Every season brings a new location for a traveling guide. Every location has its good rivers and its famous rivers and then the rivers and locations that we reserve for a timely occasion. Famous rives need not be confused with the good ones, and often the famous rivers have a stretch that we become particularly fond of.
Wile on the Olympic Peninsula I am very attached to the Hoh and Sol-Duc and my favorite drifts are the park to oxbow and rainier to Lyndeckers. As the years have past those two rivers and drifts have become personal to me, I notice every change that high water brings; remember every rock that has given up a steelhead. Watching those in river structures move through the system like traveling fish condos.
Wile in Montana we frequent five rivers during the guiding season and enjoy all five. The Big Hole is the closest of the famed rivers, and has many great drifts but for me none are as special as the Iron Man drift on one of our local rivers, many of you will know this system right away just from the pictures but you will not find directions in these paragraphs.
The namesake is just as it sounds a long ass drift that rarely starts after 8am or ends before 7pm, the only way to get through this run is by dry fly, no nymphing allowed and we try to weed out the less abled anglers with talk of endurance and technical casting. It never fails that we always bring an unworthy once a season and they become humbled to nearly breakdown, the word angling becomes very evident.
Fortunately this season none of those occurred, I also did not get to fish it as much, as our summer weather did not cooperate with the timeliness of the terrestrial. Until just recently, the condition became right, planets aligned, fish gods spoke, high temps and good clear flows, all the stuff that brings on great angling.
In years past I could guide here from mid July to September on a weekly basis, occasionally finding it less productive than usual but mostly due to a few private launches down river, little sneaky spots that another local guide had procured. Knowing this we learned to just hold back when the tell tale signs of a low holing became obvious, sometimes the shouts of fish excitement from the bushes to the left or right as the river enters one of it’s many oxbows.
This season has been the one of few occasions on my favorite trout water, and one of higher angler pressure, the hold back has resulted in another boat coming down upon us, that was a first in five years. Another first was actually seeing another boat putting in at the low holers sneaky spot, until then they where just ghosts on the river. The spring Ice flow’s had dug out some new cut banks and filled some of the tail outs, silt from summer rains cutting gully washers and farmer irrigation has been migrating into my stretch since June, finally the aquatic grasses have grown in and stabilized some of this to help clear the water. Now the seasonal change of cooler temps and shorter days are evident of limited time to fish my favorite stretch, I will have to be content with the angling I did get and hope that it has shared it’s magical tendencies with the clients and friends that where willing to go with me on this piece of trout heaven.
To those friends and clients that came along, I thank you for your time and for sharing in my enjoyment of the season and I hope a little part of what I see in this special float stays with you for as long as you angle for trout.