On Saturday we decided to do the tourist bit be- fore the Conclave kicked in, Old faithful the paint pots and quake lake, once we had bought our permits we ven- tured into the Park, our inten- sions were to field test the wire woven nymphs on as many of the riv- ers as possible before Tuesday. One word of warning when travelling in the park Bison are the king of the road, as we came round corners more than often you would meet this beast casually walking in the middle of the road. The only thing you can do is pull up and watch as it walks by you oblivious to vehicles. Elk, Ospreys, bald eagles you name it, it was unbeliev- able what you encountered. Not to mention the skunk we stopped to photograph.
Soda Butte was dropped from our list of areas to fish on the advice of the park rangers; this was due to two fatalities the previous week where a grizzly attacked two campers resulting in their deaths. This brought home to us the reality of the Wild West and the need for bear spray.
The first river we stopped to fish was the Fire hole just above the falls at the fire basin. tackled up with a size 12 black and silver woven nymph on the dropper and a size 12 woven Mayfly on the point we entered the waters, a note of caution to all the water is so clear it looks shallow, but I soon realised it wasn’t .The shock of instantly ending up to my chest in crystal clear water that looked only
2 foot deep unnerved be for an instant. Once we got accustomed to the depth of the water we waded out to the middle of the river where there was broken water cascading over the rocks. Sud- denly I had a take and missed him a quick flick of the wrist and a cast over the same spot, immediately I had another take, a beautifully marked Brown trout, quickly re- leased I cast again in the same spot and again an
immediate take. This was to be the case for the next four hours, on a stretch of no more than 50 metres I had connected into well over thirty fish. Gerry was a hundred metres below me and each time I looked down stream he was into a fish. By this time Caddis was coming off the water big time and then it started the river erupted with fish taking the dry. Locals who were fishing did not seem to getting anything at all and a few gave us sly glances as we hauled in fish after fish using the nymphs, why change when we don’t need to. Most of the anglers we saw were fishing dry fly but no fish would take their finely presented flies, and here was us swinging the nymphs and con- necting with virtually every cast. This got to one guy who came over to enquire what we were us- ing, not being slow to show our delight at the nymphs his very words were “God dam it where did you buy them from” he eventually left with half a dozen variations not to fish but straight in his car and away home to try to copy them. It was about lunchtime so we decided to have a break and go down stream where we had seen
I Shoot and Fish E-Zine December 2011 20
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