This is the time of year in the Rocky Mountains when the variables of fly fishing can combine to form a game of chance. Spring fishing has provided some very nice moments and an angler wants very much to ride the wave of momentum on into the summer. However, the sometimes straightforward nature of early spring fishing–nymphs, streamers, and dries can all work, water tends to be low and clear, fish are hungry after a long winter–is replaced by a roulette wheel.
First, there are a lot of opportunities for truly excellent fishing. Hatches are either popping or getting ready to go–Mother’s Day Caddis, Blue Wing Olives, March Browns, even the mythical Salmonfly might begin to appear. Weather is warming enough that fishing can last all day if things go right. But that warm weather is melting a pretty decent snowpack and that snowpack is forming spiderwebs of cold water that run off the mountainside, pick up some color along the way and combine in a tributary of chocolate milk that may just dump into your river of choice, blowing the whole thing out just as the trout were ready to eat all those bugs.
Then, even if you pick the right stream with the right flows (dropping with a milky green tint to the water), you can be ambushed by the wind–windbushed. Spring wind in the Rockies reminds you that the all other seasons are just breezy. This is serious wind and often it doesn’t matter how well you can cast in it because the bugs get blown off the surface and the fish won’t rise. Sure you can throw streamers and/or nymphs (make sure to duck when the wind blows the whole rig straight at the back of your head) but you were looking for risers, man, and the wind low-holed you.
Looking at my fishing logs I noticed that some years I have not fished much in May at all. I think this is due to the fickle nature of late spring fishing and a work schedule that keeps me chained to the desk. Still this year I am set to go at least…well, once. I will probably get skunked and perhaps impaled by my own streamer pattern, but I will have gotten out there. And if things go poorly, I still have all the snow keeping the water cool. Meaning there is a great summer of fishing to be had.
But if things go well–if I pick a river that is dropping, if the bugs show, if the wind lies down a little that day and the sky grays and the bugs spend a fair amount of time de-schucking on the surface, if I hit my number on the roulette wheel of late spring fishing–well…crap, I probably just jinxed it.
