Brazda's Fly Fishing

 Oncorhynchus mykiss,

The highly sought after game fish of North Western United states, the popularity of catching steelhead has risen to the for front in western angling, how you catch them will always be controversial. I have been using a Spey rod since 1990 and it dramatically increased my SENSE of catch ability, I say sense because it actually did not catch me more BUT I could fish it more, then came the higher catch rate, I definitely like to catch them more on the Spey rod than any other method!.

Now since I started nymphing steelhead on the fly rod I found that catching them in high percentages was better for the psyche and later found that my clients liked it MUCH better as well. Imagine that, paying to go steelheading and expecting to catch them, what a concept; it actually may have pissed off some of the guides and anglers that did not catch so many steelhead.

To this day I see many steelheaders’s that use the Spey as a tool to cast to the other side of the river or to throw300 grain heads and not as a tool to fish the water they stand in. The Spey rod has born a revival in swing fishing for steelhead like no other tool since High Speed Hi-D from Sci. Anglers.

What is not remembered or learned so much in the first few years or 10, of using the 14 ft tool is how to fish the swing, our fly fishing forefathers learned how to fish the swing out of necessity, but in the slow days for steelhead fly fishing 1970-1986 (the drift fishing era) it had been forgotten. Now armed with the POWER of the Spey, the shoot first maybe land a dumb one later approach, runs rampant! I know of very, very few anglers ( I do know a lot of anglers) that actually can go into a river with a good run of steelhead in it and catch one entirely on skill and  technique. I do however know that by combining yesterdays approach to swing angling with today’s swing tool an angler can be pretty dam good at catching swung fish as a daily routine.

 Teaching the old school methods take time, much more time than teaching new methods, old school methods are acquired from time with the line under tension wile swinging the fly, having a rod the caster is used to handling helps dramatically.

Fortunately for the other 95% of the self taught week- end anglers there desired subject will at times go berserk and attack shit just out of meanness.

This is one of the reasons steelhead are the coolest fish in fresh water. One of the best swing anglers I know Vern Olsen once told me he’s fishing for the ones that eat  it with HATRED and he has found a lot of them.

 Now since being a fishing guide I could not be happy taking MONEY for a job that was so often left unrewarded, I approached steelhead fishing from a new angle. Back when the upper Hoh River on the Olympic Peninsula finally went to catch and release and No Bait is when I decided I would take this love of steelhead to the next level. I started guiding clients for steelhead and we did not always use the swing. I discovered that even though all I had ever done was  fly fish for steelhead on the swing, I did not get the feeling that clients where satisfied with a couple grabs or a few Dolly on an average day. I really know that I  wasn’t, I simply felt I owed them more, they needed to see the fish, feel the fish on the line at a much higher percentage of the time, they needed to handle this great fish and get that feeling of total content, that the world is great again and life is good. I wanted them to see and feel as I did about the steelhead, that there beauty and power was respectable and obtainable.

 The first day I tried nymphing for steelhead I did not really know how to even nymph for Trout let alone steelhead. I did know I felt dirty about it what I did not know was how great it was to be dirty! My convictions told me it was disrespectful to the fish, come to find out those where other peoples inherited convictions through the mystic of publications.

My upbringing as a very young steelheader was either bait or swing the fly, bait when we went plunking due to dirty water then swinging when we could. Pure bait during the competitive years,(82-88) buddy fishing, taught me where the steelhead lived and when. Swinging the fly with my grandfather taught me exactly that, how to swing old school. Swinging the fly religiously again after I felt I had caught my share drift fishing ’88- 96.

 Now I was venturing into new waters so to speak and it was a complete turn around in success from just swinging all those hours for the grab or a really good day four steelhead.

