Ten Feet of Trout Return to Newsletter
by Bill Blanton
It was just before dusk and I was sitting on the back porch of the guest cottage at a Cody, Wyoming, ranch when I noticed a big wake on the far side of the pool behind the house.
I'd come to call it the Home Pool, but to tell the truth, I hadn't fished it much. It was at the tail-end of a stream that flowed through the ranch property and was somewhat weedy and discolored because of all the nutrient that seeped in the water as it made its way through the ranch.
Far upstream, the owner had improved the stream flow and set up automated feeding stations. The result was a bunch of super-sized trout -- bows, browns and brookies -- that he liked to exercise with barbless hooks and heavy leaders. A couple of nights before, I'd fished with him in the improved area and landed two 20-plus inch fish and broke off a couple more that were even larger. But I hadn't seen any of those big guys this far from the improved area. And no feeding was being done in this part of the stream.
Downstream from the Home Pool was the South Fork of the Shoshone River, where I'd been fishing for the past few days, catching dozens of browns, ranging in size from little bitty up to around 18 inches.
I hadn't bothered with the Home Pool. But that wake intrigued me. My 4-weight was already rigged and waiting on the porch, so I put on an 0X leader and a big black cricket imitation and headed for the water.
Two casts later I experienced a violent strike. I was hooked up with what would turn out to be a 28-inch rainbow. He fought hard on the surface, then tried to dive down in the weeds. I held the rod high to keep him close to the top while I wrestled with a landing net that suddenly seemed inadequate. After a few minutes I guided him into the net, confirmed his length, and released him. He was a magnificent fish, deep-bodied and muscular, with a head that seemed disproportionately small. I'd seen fish like this in other rich environments. I call them "Arnolds" after the body-builder and movie star. They look like they're pumped up on steroids. Which, in a way, this one was, since at some point in his life, he'd been fed a steady diet of trout pellets in addition to whatever natural food he found in the stream.
I figured "Arnold" must have made his way downstream from the improved area.
I took a few minutes to calm down, checked my tippet, and started casting again. Pretty soon I had another Arnold on, again a rainbow, this one a little under 24 inches. The drill was the same, but after I released him, I decided to rest the pool (and myself) for a few minutes. After that pause, I cast again and got another bow of the same size, then another a little bit bigger.
That was four fish bigger than any trout, except one, that I'd ever caught. By this time I was really hyped, so I kept casting for another 15 or 20 minutes, with no results.
I figured all the activity had shut the pool down, so I reeled in and started walking back towards the cottage. Just as I got to the porch, I saw another wake on the near side of the pool. I hurriedly stripped out line and cast. A fish hit, and a few minutes later I netted a brown almost the same size as the first rainbow I caught.
By the time I released him, it was dark, so I reeled in for good.
It came to me during dinner that night: In the course of about 40 minutes, I'd caught five fish that totaled more than 10 feet in length.
That evening of the big fish was one of several highlights to a 12-day trip to Wyoming. My wife and I stayed on the ranch for four days. Every day, I'd hike downstream to the South Fork of the Shoshone to try my luck with the browns. It was private water, lightly fished, and I caught a lot of fish. It was sort of unique in my experience. The water was low -- I'd walk over extensive gravel beds, part of the spring and early summer stream-bed, to fish relatively small rivulets, but any area with more than a few inches of water in it held fish. I caught them on dries, nymphs, terrestrials -- even lured one out of a deep hole with a cone-head zonker.
The browns were lying in the faster water where I would normally expect to find rainbows, and almost all of them jumped like rainbows once they were hooked.
The first day, I was simply delighted to catch any fish at all, not having fished for trout in two years. The second day, the weather turned just a bit cooler, and the fish were biting like crazy. I could do no wrong. I think I caught more trout that day than I have ever caught in a single day of fishing. The next two days, I tried to refine my technique and fish the deeper runs where the bigger browns might be lurking. I had a little success at that, catching several fish up to 18 inches, but I think I would have done better if I'd had a little more time.
When I wasn't concentrating on fish, I was enjoying the wildlife. We saw pronghorn antelope, whitetail deer, otter, muskrats, bald eagles, pelicans, coyote. I was a little concerned about grizzlies, since they'd trapped one on the ranch shortly before we got there, tranquilized it, and transported it to another area. We carried pepper spray everywhere we went but never saw any sign of bear.
Unfortunately, after four days, our time at the ranch was up, so we headed into Cody and holed up at a motel. Over the next few days, I got together with a Cody guide, Scott Sweebe of Eastgate Anglers (http://www.eastgateanglers.com). We fished the Greybull River, Newton Lakes in Cody, and, with my wife, drifted the Shoshone right through town. We sort of got rained out on the Greybull, but still managed to catch a couple of native cutthroats (and four whitefish). At Newton Lakes, I got a hefty, Arnold-like 19-inch rainbow on a tiny pattern of Scott's design, called the "dental floss nymph." The drift trip was productive but frustrating because of the high, discolored water and the weed growth, which forced us to clean the fly off after every couple of casts. Scott said it would be better in the fall when the water level is lower and water clarity is better.
The Newton Lakes trip was my first time in a one-man pontoon boat, and the experience stood me in good stead, because a couple of days later, I journeyed by myself to Monster Lake about 7 or 8 miles out of Cody and tried my luck there.
Outfitted in another one-man pontoon boat, I could row around the lake, then maneuver myself in position with force fins. Early in the morning, I saw a callibaetis hatch in some calm water near the shore. I tied on a CDC dun Scott had given me and cast to rolling fish in much the same way you would cast to rolling tarpon. I had about the same result, too ... nada ... until, finally, one fish went for the dry. He really hammered it, then dove for the bottom. I put as much pressure on him as I could with a 4-weight and a 4X tippet, and after a short time, I had him in the net. It was a 19-inch rainbow, Arnold-shaped, with beautifully vivid colors. I released him and started casting with renewed optimism.
