This is the first instalment in a series of three articles Chadd has written for us about the Wind Rivers in Wyoming.
The first time my son Klaus and I got invited to backpack in the Wind Rivers of Wyoming, we didn’t even own any backcountry gear. But instead of fussing over trivial matters like proper backpacks or hiking boots, I ran down to the fly shop to inquire which flies I should bring to fish.
I’d started fly fishing just a few years earlier, learning the craft by joining conversations with experienced anglers and pretending to know what they were talking about. You can pick up a lot that way. Just keep your mouth shut and nod—people will assume you know it all. The guys at the fly shop never fell for this; they knew I didn’t know a thing.
When I got to the shop, Clarence was stocking shelves. I’d heard he was a fly angling Jedi, but he never made a big deal of it. He may have exhibited a certain aloofness, but I’d always assumed that was because he regretted there was only so much someone like him could teach guys like me.
He looked up from his merchandise. “Help you find anything?”
Another reason I like Clarence is he lacks the intimidating presence of a typical outdoorsman. He’s not tall or chiseled—sort of the opposite, actually. He’s on the stocky side, wears thick eyeglasses. If you tried to guess his hobby, you might guess video games before fly fishing.
“Hey, Clarence.” I always call him by name, like we’re old fishing pals, hoping he’ll someday do likewise. “I need to know what flies to take on a backpacking trip.”
“Where you going?”
“The Wind Rivers.”
“The Winds?” He turned back to his work. “Just take anything,” he said, waving at the store’s dry fly inventory. “You’ll catch about a bazillion fish.”
It was good to know that savvy guys like Clarence called it “the Winds,” but I was hoping he’d drop everything and hand-pick a selection of flies for me, including some obscure fly from the back room, an arcane pattern that worked like a talisman.
“Anything?” I said, dubiously surveying the flies.
“Yeah, it’s crazy there. When are you going?”
“August.”
“Oh yeah. You’ll have a blast.”
As usual, he was right. I stuffed my flybox with anything and caught almost exactly one bazillion fish.
It was a great trip. The fish religiously observed morning and evening rises, but they were surprisingly flexible, too. If they were eating mayflies, they might gulp a big Yellow Sally just to keep things fair. I knew truer imitations would likely yield bigger fish, but for the first couple days I hooked so many, it didn’t matter.
For Klaus, who was thirteen-years-old, it was Fly Angling 101, with personal instruction from the very best tutors in existence: lots of real fish.
I learned a lot on that first trip, too, of course, and as the novelty of the place wore off, my approach matured. Instead of hurling haphazard fly selections to shoals of willing leapers, I picked flies carefully and fished where I thought choosey lunkers might lurk. The Winds rewarded me with bigger fish only slightly less numerous than their smaller, more reckless brethren.
Even so, I got a feeling Klaus and I were taking some unfair advantage, as if the place wanted us to put forth more effort but was too polite to insist. Like when Klaus called for help one day from forty yards upstream.
“Dad, I lost another caddis and I’m all out.”
“What happened?”
“I dunno. Must have tied the knot wrong.”
Klaus lost a lot of flies up there—gnawed them apart with hemostats, popped them off with sloppy casting. I should have slowed down to show him better practices, but with so many fish to catch it was hard to think big-picture. I always had a few more shoptied Prince Nymphs or PMDs. It was too easy to hand Klaus a fuzzy handful of whatever and send him on his way.
When we got home, we were invited to the next trip, the following August. I didn’t have to think about my answer. In my head, I’d never really come back. However, I promised myself I wouldn’t fish with just any fly next time. I’d tie my own, and I’d use them wisely, according to notes I took on the first trip.
Sheridan Anderson, author of The Curtis Creek Manifesto, recommends four flies per person, per day of backcountry fishing. That’s a great rule for myth-shrouded Curtis Creek, where fish were as schooled and skeptical as grad students, but I was tying for the Winds, where fish often rise two at a time to a well-presented dry. The problem wasn’t finding fish to catch, it was bringing enough flies, and running out up there would be an unspeakable fate. I’d need five per day to cover me for our next weeklong stay. Klaus would probably need six.
