Gary Kring, my office next door neighbor, who also happened to be in
Yellowstone, stopped by with his family for lunch. Ken and Chris and the
kids left.
We have been fishing Soda Butte Creek for 12 to 15 inch fish. Fished
upstream. The fish were small. Fished the meadow below the campground.
The fish were bigger, but none bigger than 12 inches. Fished the lower
meadow, a couple miles downstream, from the butte down toward the Lamar.
That's where we encountered "The Fish". It was the perfect setup; a swoop
of current flowing into a curving pool. We could fish it from a gravel bank
on the inside of the curve. A bubble line flowing right next to the cut
back on the opposite side. A bubble line is a good thing. If you get a
bubble line flowing though a pool, that's where the fish line up to feed on
whatever floats downstream. There he was, right up against the opposite
bank, rising to snack on something off the surface, then dropping back down
to wait for the next morsel. It was almost too easy. Almost. There was
another, stronger current flowing right into the middle of the pool to
complicate the drift. No bubble line there, just a stronger current. There
were fish in that current too, but I couldn't see them. The fish I wanted
was under the bubble line.
Here is the problem. To catch the fish, the fly you cast has to dead drift
right down in front of his nose. If the current catches the line, it will
drag the fly, and no self-respecting trout will respond to it. The
challenge is to get the longest dead drift possible so you have the longest
opportunity to fool a trout. In this case, I needed to cast my line across
a faster current to reach the slower current my fish was feeding in. Before
my fly had a chance to drift very far, the faster current would catch the
line and drag the fly. If I could cast to the right place, I needed about a
two-foot drift. I made a couple casts that were slightly off, but not so
bad as to spook the trout. Then I hit right where I wanted: two feet in
front of him, directly in line. All I needed was for that fly to make it to
him before it started skating across the surface. It drifted. It drifted.
It worked! It was so subtle. If I hadn't known exactly where that fish
was, I would never have caught him. The fly drifted down to him. He rose
slightly. I never saw him take the fly. He never broke the surface. The
fly just disappeared.
I gave the line a tug. He was on it. He stayed on it. I landed him fifty
feet downstream. He's not the biggest fish ever, but he was the big fish of
the day, and for the Yellowstone Park part of the trip. A 17 inch
Yellowstone Cutthroat. The next day it rained, and Soda Butte Creek blew
out. That muddy brown thing flowed into the Lamar and blew it out. It will
be days before either stream clears up again. Timing is everything.