So there I am sitting in the upper Hoh with an 8wt and a dry line, twist on lead and orange yarn on a hook, I have just landed my 8^th steelhead and am all by myself and within sight of the boat launch. I cannot remember the last time I had done that even with bait, I was ecstatic about steelhead again, fact is more than ever. I still stuck with the swinging thing; I was making custom lines for Spey rods all the wile nymphing whenever I felt like; no one was watching or catching more than the one a day. I soon found myself nymphing a lot going to zipper lip rivers and streams with my old bait buddies and crushing them, the same ones that thought I was crazy for fly fishing steelhead at all. I soon fell out of the loop and went rogue, I was on my own no support team. All the while fencing the Spey angling tradition, hell I was selling a hundred lines a year on the side, custom sink tips and Spey Lines. Rio came out with some great lines and finally made a GOOD loop on them so it gave me an out, I could get off the extra work train of looping lines at night and just go catching.

  I started guiding a lot more and really learned how to nymph trout on the Yakima while guiding it. So here I am over twelve years later and catching steelhead like it was 1985 while tossing sand shrimp. I have pretty much developed my style of angling that generally keeps me and my clients happy. The big runs have returned to nearly all the rivers, the stream etiquette is the best of any state. I am using the nymph rod just as another tool in the big game of it all even though many still feel it is a sin. (Guide hint) What some anglers don’t adhere to is the use of a tool that will get them the end results more often even if it to catch a swung fly steelhead every day.

So at year 2010 I am more compelled to not fish the nymph rod when I go angling myself, this has been creeping up on me, this feeling of had caught enough on one type or another just as in 1989 when the bait rod started its cobweb collection. My Spey rods have all been broken numerous times from cliental abuse and I feel that I owe them some love and affection this is my year the year I come full circle again in my never ending pursuit of the Steelhead it’s time to bring back old school swinging!

 

Very rarely do I get the opportunity to fish TOTALLY new water with a client, water that I had never even seen. The type that you carry a map in the river and keep track of mileage and bridges so not to pass the GET OUT. It is definitely not something I would ever do with a paying client had they not totally understood that I had no idea of what was around the next bend.

Earlier this week I spent three days on the Missouri river by Craig Montana when all the good water in SW was a raging torrent. Of course we could of went to the Beav and jammed our boat between thirty others and fifty bankies but I would rather T-BAG a chainsaw than do that. Chuck Keenan, Harry Lee and his son Chris where up for the adventure of traveling north to the big rainbows of the Mo. Now, I have spent a few weeks above Mid Canon in the last two years and had a good handle on that water but below that was just the Atlantic Ocean as far as I knew. Of course as soon as we arrive the same snow melt issue was traveling there and the Mo was rising a couple thousand cfs a day, NOT what you want for the blind mission I was on.

With the best advice we could find from Headhunters fly shop, we headed into the great beyond with some crazy ass new RAINBOW CHEK NYMPH and the GAFF a SW pro guide special. It really felt like fifteen years earlier when we would road trip it to far away rivers in hope of finding what we had recently read in some shiny dream laced publication. Loaded with enthusiasm of a pointing dog on opening day of pheasant season we hit everything hard and found fish on most corners and drops, probably the best scud fishing in a river I have ever seen. Soon we were out of the CHEK nymph and scratching out a few on felt penned ray Charles.

Every year I add to the list of clients that will do anything that it takes and Chuck Keenan was on the top of that list, a very educated and seriously calm hearted man with a lust for gods natural beauty that makes us all proud to just be a human. We had a stroke of genus the next day along with some in-tel from fellow guide Scott Wison a few days earlier and headed for the never seen stretches down from Mid Cannon. Armed with ten different worm patterns and more Chek nymphs we hit the insides at four to seven feet deep and semi slow to slow. Pumped a few fish that were full of 18 PT’s and nothing else, and no they did not eat PT’s. It was worms or nothing, and the bite was ridiculously soft to the point of NOT hooking the bite, none of them. Harry Lee was totally on point and ripping them at a twitch of the bob he landed 7 or 8 before lunch and Chuck and I were shooting blanks. Just when diving head first into the next rock pile seemed like the best thing to do, I go desperate and pull out another new fly (if you can call it that) the gummy I had ONE,, mostly as a novelty. Oh yea you know what happens, drift thirty feet and two foot of Rainbow trout is skipping all over the river. The trout where hanging onto that THING like it was gold on wall street. After the initial shock hitting the EASY button I remember that we only have one, out comes the 1X and all knew knots. 10 fish later and a few reties we loose the gummy to a giant Brown that left us holding on a little too tight. With that action came the overwhelming confidence and a certain speedy reaction that gave us another good chunk of fish on the Gaff.

