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Fishing the shoulder . . .

By Steven J. Meyers

Found in: | Outside | Fishing | Fly Fishing |

My buddies back east (yes, I admit it - I have buddies back east; some of them even come from god-forsaken hell holes like, gasp, New Jersey!) are always calling in May to tell me they want to fish out here in the worst way. And I tell them, that's exactly how they'll be fishing if they come now - in the worst way.

"I want to go up Lime Creek with you, Steve."

"I do, too, but it's buried in ten feet of snow."

"Ten feet of snow! It's in the seventies here!"

"Yeah, well up in the mountains, it's still winter." You have to love their innocent lack of awareness of anything more than 60 miles west of the Atlantic. That, and their persistence.

"Okay, we'll fish the Animas!" They tell me, full of hope, remembering a glorious day on our lovely home river a few Septembers ago.

"The Animas is chocolate soup right now and the only way to enjoy it is in a whitewater boat of some kind. You want to come out and row some whitewater?" I ask, already knowing the answer.

"Naw, I want to fish!"

I don't want to sound arrogant here, but sometimes I wonder if anyone other than guides ever actually considers what nature is doing when they make fishing plans. Sometimes want and can are two entirely different things. It's the real world, one wonderfully characterized by changing seasons, and full of things we can neither control nor perfectly predict (thank god) - things like a melting snowpack.

Just to make them feel bad, I'll throw out a comment nobody ever wants to hear. "You shoulda been here a month ago before the runoff really got cranking. The fishing was awesome!"

You can almost hear the steam hissing out of their ears.

It's not exactly a well-kept secret. Some of the best fishing around here occurs toward the end of winter, before spring, during a time locals call the shoulder season. Cold winter storms have begun to give way to warm spring ones. It still snows, but the snow doesn't linger quite as long. The days between storms are often clear, and warm. Trout seem to respond to upward changes in water temperature with an eagerness to eat that can sometimes be astounding - or maybe it just seems that way after a winter of mostly cold water and often slow fishing. Anything resembling a bite appears astounding. No matter, the chance to take some trout from a river that has been slumbering lights up local fishermen as much as the transition toward spring lights up the local fish.

I love the shoulder.

The fishing comes and goes this time of year. It's good when the water warms a few degrees, clears from whatever tentative, preliminary runoff is occurring - either from low-level snows that melt early, or the high mountain snowmelt that is just beginning. If you catch the river between momentary spates, you'll likely have good fishing.

As always, look for feeding fish. If you see them, try to determine where in the water column they're feeding, and in the absence of obvious hatches it's always a good idea to screen the water and take a look at what is present in the way of food sources - that, or stop by the local fly shop and ask. If you're too proud for that (many good fishermen I know are) some kind of buoyant fly like a stimulator or bushy caddis with a bead-head prince nymph hanging trailing off it, or a nymph rig with a pair of generic attractors like that bead-head Prince and a pheasant tail, will usually coax the fish to eat.

There's nothing quite like those first smells of sun-warmed damp earth, the sound of rushing water, the feeling of river currents tugging at your waders in a river close to home; in short, the ending of winter, the promise of spring - the shoulder.

And all the while you're merrily casting your line, watching your dry fly or strike indicator, waiting for a trout snout to appear or the indicator to stutter, you'll be smug. Smug, knowing that in a month or so, when the runoff is peaking and the river has become a violent froth, when you're relegated to fishing a New Mexico tailwater or recently thawed lake for a while, some buddy from some god-forsaken hell hole he is forced to call home will call and tell you he wants to go fishing, and you'll be able to say, "Shoulda been here a few weeks ago . . ."