Category: Gear

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The Ten Best Summer Steelhead Flies!!!

Disclaimer: I wrote this as a joke, because I have no idea what the ten best steelhead flies might be, winter or summer, and I feel guilty every time somebody ends up here. It’s actually a long shaggy dog story about a fly I tied with an ostrich feather that a drag queen gave me at a pride day parade. I did, in fact, catch a summer steelhead on that fly, so if you want to know the very best steelhead fly, it’s one you tie with a feather given to you by a drag queen at a pride parade.

I’m sure someone knows what the ten best summer steelhead flies are, but I haven’t a clue. In September We  go to Oregon, but before, in less than a week, we go to Louisiana. The jumble has me thinking about redfish and steelhead flies at the same time, and I’m no good at multitasking.

I like simple flies. A few years ago the rage in redfish flies was redfish crack, the hardest part of which was using a magic marker.  Tie some EP fiber to the hook for a tail, wrap some EP brush for a head, use a sharpie to bar the tail, brush out the head, done. I greatly admire that fly.

My current favorite redfish fly is this unnamed thing, or at least unnamed to me. It’s my favorite because I made it up after fishing an Avalon for permit, and because the first fly I ever fished in saltwater, a rattler, had rattles. I later caught 50-odd crappie in a single day with a rattler, and later still caught a four-pound bass. I like flies that make noise. I would name the fly I made up, but I figure lots of people have made up the same fly, and one of these days I’ll stumble across its name.  Meantime it’s easy to tie and catches all sorts of stuff. Plus it’s kinda weedless, or as much as any fly is ever weedless.

Rattler. Ok, maybe it was only 30 crappie. CRAH-pee. Puh-CAHN.

Sac-au-lait.

Steelhead flies though are a different matter. It doesn’t seem like anybody ever thought about making them simple, and I don’t know why.  Are steelhead peculiarly complex? Do they never hit a Clouser? Steelhead flies look like somebody wanted to tie classic salmon flies, smoked a joint, and came up with Modern Steelhead Flies. That’s the book I bought to teach me all about steelhead flies, Modern Steelhead Flies.

It’s hard, by the way, not to make jokes about marijuana and Oregon.

Kris and I finally paraded with my firm in this year’s LGBT Pride Parade, and I learned that sometimes Texas parade routes smell like marijuana. Colleagues ask every year if I’ll march and I say sure but then something happens. I put off joining the parade for two years, and they finally shamed me into it. Personally I think it’s a better world when LGBT folk can do some shaming.

The Pride Parade in Houston is no small affair.  There are thousands of paraders, and tens of thousands of paradees. Our daughter dropped us off on Allen Parkway and we walked a bit to the staging point. I really dressed for the parade too: a pair of running shoes, khaki shorts, blue linen shirt, and the crowning glory, my straw fedora. I was a little worried I might stand out too much, but believe it or not, some participants were even less restrained than me. Really. Kris said there was a topless lady, but I didn’t see her. Ogling the topless lady would have probably been wrong anyway, but Kris thought she might be topless at a parade with some expectation of being ogled. Could be.

There were groups from churches and big oil. There was the mayor and the parents of transgender children. There were Democratic candidates, though I think I must have missed the Republican float. We were the only big law firm, but there were lots of banks, and some smaller firms.

So meantime I haven’t actually read much of Modern Steelhead Flies, but it’s got good pictures. Of course I had absolutely none of the fly tying materials for steelhead flies. This is always a given for any new fly, one never has the stuff. This though was particularly brutal. Hooks? Nope. Hot pinks and purples and blues? Nope? Ice dubbing? Not a bit of it. I didn’t own a single ostrich feather.  The first fly I tried, something called a Fifth Element because of all the blue feathers (none of which I owned), had 72 different layers of materials. I spent an hour ordering from FeatherCraft, and when they didn’t have everything I ordered some more from J. Stockard. None of my local shops were going to carry this stuff. I finally found blue Gamakatsu octopus hooks on Amazon. The Feather Thief got nothing on me.

Then I tied the fly, got to the end and realized I’d  forgotten to order the last five layers of stuff.  I tied in some black marabou and called it a day. It looked pretty good, too, as long as you didn’t pay attention to the big gaps on the back side where I didn’t get the materials all the way around the hook.

The third fly in the book, which was also on the list of flies the Oregon outfitter sent, was Jeff Hickman’s fish taco.