It was for nothing, though. I didn't get another bite the rest of the morning.
Around noon, I rowed over to shore to stretch and eat a bite. Steve Bassett, the owner, came by and suggested I try hoppers instead of matching the hatch. "Just be patient," he said. "Let them sit for about 20 seconds and then give a little twitch."
I did just that when I got back on the water and was rewarded with four nice fish, three of them about the size of the first, the fourth a little better. The last one was really something. I was adjusting one of the oars on the pontoon boat with my right, rod, hand when he hit, so I had to set the hook left-handed. That was awkward. Then the fish porpoised across the surface for about 20 or 30 feet, as if he were a bonefish taking off across a shallow flat. For a while, he was essentially towing me around the lake in the pontoon boat. When I finally netted him, he turned out to be 23 inches.
I caught one more nice fish, this one on a Clouser minnow stripped fast on a sinking line.
That was six fish in all. Again, I had approximately 10 feet of trout in a relatively short period of time.
Our last fishing day in Cody, Scott and I got up early and drove to Yellowstone Park. We came in through the Northeast entrance, which means we went through Cooke City, Montana, surely one of the coolest spots in North America. Remember the town in the TV show "Northern Exposure"? Well, Cooke City is similar -- down home fly shops and bars and motels, side-by-side with yuppy haunts like a coffee shop where I bought a Danish and a double mocha something-or-other to fortify me for the last few miles of the trip.
We'd planned on fishing the Lamar River, but there were so many fishermen there, we decided to check out the Soda Butte first.
There were a lot of people fishing, but most of them weren't doing much good. They'd make a few casts in one pool, then move on up to the next pool and do the same. Scott thought we should be more methodical in our approach. We started with attractor dries -- a stimulator for him, a hopper for me. When we didn't get any results with those, we added a dental floss nymph on a dropper and immediately pulled three cutts from a run that had just been deserted by two other anglers.
After that, we moved up to the next run and fished it for the rest of the morning. A Green Drake hatch came on, so we matched that for a while, first with dries, then with nymphs. After the hatch died out, we switched to beetles and caught a few fish with those. We kept ourselves entertained in that spot for about three hours, then took a break for lunch.
We drove over to one of the turnoffs for the Lamar to eat, thinking we'd hike the mile or so across the Lamar Valley to the stream after lunch. While we were eating, a tour bus pulled up and parked in front of us in the turnoff. I expected to see a few tourists hop out to snap pics, but, no, the bus was full of fly fishermen. They came off the bus in twos and threes, decked out in the latest fly fishing garb -- waders, vests, hats -- toting new rods and nets and wading staffs. Scott and I looked sort of shabby in comparison in our shorts -- we were wading wet -- and old frayed vests and raggedy fishing hats.
Eventually, I think about 20 people got off that bus and started to trek to the stream. Scott and I looked at each other: "Let's go back to the Soda Butte," we both said.
Back on the stream, we found another run recently deserted by other anglers. We fished it for a couple of hours, changing patterns from time to time and consistently catching fish -- with a few lulls while we changed flies or rested the pool. The most fun thing we did there was sight-fish to visible fish with small nymphs. Judging by the tracks in the area, the run was an animal watering hole, so the fish weren't particularly shy about movement on the bank. We rigged up with the dental floss nymph in size 18 on 6X tippets, with a size 24 nymph on a dropper. We'd cast a bit upstream of the visible fish, then drift the flies down into their feeding lane. They'd rise to check them out, sometimes refusing, but taking the fly often enough to keep it interesting. Scott was using a 2-weight; I had a 3-weight, so even the small fish were fun to play.
We caught a bunch in the 12-14-inch range and a few 16-inchers.
After a couple of hours, we moved downstream to yet another run recently deserted by frustrated anglers. I saw a rise near the tail of the pool, so I tried one of my favorite techniques, a downstream cast with a reach mend. Then I roll-cast a little extra line out to get a long drag-free drift, and hooked my biggest fish of the day, a beautiful 18-inch cutthroat.
Our last spot for the day was a gorgeous J-shaped pool with undercut banks. By the time we got there, it was dusk, and a midge hatch was on. We changed to a #18 gnat pattern -- what Scott calls his "Jimi Hendricks Gnat," since it had touch of purple and yellow in it. Eventually, we downsized to #24 Jimi Hendricks.
Whatever the name, they worked great. I pulled three risers out of the inside curve of the "J." Scott got a fish from the head of the pool that challenged my 18-incher for fish of the day honors, and we just kept at it until we couldn't fish any more. The last half-hour or so, we took turns casting to a large fish who'd found the perfect lie -- a cutout in the far bank where the currents were complex enough to guarantee it was impossible for an angler to offer him a drag-free drift. We both tried, with slack line casts both unstream and down. The best we could do was lure him away from the bank a little. Suddenly, we saw something big and brown in the water near the fish. It turned out to be a baby beaver who was moving from hole to hole. We took that as a sign we weren't going to get the big guy.
Finally I made a long cast towards the tail of the pool and started reeling in. Just as the leader was coming into the guides, a small fish hit. He'd followed the fly all the way across the pool. I landed and released him. "That's it for me," I said. Scott agreed and we started the weary walk back to the car.
On the way, we paused to look at the scene behind us -- the sun was setting in the mountains sheltering the Lamar Valley. We could see buffalo grazing in the distance, and a flock of mallards flew overhead, silhouetted in the darkening sky. It was the end of a perfect, seamless day of fishing.
And the end of the trip. The next day, I slept through most of the long flight back to Florida, and tonight, a week or so later, I'm still dreaming about Wyoming.
I'll be back.
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