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My summer months are primarily spent going after striped bass in Maine. I’m unemployed  which means I fish every day. And when you fish every day you will inevitably have sessions when you don’t catch anything. I’m transparent with this fact even when the fat tourist barks out the hackneyed expression: “Catch anything?”

Not catching anything teaches me just as much as catching. I take the time with both the latter and the former to register the “why” and put it in my fish brain. The rules are there are no rules when it comes to fly fishing. Yes, there is etiquette and being responsible with the fish but how you catch them on a fly rod is up to you. 

I’m fortunate to run into some humble and confident anglers from time to time. I watch them and share information. Not all of them fly fish either. Am I against trebble hooks? You betcha; they should be outlawed.  Do I recoil at the sight of styrofoam worm containers and trash? Of course. But I judge bait and spin casters one man at a time.

There are some guys out there who are responsible and have taught me a lot that I directly apply to fly fishing.

My point is simple; it’s the humble man who learns the most because his mind is like a parachute; open.  I caught the fish in this picture yon my Beulah 8wt Opel and nautilus No. ten. With 17lb fluorocarbon tippet. I put a swivel on my line so my fly doesn’t twist. This is my biggest this summer; 37″ and weighed about 25 lbs. Yes, he went into my backing. Yes, I’ve lost many fish this summer. Yes, I often go out and don’t catch a thing.  Yes, I’m obsessed with fly fishing.  #catchandrelease

John and his wife came to the Middle Fork Salmon from Brooklyn.  He was a writer, she was a nurse.  While six days of roughish camping and float dry-fly fishing may not have been squarely in their comfort zones, we were comfortable with each other.  I think there’s an effect whereby having very little in common can lead to some of the best conversation; kind of an inverse of what you’d expect.  Anyway, despite John’s pelagic fishing experience on the Atlantic, neither he nor LuHung had really spent any time with a fly rod.  As is usual, the first day was a learning curve of casting and dead-drifting; and for me, getting a feel for just how gung-ho these guys were – in other words, how badly they wanted to catch trout, and how many they expected to catch.  I did my normal dance between instruction and forming a true interpersonal connection, but there was one thing I couldn’t figure out.  One spot on the record where the needle kept skipping, if you will.  I couldn’t figure out for the life of me if I needed to, or even should, bring up this one thing:  Neither of them seemed to be able to hook a trout.  Out of the literal dozens that came up to eat their flies, each turned and dove for the depths again.  Now, as a guide, this is kind of troubling in a sense – the hooking of a fish is a goal of sorts, a measure of success for most; including the guide.  But did they care?  Were they trying to hide embarrassment at their seeming inability to stick one, and if I brought it up, it’d introduce the kind of awkward that’d change our dynamic for the duration?

In the end, the guide-y guide side of me came through.  I brought it up.  I don’t remember how, but I brought it up.  John looked back and grinned, and said, “We talked about it before we even got on the boat… we don’t need to hook a fish.  We just want to watch ‘em do what they do.  These trout are beautiful.  They’re like nothing we’ve ever seen back East, and we’d almost rather not drag them around too much.”

Fine with me.  Because as it turns out, that attitude meant we could relate to each other.  They’d somehow entered into fly fishing with a mentality that normally takes years to develop (it did for me anyway).   Quite a few  (the horde of brand-name clad, PBR-swilling, fish-counting, big-ego bro’s who seem to be multiplying on every river system in every mountain town) never seem to develop it at all.  John and LuHung were folks who, by default, already knew that there was more to life and self-satisfaction than some quantitative kind of fly fishing success: a notion I totally embrace despite identifying with fly fishing as pretty much my over-arching lifestyle.

But it was still somehow really, really hard to watch them not set the hook on all those fish.

This one John hooked accidentally. I netted it on purpose though.

And these because I’ve allegedly not posted very many cutthroat photos. Some of the few I was able to get pics of, what with last year’s absurdly high water temps.

Today, friends, I give you trout porn.  Not much other than trout porn. I’ve gotten blanked more than I’d like to admit, and had a couple spectacular days as well.

It’s a delicate time of year where I fish:  some rainbows are starting to dig redds and get their groove on, while others are tanked up in perfect swing runs, getting hormonally enraged and hungry.  Several days’ time can tip the balance, and suddenly they’re all spawning, and thus off-limits to any angler with a brain or heart, or indeed any consideration for something other than his fragile ego and attendant instagram feed.  As far as I can see, we’re tipping now; and in a few more days, they’ll have passed on wild genetics to a new generation.  Still a delicate time – again, if you’re not too concerned about grip-and-grins on your social media self-representation, you probably don’t want to poke too many malnourished post-spawners either.  (Mind the holes/runs above and below a redd – usually those contain the fish that didn’t want to hang out on their redd in the shallow water all day, in plain sight of every predator, but are spawners nonetheless.) (And by “mind”, I mean, “Don’t fish”.)

So let’s tie some flies, yeah?  Summer’s a half-step away, and in about two short months you’ll find cutties looking skyward for the first salmon flies and other early stones.  There are summer streamer ideas (and proven favorites) to be birthed from that vise, and while I’m thinking of it, summer steelhead are probably starting to turn homeward from Katmchatka or the Aleutians or wherever they’ve been.

Anyways.  On to the promised trout porn.  Retrospective winter steelhead and summer cutthroat writings to come.

The end of a long dry spell: a nondescript tension that turned into a long, hard fight.

As close to perfection as you can get 500 miles inland.

This is my dad, with a fish that was pretty much where I told him it might be… love when I’m right like that.

Can’t complain.

Sometimes you have to get out the tape, just out of curiosity…

Matt’s release, I always seem to cut someone’s head off.

hefty hoist.

New fish in the old spot!

I’m a lightweight.  I hate the cold.  Unfortunately, winter is the best time to do one of my favorite things in life…swinging two-handers for trout.

Beulah Onyx 12’4″ 5wt + Tonic 400 + Pro Tube streamers.

An example of when NOT to use your camera’s macro function…bummer.

Date: The other day.

Time:  Mid-afternoon.

Weather:  Sloppy snowstorm.

My Mood:  Rather poor.

Final Decision:  What the hell.

Rod:  Beulah 9’9” Platinum 7wt.

Line:  Hand chopped 270 gr. franken-skagit.  9 feet of T6.

Fly:  Olive/black Gartside Soft Hackle.

The technique:  Letting the fly dangle idly (hopelessly, almost) while thrashing my left arm to warm up my hand.  Whoops…there’s one.

Spend a couple hours on washboard roads, gritting your teeth, and listening to parts of your truck gradually loosen and begin to rattle….

Find the river.  Turn, drive upstream.  Find the right pullout where the little valley spills in from the other side….

Pull over there.  Jump out.  Let the dogs jump out and sniff and pee on stuff.  Stretch with excitement in the sudden quiet….

Assemble your gear, whistle the pups into line, and start hiking.  Wade the river, and leave two good beers in the mouth of the creek.  Head up that valley….

Give it an hour, that should be enough.  Turn down to the creek at the dead tree, just past the big rock, but if you hit that clump of bushes you’ve gone too far…

Stick the key in the lock, say the password, kneel at the altar, rub your lucky rock, take a sip of whiskey….

Or whatever you think works….

You’ll see the pool where you should start.  You wouldn’t think that it’d hold that many fish, ….but it might.  You won’t think any of them will crack two feet, bend out a tube-fly hook,  lead you a hundred yards downstream, or almost beach themselves chasing your fly into the shallows, either….

But they might.  One way to find out.

A face only a streamer fisherman could love.

my favorite fin, on one of my favorite fish, in one of my favorite places.

Buh bye.