Now Mr. Hickman’s fish taco really appealed to me. It was on the outfitter’s list. It was relatively simple compared to the other stuff, only 67 layers or so. Most of all I could look at the fly and think, that looks fishy. That’s the highest praise for any random fly sitting in a box: It looks fishy. Plus it was a taco. I might prefer an enchilada, or even a chalupa, but I’m a Texan and if what you can get is a taco you take a taco. I know and like people who’ve written admirable books about queso and salsa, and I’ll throw in a gratuitous plug for them here. I have also gone miles out of my way to get barbacoa and lengua tacos with just a brush of onion and cilantro, and this was a taco.

I was sitting in my office one day and got distracted and watched a video of Jeff Hickman tying Jeff Hickman’s fish taco. He seemed like a genuinely reasonable guy. He drank unpretentious beer. He took it in stride when he forgot to tie in the 33rd layer of rainbow black flashabou.  I figured this was a guy who wouldn’t mind if I had to use a hot pink hot spot instead of red because I only ordered hot pink ice dubbing.

I also had no ostrich feathers, and 90% of the fish taco is ostrich feathers.

So Kris and I are walking to the staging point for our LGBT Pride parade group and I’m dressed in my gaudy outfit and I feel a hand on my shoulder. A big hand.

Now I’m 6 feet, or I was 40 years ago, but I turn and look up, way up, into the face of either a transgender lady or a drag queen–the taxonomy confuses me some but you can be one without being the other, or vice versa–in a long black satin sheath gown and enough dyed black ostrich feathers to festoon, well, an ostrich. We were of a certain age together, but she’d spent a bit more time in tanning beds, and I was dressed more like a law firm partner taking his grandkids to the zoo. I had no ostrich feathers.

“Darlin’, we gotta spruce you up.” Ok, maybe that wasn’t precisely what she said, but that’s what it sounded like to me.  She plucked an ostrich feather and stuck it in my hat and declared me more festive. I now have a spirit animal for this trip to Oregon, but I haven’t decided whether it’s an ostrich or a 6-foot-4 drag queen in the LGBT Pride parade. I’m leaning towards the latter.

So meantimes.

Kris and I are driving from Galveston and talking about what we need to take to Oregon and she says she’s been looking at the email from Jeff Hickman and I say who? She says Jeff Hickman and I say the fish taco guy? She says what? Jeff Hickman it turns out is our outfitter. I guess I knew that, we’d exchanged emails and all, but it hadn’t registered that the guy I was watching on YouTube tying fish tacos was the guy I was e-mailing. I’m slow like that.

But I catch up sooner or later and this is all coming together. I might even catch a fish. I’ll tie up some hot pink redfish crack with lavender hot spots. If nothing else I’ll learn to tie a fish taco, and I’ll use ostrich herl scavenged from the wild.

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Tenkara-san

Kris gave me a Tenkara Sato outfit from Orvis for Valentines Day.  I gave her more or less the same thing, a Temple Fork Outfitters SH 11’6”. She tried hers on the Guadalupe but didn’t catch anything. I tried mine for the first time Sunday, fishing along the banks at one of Damon’s 7 Lakes for sunfish.  I only had about an hour, and kept meaning to switch to a popper but never did. I didn’t see many sunfish, but I caught one small bluegill and three smallish bass.

It took me a while to set up the rod and line, and my set up was . . . creative. Ignoring the instructions I tied some perfection loops and stuck things together. It was close enough to the picture, with the line that came off the rod dangling off the rod tip and a bit of standard leader attached to that. The booklet informed me that Tenkara was fly fishing, not dapping or cane rod fishing. From what I could tell it was about as much like dapping or cane rod fishing as it was like fly fishing, but I fished with a Damon’s owner’s favorite fly, a BBB. “BBB” stands for something, of which “bitchin” and “bream” are part, but I never have had it straight. They’re pretty easy to tie though, and they catch fish.

For me the 10’ rod had a range of 10-15 feet from the rod tip, plus or minus, but it was easy to cast and reasonably accurate.  Tenkara rods don’t lend themselves to long stillwater retrieves, but in a way they’re perfect for spring bass and bream in shallow water.  Every fish I caught hit while the fly was sinking through the water column, not while it was moving.  Toss, wait, toss again, wait. it’s intimate, visual, almost as good as dapping: all but the sunfish was caught when I set the hook after watching the fish take. If I hadn’t just  blundered down the bank not paying much attention, if I’d used just a modicum of stealth, I probably could have done much better, and caught more fish. Of course if I’d switched to a popper I might have caught more fish.

