Much has been written in the past about the allure of dry fly fishing. Deservedly so, too. To many people it is the highlight of the fly fishing experience, watching a fish rise from the depths to poke his nose out of his world and into ours and inhaling a hook with a bit of feathers and fur on it in the process.
Ah, dry fly season. When you shove the nymph boxes a little bit further down in the pack and try to reorganize your dry boxes. Ha, when I first pulled mine out this year they were a complete jumble. Caddis were hanging out with the mayflies, the terrestrials were everywhere and a large number of them were just loose in the box with little bits of leader hanging out of the eye.
In the heat of the moment on the water you don’t have time to be very organized when fish are rising all around you.
Yesterday was the first real dry fly day I’ve had this year. My buddy Tre has been going through a rough patch, so after helping him move some furniture in the morning we decided to hit the Lower Madison. There is nothing like a day of fishing to get your mind off your troubles.
The day started off kind of slow. There weren’t too many bugs on the water, and we had to resort to nymphs. But the day wore on and we moved upstream. We both managed to pick up a few fish once we switched to dries.
But then it was like a someone flicked a switch.
Suddenly caddis were everywhere. Thousands upon untold thousands of caddis. Filling the air, flying into my mouth, crawling all over my arms, and covering my waders. If you’re as ticklish as I am, caddis crawling on you can prove to be a bit of a distraction. Both of us also saw a couple of salmonflies and golden stones in the mix as well.
As many bugs as there were, the fish just weren’t looking up. I managed to hook two monsters that were hanging right by the bank though. Each one of them took the fly, shook their massive heads, ran to deep water and just sat there. Didn’t fight, just sat. At that point I knew they were big fish. After five minutes of just standing there with a bent rod and no action on the other end I figured it might have gotten snagged up or something. So, like an idiot, I walked over, the fish didn’t move, and I grabbed the leader. A slab of a fish rolled underneath me, bumped my leg, shook the fly and was gone.
This happened twice, just like that. Happening once, that’s understandable. Twice in the span of ten minutes? Pretty damn stupid. Oops. Judging from the glance I got at both fish, they were easily pushing 20 inches. Easily.
So we moved up river, laughing and carrying on and having a grand old time. And then another switch got flicked. There was a rise. And another. And another. And another. Suddenly the entire river was covered with rising fish. So many that it’s hard to choose which one to cast to.
We started catching fish hand over fist. Almost every cast, if you were accurate enough. Since there were so many bugs on the water, you had to put the fly right into their feeding lane or they wouldn’t take it. Most of them were feisty 10-14 inch fish, with a couple bigger ones.
Tre caught the fish of the night when he noticed a nose peeking up now and then near the bank and landed this monster. After landing it, looking at it and releasing it, he looked at me and said something to the effect of “you know someone is looking out for you when your life can be completely shitty and you can still catch a fish like that on a dry fly”.
It reached a point where we caught enough fish to tie on oddball flies, just to see if they worked. I put on a Royal Wulff, and he tried a bright yellow Elk Hair Caddis. Both of them were unlike anything on the water, and both of them worked. Much to the consternation of the guy across the river, I might add. We were spotting risers, calling them out, casting to them and catching them one after another, and he couldn’t catch anything. Guess it’s not all about looking professional, is it dude?
Finally the day darkened, and the fish slowed down. That was the most epic day I’ve ever had on that river. It probably makes my top ten dry fly days of all time too. There is just something about the rise that breathes new life into a fisherman.
Like the song said in the video Mark put up a couple days ago, Dry or Die.