The float down from Mid Cannon is breathtakingly beautiful, the rock formations, evergreens and big trout are certain to see Chuck and myself again and we may just have to go farther to repeat Winging it!

Olympic Peninsula 2010 (Video)

Over the last 30 plus years I have been chasing steelhead in Washington state, the last 15 years have been bordering on psychotic tendency, my wife of 24 years will attest to that.  About every seven years the natural cycle makes an up curve and generally peaks every 10-12 years. These peak years to a fishing guide is nothing short of a gift from GOD. This past season has seen a spike of monstrous proportions, one like I have not seen since 1985/86 in Puget Sound. I spent a few weeks on the OP that year but found ten fish days the norm on my then home water the Green and Puyallup and my measly wages and 63 VW was not in for the constant haul to the holy grounds.

Spending well over 100 days a year on steelhead water coupled with the best run in any lifetime has padded my steelhead numbers to epic levels. I feel blessed to have experienced such a season and am preparing for the norm come next October when I return to the river of my ancestors, my beloved Methow. We should all be thankful for this return of our majestic steelhead as there is one rule that a die hard angler should always heed ‘ NEVER TAKE STEELHEAD FOR GRANTED”

I say this as we should all realize what we have when we have it, I know that there are dozens of anglers out there who caught fish at first try this last year and now may think that steelhead are not so hard to catch. We forget the trials and tribulations of the down years, we forget to pay amish to those that are working hard to recover the lost salmon and steelhead runs, the conservation clubs, CCA, Wild Steelhead coalition, various river trusts and these are but a few, they all still need the help and financial support from anglers.

As I gear up for my next four months guiding trout in SW Montana I relive every new push of steehead into the rivers of my season, they gave me so much to live for, they left there prodigy in the gravels of my world hoping the same as I to return again in an endless cycle of life.

