, Chip and I prowled an island in the middle of the lake, soon capturing eight meaty trout, including two beauties that measured over 18" in length.  Here's Chip, holding the largest one:

As you know, I release the vast majority of fish that I catch.  I subscribe to the philosophy that a trout is too valuable of a resource to catch only once.  But there are some places where, and times when, keeping and eating fish makes perfect sense.  The fish we buy in supermarkets and restaurants doesn't magically appear there like the fish that Jesus conjured up to feed the multitudes that came to hear him preach.  The fish we consume are captured and killed before they arrive on our plates.  I think it's a good idea for all carnivores to be directly involved in the process of capturing (or raising) and killing their own meat at some point in their lives instead of always just removing it from a cellophane wrapper at home or sticking a fork in it in a cafe.  When we obtain our food directly from its wild sources like our ancestors did, we gain an appreciation for it that is impossible to gain any other way.  The same is true for eggs or vegetables or fruit or herbs or anything else we eat, and the principle doesn't apply strictly to carnivores.  Supermarket produce cannot easily surpass the taste of produce taken directly from one's own garden or orchard or barnyard, and in any event there's something special about knowing exactly what was involved in the journey from simple seeds to the complex organisms that go into our mouths and sustain our lives.  Animal, vegetable - it's all life, all part of the same chain in which humans are another link.  That's one of the simple realties that weeks in the wild remind me of so poignantly - realities too easily unnoticed when hidden under the veneer of civilization.

Again, the delayed gratification principle comes into play.  It's much more expedient to buy processed food than to participate in the food creation process - instant gratification is great.  But one of the best things about delaying gratification is that the ultimate rewards often seem much sweeter when we finally obtain them.  Perhaps it's the extended period of hope and anticipation that causes that result, or perhaps it's our tendency to cling to the more puritanical notion that something is not worth as much if it is not earned.  In any case, one's sense of appreciation and gratitude is heightened when rewards come with a price.  That's what I believe.  Let me know what you think.

Tomorrow I depart for the upper Midwest.  It will take a couple of days for me to get to the lake country of Minnesota.  I'm sad to have to put the rugged vistas of the Rockies in Excalibur's rear-view mirror, but it's time to see new places and fish in unfamiliar waters.  This will be the final leg of my journey, culminating in Maine before I return home to Pennsylvania in just under a month from now.

Days 32 & 33, June 21 & 22, San Juan River

Strategy.

When I was a practicing CPA in the fiercely competitive world of large international accounting and consulting firms, the leaders of my firm formulated strategies that took our firm from number 8 to number 1, as measured by annual global revenues, in the course of my career. Those were good strategies. For about two centuries, the leaders of the United States had strategies that took us from a loose set of backwater colonies to the world’s greatest superpower. Those were also good strategies. (What happened to those anyway?)

When you fish on one of the most popular and crowded rivers in the country for big trout, you have to have good strategies. I had two of them, and they both paid off.

Strategy One

Based on my experience on my first day fishing on the San Juan River (see prior blog post), I was in no hurry to get to the water day two because the fishing was much slower in the morning than in the afternoon. So I took my time scouting around late morning and I noticed that all the empty drift boat trailers were being shuttled to an area at the bottom of the “quality” water section called “Crusher Hole.” I figured correctly that Crusher Hole was where most of the drift boats would be arriving late in the afternoon, and I might have the area to myself until then. Elsewhere upstream, I was pretty sure, there would be both dozens of drift boats and most of the other wade fishermen. So I parked there and strolled down to the river. Good strategy! For the next several hours I made my way a short distance upstream from Crusher Hole, fishing at each of the pools and runs behind a series of rocks that had been placed in that area for the purpose of improving fish habitat. In each and every one I found at least a few fish, including some large ones. This time I had my GoPro video camera with me, so I have evidence of what I found. Here’s the link to a short video showing one of my catches above Crusher Hole:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXaq77McUY8



The very large rainbow trout in the video was impossible to hold without a net or I would have gotten a better picture at the end, but I think you can see enough to understand it was a solid trout. I caught that one on a tiny mayfly nymph just before the flotilla of drift boats arrived, each sporting a guide and two clients who were eager to crowd into my run. Fine. While the naval parade proceeded by, I quietly moved up into the riffle just beyond the row of rocks you could see in the video because I noticed there were a lot of splashes there, indicating that some kind of hatch was happening and the fish were rising to insects. I tied on a little comparadun (a small mayfly pattern with a fanned deer-hair wing) and started casting. As the boats continued to bob by, I caught trout after trout while the passengers gawked. Most of the trout were smaller ones but there were a couple of big browns in the bunch. It was the kind of dry fly fishing action you long for when you visit a place like the San Juan. Spectacular!

Strategy Two

On my third day I decided to take on the floaters mano e mano. I had only skirted the “quality” water on day two, and although I had caught about 40 fish the first day and at least 25 the second (in about 4 hours), I hoped to increase the average size of my catches in my final effort on the San Juan. So I stopped by one of the local fly shops and hired a guide with a drift boat. Good strategy! I got a little lucky because my guide, John Tavenner, was a twenty-year veteran San Juan guide, and a really nice guy, who knew the river better than the back of his hand. Crowds or no crowds, John seemed always to be able to find us a slot of water where big fish abounded. I knew the fish abounded because, most of the time, I could see them in the crystal clear water.

