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The Lure of Small Streams

By Steven J. Meyers

Found in: | Outside | Fishing | Fly Fishing |

A Quick Guide to Gearing Up for Small Streams

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Most people expect a discussion of gear for small stream fishing to begin with tackle. I say, begin with your hat! There are all kinds of hats — baseball hats, cowboy hats, fedoras — but the kind of hat matters little. I’d suggest a hat with a wide brim to protect your skin from the sun and your ears from errant casts. Oddly, the place most often poked with a wayward fly is your ear (and while you’re at it, smash the barbs on those flies so they’ll simply slide out if you do poke yourself, but more importantly so they’ll slide out of the fish you release with less trauma from handling). Hat color is important. It should be drab. A bright or colorful hat will announce your presence to the fish. Same goes for shirts and shorts. You’re not trying to make a fashion statement. You’re trying to be inconspicuous.

Early in the summer, when the water is still a little cold and high, a pair of waders will make wading more comfortable. For much of the summer the water is neither so deep nor so cold that you can’t wet wade in a pair of shorts, but wear wading boots. Stream bottoms are sometimes slick and the special soles of wading boots will help keep you from slipping on a mossy rock.

Experienced fishermen have strong opinions about fly rods. Ask three anglers about fly rods, you’ll get four opinions. Here’s mine: fish a rod you’re comfortable casting, one long enough to control line on the water but not so long it limits your freedom of movement or your casting around brush. Overhead limbs are easier to deal with if your rod is a little shorter. Long enough to control line and short enough to manage in the brush? Somewhere around 8 feet should do it. And since the trout are spooky and you won’t need long casts in the kind of wind you often see on a lake, saltwater flat or broad river, use a light line with a rod to match. A three or four weight would be versatile — not too heavy, not too light for most situations.

Use a shorter leader than you would on a big river — 7½' is a good start but sometimes you’ll want to go even shorter. A short leader will help you control your fly in fast water and help your casting. Sometimes your casts will be very short. If the leader is too long, you won’t have any line out and fly rods do a very poor job when all they’re casting is leader.

And finally, flies. Small stream trout are rarely selective. A few bushy deer-hair, elk-hair or well hackled hair-wing flies (Humpys, Wulffs, Elk Hair Caddis, Trudes, Small Stimulators) and some small bead-head nymphs for days when the trout are reluctant to rise will be all you will need. I often fish a bushy dry with a small bead head dropper and let the trout decide which one they’d rather eat.

YEARS AGO, SHORTLY AFTER HER DEATH,I wrote a poem that was the description of a woman I'd known and loved for much of my life. For many of the years I'd known her, the small streams of the San Juans were her favorite place to be. The poem attempted to recreate her by reconstructing the Animas drainage using the names of its tributaries. My elegy never mentioned that these wonderful words were the names of creeks; it simply wound them into the narrative - as they were wound in her, as they wound down canyons and valleys to join broader flows and eventually the sea. It seemed appropriate. She had become, in many ways, the embodiment of that country, of that drainage, of those streams.

And the names! Grasshopper. Crazy Woman. Coon. Ruby . . .

A quarter of a century has passed since I wrote that poem and in the intervening years I've come to realize that I had described myself as well. No less than she, what I am is in no small way a consequence of these streams.

One year I got a wild hair and decided I'd spend the summer trying to fish every inch of one of my favorite small streams, Lime Creek. In the end, I managed to cast a fly into most of its course from high green tundra down into the densely forested canyon where it joins the Animas. A few of the stretches proved unreachable. I might have managed a hairy rappel down into its depths in a few of the places I never fished, but some of the drops consisted of cascading waterfalls that were accessible only to steel-nerved kayakers, and I doubt any of them ever thought about fishing as they fell down those rocky chutes.

It was an amazing summer for a hundred reasons, the most amazing may have been this simple fact: over the course of that season I met exactly two other fishermen on the stream. That was before "The Movie" (A River Runs Through It) and the explosion in popularity that fly fishing has enjoyed since, but it's still true that if you are willing to do a little hiking you can find miles of trout water without other fishermen. If you are a trout fisherman put off by the numbers of people dotting the banks, floating by in drift boats, standing in the best holes of your favorite rivers, I have a liberating thought exercise not quite as time consuming as attempting to wade the entire length of a mountain stream.