This season has been exceptionally crazy. The pressure has been pretty bad on Fridays and Saturdays but other than that it is only the added guide pressure from some of the other services in the state, you can notice them by there lack of grey hair or facial hair for that matter. Well since I have been guiding on the Methow for steelhead since it’s reopening in 2002, this season has had the highest guide use yet I would say four times as much. The best thing is that most everyone is sticking to the code, “not fishing others water, not rowing out in front of other anglers all that stuff that let’s the other anglers know you care about their day too,treating others as you want them to treat your present fishing water. The steelhead are in every run and riffle, they will bite at some point in the day. The deck is getting shuffled daily and new fish move in and out of your favorite holes, all the good stuff you notice when on the water daily.
This season stands apart by the Trespassers and there propensity to try and fool everyone by parking a ways away nonchalantly walking down the road and diving through the signs when they THINK no one is looking. I swear some of them act as if they are CIA spies or homeland security just popping up in all black standing silent in the run. THINKING no one knows what they just did. The bad thing about it is it gives a bad taste to the locals about anglers, and I would rather not have them pissed at us, since I like to ASK for permission.
Somehow mysteriously last week a lot of spots normally flooded with the lowly trespasser where open to angle, the parked rigs on the road are gone, new signs in place and I would bet some hefty fines given out, hallelujah!! Finally the law is working on my side, a first for me. The story behind the story is just ask permission, do some leg work, find the owners they are usually very nice and will grant you the day’s permission to trespass.
I floated the lower river (Methow) today with my wife to take a look at how many steelhead where waiting for me down there. I acquired a private launch with some kind conversation, mutual friends and old relatives in the valley.
Upon floating into a great looking run I see a man on top of a very large rock chucking a spin pole, when I snuck down close and loudly asked how the fishing was he nearly fell to his death in fright from said rock into the water frothing around like a drowning cat, he chokingly gains his composure and reels in. When I saw the thing at the end of his rod I was in total amazement, two Hildebrandt spinners stuck together and a plastic kids toy shrimp attached with what appeared to be dental floss, dawning a 4/0 hook that was clearly barbed. I asked the rhetorical question did you catch any on that thing there? He was not in the talkative mood, and as I kindly said the river was closed down here he stumbled off like a teenager caught looking at porn by his mom.
The next group used the no speak da English on me and kept on fishing, I could see the gut piles in the water and the well used trail up and down the bank, they had very good gear for not knowing English. This time I called the law, one of the first times I ever did this, the poaching hotline, they the WDFW referred me to 911 or the state patrol, so I called them, they asked where I was and then to stay on the line. When the lady came back she said and I quote; “there was an incorrect posting of the opening in that stretch that is actually going to open next Wednesday” and that they were not giving citations for the infraction! WTF so I said great I will go get my rod, “ah no you can’t do that sir” she say’s. So as it would appear I can not fish when others can because I do know English?
No sir that’s not it there was a conflict of posted opening dates by WDFW and it is closed but no citations are being given out.
Drifting on sighting more steelhead than I have ever seen before in a lifetime of angling them, I come to the lower three holes, there stands the best of them all, Tom Miller as I was to find out, Colville Indian. I asked him if he knew the river was closed he said NOT FOR ME , while I was laughing out loud, I knew right away he was tribal. My wife and I stopped and chatted with him for a while he proceeded to hook and break off three steelhead in fifteen minutes; it took five minutes to re-tie each time. He was a very nice man we had a great talk about life in the valley and how the river would be as crowded as hell next Wednesday and that his season would be over with all the white men now fishing his hole. I think I will go stop in and see him again someday, just to get a little view of the world from his angle. I could not help but feel connected to this native Tom Miller, he seemed like a great man with the desire for a simple life.

I am pretty excited and fearful of what I might see when it finally does open up down there, it’s been a few years since the last opening, and it was pretty amazing then in a psychotic sort of a way, like a strange horror film or a freeway accident you just have to look.

For about 7 years now I have been guiding part of my season out of an AIRE super puma, those that have fished with me know him as “LITTLE BLUE BUS”. He has been a dependable, tough as nails, mini SUV of a raft, and has brought myself and countless others great fishing enjoyment. He has been in the background of hundreds of fishing photo’s from winter steelhead on the Olympic Peninsula to summer trout fishing my favorite strech of the beaverhead. We even gave him a secret mission of MOTH PATROL on the upper Big Hole during very low flows and a moth hatch that resembled snow falling. It is with great sorrow that I must put the Little Blue Bus in the shed for what may be the rest of it’s inflated life, I hope to bring him out for special occasions like a slide down the lower Yak canyon, yes below Roza, or a super sneaky dump off in some little canyon, under stealth only mode. I have a super light custom frame for just two people that I am sure he will be up for the task of floating. I think little blue will apreciate the once yearly use and importance of his stealth only status.
I don’t have a name for my new green super puma but am sure to come up with one, a few of my regular clients and some of the guides that have borrowed little blue bus are sure to chime in with some naming solutions.
I am looking forward to a great fall steelhead season wherever the run takes me and my new raft. To be named at a later date!