I started tying in March. I stuck with the standards; they’re the flies I tie best, and they’re durable. I further ruggedized them with techniques learned from my tying instructor—from reversed-wrapping with heavy wire to substitutions of the tougher, synthetic materials. I varied the fly sizes and shades so we could fish smarter. For example, while tying my Parachute Adams, I also tied a batch of Purple Hazes, a similar pattern I’d discovered that summer. On the Blacksmith Fork River (one of my homewaters and Mr. Anderson’s former stomping grounds) the fish have a hard time resisting the Purple Haze, and I couldn’t wait to try it in the Winds.
After one particularly productive tying session, Klaus spotted the growing stockpile.
“When can we split them up?” he asked.
There was no good reason to put it off, but I said, “When we get there.” I guess I just liked the way they looked all together in the flybox.
I tied about fifty flies for each of us. On the first trip I may have packed twice that many—I’m not really sure. They were shoptied flies with no special distinction. My hometied flies were tougher and smarter, so I needed fewer, but it still took me all summer. I tied one or two evenings a week, which often trumped family, friends, and fishing. Even packing for the trip itself had to wait; I tied every night for a week before we left.
The outcome was row upon row of flies, beautifully graduated in style and size. Hare’s Ear Nymph, Purple Haze, Manflower: all were assembled. This, I thought, was the effort the Wind Rivers expected. Instead of a decadent fish grab, I would make an angler’s pilgrimage, an offering.
Our company of ten met at dawn. The drive to the Wyoming borderlands starts on two-lane state highways, continues on Sublette County roads that are only nominally maintained, and ends after thirty-five miles of packed-dirt washboards. From where I live, it’s a five-hour haul to the trailhead, where the Wind River peaks loom over ranches and federal rangeland. There our four-hour hike and one-week stay would begin.
Most of the group rode in Nate’s big Suburban. Klaus and my good friend Tony came with me, along with the party’s backpacks, which were piled in the bed of my pickup. Tony doesn’t fish, but this was his first trip to the Winds, so we had plenty to talk about. I told him about the first trip. We compared our pack weights and our efforts to get ready.
“There was so much to do,” Tony said, massaging his temples. “I wasn’t done packing until last night. Hope I didn’t forget anything.”
“Oh, I know,” I chuckled. “I’ve been up late every night this week tying flies.”
“How many flies do you need for a trip like this?”
That’s when I realized I had left the flybox and the flies at home. I was on cruise control at 60 mph to fish the Wind River Range without a single fly in my possession.
We nearly swerved off the road. I stifled a sequence of expletives, but it required quite a bit of effort. Turning back would put us three hours behind schedule, which meant hiking in after dark, which was unacceptable—even dangerous. Besides, all the backpacks were in my truck and they’d never fit in Nate’s Suburban.
Inside that flybox was my Wind Rivers dissertation, but I couldn’t go back for it.
Tony waited for the answer to his question. “Something wrong?”
“I just realized I left those flies at home. In my room. On my dresser.” I repeated this in my mind—with the expletives. It was considerably longer that way.
“That doesn’t sound good,” said Tony.
“No.”
“Did you bring any others?”
“No.”
“Hm. What’re you going to do?”
I tried to laugh it off, but Tony could tell this was a big deal and we drove in silence for a few miles. I glanced at Klaus in the rearview mirror. He’d been dozing; he was wide awake now.
“You brought a flybox, right?” I asked.
He nodded, but we both knew that wouldn’t save us. He got his flies from me, and because I was still learning, he usually had only twenty or so flies at any given time.
“What’s in it?” I asked.
“A few mayflies. One Purple Haze. Some caddises, maybe. Why didn’t we split up the flies before?”
“We’ll pick up some more at Midway.”
