Eggs Benedict

Ok, so sometimes I get a little bored and I try shit. These little guys I call Eggs Benedict. Yes, they are egg patterns and I was fishing up at the Land of the Giants. I hooked 3 to1 on these versus other traditional patterns like the fire-bead sow in grey and various scuds. Will they work on the lower? Probably. Should you use them? Well, let's explore that.

First of all, let's answer this question of where patterns come from and who creates them. For Marx, there was a distinction between the 'doers' and the 'makers' in the workforce. Essentially, the doers just do stuff. They take orders and they sit on the production lines and replicate tasks or just do jobs. The makers are the innovators. They're the ones that create stuff or invent things that make our lives easier or more productive and give the doers something to do.

In fly fishing, one might say the doers are the folks that go into the fly shops and ask the dude behind the counter, "what'r they hittin?" The makers are the ones that actually figure those patterns out. In the guiding community, there are both as well. I personally feel that 'making' is more rewarding than 'doing' but I also believe we are all somewhere on this continuum of learning and being a doer one day doesn't mean you can't be a maker the next.

I like creating stuff. (Just look at my rod holder on my truck...coming soon to this blog.) I also like tying new fly patterns. Sometimes they are truly new and creative and sometimes they are just variations of patterns already out there. The eggs benedicts are pretty much just a variation of the fire-bead sow. But like I said, it out-fished all the other sow bugs I tried so even a tiny variation can make a huge difference. The bottom line is I'd get bored with fly fishing if I wasn't experimenting and trying new stuff. I guess that makes me a 'maker'. That doesn't mean it always works out or that I'm a particularly good innovator but it does mean that's where my head is.

So obviously these are an egg pattern...eggs with some sauce, if you know what I mean. That's where the inspiration comes from. People have argued for years about the fire-bead sows and what they replicate and whether or not they are ethical to fish when trout are spawning because why? It's too easy? Or, it's because they replicate an unborn baby trout?

Really? Eggs are food for trout. They just are and fly fishing is the art of replicating a trout's natural food. It's just natural food. Here's the kicker though and where there is some room for ethical arguments. It's where you are fishing these flies and how persistent you are in pounding reds. That's where people get a bad taste in their mouths.

If you are one of those guys using egg patterns, standing on reds on stretches of the Missouri where the predominate trout are wild-reproducing fish; I'd say I would have a problem with that. It's not because you are using egg patterns, which again, is a natural source of food. It's because you're disrupting the reproduction cycle of the fish by spooking them off there beds and by potentially snagging a few spawners. You are also potentially grinding eggs into gravel if you're walking through the reds.

However, as for actually getting fish to eat? It's usually not the fish spawning that are eating, from my experience. It's the fish below the reds that are waiting for rouge eggs to become dislodged that you'd have the best shot at. Yes, there is a theory that spawning fish will eat eggs that float through their red as they try to keep the reds clean but by-in-large, those fish are too busy scraping their reds and fighting for breeding rights to eat.

Yesterday, for example, I caught a really nice brown on the eggs benedict that was one of those fish looking for a rouge egg or two. I'm pretty comfortable saying that because he was amongst a group of reds and browns don't spawn in the spring.

I personally, feel it's a slam dunk on whether or not a person should be pounding reds on the Lower Missouri because that fishery is made up of mostly wild reproducing fish. If you want the fishery to thrive, you should probably leave those fish alone.

I, however, have been fishing below the Hauser Dam just upstream from Holter Lake. Those fish are mostly hatchery fish. They are put there by FWP for the purpose of growing quickly so that people can catch them and bring them home to eat. We, as tax payers, fund the programs that stock these fish. Hundreds of thousands of these fish are stocked in the reservoirs every year. There is some argument on whether those fish reproduce but the intention from FWP was to pick these particular strains of trout that do not reproduce so that they have a better control over the balance of trout in the ecosystem and give folks plenty of opportunities to take fish out of the lakes.

I actually kept a few of these trout, (not the brown obviously,) because they are really good in the smoker. I'm actually going to go back there today because I want to stock up a little on smoked fish. I really want to catch a white fish to throw in there as well. I'm curious what that will taste like.

At the end of the day, I hope we can all agree that we need to be environmentally conscious. We all want our rivers to thrive and to preserve them for those behind us as well as for us tomorrow. Follow the laws when they are written and hopefully learn from folks and develop a sense of ethics when the laws are not clear. And then engage. Have discussions. Be open to learning and doing what's right for our resources and also be open to spreading the word when you see things that aren't cool. We all play a role in preserving our natural resources.

Keep 'em where they live...