The clear, cold water glows in the deepening light of late afternoon.  Fall is coming to the mountains.

Whether a trout answers the door depends on how I knock…

So I knock gently.

What is the difference between a trout, evening sunlight, rock, and water?  Absolutely nothing.

In a house made of water, windows are everywhere.

And looking through each window is a gazer.

After setting and rising with the sun, I return.

This is how I live in the moment.

Brook Trout are living proof fire and water are not opposites.

If the poet had written, “In the stream, I am the absence of the stream,” he would have been wrong.

Fly Fishing is how we see the future.

Trout inspire us to gently handle what we love.

They also figure large in the history of our sport, serving as laboratories for some of the great fly fisherman of our time. People like Vince Marinaro, Charlie Fox, Rene Harrop and Mike Lawson have all used spring creeks as test beds. These are the people that a lot of us consider the “Rock Stars” of our sport.  They have developed flies and tackle, and authored books that have changed our sport forever- and in a very positive manner.

Although brown trout are the most common, just about all the trout species can be caught in spring creeks.

The sulpher dun and its spinner are a staple on most spring creeks, where on some, emergence periods can can last more than a month.

Trout are not the only denizens of spring creeks. Insect eating birds like this swallow are common sites.

Spring creeks are indeed lush places full of life.

One of the perks of this annual trip to North Carolina- other than the fishing, and the fancy digs- is the warm weather.  However, this year, I left 82 degrees in the Colorado to find cold weather with strong winds for the first couple days.  The trip started out pretty grim as the fish were holed up and the catching was slow.

Then the weather changed. The birds got moving, and the fish followed- or maybe it was the other way around.

False Albacore took our clouser minnows and sprinted away with them like a 20-something purse snatchers.

The Albies were coming up to bust bait but they weren’t staying up very long. At first we ran after schools busting in the distance, but they were usually down by the time we got there. A more effective technique was to try to guess which way they were moving and sit in that lane, or to sit on a bait ball. We caught as many of these as we wanted.

While cruising around looking for a new spot, we approached a small, sand hump island that was loaded with fish. There were thousands upon thousands of Bluefish flashing under the boat as we moved along. We found a couple pods of relatively big Blues hunting up against the island beach that were very receptive to Crease Flies- and about anything else you would throw. If you cast near a school, you could watch a pod of twenty or more, come charging up to the fly, hitting and missing it until one got hooked up. They put a nice bend in an 8 weight.

On the same hump, we ran into a school or Redfish in the midst of all the Blues.  We managed one before we spooked the school.

We also found schools of Sheepshead on the side of the island. They’re a spunky, attractive fish. A first for me.

On the backside of the same island, we came across a gill net that had drifted free. It was full of fish that had recently died. They were mainly Bluefish but there were several sharks trapped in the net, including a Hammerhead. We also saw several dead sharks on the bottom near the net and this one that had washed up on the beach. Although required by law, there was no name on the floats. We pulled up the net as much as we could, looking for any live fish that we could free to no avail. We called the NC Wildlife Commission and they sent out a couple boats to take care of the matter.

After a day or so of warm weather, the Puppy Drum turned on. We even caught some on a grass bank right in front of the rental out of kayaks.

We found an area with shallow feeding Puppy Drum. The area held lots of Reds, with several schools moving through as well as singles. My favorite type of fishing- wading and sight fishing.

I tried a spoon fly for the first time and it was my most effective fly. Works well in the grass without hanging up. You could follow the schools pushing the grass and moving water as they fed their way through. I had one cruising fish come with 10 feet of me before I saw it. I just reached out with the rod and dropped the fly next to it. The fish turned to the fly, chased it and grabbed it as it sunk but I jumped the gun on the hook set and missed it. Pretty cool.

And then there were the Trout and the Flounder.

I also ate better than I do at home. Fresh fish, steaks and to top it off, Dan and his wife made a “boil” with fresh shrimp and crabs that was fantastic!

All in all, a fine trip! Timing on a trip is always hit and miss. It’s always fun when you hit it.

More daylight = more fishing time.

This is a blessing and at the same time, a curse.  More fishing time means less sleep time, especially when you consider that we fisherman don’t immediately go to sleep when it gets dark. There are meals to eat, alcohol to consume, cigars to be smoked and bull-shitting to be done. At the end of a week of this type of fishing, many of us resemble sleep deprived zombies.

