Giants, Part 4
by Jerry Dennis
Kelly's tactics have changed my entire approach to trout fishing. I still prefer fishing to
risers during a hatch, but I'm no longer disappointed when there are no risers. Most of
the time, after all, they aren't. And since I'm not content to spend all day waiting for bugs
to appear, I've become a maniac for streamers. I fish them all day long. My casting hand
is nearly as callused as it was when I swung a hammer for a living. And I'm catching more
big trout then ever. Not as many as Kelly - this student will probably never match his
teacher in skill - but more than I ever expected to catch.
The most efficient way to hunt big trout is in a boat, especially one that allows a casting
anglers to stand. We often use Kelly's McKenzie River drift boat, two or three of us
taking turns rowing and casting, covering ten miles of river in eight hours. When you
fish with Kelly, you have to be prepared to spend all day on the river making cast after
cast after cast, each with deliberation and concentration, placed just so, the streamer
slapping the water as close as possible to every bank, stump, and rock. The
streamer's escape route takes it streaking past a sunken log or parallel bands of
sand, mossy bottom, and shadow, or past the woven, algae-encrusted sticks drowned
near a beaver lodge - places where giant trout stake out territory and guard it. We
sometimes cast all day without a single strike. Or we have six strikes and land three
fish. One or two will be about sixteen inches long. Another will be over eighteen inches.
Once every three or four days one of us catches a trout over twenty inches. My biggest
is twenty-three inches. Every season Kelly gets a couple over twenty-five.
Kelly, who is an innovative fly tier (his Troutsman Hex and Troutsman Drake are the best
imitations I've ever used for Hexagenia, brown drakes, and Isonychia spinners), invented
a streamers he calls the Zoo Cougar
specifically for casting with sinking lines on rivers filled with structure. The writer Bob
Linseman, who's had some big days with that streamer, came up with the name after
he decided the fly had the cynical and overfed look of a cougar confined all its life
behind bars. It can be grouped with Muddler Minnows, and other streamers constructed
with heads of spun deer hair, but otherwise it's revolutionary. It's tied with a yellow
marabou tail, gold tinsel body, and a wing of calf-tail hair overlaid with a mallard flank
feather dyed lemon and seated flat over the body, not edgewise as is traditional with
most streamers. The head is deer-body hair dyed dark yellow, spun and trimmed
loosely with a razor blade. The finished fly has a substantial profile and markings
suggestive of a sculpin. Most important, the flat position of the wing and the broad
deer-hair head cause the fly to swim in an undulating hula dance. There are days
when trout will eat no other fly. ~ Jerry Dennis
Concluded next time!
About Jerry Dennis
Jerry Dennis lives in Traverse City Michigan and feeds his
obsession for fly fishing (and giant trout) by spending as much time as
possible on the Boardman, Manistee, and AuSable rivers. He has been
a full-time writer since 1986, writes for numerous magazines, and was
the recipient of the 1999 Michigan Author Award. His seven books
about nature and the outdoors include A Place On The Water,
The River Home and From a Wooden Canoe. The
River Home was name Best Outdoor Book of 1998 by the
Outdoor Writers Association of American and is now available in
paperback.
Excerpt from The Riverwatch
The Quarterly Newsletter of the Anglers of the Au Sable.
Lighter Side Archive
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