Just outside the desert village of Big Piney, there sprawls a rustic compound of gaspumps and lowslung buildings called Midway Mall. Part truckstop, part old west museum, it was our final pitstop on the way to the trailhead. The boardwalk outside is decked out with thousands of sunbleached antlers; inside all manner of wares are for sale, from snackfood to horse tack to naked lady mudflaps. Taxidermy and antique rifles hang on every wall. Jackalopes, old Winchesters, even a mountain lion.
We had stopped there on the first trip, and I’d seen the fishing gear assortment on my way to the nacho cheese pump. Even in that passing glance, to me the flies looked old, poorly constructed. However, that was before I started tying, and so as we pulled up to Midway Mall again, I hoped my first impressions had been those of an untrained observer.
Unfortunately, I was right: the flies were sparsely dressed, garish, lopsided. They felt brittle; some were partly crumbled in the display case. Even so, they cost double what Clarence charged me back home. I had little interest in dropping a hundred dollars or more on substandard flies, but I couldn’t have replaced all my flies for any price—the selection was too narrow.
Under the glassy gaze of dusty bobcats and elk, I pondered over the display case for twenty minutes, scrutinizing not only the patterns but each individual fly. A slow Buck Owens tune played on the sound system. At length I chose my flies and a two-dollar flybox to put them in. Nate and the others chomped jerky in the Suburban as I waited in the checkout line behind an old trucker in a foam-crown ballcap. Through his mirrored shades he looked at me in my fresh hiking pants and brand-new boonie hat. Then he looked away.
When I stepped up to the register and told the cashier how many flies I had, she acted like she misheard me.
“Twenty-one?” she asked, eyebrows raised.
“Yeah,” I sighed.
She pursed her lips and shrugged, as if to say, “Hey, it’s your money, pal.” The total was somewhere north of fifty bucks.
Back on the road, I said to Klaus, “We’ll have to be careful with flies this time.”
He nodded. Then he shook his head.
I don’t remember much about the hike in. We stopped at sunny parkland overlooks while cumulus clouds scudded enormously overhead. I should have looked longer or at least shot more photos, but mostly I worried about the fly situation.
After pitching our tents, Klaus and I conducted our dismal inventory. We had thirty-two flies between us. There were no other fly anglers in the group, so thirty-two flies of disparate source and pattern would have to withstand one bazillion Wind River fish.
There were nine Elk Hair Caddises. I’d bought seven at Midway, and Klaus had two I’d tied for him that spring. In the Winds, a caddis will usually catch something, so these would form our front line. We each claimed one of the hometied flies. Klaus took the size 12 with tan body and silver wire rib. I got the size 14 with green body and copper wire. Both were products of my initial, clumsy attempts at fly tying, but they put the coarse Midway flies to shame. We pinned them into our boxes, handling them like miniature, sacred artifacts.
Eight mayflies of varied flavors would serve as our irregular troops. A few BWOs, a Cahill Parachute, nameless mosquito patterns. Like their natural counterparts, they wouldn’t last long. Most of Klaus’s had been fished already and weren’t in great shape; those from Midway looked like they might not even float. We divided them between us.
Klaus had a single size 12 Purple Haze in his box, one of the first I ever tied. It wasn’t a perfect example of the species, but it was the hometied fly I really wanted to try in the Winds that year. I knew Klaus would lose or exhaust the fly long before I got a chance to cast it, but I resisted the urge to confiscate it.
A ragged motley of terrestrials, nymphs, and streamers rounded out a regiment I calculated might hold out for three days. After supper there was time to fish the evening rise at the vast lake in the valley where we camped, but I headed for bed. I seldom sleep well while camping; that night I tossed in my mummybag with extra intensity, mourning my forgotten flies with their glossy hackles and fresh, prickly dubbing.
Next day, Klaus and I woke early to fish the morning rise. As I walked with my son in the stillness, I forgot about the fly shortage for a time. Once there, we found numberless trout jumping to a midge hatch. This wild and mist-veiled sight alone certainly counted for something, but it suddenly galled me to consider the fish that would have fallen to the hometied Griffith’s Gnats that I could not fish.
