The Total Outdoorsman - The One

Some days, if you’re lucky and if you listen closely, the trout will tell you exactly what they want.

- T. Edward Nickens

THE FISH WERE picking at the fly, plucking and nipping at its tail in the slower pools, but slashing at the bug in the swift water with maybe a 40 to 60 percent commitment rate. The trout—rainbows, cutthroats, and the occasional brown beast in this northern Montana creek—had already turned down all of the standard menu choices for this water. They rejected the Cat Puke, a big wedge-headed bank crasher that killed them a week ago. They wanted nothing to do with any Green Drake— neither the giant-hackled pattern that was suggested at the fly shop nor the slimmer parachute version. But they sniffed and sipped at the golden stonefly. It was a kinda-sorta bite. Our first clue.

While my buddy Land Tawney handled the raft oars, I went to work on the fly. I had only one version of a golden stonefly in the box—a bullet-beaked meat bug nearly 1 1 ⁄2 inches long with tiger-striped rubber legs that looked like they belonged on a mosquito hawk. That’s where I started. I trimmed a half-inch of rubber off each leg, and the strike rate stepped up. The more I trimmed, the more fish I caught, and by the time each leg was down to a half-inch long, I was left with a snub-nosed size 4 fly I could skip like a rock. It looked like I was chucking a mustard-yellow cigar stub through the air. And the trout went nuts.