geartalk

The Reverse Eddy

True or false? Trout always face upstream in rivers.

The answer: false.

Trout usually face up-current in rivers (though not always), and as currents inevitably mix and swirl under myriad influences that shape water directions (banks, rocks, timber and so on), it’s common to find trout facing downstream, feeding into that current.

The classic example of this is the river eddy: water washes around a giant rock or a gravel bar with such force that it creates a vortex, where water is spun around in reverse. These eddies are often prime spots for holding big trout, especially when mayflies, midges and caddis are present, either nymphs or adults.

When reading water and assessing a run, always look for an eddy first. You know that main seam is there, and you know how to fish that, but spend a few minutes before that first cast by taking a long, hard look for an eddy.

The first telltale is watching the pattern of bubbles, twigs, leaves and other flotsam on the surface. Insects on the surface are, of course, the best sign of all.

If you see the patterns of a reverse eddy in place, assume there are fish in it, and the reason those fish would be there is to eat.

The best cast to cover an eddy is a snake cast, where you leave slack at the end of your line, and gently feed that slack into the eddy as your flies drift upstream.

It’s an extremely technical maneuver, but it can be very exciting, as you’ll see and feel strikes much more effectively in the relative calm of an eddy.

BONEDALE FISHING REPORT #7

APART FROM THE PULLING AND HAULING STANDS WHAT I AM

I live in a neighborhood on the Oakland border, lined with mom-n-pop shops selling fresh fruit, baked goods, confections and miscellany. Old men linger, trying to figure out what happened to their acid-laden souls. They sip coffee and smile at some invisible, perpetually-suspended funny bone mallet. They’re what’s left of the pre-Starbuckian era. In the middle of it all the fashion whores neatly organize the pain of yesteryear into new shoes, clothing lines, coffee drinks, or neighborhoods where you can window shop ghetto. The indigenous tribes are no dummies and feast upon this harvest with bittersweet resentment. They realize they represent some yearning for hardship, so they play into the tattered $200 designer jeans, junkie-wannabe persona. In Carbondale, yesteryear is the 10th Mountain Division, coal miners and cattlemen. Birthing calves at 3 a.m., sub-zero, shoulder-deep in mother’s blood–cowboy, wind and animal moaning low. Double pay if you stay more than eight hours in the pitch-black mine, always darkest and coldest before dawn. – Eric Hause, my brother in arms.

The further west you go, the weirder it gets until you hit the next good piece of water, which is the Pacific. From the glassy barrels of Kauai to the Bahamas and beyond, we always come back to our trout streams–freestone rivers where anything’s possible. The mighty Colorado survives in spite of rolling gas fires, truckers headed the wrong way, smoking canyon walls. It’s counterintuitive to run into fire. If you don’t feather the oars, you have to resort to deep strokes, which always is a rookie move. My friends, you don’t toy with gravity, and the Colorado is not to be fucked with. Wade carefully and know your sections, especially if you’re floating. People from all over the west come to surf its waves. There’s a new roller just outside of Palisade that tempts me, but what if one of those errant gas trucks tumbles into the river? The biggest trout I’ve ever seen have been on the lower Colorado–a Brown and Bow too big to even guess. It’s not an easy river to fish and eats boats every year. I’ve come close on multiple occasions, and it scares me more than big Pacific surf, but between it, the Fork and the Crystal, there’s enough water to explore five lifetimes. I’ve been fishing these drainages my entire life and would be a liar if I said I knew them well.

CUT AND PASTE AT YOUR DISCRETION. Tim Heng and I went after the Monster Bass but to no avail. The Mother’s Day hatch has moved up-river and the waters on the Coli are in great shape–cold nights are keeping the runoff at bay. We’re hoping for another big flush and perhaps we’ll catch some Koi and Macks blasting over the spillway.

Live from the WORLD HEADQUARTERS

Kea C. Hause

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The mailbox at the Hause residence, where I was informally “adopted” for a number of years, living in their basement. Photo: Copi Vojta

Make Big Water Small

Most of us started fly fishing on small streams. They’re easy to wade and easy to read. You have that one log sticking out in the current, scouring the river bottom, and you can guess there’s a good chance that Mr. Brown Trout might be hanging around it.

But what do you do when you get on a big, wide river, like the Madison, the Bighorn, the South Fork of the Snake, the Green, the Colorado, or the Delaware?

Among the guides I’ve fished with on these rivers, from Patty Reilly in Wyoming to Bob Lamm in Idaho to Joe Demalderis in New York, they all say that the key to reading them is to make big water small.

By that, they mean taking a river that’s 50 yards wide and mentally dividing it into five 10-yard-wide sections. If you’re wading upstream, start with the 10-yard section that’s closest to the bank. Look for fish first. Now look for changes in structure–a rock, a log, a dropoff. Also look for changes in currents. Is there a spot where fast water meets slow water? Look for a depression in the bottom. If you’ve found the changes, make your casts: 10 casts, covering all the hotspots on your radar.

Nothing happened? Move out from the bank to the next 10-yard-wide section of water. Look for the same things–current breaks, structure, dropoffs–and cover them with solid casts.

Nothing happened? Move toward the middle and repeat the process. Do this until you can’t wade any deeper (if you’re wading big rivers, it usually is too deep to work all the way across), and until you feel you’ve made enough casts.

Next, wade upstream and start the process over. Make big water small in your mind. Divide and conquer, always working from the bank outward.

Where Would You Be?

When reading water, ask yourself this simple question: If I were a trout, where would I be? Understand that your life revolves around three things: eating, not being eaten and making little fish.

In the context of fly angling, the eating part is most important. Playing the role of trout, you understand that you primarily eat insects and smaller fish. You know that you’ll find more of both closer to the banks, so that’s a good starting point to choose where you want to hang out in the river.

The insects you eat come in all forms: nymphs, emergers, adult bugs hatching, adult spinners falling to the surface to lay eggs, terrestrials falling into the river and so forth. You know that mayflies, for example, like to lay eggs on gravel bottoms, and that that is where nymphs, emergers, duns and spinners are likely to concentrate.

Currents also concentrate insects. Bugs get trapped and collected in the seam where fast water bumps up against slow water, for example. You (the trout) want to be near that seam, in a place where you aren’t expending more calories to swim than you can consume.

At the same time, you don’t want to become calories for another predator. You want to find cover in those rocks or under that log. Lacking thick cover, my exit strategy is to go to deep water. There has to be a place where I can escape to the depths when I’m threatened.

Making little fish is another matter. We spawn on gravel. Hopefully, the angler reading this essay won’t mess with me when I’m on a spawning bed.

The more you ask yourself, “If I were a trout, where would I be?” while you are on the water, fishing, the easier reading water becomes. Thinking like a fish will make places and targets pop out before you cast. You’ll overlook fewer targets, and catch more trout.