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Snoods and tippets

George Washington’s pocket fishing box

Nothing is more confusing than leaders and tippet. If you set out one morning to make fly fishing arcane, you couldn’t invent something better than tippet.  There’s the whole stupid system of nomenclature, 5x, 6x, 0x. Who calls something 0x? And then you get saltwater with a completely different poundage nomenclature and its own wacky world.  Wouldn’t it make sense that if you were going to catch a 200-pound fish, you’d need a 200-pound leader? But of course you don’t. You use a 20-pound class tippet attached to something called a bite tippet that’s 60 pounds and can’t be longer than 12 inches or some such to qualify. Or something. Unless of course you’re using wire because the thing has teeth.

The leader attaches to the end of the fly line (which is the part of the line that looks like the line in a weed whacker). You add tippet, which is just more leader really, to the end of the leader to make the leader last longer. The fly ties to the tippet. It’s the least obvious thing in the world.  When I bought my first fly rod at Gibson’s Discount Center circa 1970 I pulled off some monofilament from my spinning rod and tied it to the end of my fly line, probably with a square knot.  Nothing wrong with that, except of course it’s not right.  I’m just lucky it didn’t explode.

Since October I’ve lost four good fish on broken leaders or tippet: two nice trout, two bass, and a permit.  A permit.  The second permit I’d hooked and lost in two days. The first flipped off the hook, but it was the second that hurt. My permit.  The only good thing was that for the permit at least the guide thought the leader was cut, not snapped.

Back when I abandoned the square knot and tried to figure out leaders–trout leaders–I started tying my own progressive leaders. There’s a joke there about Democrats. I learned a lot of knots, I learned a lot about how leaders are built. I also learned that most guides hate knotted leaders, and at his first chance the guide would pull off my carefully built leader and replace it with the store-bought kind. I think they all figured my kind of magnificent casting must be blamed on something, and the knotted leaders were the first thing to hand.

Like fly lines, leaders were originally built from lengths of braided horsehair (called snoods). There are still guys out there who make horsehair lines and leaders.  Progress was made when somebody started making leaders out of the silk gland of silk worms, called silk gut. We’ve made a lot more progress, but I’m sorry we don’t still call stuff snoods.

Trotline with Snoods, from Wikipedia Commons

For bass and sunfish I use nylon leaders and tippet. At least theoretically nylon’s cheaper, bass and sunfish aren’t leader shy, and in a perfect world I need some nylon for trout dry flies, because nylon floats on the surface and fluorocarbon breaks the surface film.  The problem with nylon is that it rots faster than fluoro, and that $7 spool of tippet gets expensive fast when I have to replace it every year. The only way I can tell it’s rotten before I lose a fish is because it breaks easy barehanded. I lost both bass on 3X nylon tied to poppers. The 3X was rotten. It wasn’t that old, really, but I’m convinced the stuff doesn’t stay strong for more than a year, so now when I buy new leaders and tippet I mark the envelope or the spool with the month and year I bought it.

At least theoretically I mark the spool with the month and year I bought it.  Usually I look at the spool at the store and think I need to mark the spool with the month and year I bought it.

For nymphs and streamers I use fluorocarbon. It’s stronger for the same diameter and theoretically there’s less breakage from abrasion. It’s problem is that it sinks, but that’s not a problem for nymphs or streamers. I use fluoro for saltwater for the same reasons.  It may rot too, but slower than nylon. I lost both trout on 4X and 5X fluorocarbon leaders and tippet. One broke at the tippet ring, and the other at a knot.  I think the tippet was rotten, and the fish was well played, and the knot was well tied. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

I don’t tie my own freshwater leaders any more. I buy 7.5’ 0X leaders for bass and 3X for sunfish and trout. From that base I can build whatever I need. The guys at the fly shop advised me to never fish bass with anything less than 12 lb tippet or leaders.  That’s about 0X, but I still use mostly 2X. It’s all simple really, and I don’t know why anyone would accuse fly fishing of being arcane.

I just wish instead of tippet I was buying snoods.

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Palm Beach

Scott Hamilton is a big guy, thick in a strong way through the calves and thighs and shoulders, and thick in a working man’s way through the center. His voice has a baritone authority, only slightly tinged by his Marlborough Menthols. His hair is fine and straight and a bit shaggy, apparently untouched by grey, with a mustache that follows suit. The mustache is whispier than a proper hero’s mustache, but too benign for a villain’s. Before he guided in Palm Beach he guided in Key West, and my bet is that’s where he picked up the diamond stud. Before Key West he guided in Maine.  He’s been guiding fly fishers in Palm Beach since 1991. That’s a lot of guiding.