Every season brings a new location for a traveling guide. Every location has its good rivers and its famous rivers and then the rivers and locations that we reserve for a timely occasion. Famous rives need not be confused with the good ones, and often the famous rivers have a stretch that we become particularly fond of.
Wile on the Olympic Peninsula I am very attached to the Hoh and Sol-Duc and my favorite drifts are the park to oxbow and rainier to Lyndeckers. As the years have past those two rivers and drifts have become personal to me, I notice every change that high water brings; remember every rock that has given up a steelhead. Watching those in river structures move through the system like traveling fish condos.
Wile in Montana we frequent five rivers during the guiding season and enjoy all five. The Big Hole is the closest of the famed rivers, and has many great drifts but for me none are as special as the Iron Man drift on one of our local rivers, many of you will know this system right away just from the pictures but you will not find directions in these paragraphs.
The namesake is just as it sounds a long ass drift that rarely starts after 8am or ends before 7pm, the only way to get through this run is by dry fly, no nymphing allowed and we try to weed out the less abled anglers with talk of endurance and technical casting. It never fails that we always bring an unworthy once a season and they become humbled to nearly breakdown, the word angling becomes very evident.
Fortunately this season none of those occurred, I also did not get to fish it as much, as our summer weather did not cooperate with the timeliness of the terrestrial. Until just recently, the condition became right, planets aligned, fish gods spoke, high temps and good clear flows, all the stuff that brings on great angling.
In years past I could guide here from mid July to September on a weekly basis, occasionally finding it less productive than usual but mostly due to a few private launches down river, little sneaky spots that another local guide had procured. Knowing this we learned to just hold back when the tell tale signs of a low holing became obvious, sometimes the shouts of fish excitement from the bushes to the left or right as the river enters one of it’s many oxbows.
This season has been the one of few occasions on my favorite trout water, and one of higher angler pressure, the hold back has resulted in another boat coming down upon us, that was a first in five years. Another first was actually seeing another boat putting in at the low holers sneaky spot, until then they where just ghosts on the river. The spring Ice flow’s had dug out some new cut banks and filled some of the tail outs, silt from summer rains cutting gully washers and farmer irrigation has been migrating into my stretch since June, finally the aquatic grasses have grown in and stabilized some of this to help clear the water. Now the seasonal change of cooler temps and shorter days are evident of limited time to fish my favorite stretch, I will have to be content with the angling I did get and hope that it has shared it’s magical tendencies with the clients and friends that where willing to go with me on this piece of trout heaven.
To those friends and clients that came along, I thank you for your time and for sharing in my enjoyment of the season and I hope a little part of what I see in this special float stays with you for as long as you angle for trout.

Browns on the surface, Its what we fish Montana for, there are some huge Trout in this state, and the biggest trout I catch are on Dries every year. Maybe it’s that I enjoy to fish them more than other methods or that I am lucky on the dry but so far season after season even when i was on the Yakima it was the dry fly that allways seem to catch the biggest fish of the season. Catch being the operative word I hook larger fish on Bobbers and streamers but how often can a guide fish with streamers after June and before October without burning out the client, not too much!

They come in size 4 to 20 and all colors of the spectrum, greens, yellows, tans some wear red heels and some crazy striped and horn laiden legs. They talk like some African aborigine tribe and fly from river bed to field in search of a lady hoppers. A little wind and 80 degrees and they start the parade down the river to waiting trout!

The wiley Moose apears from the river bank to give the floater a brief look into the wilderness of the past. They often stand and watch us go by as if we were they are the spectator. Mostly we see the cows and juvenile bulls but every so often a big bull or a cow with a calf will apear on the next bend.
I often try to find them wile fishing certain strecthes but the best way is to just let it happen they are there. The intencity of Montana is breathtaking, often its the weather that reminds us we are at 4800 feet but by simply looking around and soaking it all in we learn to really apreciate the splendor of the riverine corridor outside of the trout fishing.

Over the last twenty years fishermen and baseball players have had some interesting superstitions.
I don’t know many of the baseball ones first hand but the fishing phobias I have down pat.
The old Banana in the boat is one nearly all fishermen know of, and clients eventually learn first hand. I can not remember how many times I have thrown a Banana overboard and wasted a few ours of fishing to get the stink off before the bite returned, this is exeptionally important on a steelhead trip as the bite has to be taken advantage of when it happens.
Now the past few years I have been coming accross a few Rattlesnakes, I have never killed one but usually go and check them out shoot a pic or just shoo em off the road. I was thinking that I was being nice as I kinda like reptiles in a naturalist sort of way.

