Rookie of the Year

This is Rick with his first Missouri River brown trout. Yeah, he caught it on a size 20 trico while sipping spinners in the soft stuff. Before three days ago, Rick had never fly fished. This fish was an accumulation of three days, learning and honing skills that will undoubtedly serve him well as he continues to pursue this new-found passion.

Rick called me a couple months ago, wanting to try fly fishing out. I could tell on the phone, he was a little intimidated by the prospects of taking up the sport. I remember when I got into it years ago where even going into a fly shop and beginning a conversation with someone in the industry was a little scary. I got that from Rick and wound up talking to him for about an hour on all the opportunities we have out here in Montana for fly fishing and how we could develop a plan to help him experience as much as possible in a short time and actually learn enough about it to then decide if it was something he'd like to continue. Rick booked three days with me.

The first day we floated the Mo and spent the first hour or so, working out the casting. Rick was a quick study and I was actually pretty surprised as how fast he learned. He's a golfer as am I and it was easy to find analogies that he could internalize.

There's a lot to fly fishing. Casting is only a fraction of what it takes to be successful. Rick wanted to learn so that's where we started and we did it in a fashion that would actually create a good foundation for success. That's what cool about a guy like Rick. He's ok with putting in the work at the beginning, knowing he might not catch anything for a while.

So many times, people come out wanting to try fly fishing but they only have a day or so. They want to feel successful and they want to feel the tug so they get the abbreviated versions of all the things you need to know to fish a river like the Missouri. They learn how to chuck a nymph rig ten feet out of the boat and mend their line and with a little luck, they get a bunch of opportunities to hook and fight these incredibly tough fish. It's fun and it's what they came out for but how much do they really learn about the sport?

Don't get me wrong. My point isn't bash anyone that just wants to come out to catch a few fish and have fun. That's not what I'm saying at all. What I would like to do however, is to commend those folks like Rick that really want to learn. That's fun for me. I really enjoy that part of what we do and it's something that I believe, get's a little lost.

Like I said, day one was spent on the Mo, working out some of the technical stuff like casting and getting a drift. We did nymph fish because that's what the river was giving us and an angler can learn a ton about fly fishing by nymphing. We shortened it up and lightened the load so Rick could still practice his casting and we caught a number of fish. It was a good introduction.

Day two, we hit some small streams and did a little walk-wading. Another goal of Rick's was to have a true Montana experience. He also wanted to see a variety of fish. We threw dries and only dries this day and caught a bunch of quality cutthroats. Rick even watched as I dorked the biggest cuttie of the day off while heading back to the truck. Humility is a good lesson for us all.

On day three, we wanted to accomplish a couple things. One was to catch a brown. Another was to experience the difference between dry-fly fishing on a freestone, where fish are opportunistic and not all that techy to now fishing tiny bugs to incredibly wary fish in slow moving, flat water.

A couple hours into it and we had boated a bunch of fish but no browns and we had yet to find that nose coming up sipping spinners. With all the bugs coming back to the water, I knew it was just a matter of time. At about 10:00 am, those noses started popping up and it was time to shift gears and throw out one of the biggest challenges an angler can tackle. Tiny bugs. Flat water. Big 'ole browns.

The brown in the picture was the literally in the first little pod of fish we set up on. It wasn't the first cast. It wasn't even the tenth. In fact, at one point I was just about to pull up anchor and move down stream because we had put the imitation I started with over the top of these fish a number of times and even had one eat it but Rick didn't connect. We were to a point where these fish were seeing the cluster pattern coming at them and they were ducking away from it. And then, they kind of just disappeared for a while.

We talked for a minute about trying to find some other fish that weren't educated already when the little pod came back up. "Let's try one more thing," I said.

I tied an ant on and trailed a size 20 CDC trico spinner behind it. Rick made a perfect cast and as this brown sipped, Rick stuck 'em.

When I say an accumulation of three days of learning, you have to understand what it takes to land a fish like this and what it took to get this fish to eat. A perfect cast with a little reach, being able to feed line down to it. Being patient enough to let the fish eat the bug before ripping it out of its mouth. Keeping your cool and getting a firm lift on the hook-set without the bass set as you would for a nymph rig. And then fighting a fish like that in current on a size 20 hook and 5x tippet while also maneuvering through the weeds. All of this has to come together to catch that fish and like I told Rick, he just passed the 500 level class. Congrats.

Keep 'em where they live...