I didn’t follow any of my rules for picking Captain Hamilton: I found him on the internet by searching Palm Beach and fly fish. There aren’t a lot of choices. He’s not endorsed by Orvis, and while he’s proud of being the longest tenured Redington guide, I didn’t find him on Redington’s website. His boat’s principal interest to me was its oddity: a 26′ Power Catamaran with twin 140 hp Suzuki motors mounted on a jack plate. It has a T-Top. Tidy and well-maintained, Scott says it drafts in a foot and handles five foot waves offshore. I’ve been in five foot swells before, on a 22′ Boston Whaler, and I hung my head over the gunnel and gave my guts to Neptune. I was just as glad it was blowing hard enough to keep us in the Intracoastal.

 

Three things struck me about fishing the Intracoastal at Palm Beach. First, this is an urban landscape. There are boats everywhere. I’ve spent some time on the Intracoastal around Galveston. It’s a relatively narrow deep channel where the most common traffic is chemical barges and bay boat sport-fishers speeding through. Nobody hangs out on the Intracoastal. On the other hand the Florida Intracoastal is an urban landscape, and I saw nary a barge. There are 70-, 80-,  100-foot yachts with three thousand gallon diesel tanks capable of a quick cruise to Monte Carlo, the twin of the Kennedy’s yacht cruising about in a constant state of party, lots of Hinkley’s, 60-foot deep sea fishing boats ready for a quick cruise to the Bahamas, and 40- and 50-foot live-aboard sailboats anchored randomly through the waterway because, apparently, the owners don’t want to pay marina fees. Kris asked Scott if it was dangerous to leave one’s boat anchored in the waterway. Scott said the biggest danger was the bilge pump failing during a heavy rain.

Second, the water is blue, and by late in the day with the incoming tide we could see the bottom in ten feet. There’s clear water further south in Texas, but there’s rarely much clarity in Galveston. We get mud from the Mississippi, Florida has boat traffic.

Third, people who build $3 million houses on the shoreline of Florida waterways surely can have bad taste. Why spend all that money on all that view and then decide that you need a couple of life-size bronze elk statues to make everything perfect? Elk? Elk? And both of them male? Of course the elk aren’t really complete until you surround them with statues of Greek goddesses.

We started the morning with Scott bemoaning the lack of clarity and running a search pattern looking for tarpon on sonar. Scott put Kris on the front of the boat, which I thought was unfair but was too gentlemanly to mention. I fished the back by the motors with a Redington 11-weight and a fast sinking lead-core line. Scott asked me if I had practiced my backhand, and all I could think of was Venus and Serena Williams. I tried to cast like I thought the Williams sisters might, and proceeded to wrap that heavy line around one of the Suzukis. Scott got me unwrapped without yelling and tried to explain again. All day Scott was immensely patient. I finally figured out that I should ask where he wanted me to put the fly and go with it on my backcast, which was what he was saying in the first place. That seemed to work. We fished for a while then moved on. No tarpon.

Thursday, the day before we left for Florida, our daughter Austin and I had a conversation while walking through downtown Houston to her office–I was going to the annual Anti-Defamation League lunch, she was going back to work. “What happens if you don’t catch a fish?” Well of course I won’t catch a fish. I never catch fish. “I’ll have to go back” I said. “That’s a problem for Delaware” she said.

Scott kept saying the same things over and over, trying to drill them into my thick head. The takes would be fast. The fish were hard-mouthed and setting the hook would take a hard strip-set then another and another and another. I’ve fished with guides, especially trout guides, who fanatically checked the integrity of the leader: Scott fanatically checked the sharpness of his hooks. He was justly proud of his own tied flies, and when I kept wrapping flies around every available nook and cranny he switched me out to a kind of bend back with a stiff fish-hair wing and taught me how to slow the retrieve to keep from getting hung in mangroves. Slow, really slow. It was a good lesson, and at least another hour before I lost that fly.

We spent a long time searching for snook against bulkheads, among dock pilings, under mangroves. I got a bump I couldn’t identify and forgot to set. Kris and Scott saw my line get thwacked by a big needle fish but I forgot to set. We caught nothing except a New York lady in yoga pants who wanted us to move along so her dogs would stop barking. If you could fish for New Yorkers in Palm Beach, I’m pretty sure I’d have caught my limit.

Meanwhile Scott worked hard–good guides work hardest when the fishing is bad.

End of the day Scott put Kris on a 10-weight with a clear Courtland floating line and a 9-inch needle fish fly.  Big fly, heavy rod, heavy line. Scott cast, Kris retrieved, I kept the boat in a straight line. The barracuda that took the fly took the leader with it.  Kris said it was like watching the great vicious Jaws maw  come out of nowhere. Scott said it was at least 40 pounds. I think 50, but I was holding the boat on line and didn’t see it. Their yells sure sounded like 50.

One more bump for me by a small barracuda.  I guess I have to go back to Florida.