Despite the hardships, this is something I would not miss for the world. I can remember reading stories in books and magazines about salmon fishing when I was young and the names of the rivers have not changed. Names like Bonaventure, Cascapedia, Matane, Saint-Anne, Matapedia and Ristigouche to name a few- all of which brought up rich memories for me, well before I even laid eyes on them. And when I finally did, reality was better than the dream.

The peninsula itself is rugged and mountainous- and this is where the rivers get most of their character from. They are jagged and rocky, and their waters are exceptionally clear. And let’s not forget the fish, after all, they are why we came. The Atlantic salmon in these rivers are strong, beautiful and wild, a combination that just can’t be beat.

The Gaspe Peninsula is not the only place in Quebec that has good populations of wild Atlantic salmon. Quebec has six other regions with dozens of salmon rivers. The Lower St. Lawrence, the North Shore, Anicosti Island, Northern Quebec, the Charlevoix and the Saguenay all have many rivers with good runs of salmon. One could spend a lifetime exploring all these wonderful rivers.

Most of the water in these rivers is crystal clear and stays that way even after heavy rains.

Rugged beauty, tumbling from the mountains.

The fish in these rivers are sleek, powerful and wild.

Traditional fishing methods are still the norm in this place.

The places are pretty wild, too.

Quebec is a beautiful place in itself.

The fish are strong and fight hard. Leave your 7wt. at home

This fish is fresh from the sea with a few sea lice on its tail to prove it. Sea lice usually drop off of the fish in a forty-eight hour period after the fish enters fresh water.

For weeks I had been calling one of the forest rangers to get the lowdown on conditions on a couple high country lakes I wanted to fish.  I was itching to get back into the high country.  I kept getting the message that the lakes were snowed in. However, the weather had been so warm that I thought I would chance it.  Figuring it would at least be nice to just get out, I headed up to the area. After tooling around, I ended up at the trail head to one of the lakes.  A smile spread across my face when I saw that the trail was clear and dry.

These lakes can be tough to get to but that just tends to keep other anglers away and gives you some sense of accomplishment just getting there.  One of the lakes I especially like lies in a bowl that’s a relatively short, but steep, hike from the trail head. This year, I made two trips.

As I made my way up the trail, I began hitting some patches of snow in the shaded areas. It wasn’t too hard to get through, but it still made for more work.

Final approach to the lake showing the earthen dam

When I got to the lake I could see a number of “icebergs”, but the majority of the water was open and fishable.

Before getting to this shallow bay, I had fished a number of spots with no signs of any fish.

Then the catching began. The water was still cold, and the fish were lethargic, but they responded well to chironomids. I tried a number of spots but caught all the fish in an area the size of a large living room.

High country lakes are beautiful places with beautiful fish.

A parting shot

On my next trip, the weather was erratic.  The lack of snow made the hike in much easier and the changing weather, with its low hanging clouds and patches of sun, gave way to blue skies; making for some interesting views.

The first views coming into the lake

With the warmer water, the fish were much more active. I was able to sight cast to fish cruising the shoreline- very fun fishing.  With the clear water, fish could be spotted 100 feet away and the Cutt’s slow, deliberate rises made it easy to pull the fly away before it was taken.  Most of the fish were caught on one of my favorite high country flies, a foam beetle.  The fish still had plenty of color left from the spawn.

Fly fishing is something we engage in for reasons of fun or sanity instead of revenue or food gathering, so in other words, it’s an emotional thing, which allows us significant latitude when we talk about it.
Home waters are a state of mind – not GPS coordinates.

He lives miles away, but he’s on his home waters.

For example, the concept of “home water” clearly isn’t geographic in nature, but a matter of the heart.

One fly fisherman can tell another his “home waters” are literally halfway around the globe, and the second fly fisherman won’t bat an eye.

That’s because his “home waters” are a five hour drive to the north (the last ten miles on dirt roads), and while humanity is generally poor at accepting alien perspectives, fly fishermen do sometimes make worthwhile exceptions.

That’s why I tend to seek out smaller, wilder waters even though I live on a beautiful freestoner. It’s not because blueline fishing is “easy” (for the record, nothing’s easy when you’re fishing from your knees or crawling through bushes).