Open Google Earth. Select a few square miles of mountains straddling the Animas River north of Durango. Look at the wrinkled face of the terrain, the shadows cast by high ridges and peaks into the canyons that separate them. Do it again just across the divide with a few square miles of mountains in the headwaters of the nearby Rio Grande. Increase the scale, move out and back until you're looking at a larger swath of wilderness. Try to imagine the many miles of streams that lie in all the canyons and valleys of this nearby country. Imagine the mind-numbing number of trout in those miles of free-flowing, mountain-bred, snowfield-fed creeks. Imagine, as well, how few fishermen are likely to be there. And ask yourself, "Why am I worried about the crowds of anglers on the big rivers when I live in a place where a few miles of hiking will find me on miles of fisherman-free trout water?"

A friend, a fishing guide, once said to me with utter seriousness, "I can't fish those small streams. No challenge. Too easy." In the moment of hearing it I felt a keen sadness for him.

It was the same kind of sadness a mountaineer might feel when talking to a rock jock who only sport climbs sheer rock walls of 5.12+ because technically easier mountain climbs were no longer challenging enough.

And what does that make of the of life's more simple joys? A hike in beautiful country? Solitude? Of the profound pleasure of standing on top of a mountain that may have been a walk-up, or of simply standing knee deep in a rushing stream?

Maybe that's one reason why I love small streams so much. There is nothing to be gained in the way of status there. You will not likely get to photograph a trophy. You won't be able to change out of your waders, drive back into town, grab a seat at the local watering hole and brag about how you fussed over a huge, fussy trout for hours before making the perfect cast with the painstakingly discovered perfect imitation. There is no ego to be found in fishing small streams. Only joy.

It is as simple as walking up a mountain. And as wonderful.

The first trout I ever caught in Lime Creek did not require the perfect fly, a perfect cast, a time consuming wade and stalk. I'd gone with a good friend shortly after arriving in the area. We entered the creek in the middle of a long stretch of calm water, a rare, still pool undisturbed by large boulders. I'd let my line dangle downstream while I reached into a pocket for something. My rod was awkwardly gripped between my knees. My dry fly was drenched and submerged, dancing back and forth unnaturally when a fat little brook trout grabbed it. That brookie was as beautiful as any picky spring-creek brown trout I'd ever managed to catch. Maybe more beautiful.

Like wild, small stream trout in healthy watersheds everywhere, that fish was clean as a whistle. Not a mark on him. His translucent fins had razor sharp edges. His head was small, his shoulders broad. His back was wormed with pale green vermiculations on a background of jade, his belly shimmered a luminescent white, and his glowing sides were sprinkled with pale spots, punctuated every now and then by pink ones haloed in neon blue.

My buddy and I walked slowly upstream, alternating casts. The trout were invisible - perfectly camouflaged against a bottom littered with river-polished stones. Stones the very colors of the trout that held there. Trout were strewn everywhere trout should be, in the eddies behind rocks, beneath stream edge undercuts, in small depressions on the stream's bottom, in the pillows in front of large boulders, in the slow currents at the bottom of the larger, deeper pools. They rose eagerly to floating flies, and snagged them even after tumbling currents had drowned them.

You needed cast creatively to cover much of the water. Overhead, sidearm, roll casting where streamside willows or a steep bank blocked any backcast. An errant cast to the rear might lose flies in brush or overhanging limbs, and the same could happen if the fly overshot its mark going foreword. The biggest fish would almost always be found in the places where it was hardest to deliver a fly or manage a natural drift - but there were plenty of easy fish, too.

The pleasure was at once simple and complex. Easy and difficult. As easy (and pleasant) as the surprise of a trout taking your fly while you were preoccupied with some other pressing business - your rod wedged between your knees. As difficult as a good drift managed beneath an overhanging willow in a narrow, brush-lined stretch where no backcast was possible.

Sometimes difficult, yes; but no bragging rights.

I'm not going to get all Zen on you here. Frankly, if I read one more article, poem, book - anything that compares fishing or anything else to Zen, I think I'm going to barf. When I maintain on a motorcycle, I lube the chain. I change the plugs. I get my hands dirty. I don't find the one true path to inner peace. When I engage in archery I don't become one with the target. I pull back the arrow and let it fly. And when I fish, I'm not looking for the meaning of life. I'm simply living mine.

And when I fish a small stream, I'm usually pretty damn happy. That should be more than enough for anyone.

Steven J. Meyersis the author of six books on nature and fly fishing and a columnist for Inside/Outside magazine.