Last month Seth Mklean and myself went overe the High Road to Melrose for a guides day off float fishing, we seen a Rattlesnake and stopped to shoot this picture and kindly escorted him off the road to safety. As we entered Seth’s monter truck to continue our journey he says I don’t think we should have done that. Upon questioning he said he killed one last year and the next day fishing was terrible on the Beaverhead, well if you knew Seth and the Beav that just don’t happen! I shrugged it off due to my kindness to the snake,,,,we had less than good fishing that day which is unusual as the day before with clients we crushed them on the same float, it did not register.
Four days ago Mark a friend from Cascade MT came down with four dead rattlers in a cooler, Eric the chef was wanting some to make a real cowboy dinner for us to try. That day we went down to the lower Jefferson with two boats Rooster, Mark, Ben and myself. We had gotten some reports of Drakes down by the Caverns and last year we had some good days in there about now. We floated 12 miles for 12 fish in two boats. I thought nothing of it as this section has fewer fish and we know how reports go, I like making them not following them.
The very next day (after eating rattlesnake) on the upper Big Hole the dry fly fishing was great in Joe’s boat (Joe did not eat the snake) but mine floating all around him with the same shit we could not hook them, they were biting but not getting hooked as if we had no hooks on our flies, it was on the verge of comical and or supernatural, I could see the fish open there mouth a chomp the bug and nothing. We tried streamers, the same thing BAM a hit and no fish, we had thirty or more bites and 5 to the boat with one rod in four hours, strange,,,,.
Last night it all came to me clear as day it is the “curse of the rattler” I instantly remembered last fall when Joe Macomber came from Colorado to film some steelhead fishing. We put in on a float I did the day before with Jason Boitano, we crushed the steelhead and some huge trout and a few bulls to make the day with Jason. The next day Joey, Newel and myself launch and head for the first run, big trout, next run a double steelhead on the same line, instant break off. The next four hours we had 0 action no trout, no steelhead, not even a whitey. Then comes the break off session, brand new leader breaking up in the fat stuff, we loose ten steelhead in a row and I am out of leaders and it is getting dark, finally on a home made leader we land one steelhead at the get out.

The clincher to the newly discoverd phobia, and now assumed responsable for the action of that day, this little guy caught by accident the night before one hole up from the get out 24 hrs and one minute before we finally laded a fish the day with Joe and Newel from Colorado.
Scanning what memories I have left this has happened at least three other times twice on the Yakima and once more last summer with Can-o-nasty.

Don’t mess with Rattle snakes or you will get the curse!

It’s on the verge of full blown Salmonfly season on the Big Hole river, I say verge because we have seen a smattering of bugs each day but not the BIG deal. What has happened recently are the Salmonfly crowds.
They are all good fishermen out to have a great time chasing the elusive FLY as they call it in Melrose. Upwards of 20 boats a day per floating section, but as contrary to some may feal they are good sports and courteous with noble intention. Good fishing has been had by most and really good fishing by a few.
I had a great day yesterday with a favorite angler Chuck and his new fishing buddie Harold or “Doc” as we call him, on the Divide run, we caught upwards of 30 trout all nymphing and found ourselves in a three or four boat float at times, we would stop and let them by, clearing the view we called it.
That night on the way back we unanamousely aggreed to have a Madison day and take our good fortunes over there. I had been fishing the Madi every few days for two weeks and fishing had been good to down right balistic at times.
We get over there and the rains the night before had turned the water a bit but could be for the better.
The day goes without seeing a soul, normal fishing down to 8 mile then the fishing gets as hot as it can get down to Burnt tree. Then suddenly as if god sent a bolt of lightning the wheels come totally off the wagon and we catch two trout to the get out. Guys had a great day and did not say shat about the 10 fish day after 30+ the day before, they liked the no traffic but still it killed me to have fewer fish.

Whats the Moral of the story?????

Spring Steelhead on the Olympic Peninsula are what I exist for in this world, hands down without a doubt.
The steelhead of Washington State can be humiliating and again gracous in the same day.
With a month of working around the new house in Ellensburg I am ready to hit the rivers of SW Montana.
Big foam eating Brown trout will have to take the place of my beloved steelhead until October.