It’s because the fishing is – to leverage a pair of overused words – intimate and predatory at the same time, a combination I find irresistible.

A Brown Trout just after he made a mistake.

Which leads us to the latest small stream experience (not the fictional version posted here), where I invited an old friend along to serve as bait for the hordes of mosquitoes while I fly fished.

It only partially worked.

In fact, it didn’t work at all; the mosquitoes were on us like makeup on a politician the second we opened the truck doors, and I’m not even going to try and describe the horrific events that followed when I whizzed in the woods prior to throwing on my waders.

I’m having a flashback just writing about it.

Keith quickly doused himself in gallons of his vintage Muskol repellent – a product made from 100% Deet. A highly effective mosquito repellent, it’s become clear that DEET works by altering your DNA to the point that mosquitoes no longer recognize you as a mammal.

That reduces the number of bites by a considerable portion, but your friends will wonder why you’ve got another hand growing out of your elbow.

It’s a trade off, but when the payoff is a small stream, a lot of trick casts, and a few willing brown trout, I’ll take mutation any day.

The fishing itself wasn’t dramatic, but it was – for want of a better term – pure. The casting was difficult, the fish gorgeous, and the setting unreally pretty.

Can you see him?

I rarely see photographs of myself fly fishing (I’m usually taking the pictures), but when most every picture shows you hunched behind a bush or casting from your knees, you realize you’re reverting from “civilized behavior” (which isn’t very civilized at all) into a predator – without really noticing it.

The result was a fishing trip where you stop your pursuit of trout every few minutes to appreciate what you’ve submerged yourself in, and even then you still can’t quite grasp it.

Sometimes it’s almost as if you’re an actor in an unbelievably boring (to the world), wildly perfect movie, as if perfection can’t be achieved in every day life.

The fishing was largely good, though like most small streams, it turned on and off suddenly.

We arrived a little too early, and one run yielded exactly nothing. Two hours later we passed the same run, this time mining it for six pretty brown trout.

It’s easy to fall for the hype (anti-hype?) that small stream fish are dumb and easy – eating everything that floats by – but the truth lies pretty far from that statement.

Like anything almost perfectly in tune with their environment, they dance to a tune that us clumsy, smelly humans have largely forgotten (or are simply ignoring).

I can’t explain it in explicit terms, but it’s clear I’ve become fascinated with pictures of brown trout parts. Like most trout, they’re more colorful than they’d seemingly need to be, and while I won’t say I’m tired of rainbow trout, I can say the brightly colored brown trout offer a nice break from silver.

What color exactly would you call that?

Sure, he’s upside down, but check out the colors.

Wave good-bye.

The fishing itself was alternately too hard, too easy, too frustrating and too overwhelming to write about.

Befitting our shared status as geezers, Keith fished an old Fenwick HMG fly rod (8.5′ 5wt), while I dragged out my old-style Diamondglass 8′ 5wt – a rod so sweet you could descend into a diabetic coma just by waving it.

Authentic Geezer Gear (I’m starting a new fly fishing line by that name)

And I won’t even bore you with fly selection (though Humpies are our friends).

The bite was damned slow in the morning, but picked up midday. In truth, you don’t need high-end gear or boxes of flies to fish a small stream, but you’d better come equipped with a good roll cast and a great deal of accuracy.

Sunset on the Firehole after our first afternoon in Yellowstone

Dad and I had the opportunity to enjoy some of the most beautiful water we may ever fish in our lifetimes, while at the same time being immersed in the some of the most breathtaking scenery and amazing wildlife either of us has ever seen. It may sound like a cliché, but while catching more fish certainly would have been welcome, I don’t know of anyone that would consider that paramount to just the experience of fly fishing Yellowstone.

With vistas like this it was hard, at times, to concentrate on catching fish

When I booked this trip in August, the local fly shops warned me that the weather in October is unpredictable at best. A buddy once told me that I should only consider making fly fishing a career if I actually preferred spending my days hearing and talking about other people’s adventures, instead of spending time on the water myself; so with the past several years of living out his prophecy, I was determined to not endure another Winter where I spent three months ramming my head through a wall, regretting not getting out more.

Snow squall on the Gibbon.