Klaus and I tied on our smallest mayflies—poor imitations at best. Klaus used a PMD and cast into the splashing chaos for a quarter-hour without hooking up. I chose a clunky Midway mayfly, but the too-skimpy hackle wouldn’t float the too-heavy hook. I fished it in the surface film and got one half-hearted hit, but the fish weren’t hitting just anything that morning.
I switched to a Woolly Bugger. I had two, both from Midway—one black and the other snot green. Both were tied on primitive-looking hooks with comically oversized barbs that I never could smash all the way down. I also had a Mickey Finn from Midway, and Klaus had a bugger he’d brought from home. This constituted our supply of streamers.
I gave the green bugger a decent showing despite my melancholy. On its first cast, I felt a bump. On the second I was fast to a nice brook trout.
“Switch to your bugger,” I shouted to Klaus. “Just don’t lose it.”
He tied on his olive bugger and caught a brookie of his own. We met similar success as the morning advanced. When we got back to camp it wasn’t the fish we talked about.
“Still got your bugger?” I asked.
“Yeah. What were you using?”
“This green one. Kind of ugly but it did the job. It’s nice and heavy.”
We re-distributed so that Klaus had his olive bugger and my black Midway specimen. I kept the green one from Midway and the Mickey Finn.
For the rest of that day, we fished our flies the way our fighting boys expended ammo during the Battle of the Bulge: we chose our targets wisely and aimed carefully. This resulted in some unforgettable fish. On Black Joe Creek, Klaus’s exceptional casting from the bankside reeds yielded him a gorgeous sixteen-inch cutty. I recall each of the cutthroats that came to my single hometied Elk Hair Caddis that day—I unhooked five from the fly before it began to disintegrate, and it caught one more after that.
We developed methods to conserve flies. Instead of the usual practice of fishing thirty or forty yards apart, Klaus watched me until I caught a fish, then I watched him land a couple. It was a little like shooting pool. And rather than fishing relentlessly all day long, as we had during the first trip, we took frequent streamside breaks, recounting our fish and trading flies the way schoolkids trade baseball cards.
“You sure I can have this one? How many fish did you catch on it?”
“I dunno. Five or six. Go ahead. Take it.”
At the end of the day we’d used up or lost only five flies total—a bit more than half of what Mr. Anderson predicted.
On the third day, Nate and the rest of the group planned to visit a high cirque that cradled a lake said to be densely inhabited by brook trout. The hike would take less than two hours, leaving most of the day for fishing. This would surely cost Klaus and me more than five flies; even the conservative estimate of four per day each would decimate our reserves. If the fishing got really good, which was likely, we’d face an unfortunate decision: prematurely stow our flyrods or blow the fly budget.
I suggested to Klaus that we take an alternate route. Instead of taking the trail with the others, we could hike upstream along a tiny creek that drained from the cirque. It would show us some unseen country, and we’d save on flies by taking longer to get to the lake.
The plan worked as well as any I’ve ever laid. We talked and laughed as we clambered up alongside the creek, which dwindled to step-over trickles in some places, widened to sylvan pools in others. There were scenes so striking they compelled us to gape in wonder, despite the abundance of waiting risers. In one place, we hopped from one bus-sized boulder to the next, following the creek by listening for its ghostly splashing somewhere far below us.
The fish in the creek were small, but they went easy on our flies. We tried to return the favor. Sometimes we gave slack and let them shake our hooks rather than landing them. By late morning we’d both hooked high double digits and lost only a couple flies. The one notable casualty was my fault—I popped off the snot-colored Woolly Bugger with a bad cast. We searched among the boulders in my backcast for twenty minutes but never found it.
