The Mysteries of Fly Fishing

Hands down, June is my favorite month in Idaho.  It’s the only time of year where everything is glowing in greenery.  Its also a great time for dry fly fishing on the Upper reaches of the Henry’s Fork.

 

 

Granny and I found ourself camped behind the old A-Bar at Last Chance early Tuesday morning.  We had a big night at the Trouthunter Bar and Grill with longtime buddy Ben Smith.  After a tasty cup of coffee overlooking the river we crushed a huge breakfast and headed to the parking lot to rig for the day.

 

Last Chance on the Henry’s Fork is a unique fishery.  Doing it right means you only match the topwater hatch.  This means dry fly only.  And you don’t blind cast here.  You find a rising rainbow then go for it.  Most of the time these fish are challenging.  This is the place where the old saying of “These trout have PHD’s in Entomology”, came from.

 

The day was a stunner.  We had complete cloud cover, no wind and it was above average warm for this time of year.  I’d say it was 72° at 9 AM.  I casually tied on a “Currier Abortion” and went to work (a PMD pattern I poorly tied myself back in winter of 1987).  It took me a mere 5 minutes to find a big fish and one cast to hook him.  He spit the hook on his fifth jump.  That’s fine with me.

 

I took two steps upstream and found another.  Surprisingly, my lousy looking Abortion got eaten again.  That was my second cast.  This fish also ran hard and jumped.  He spit the hook too.  No big deal.  It’s easier this way.  Wow, I thought.  This is going to be one heck of a day.

 

Well, these wise ole Henry’s Fork rainbows kept on eating my fly.  It was crazy.  Did 2020 suddenly make them stupid?  It seemed weird that almost every big fish I found ate on the first cast.  I got ten in a row to eat my fly.  People fishing around me were giving me that look of, “What the heck are you using dude?  But even odder however, was that I lost every single one of these fish after a couple jumps.  Was I tarpon fishing?

 

By the time the 11^th nice rainbow sucked down my Abortion I was ready to get my hands on one.  Yeah, I’ve handled plenty in my day but its not like I get sick of them.  But number eleven ran jumped and got away.  I’d already checked my hook several times and once again, it was fine.

 

There are many obscureness’s in fly fishing but today was a new one for me.  I’ve definitely lost five or six fish in a row.  But today I lost every single fish I hooked.  Perhaps over 15.  I was a little disappointed to say the least to be skunked on my favorite water in such a bizarre way.

 

But getting blanked was one thing.  Perhaps stranger than losing so many fish, was that I actually got 15 large Last Chance rainbows to eat my fly in the same fishing session!  I can’t remember these fish ever being so gullible in all my life.

 

If you fly fish enough you see it all.  I can honestly say I’ve never had such a day as today.  Were the fish smart as always but I just had magnificent presentation today?  I don’t think so.  Somehow that doesn’t match my inability to land a single trout.  Today was simply one of those mysteries in fly fishing.

 

At 3:30 I called it.  The hatch finally tapered off, the skies cleared and a big wind started.  I was also pretty dang tired.  We headed for the gravel pits for a nice quiet camping evening with a few of the Henry’s Fork regulars.

 

Jeff Currier Global Fly Fishing