Fishing in sub freezing temps most of the day with snow and wind that could knock you over is certainly not what I would consider ideal fishing conditions, but it gave us solitude on some of Yellowstone’s most fabled waters that would have been asshole to elbow had the temps been more favorable. Most of our time was spent on the Firehole, Gibbon and Madison Rivers with only an occasional herd of elk and bison as company.

Freshly fallen snow on the Madison. I doubt you would find this much solitude on this famous river during the summer.

Despite the weather, we had ample opportunities, but only dad managed to seal the deal with a twenty-one inch rainbow and a very respectable brown. I hooked up with at least three fish over twenty inches that resulted in two break offs and one spit hook. I cursed the trout gods with their lust for 6X tippet and barbless hooks…. It was by far some of the harshest fishing conditions I have ever faced, but there were indeed opportunities to catch fish, and that just goes to show how special Yellowstone truly is.

The glassy gin clear water in meadow stretches of the Firehole is some of the most technical water I have ever seen. A few weeks prior I can imagine the terrestrial fishing in this stretch was on fire!

Amongst the anglers we did see were a few who knew their shit, and made us look like the foolish bass fisherman that we are. I have to tip my cap to the gentleman that was slaying the bows on a meadow section of the Firehole, casting size twenty two Beatis dries with forty plus mph winds. I gave that idea a feeble attempt and quickly realized that it was just not going to happen. There was also a guide with two clients who put on a nymphing clinic where the Gibbon and Firehole meet to form the Madison. We must have seen eight trout over twenty inches caught in the matter of hours.

The Madison Junction, where the Firehole and Gibbon meet to form the Madison River.

Even though I cursed the trout gods a few times, the experience was worth frost bite, wind burn and a severely bruised ego. It’s time to get started planning the trip for next year and plotting my revenge.

The Gibbon with National Park Mountain towering behind it.

The Madison

The Madison along with the Yellowstone is amongst the most fabled fly fishing rivers in the world. The trout are wary and well educated because of the angling pressure it receives. As we witnessed, if you have the skill and the flies they are looking for, the Madison can provide a bounty of bows and browns over twenty inches.

The Gibbon

Most of our time on the Gibbon was spent in the meadow within the last mile before it meets the Firehole to form the Madison. Most of this water is less than twenty feet across but is surprisingly deep. The outside edges of the bends are well over ten feet deep in some areas with undercut banks providing the trout with ample prime habitat. While the Gibbon is mostly known for its dry and terrestrial fishing, we found streamers to be quite productive.

The Firehole

The Firehole River is a strange yet magical place and probably my favorite water we fished during our trip. The river is littered with geothermal features many of which are on the river’s edge and provide nutrient rich warm water making for perfect conditions when other rivers get cold.

The Fish

A small sample of the fish that were caught. Not many were caught each day but the fish that we did hook and land were healthy, beautiful and full of piss and vinegar, which explains why a high percentage spit the hook, or broke us off.

I never wanted to leave northern Michigan.

Three years ago when the factory I worked at was shut down, a victim of free trade agreements and an economy bursting at the seams, I was forced to make one of those important decisions in life. I could stick around the area I grew up, where I was finally learning to appreciate all it had to offer-  the only catch being that I’d have to settle for making minimum wage working for golf/ski resorts and slowly lose my house- or, I could look for work elsewhere and lose my house on my own terms.  When I would run into guys from the shop around town or the unemployment office, I’d always proudly proclaim that I was leaving. “No way to make a living here, anymore.” I’d declare, as if I knew what I was talking about. Yet, when no one was around, I was almost constantly hoping that an opportunity would pop up before the move actually happened, allowing us to stay where we were and still hold onto the lifestyle we were used to.

Obviously, nothing did.

Most of our possessions that seemed so important only a few months prior became garage sale fodder. What really mattered, was packed inside cardboard boxes and then stacked in the back of a rusty moving truck before being towed nearly 900 miles to eastern New York.

The homesickness began seconds before I hugged my neighbors and told my wife and kids I’d see them in three weeks. It took everything I had to restrain the boulder of emotion that was balling up in my throat as I hugged the guy who would always come over and snowblow our driveway for us when I was working long shifts.  Just cause he wanted to be a good neighbor.  The boulder grew even larger as I gazed across the street at my house for the last time. It wasn’t a mansion by any means, but it was the perfect place to raise my kids and enjoy a small backyard campfire on northern Michigan evenings.  It was a white tri-level with burgandy shutters, and impeccable landscaping- if I do say so myself.  We had plans to add a two story, two car garage with a breezeway connecting it to the house the following Summer.  It sat on a decent sized lot which backed up to a small pond and thousands of acres of state land.