By noon the wind had kicked up storm clouds, but as we approached the lake, the air went calm and the sun beamed out. The jagged rim of the cirque shone so clearly on the lake’s mirrored face that there was scarcely a detail of the actual landscape that we could not resolve in the reflection. The pale granite flanks of the mountains formed blank tablets on which the clouds cast shadows that to us looked like faces and dinosaurs and elephants—monkeyshines big as football fields.
A single caddisfly lit on the lake and fluttered dauntlessly there, vanguard of a commencing hatch. We tied on our best remaining caddis imitations and fished on. When it got too windy for casting, we paused and listened to the snapping wingbeats of the grasshoppers, or watched the tiny alpine wildflowers tremble in the breeze.
After four days, I still hadn’t fished the hometied Purple Haze. I’d quit keeping tabs on all the flies except that one. Klaus expressed no interest in letting it change hands, but he didn’t let it sit idle, either. One afternoon while I stayed campside, he went stalking among the nearby creeks. When I saw him striding purposefully back that evening, I figured he had a story to tell.
“It was unbelievable,” he said. “I found this stream full of cutties. It’s so perfect.”
He had trouble finding the words to tell how he’d hooked a succession of fish (one of which he claimed to have hooked and released twice) on the purplebodied wonderfly.
“I hooked up on the first cast,” he said. “The very first one!”
I hated to dampen the mood, but I couldn’t help myself: “How’s the Purple Haze?”
“Oh. Well, you gotta look at it.”
He produced the fly as if it were a tiny, injured bird. I examined it over the top of my eyeglasses. One of the hackles had detached from the head and spiraled out from the parachute. It would not survive another cast—not unless I could maybe tuck the hackle under itself, pull it into a sort of half-hitch, and temporarily halt the unraveling.
That night, with the aid of hemostats, headlamp, and my tongue held at just the right angle, I rehabilitated the fly. It was held together strictly by fond wishes, but it might last long enough for me to land one fish. Klaus pinned it into his flybox, which now held maybe ten flies and no two alike.
We turned in and I passed one of my best nights ever in a tent. I drifted off in dreams of sparkling native cutthroats dashing up to my Purple Haze, the only thing we had left that might pass for a Wind Rivers dissertation.
In the morning Klaus led me to the little waterway where he’d had such success the day before.
“It’s called Cutthroat Crik,” he said over his shoulder.
“It says that on the map?”
“No. That’s what I named it.”
We came to a shady place where the stream spread out over a broken bed of cobbles and woody debris. We stood looking upstream at the backs of three or four cutthroats idling on their underfins in no more than six inches of water.
“So,” said Klaus, without looking at me. “You, um, want to try that Purple Haze now?”
Klaus and I are close and I can read him pretty well. During that week in the backcountry, as we shared our few flies, we drew closer. If he was an open book to me before, he was now one of those largeprint magazines for people with bad eyesight. Even a stranger could deduce the answer he wanted.
“Me? Nah,” I said. “I want to see you tie it on and hook this one on the end here. What do you figure he is? Twelve-incher? Fourteen?”
It seemed Klaus was likewise reading me well enough to know how I’d respond, because he had the fly out of the box and his tippet through the eye before I finished speaking.
“You’ll have to high-stick him,” I added. “Maybe cast from over there.”
“No,” he replied, wetting the tippet with his mouth. “I know exactly where to go.”
He cinched down the knot and took up a spot I hadn’t noticed, a brushy alcove close by the bank but hidden from the fish. Then he made a few false casts, side-arming over the water to avoid the dense understory. In theory it was good technique, but he got jumpy and sent the line every which-way.
“Easy, junior,” I chided before he could foul or snag up. “Get your head together.”
He downed his line on the water well back from the fish and ran a hand over his face. Then he looked upstream, lining up the shot. Without the luxury of a full flybox, he had grown more thoughtful.
I considered the flies I left behind. I thought about what I’d brought with me instead, and what had been there all along. Klaus began casting again. This time the line sailed fine and true, and as he fished our last good fly to pieces, he made the offering for both of us.
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