The Mother's
Day Caddis Hatch
by
James Anderson
4/23/05 (Sat.)
As water temperatures continued
to rise, so too did my blood pressure along with the anticipation of another
spectacular hatch. Like the crazed Captain Ahab chasing after a white
whale, I locked the store door and jumped in my Dodge Dakota. I thought
I would start off just below the Depuy's culvert, since the water temperature
there is usually about 52 degrees, (a few degrees warmer than the rest
of the river could make the difference between thousands of caddis and
none). As it turned out, there were no vortex swarms, blizzard hatches,
or floating carpets, but I did see several caddis were hopping about the
Yellowstone and its banks. I got a split second drift behind a rock
and caught a nice little brown. Later a little rainbow slammed my Olive
Hot Wing before the dark and ominous clouds announced their arrival.
I might have stayed if I had seen more risers, but at that point an evening
glass of red malbec wine was sounding pretty good.
4/25/05
Nothing really worth reporting
today. The previous warmer weather days brought the river up from
2,000 CFS to 4,000. That, plus the rain from the days before caused
the visibility to decrease drastically to about 6-12 inches. I didn't
see anyone else on the river that day, and was wondering why I had bothered
to even try. It was cold that day too, so I didn't see a single
caddis. My black wooly wasn't getting me a lot of action.
I did see a lot of activity on the other side of the river. A happy
black lab kept retrieving sticks, barking, and shaking water on his master
in a repeated cycle. After a few casts, it became evident that reeling
in was the right move.
4/27/05
I caught the biggest fish of
my life on the Yellowstone today. I wasn't even going to go since
the water was pretty muddy, but I had just gotten some boot foot waders
and was anxious to try them out. I was standing on a rock staring
blankly at my JJ Special as I jigged it below me in the current.
I remember thinking, "Those yellow rubber legs have a really good
action when you twitch your rod tip like that." Then all of
a sudden, as if in slow motion, a huge brown came out of the mud and rolled
over my fly but missed it. "Holy #@&%!" I yelled as
I quickly gave a few casts back hoping he would hit it hard. He
was only about 6 feet away from me and must have seen me when he rolled.
Still I tried to dredge him out but nothing, so I ended up moving
up stream.
I fished for about 1/2 an hour before
heading back to the honey hole. In addition to my JJ Special, I
tied on the biggest black streamer in my box... it was a bass streamer
with the weed guard and all. Casting those two with my 8 and 1/2
for 4 IM6 was no picnic, but seemed to work well enough. I held
my breath and swung my line into big brown central. Wham!
He nailed it on the first drift and flew into the air like a trapeze artist.
I started walking down stream with him, being careful to keep the pressure
on.
Being the photomaniac I am,
I took a picture of myself smiling while I had him on. I was really
excited! It felt like the best day of my life. When I thought
I had him landed on the rocks, I pulled my rod behind me and started to
grab for my line... zoop. The fly pulled out while he was flopping
around in the rocks. I remember thinking there goes my proof! Now
no one will believe me. But I was still smiling. It was hard
not too. My best guess is 26" but you know how that works.
Anyway, X marks the spot in the photo below where he was, directly across
the river from the third hole on the Livingston golf course. Send
me a picture if you get him! (And Please, don't use the "granite
shampoo" on my buddy).
Ho Ho! Now that's a big fish on smile if I ever saw one!
4/28/05
Not a good day to be on the
river. Still, I had to try to catch the one that got away the day
before. But it was snowing and the visibility into the water was
less than a foot. Talk about miserable, it was brutal! It
felt like someone had beaten my hands with a hammer as they finally warmed
up in the car. I had steer the wheel with my knee as I shook the
painful feeling back into my fingers. Oh, and the highlight of my
day... you know when you get those little tiny knots in your fly line
and you think you can pull them apart? Well I ended up pulling to
hard and broke my line in two. FYI, blood knots don't work well
in the first 20 feet of your fly line.
4/30/05
I have to admit, Hank and I snuck out the doors of the Yellowstone Angler a few minutes early. Okay, maybe an hour. I apologize if you stopped by and saw our gone fish'en sign, but you know how it is... once an addict, always an addict. Hank and I headed for the East End Access with for an evening float. Since it had been quite cold, we actually didn't expect to see as many caddis on the water, but we were pleasantly surprised to see fish gulping dries as soon as we arrived. We backed the boat down one of the more sketchy put ins, without getting stuck or popping a tire, so as far as I was concerned the day was won. But the trout were very cooperative that night. They finally seemed to have keyed in on the caddis. This was the first day we really slayed them. The clouds helped out, but when the sun broke through we found big fish rising in the shade of the banks. We didn't see a lot of people that night, but the ones we did see were all smiling.