As soon as their waves goodbye were out of sight in the big black mirrors sticking off the cab of the U Haul, the wind picked up and blew that boulder just enough that it started rolling down the mountain.  It picked up steam as I drove past various places on the way out of the area.  But they weren’t just places, they were memories.

Cliches told me that the homesickness would go away, but it turns out the only cliche that holds it’s own is that absence makes the heart grow fonder.

I had always known I had it good where I was at.  I was 20 minutes north of the “Holy Waters” of the Au Sable, 30 minutes from it’s North and South Branches, the Manistee, the Jordan, the Pigeon, Sturgeon and Black which were so beloved by McGuane.  Then there were dozens of small to medium sized inland lakes- all of which were flanked an hour in either direction by Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. Yet, I gained a whole new level of appreciation for the area once I finished unpacking all those cardboard boxes at our new apartment, and joined the hustle & bustle of the Northeast- both on the waters and off. Which is why nearly every hour of vacation time I’ve had since the move has been set aside for trips back to my homewaters.

Of course it’s always nice to see the people, too. But I’m not ashamed to say I’d much rather hang out with my old fishing spots. It’s not like you can keep up with your favorite brookie stream on facebook.

From the time I got my first bb gun and a push button zebco, I was pretty much always in the woods until high school, when I suddenly began spending most of my time on a skateboard. After school ended, my future father-in-law took me under his wing. He was an avid outdoorsman who kept his family’s stomachs full of wild game and supplemented his income by trapping, and selling firewood. It was kind of a weird transition in my life. I didn’t want to be seen as a hick by the kids I hung out with as a teenager, but I loved every second spent learning to hunt, trap, and fish.  There was just something magical about it all; sorcery that to this day seems to grow more and more powerful.

I haven’t set a trap or snare in the 3 years since the move. I haven’t hunted in almost 2. And I haven’t ice fished or touched spinning gear in 4. It’s not that I don’t enjoy them anymore; it’s just that about 4 years ago, fly fishing came along.

I don’t know what it is about fly fishing that allowed it to take precedent over all of my other outdoor pursuits. It’s one of those things that has transcended being just another hobby.

It’s become who I am.

I don’t ever think I could explain why I do it, though. But there was this time a few years ago on the South Branch of the Au Sable, on a bend pool between two riffles where I usually found myself every evening after the plant shut down, right up until I drove over it’s log strewn waters with everything I owned on the way to upstate New York.

It was hex hatch time and I was in the habit of not stepping into the water till the bugs were falling. There was a bank side cedar tree just below the bend that shot straight out over the water’s surface for a few feet before it grew towards the blue northern Michigan sky. It made a nice bench seat where I could chain smoke cigarettes to kill the time and feel sorry for myself about how life was working out in between checking out the different bugs that would occasionally flutter off the water’s surface. The evening was like pretty much every other during that week, right up until a subtle movement caught my eye on the opposite side of the river. I was alertly trying to decipher what I had just seen, when a young deer materialized from behind the brush, looked both ways, then started drinking the cool water from the river. The hunter in me said to just sit still and enjoy the show, but I couldn’t help but want a picture of the moment. I carefully slid my camera out from the chest pocket of my waders, and then slowly stood up to get a better angle when the brush just behind me suddenly burst into motion.

As I watched both deer disappear, I realized that there was a fawn laying down in the heavy grass only three feet away from me the entire time, without me having a clue to it’s presence. My standing up was too much for it to hold it’s position any longer, and running for it’s life also sent my thirsty deer somewhere in the direction of Otsego County.  I stood there, amazed that that little spotted deer had the nerve to sit motionless next to me for so long.  How long would it have stayed had I not stood up?

