Fly Tying: The Latest Rocky Ford Selection

I'm thinking about those Rocky Ford Rainbows. So I tied up some midgey dries.

And, for the next time I go subsurface, I'll show them some soft hackles.

But since I'll likely spend most of the time working on top I tied up some pretty little stimulators, too.

Of course, I'll keep some muddlers handy, some in the #12 range, like this one, and some a bit meatier.

You never know who you'll run into out there.

"Winter, Thirty Below with Sundogs" by Tom Hennen

The sun came up chased by dogs

Across a field of snow.

As they passed the pile of broken logs

Frost fluttered in the air

Between the birch trees

Standing in that spot exactly

Where the ridge becomes a hill.

In another thousand years

Sky and woods and land

Will have come to be there, still.

And still pursued all day, a winter fox

Too smart for dogs,

The sun goes in animal delight

Over the farthest edge of earth

Not far ahead of night

And jumps into the dark pool

With a last great splash of light.

"Winter, Thirty Below with Sundogs" by Tom Hennen,

from Darkness Sticks to Everything. © Copper Canyon Press, 2013.

REVIVE, Winter 2014

Get Revived HERE.

The Artist and the Fly Fisher

Very nice. Makes me want to be an artist.

Rocky Ford Creek Report: The Purple Glow

It's time to fish. I climb out of the snowy Okanogan valley and up onto the foggy flats. It feels like being on top of the world with your head in the clouds.

On the other side I pass out of the clouds and descend toward the Grand Coulee.

Following the route of the glaciers, and passing the lakes and potholes left over from the great flood of ten thousand years ago, I traverse the coulee to its southern end where it opens up on a rolling plain strewn with glacial rubble. Through this plain flows Rocky Ford Creek.

It's snowless here, and around 40 degrees. But the creek doesn't care about the ordinary winter weather. Being a spring creek, it flows at a constant temperature ideal for trout. That keeps its trout fat and sassy throughout the year, and that in turn, and the year-round open season, attracts fly fishers from all over the west and beyond.

It must be one of those days. The parking lots are full, and the banks are studded with bundled up figures casting in nearly synchronized rhythm. Since wading is forbidden, finding a good spot in the cattails along the bank is essential to success.

Someone is in my usual spot, so I set up a little closer to the parking area than I like.

It's a nice spot, though, and there is plenty of room for casting. Fish are active, waking and rising all up and down the waterway. But there doesn't seem to be very much catching going on. That's true for me, too, at first.

I start with a big Callibaetis dry that was still on the line from the last trip. No interest on the part of the fish. So I try a flashy little bead head woolly bugger. There are days when that's the hot item. But not today. So I go back on top with a medium muddler. Still nothing. But now I'm committed to fishing dries, so I tie on a stimulator and begin to work it in a wide arc.

While I fish, a beautiful little long-billed marsh wren keeps me company.

After awhile the fish seem to get more active, and I discover that a fast strip of the stimulator will evoke follows and bumps. Pretty soon I have my first hookup, and bring the first fish of 2015 to hand. As Rocky Ford Rainbows go, this one is a baby, but, like the New Year's Baby, it comes in with lots of promise for a good year.

I catch several more on the stimulator, all on the small side. Then I bring one in that's just heavy enough to require the net. At the least, the net gives me a full view of its beautiful form and coloration.

I look downstream and see that, in the ongoing game of musical chairs, the fisher below me has gone somewhere else. So I pick up and move on down.

I have come to know this stretch. The channel is a little deeper here, and there's a slight bend that creates a seam that can hold fish. I'm hoping to find some of the bigger variety.

I stay on top. I enjoy staying active and working flies that I can see. I enjoy just as much cracking the fly boxes and putting several different patterns through their paces.

While I fish the sun breaks out for one brief shining moment.

It's like an omen. Moments later a fish turns on a little muddler and is hooked. While still not one of the fabled Rocky Ford bruisers, this is a good fish. He acquits himself well in the ensuing struggle.

Many of the other fishers are making their way to the lot and pulling out for home. I stay and fish.

I'm casting another pretty stimulator, this one with natural deer hair, a dark body, and grizzly hackle. My kind of fly. The fast strip isn't working here, so I'm trying a variety of presentations. I get some follows and bumps, but no takes. Then I get nothing.

The sky begins to light up with what promises to be a beautiful sunset. I keep fishing--this time of evening can always be prime time for big flies on top--but I also keep my eyes on the sky and my camera close at hand.

A chilly breeze picks up. I cast the stimulator out into the main channel where it bobs on the riffles, then turn, pull out the camera, and get ready to take a final shot of the sunset at the height of its color. I cradle the rod in my left arm and snap this picture--and the rod jerks like a dowsing rod.

I whirl around, shove the camera back in my pocket, and get a grip on the rod all in the same movement. I'm just in time to see a big Rainbow come clean out of the water and hang in the air like a purple neon sign before crashing down and churning away upstream.

And then he's off.

I grieve for a second, like we do, then strip in line, determined to keep fishing with that lucky stimulator. That's when I see the bare tippet.

That was the one. The one who takes your fly and your self respect. The one who keeps you coming back for more. The one who lights up the darkness of an unknown future with the purple glow of Possibility.

"Vertical" by Linda Pastan

Perhaps the purpose

of leaves is to conceal

the verticality

of trees

which we notice

in December

as if for the first time:

row after row

of dark forms

yearning upwards.

And since we will be

horizontal ourselves

for so long,

let us now honor

the gods

of the vertical:

stalks of wheat

which to the ant

must seem as high

as these trees do to us,

silos and

telephone poles,

stalagmites

and skyscrapers.

But most of all

these winter oaks,

these soft-fleshed poplars,

this birch

whose bark is like

roughened skin

against which I lean

my chilled head,

not ready

to lie down.

"Vertical" by Linda Pastan, from Traveling Light. © Norton, 2010. 

Bonne Annee' from Hooke'

January Beauty

New Year's Resolution

Fish with a better class of people.

From The Salmon Fly: How to Dress It and Use It, by George M. Kelson, 1895.

Swing the Fly, Winter 2015

If you can't get on the water where you are, you can still have the vicarious experience by wading in HERE.

Happy New Year!

A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL OF YOU!

May 2015 be your best year yet.

"To the New Year" by W.S. Merwin

With what stillness at last

you appear in the valley

your first sunlight reaching down

to touch the tips of a few

high leaves that do not stir

as though they had not noticed

and did not know you at all

then the voice of a dove calls

from far away in itself

to the hush of the morning

so this is the sound of you

here and now whether or not

anyone hears it this is

where we have come with our age

our knowledge such as it is

and our hopes such as they are

invisible before us

untouched and still possible

"To the New Year" by W.S. Merwin, from Collected Poems 1996-2011. © Library of America, 2013.