Reading Water

What does it mean to be a fly fishing guide? To an outsider taking a quick glance, it may look like a job where someone just "takes" a couple of anglers fishing for the day. Upon closer inspection, one realizes the breadth of tasks that a guide endures day in and day out. During a typical guided fly fishing trip, most fly fishing guides act as chauffeurs, food servers, skilled oarsmen, casting instructors, mending instructors, knot tiers, fly selectors, tangle experts, story tellers and therapists. In addition to all of this, we spend most of our day "reading water", and telling our anglers exactly where to cast. In fact, this is arguably the most important skill in fly fishing. A perfect cast, with the perfect fly, with a perfect drift over the wrong water will not net you a fish. Ninety percent of trout typically live in only ten percent of the water. Identifying, or "reading" this water is crucial to being successful. Over the past week, I had the chance to guide many skilled anglers on the Green River, the Snake River and the Wind River. All of these rivers were fishing well, with eager trout looking for dry flies in just the right spots. Many of my recent clients exhibited great casting and mending skills, but lacked in understanding how to read water. As I am rowing the river, I am always looking ahead to the next spot to have my clients cast their fly. Conveying the exact spot to both anglers while rowing can be difficult. Often, it takes numerous casts for the fly to finally hit the desired target, and by then, it is often too late. I guess the realization I had this week was that even when I get to guide an angler with a true expert level of casting and mending, if they can't read the water, it can still be very tough. Teaching someone how to read water is very difficult; the best way to learn, is to fish as much as possible with trial and error. Check out Reading The Water, by Dave Hughes...it's a great handbook that every fly fisher should have in his or her library.

For anyone interested, my buddy Mark Ditzler has a great website showing off some of his glass fish art. Check it out. Finally, enjoy this photo of a 26" Brown Trout netted in the Wind River Canyon (via one of Darren Calhoun's great guides), caught by my buddy John Holland. I'd say John can read water reasonably well. Great fish H-Bomb!!

The Snake Is On

I've just wrapped up a very consistent week of guiding on the Snake River in Grand Teton National Park. Despite the fact that the river is still running a bit high (4,600 cfs at Moose), the dry fly fishing has been very good. Reports from below Wilson have also been solid. If you do venture below Moose, the river is moving quite fast...make sure to walk the many new sidechannels. I've found Cutthroat from 8" up to 18" eating the usual suspects: Chernobyl Ants, Hoppers and large mayfly attractors. I had another lucky day on the Green River yesterday. Clouds in the morning produced some fantastic fishing for larger Brown Trout. If you can order up some dark skies, drop a Copper John under a large ant and hold on tight.
The South Fork continues to nymph very well, but where are the dries? Hopefully it will pop soon over there. Here's a couple of photos from the week. Lisa Smith with a great Snake River Cutty, as well as my good buddy and One Fly teammate Peter Chung with a typical Green River Brown Trout.

Can't We All Get Along?

The Snake River through Grand Teton National Park is probably one of the prettiest and most unique places around to take a float fishing trip. The special use permit that we operate under (via Jack Dennis) allows me to take commercial trips here and show anglers the beauty of the Tetons while throwing flies to native trout. Many other users also enjoy the water every day, including people in kayaks, rafts, and private fishing boats. There is also a heavy presence of scenic float trips. Private companies offer raft trips down the same sections of river that we guide on, looking for wildlife and admiring the Tetons. Over the years, many of the fishing guides have experienced at least some difficulty working side by side with these commercial rafts. There has been an unspoken rivalry between between us, whereby the fishing guides are often left to feel like the commercial guides are the ones that "own" the river and its boat ramps. Small confrontations happen a few times a summer between the guides on the river, and in parking areas. Sadly, I was the random victim of vandalism on Friday, when after parking my truck and trailer at Moose (to float down to Wilson), someone in the commercial parking lot drained one of my tires, and located my hidden shuttle key and discarded it. Apparently, someone else using that parking facility has not been happy with the way in which the commercial fishing guides have been parking there. It was a totally pathetic move, and can't imagine how someone gets to a point where they would attack someone's vehicle. Upon arriving in Wilson, my clients and I were left with no vehicle, and a message from my shuttle driver that my truck had been disabled. Not a great way to end the day. To all my fellow guides reading this: be aware! I know that we will continue to use the river and its boat ramps with the highest of standards, and would never stoop to such a level. If by some stroke of luck the person that did this is reading my blog, could you just simply let us know what the problem is with our parking? Thanks...



