Time: 12:00PM – 5:00PM

Location: Olsen Pit – Hosmer

Fish Landed: 6

Elk River, BC 08/09/2015 Photo Album

Big fish eat little fish. At least that is the conventional wisdom in fly fishing circles. For the last year or two, I made ongoing efforts to improve my streamer fishing game since big fish eat little fish, and streamers attempt to imitate little fish. If I could consistently recognize opportunities to deploy streamers, then I could probably catch more large fish. Unfortunately I struggle with technique, but on Sunday I would spend a significant amount of time stripping a large bait fish imitation.

Flies Designed by Jake Chutz in Elk River Guiding Fly Bins

Adam Trina is the president and CEO of Montana Fly Company, and he arrived in Fernie, BC on Sunday morning to join us for another day of fishing on the beautiful crystal clear Elk River. Jake and I checked out of our hotel and found an open breakfast spot called Smitty’s, and then we drove a short distance to the Elk River Guiding Shop where we met Adam. After Adam purchased his Canada fishing license, we were off to Olsen Pit to launch Jake’s craft for another day of floating. The plan for Sunday was to drift a different stretch of the Elk River from Olsen Pit to Hosmer. Hosmer was our take out on Saturday, so this segment of the river was the next section upstream of the water we covered the previous day.

Drifting Some Crystal Clear Riffles

Unlike Saturday the sky was quite overcast, and the temperature was much cooler. I wore my new neoprene booties in case we decided to park the drift boat and wade fish, as I was anxious to give my new purchase a test. Once Jake launched the river boat, I climbed in the front and remained in the bow for the entire afternoon. The front position is the most desired as the occupant gets first shot at drifting flies over new water. Jake and Adam were skilled oarsmen, so they alternated between fishing and manning the paddles. Apparently the convention among fly fishing rowers was to  switch positions each time the one fishing has success.

The upstream section of the Elk was similar to Saturday with alternating small bends, riffles and deep pools; although it seemed to me that we encountered more deep pools filled with rich azure color. Since Adam did not fish on Saturday, we gave him first choice on type of fishing, and he quickly selected streamers. Adam and I quickly grabbed our six weight streamer rods and began attacking the banks with sparkle minnows. Adam brought along prototypes of larger sparkles that were weighted much heavier than the versions that Jake and I tossed on Saturday.

One of My Meat Eaters from Sunday

I found myself quickly immersed in the active game of stripping streamers. I am the type of person who likes to follow direction and rules, but I quickly learned that other than some basic principles, there is a huge amount of improvisation in streamer presentation. Some of the underlying tenets are: allow the rod to load by pausing on the back cast, cast toward the bank, point the rod tip at the fly, never set the hook, and just keep stripping. I followed these basics, but then applied my creativity by varying the speed of retrieval and the jerkiness of my strip. Another option is whether to make a large mend when the streamer hits the water or a series of quick mends to create erratic movement. Speaking of erratic movement, wiggling the tip of the rod and making quick side to side shakes are quite acceptable. Anything that creates movement and the illusion of wounded bait is fair game.

This is what I practiced for the first three hours of the afternoon, and I am proud to report that I landed four trout on the sparkle minnow. One of the fish eaters was a bull trout that fell off my line just as I lifted the fish to bring it to the net, while the other three were quite handsome west slope cutthroats in the fourteen to sixteen inch size range. Remember the opening sentence? Here was proof that the conventional wisdom is true. I probably failed to capitalize on an equal number of opportunities. Early in my real world lesson, I found myself reacting to bumps with hook sets. Unfortunately this intuitive hook set that works well in the dry fly and nymphing world simply pulls the artificial bait out of the trout’s mouth. Once I learned to ignore the bump and continue stripping, my ratio of conversion to landed fish improved.

PB-J’s Were Eaten Here in the Boat

After three hours of chucking the heavily weighted sparkle minnow with a six weight catapulting device, I felt quite a bit of wear and tear on my right shoulder and arm, so I asked Jake if I could switch to my five weight with a gulp beetle. This move delivered two additional cutthroats in the twelve to thirteen inch range, but the beetle did not seem to pique the interest of fish on Sunday in the same manner that it performed on Saturday.

Adam Shows Off Double

By five o’clock we reached the take out ramp at Hosmer and called it a day. Obviously my fish count suffered in comparison to Saturday, but I feel that the weather and section of the river had more to do with that result than the choice of fishing with streamers. Three of the streamer chomping fish were fourteen to sixteen inch bruisers, and that is something to appreciate. Best of all I committed to streamers for an extended time period and experienced a modicum of success. The true value of Sunday August 9 with Jake and Adam was advancement of my streamer technique along with confidence that this method of fishing can deliver superior results. I’m actually anxious to toss some bait fish imitations in the waters of Colorado.

Pretty Bend of the Elk River