 This guy chomped a size #12 Olive Elk hair (4/30)
5/02/05
Once Kevney heard about our
good luck he was in. We told him that we had another spot in the
boat for him if he wanted to come along... (right in the middle, where
you row). We floated the same stretch and did equally as well.
This time however, we had the wet bar going. Bombay Sapphire combined
with tonic and limes on the rocks really hit the spot. And the browns
really hit our dries. It was one of those rare days of fishing where
everything works out great.
Oh, I guess I did get that speeding
ticket on the way to the river, but it was only $40. In jest I offered
the officer $30 plus some warm pizza. He said the judge probably
wouldn't like crusty old pizza too much as he handed me the ticket.
Anyway, as always, when you fish with Hank, pulling off the river in pitch
black is about as normal as chopsticks in China. His German shorthair
puppy sure was cold. At that point, rowing was a privilege because
the captain got to wear my ski gloves.
5/04/05
The smiles around 6:00 were
wide and plentiful. Kevney and I put in at Mallard's Rest and rowed
across to the other side to find a huge pod of fish rising to caddis.
Kevney (aka the White Fish Slayer, said he'd never caught more whitefish
on a dry fly in his life). We drifted downriver a bit and anchored
close to a rock jetty that angled out into the river. Tons of bugs,
rising fish, and lots of laughs. The Goddard Caddis seemed to be
our best dry pattern, but we caught a lot of trout on caddis emergers
as well.
We pushed through some of the
slower water so we would have more time to fish the islands above Pine
Creek bridge. Kevney was catching them left and right, so I walked
down to a deep side channel I like. I cast to a good looking spot
and my Goddard was immediately slammed by a pretty nice brown. The
problem was he took me down stream and under a sweeper than swung into
the river. Damn, I thought, now what? Luckily I brought my
long boat net with me and started head out on to the sweeper. I
don't know if it reminded me more of balancing on a tight wire or bouncing
on a diving board, but I certainly was in a ridiculous predicament.
While the current helped me bounce up and down, I somehow managed to stick
my tip under the main section of the tree and grab it on the downstream
side. I was amazed the brown was still on, and kind of felt sorry
for him since the water was going fast there. I netted him up and
brought him into the tree with me for a photo. I think he was about
as glad as I was to get the heck out of there!
After I made my pirate plank
walk back along the bouncing sweeper, something caught my eye. It
had to have been the biggest brown I had ever seen in my life on the Yellowstone.
I remember thinking, man all those years of going out and getting skunked
is starting to turn around for me! I clipped my leader back to about
0X and tied on a huge black streamer.
I didn't want to spook this
monster from the undercut bank he had claimed, but I wanted to see if
he was still there. Slowly I peaked down over the ledge and saw
it move again. Did he take a caddis? There was no way I could
land him on anything less than 1X. I stuck with my streamer plan.
Before casting I looked up and trees were everywhere, leaving me with
a dap technique as my only option. After adding a BB split shot
right in front of my fly, I plopped it out in the middle of the river
to get it wet. Then I raised my rod and placed it in the current
and watched it flow towards the deep cut bank cavern... nothing.
Dang. I put dabbed it in again, this time a little closer so the
current was sure to bring my tasty morsel into the Lion's den.
The adrenaline hit me as hard as a left hook from Rocky. I saw a
huge shadow bolt from the cut bank cavern towards my fly. It was
way too big
and round to be a trout. I felt pretty dumb after I realized that
I'd been stalking a 60 pound beaver!
Kevney Dugan with a nice bow below Mallard's Rest (5/4).
5/09/05
The inevitable: mud. The
Weekend Warriors were pretty bummed because the fishing up until Thursday
night was great. Visibility increased for a few days however, from
virtually nothing to about 6 inches. But when the sticks started
floating in the eddies and the logs were rolling down the rapids, I knew
the Mother's Day Trichoptera hatch was over and that the runoff had begun.
Trichoptera (caddis) by the
way, means "hair wings" if River Entomology should ever come
up on Jeopardy's daily double...
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