I was back the next evening, at the same spot after experiencing a good spinner fall the night before. I had planned on waiting for the Hex to fall again, but there was a decent Iso hatch materializing and a decent fish was rising with enough frequency that I couldn’t help myself. I started my stalk about 30 yards downstream when my thirsty friend from the night before popped out of the woods right next to me. I don’t know why, but she didn’t run. She got even closer before lapping up a few ounces of the South Branch. We locked eyes for a while before she lost interest and started browsing her way along the bank. I eventually grew bored with watching her and got back to stalking my fish.  Suddenly, she decided that the mid-Summer heat was too much, and waded into the stream just downstream of me. Six feet off the bank she stopped, gave me a funny look, and then dipped her entire head under the film, then came up with a big clump of seaweed. She kept a close eye on me as she repeatedly chomped the slimy, forest green vegetation.  Then there was a magnificent rise to my left, and both our eyes, and our attention, were drawn away from each other.  She went back to scuba diving, I went back to working the fish.

While I was hunting, I had always thought I was so close to nature- especially during those moments leading up to the kill, and the first few minutes after; but during that moment on the South Branch, fly fishing a few yards upstream from my curious friend, I was as one with nature as I’d ever been.

I spent my summer vacation hiking and camping in the Sierra Nevada with my friend Kyle at the end of July. This was the second attempt to reach a remote basin of lakes above 11,000′. I spent 10 months training and lost 25 pounds in anticipation of the ass kicking I was going to take at altitude.
After taking a scenic detour that added maybe nine miles to the unmarked, single lane forest service road, we arrived at the trailhead two and half hours later than we planned.

The first day, we hiked in just over two miles. The trail was awesome, winding around big trees…

As well as some gorgeous water

We set up the first night’s camp along the creek.

At this point, we were down low, just around 8,000′. That evening, we caught a bunch of browns, including one Kyle landed that was damn near 16″. The next day we got up early and hit the trail.  As we covered the 15 miles we had planned for the day, the trail angled up pretty quickly and the trees started to thin out.

We stopped for lunch right along the creek.

We fished this spot for a couple of hours, catching almost nothing but brookies in the process.   My buddy caught one good golden trout in a waist deep riffle that I would have skipped. So now he has biggest fish and the first golden of the trip.  Afterwords, we packed our packs, again, and headed up. And up. And up. After a couple of hours of hiking, my buddy was done- and I was tired, too- so we found a spot along the creek to camp.

After he got his lungs back, we fished the stream right next to camp.

And I finally caught the first couple of these…

As the sun began to set, we were attacked by the most hideous swarms of mosquitoes imaginable. Unable to even take a bite of food without getting them in our mouths, we were covered from head to toe with the damned things. It was horrible- and it happened each morning and evening for about two hours.
Kyle wasn’t able to train as much as he would have liked in preparation for the trip, and was really hurting at the high altitude. So after realizing that we were not going to make it to our original destination, it was decided that evening, that this camp at about 9,300′, would be our base camp for the next three days. We would strike out on day trips from here.

The next morning we packed what we needed for the day and hiked to a lake just above 10,000′. The hike took us past a high meadow…

And around the base of a 13,000′+ mountain we were going to try to summit.

The lake was beautiful.

We caught the heck out of goldens in this lake where they would often swim from 20 feet away to take our dry flies.

Somehow, we eventually got tired of catching trout after several hours of fish on almost every cast, and decided to spend some time exploring the area around the lake before heading back down to camp. On the way we passed a group of college-age kids who were clearing trails for the summer. Good on ‘em, wish I had taken a job like that one summer. Three of the guys were fly fisherman. They showed us a couple of places on the map to try next time and we left them with a couple of leaders as thanks.

The next day we planned to hike up to some small lakes above 11,000. We had a beautiful 4 mile hike through this…

Before stopping here for lunch…

This time I was cooked. Took my pack off and laid down on some granite for a few minutes. We only had to cross the creek and top the low ridge in the center of the picture. The lakes were in a hanging valley to the right of the summit in the background. We were close to another epic day of fishing.

Wait…is that thunder?

Yup, time to head down. We hauled ass to get back down to camp and hopefully away from the storm, but it followed us out of the valley and down to camp. It rained the rest of the afternoon and all night.

The high valley was nice and sunny in the distance though…

At least we had a rainbow.

And a nice little fire.

We fished the creek around camp the next day. The altitude was affecting Kyle so we high-tailed down to the car the following day. Hopefully, I’ll get back there and make it to those lakes. Third time’s the charm, right?