I was fortunately able to spend the day Saturday not thinking about this entire situation. Instead, I was thinking about the stellar fishing I was having on my day off with my buddy Stan Czarniak. Here's a few shots from our marathon float. More soon!

Fishin' In The 80's

Even though we are now entering the second week of August, area rivers are fishing like it is still early July. Although local rivers have dropped and cleared significantly over the past few weeks, they are all still running much higher than average for this date, and many of them are still far from clear. The Snake River below Jackson Lake Dam is running at 2,840 cfs, which is a great level. The water is crystal clear all the way to the confluence of the Buffalo Fork. The problem is that the Buffalo is still adding about 1,000 cfs right now and is running very silty. The average flow for the Buffalo for this date is only about 400 cfs. This is still making the Snake a very large river now. I fished today from Pacific Creek to Deadman's, and it was tough. Although we had good action on dry flies, all of the fish were very small. We did not hook, miss, spook or roll a fish over about 12". Although the Green is still fishing well, it is also running high for the date at about 900 cfs, where the average is about 500 cfs. The folks over in Idaho have finally lowered the South Fork levels to reasonable 9,000 cfs...we should see the dry fly action spark any day now over there.

I got a chance to head over to the Wind River last week to float below Dubois. As you may know, Darren Calhoun and Wind River Canyon Whitewater holds the only permit to drift and fish the Wind River below Dubois on the Wind River Indian Reservation. Darren is allowing me the chance to run a few trips over there this year with some select clients! I spent the day with Darren and two of his top guides, Cale and Marco. We made a reconnaissance run, checking out the water and a few of the boat launches. The river is still a bit too high to fish, but we had a great day anyway. Marco and Cale are great guys. Hanging with other guides for the day is a great way to learn new techniques, and discover new ways at guiding humor. One of the hardest thing to teach anglers in a driftboat is to cast forward...ahead of the boat. While Marco was on the oars with me in the back seat, Cale accidentally cast upstream into my water. Marco promptly told Cale to stop "fishing in the 80's". (It's in the past). Very funny stuff! Here's a shot from the back seat of one of Darren's boats. More soon...

A Welcome Monsoon

I just finished up a couple of days on the river with the Strazerri group. These guys come from San Diego a few times a year to throw some flies and enjoy Jackson. We hit the Upper South Fork yesterday pretty hard. The fishing over there is still not great. The flows remain at a pushy 13,500 cfs which make it a hard row to keep the boat where it needs to be. On top of that, the water is still very cloudy. We managed to nymph up a few fish, including a 16" Rainbow. We threw a large dry fly for the late-afternoon, and got a handful of Cutthroat to fall for it, with a 16" fish being the largest. We did not get a single fish in the riffles, which is usually the hot spot by late July. Not sure when the South Fork is going to pop.
We made our plans last night to head down to Pinedale and fish the Green today. The first day of August brought us some great weather to Western Wyoming...the Monsoon Flow. What does this mean? Well...we woke up today to thick clouds and light rain. The jet-stream changed and brought us a full day of clouds and moisture. My frequent readers probably know just how much I like cloudcover on the Green, especially after a 3-week run of sunshine and hot weather. The dry fly fishing really popped today, with plenty of Brown Trout looking up. Drakes and Chernobyl Ants did the trick. It looks like more of the Monsoon for this week, so hopefully the fishing holds up. The Snake looks like it is almost ready to go below Pacific Creek. I bet we are on it by next week. Here's my buddy Steve Mancini with a pair of beauties from today...a 21" and 20" Brown Trout that fell for dry flies in the rain. Great day today Steve! More soon!