Things got off to a slow start, which may have been more frustrating to John than to me. As I mentioned earlier, fishing in the morning on day one was not very productive, and that proved to be even more true on day three. But we used the time wisely - John gave me some very useful advice on mending my line. (For those of you unfamiliar with the term, “mending” is the act of moving the fly line around on the water so that it isn’t pushed by the current in such a way that the fly drags unnaturally. Trout usually want to see bugs that are floating by helplessly in the current, and not ones that are flying through the water like little torpedoes.) In the next video, which has music and is generally superior to the first one above, there are a few seconds of footage where you can see me mending the line. I can’t guarantee that I was properly following John’s instructions, but I’m pretty sure that my mending did improve quite a lot before the day was over.

Again, I’ll let the video speak for itself. I have so much footage of large fish swimming around on the end of my line that I had to just pick out a couple of examples. As usual, I didn’t have the camera turned on when I caught the largest two or three trout of the day. One big rainbow jumped four times, ran upstream about 30 yards and did a complete circle around the boat before we finally netted him. In any case, the examples in the video aren’t bad specimens. Here‘s the link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTWeu5j_RUs

As on the prior two days, I began to see fish rising to the surface late in the afternoon. John and I noticed a few caddis skittering around and decided we would conclude the float by tying on a Goddard caddis pattern to see if I could catch a few trout on dry flies. Good strategy! Unfortunately, I had put away the GoPro by the time we were in the last half hour of the float, so you’ll just have to take my word for it: I made some awesome casts to large visible rising fish. Our final two catches of the day, a big brown and an even bigger rainbow, were thrill rides. The trout literally flew out of the water to take the Goddard. What a way to end the New Mexico segment of the trip.

Next stop - California!

(P.S. Some of you like the fly-fishing stuff in my blog, and some of you prefer the “other” stuff. I’ve had so much material in my head the past week, and I’ve had such fantastic fishing experiences, that it’s been difficult for me to work in the non-fishing stuff. But if that’s what you like, get ready! In some of my blog posts I’ve touched on serious topics like the shame of slavery and the genocide of the Indians, the nature of being alone but not lonely, love of parents and spouses, and all kinds of literature and music. Next I’ll tackle religion! Oh my!)

Final Warmup

Less than one week to go before I launch on my big adventure!  So far this year I've fished in the Keys, northwest Wyoming, the eastern Sierras in California, and several places in my home state of Pennsylvania.  For my final warm-up I accompanied my neighbor Tom Brubaker and his friend David Bull to the fabled Upper Delaware River to float on David's drift boat and fly fish for brown and rainbow trout.  The water up there has been very high this spring, but we were fortunate that the past week was dry and the water level dropped dramatically.  The mayfly and caddis hatches were prolific and the trout were plentiful and often visible.

The name of the game on the Upper Delaware (at least the way David and Tom play it) is casting to specific rising fish with dry flies.  Because the fish don't usually rise a lot until late in the afternoon and evening, we didn't launch the boat until about 2 pm, but we fished until it was too dark to see.  From about 5 pm until well into dusk, we saw lots of aggressive risers and had numerous shots at big, healthy trout.  Each of us caught several of them, primarily on emerger patterns.  It was hoot, and a great way for me to loosen up for the big trip and practice my videography.  Click on the following link for a 2.5 minute video that pretty well summarizes our venture:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr49bYLFrT0


I plan to do one more blog post before I leave next week.  It will cover my itinerary and my toys.  I hope you can tune in throughout the summer as I travel all around our great land in pursuit of sportfish on the fly.

Bass Fever Continues

For some reason, many fly fishers aren't keen on bass.  I have to admit that for many years I wavered between apathy and antipathy for bass, but when I moved to Pennsylvania I hooked up with a local guide who introduced me to fly fishing for both smallmouth and largemouth bass.  The first time a largemouth came flying out from under a submerged picnic table and crashed down on my popper, I was sold on bass, big time.  I still love trout, but in the area where I live, the average bass puts the average trout to shame in terms of size and strength, and they are often more of a challenge to catch on a fly rod.

Yesterday I took my kayak to a small lake in Delaware Canal State Park.  I often go there in the early spring, just when the bass are waking up, but this was a little earlier than usual.  I tried several kinds of poppers and a few flies that imitate leeches, minnows and crawfish, but to no avail.  I couldn't crack the code with flies.  So I went to Plan B, pulled out the spinning rod and caught two solid largemouths before the sun dropped behind the ridge.  It was another learning experience, and a great day on the water.  Waterfowl were abundant, mother geese were nesting, and there was only one other boat on the lake.  Very nice.

If the weather cooperates this week, I hope to take the kayak out one more time before I return to trout environs and start acting like a respectable fly fisherman again.  I'm fortunate that one of my friends, Jeff Landis, has some private property on Bushkill Creek in the Poconos, and we'll be going up there on Friday.  Should be very interesting to test my skills at matching the insect hatches to trick the wily wild browns of the Bushkill.