saltwater

The 25 Greatest Flies of All Time

Joe_Cermele — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 16:56:03 -0400

No one fly catches all the fish all the time. That’s a fact of flyfishing, and it’s why there are thousands of different patterns. Fish, ever whimsical, sometimes refuse to eat on Friday the fly they ate on Tuesday. Fishermen, ever inventive, constantly create new patterns to compensate. Despite this, some standard patterns have evolved. Tested by time, water, and fish, these are the flies that work more often than not. Most are trout flies because the majority of flyfishermen target trout. That’s why my top 20 list leans in that direction.

An Illustrated Guide to the Bait of the Northeast Coast

Joe_Cermele — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:19:38 -0500

If you're after striped bass, weakfish, or tuna along the Northeast Coast, know ahead of time that bait options are endless. Photographer and Boston-based fly fishing guru Dave Skok chronicles the most popular bait species, and tell you where to find them and how to match the hatch.

Mastering the Bimini Twist

Joe_Cermele — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 16:30:57 -0500

It's been said that the Bimini twist is the most difficult fishing knot to tie. It's also one of the strongest, capable of beating fish weighing over 1,000 pounds. So here's the easy way to master the Bimini in five simple steps.

Field & Stream Adventure: The One That Got Away, Part II

fieldandstream-editor — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 09:00:00 -0400

(Click here to read part I of this story)

The Fourth Hour
Through the third hour and into the fourth, I was feeling pretty good. True, the marlin still seemed very strong, but we were cruising along at its pace, which eased the pressure on my arms and shoulders and created in me two illusions. One was that the constant, pestering weight of the taut line over what you might call the fish's left shoulder was bound to wear it down. The other was that our tribulations had ceased.

"Do not worry," Tuna exclaimed in what I initially took to be the spirit of troubles laid by.

"The water is out of the boat," he added.

I craned my head around and looked over my own left shoulder. Sure enough, he was not standing in water. He was proud of himself.

"How are you doing up there?" Tuna said.

"I feel good," I said. "We've passed four hours and I'm not tired at all."

Tuna had no way of knowing that I was not just another soft vacation fisherman. I wanted to assure him that I had been waiting a lifetime for this moment and that conquest resided in my soul. I desired to communicate, in the subtle, modest yet firm way of the Appalachian people, that for all the gray hair on my head, he had a gritty Dixie boy on his hands, a dead-game sport, as my dad would say.

"We'll wear him down," I said. "I think he's tiring a little. He doesn't have as much zip as he had when we first hooked him."

Yet this report did not seem to cheer Tuna as I had hoped. He stood at the tiller, steering us up and down the blue Pacific hillocks. He seemed curiously disengaged from the fish.

"Do you have a screwdriver?" he said.

I said, not testily but firmly, that I wondered why he needed a screwdriver.

"I have to pull up the floorboards," Tuna said. "I think the drain plug floated under the floorboards while the boat was full of water. Now all I have to do is find the plug."

Oh, yes, yes, indisputably, we still needed the drain plug. As long as we kept running along at half throttle or better, no water could enter the boat. But once we stopped to land the fish or when we, inevitably, ran out of gas, we would start sinking without delay. It was news to me that it had not only come dislodged from its hole but had gone missing entirely. If it was not under the floorboards, that would be additional news of a very bad kind. It was also news, of a surprising sort, that our drain plug was suspected of floating, since such items are customarily constructed of such sinkable materials as brass and hard rubber. If it comes out, it falls to the bottom of the boat and you pick it up.

"Float?" I said. "Why did it float?"

"It's wood," Tuna shouted back. With a touch of pride, he added that he had carved it himself.

"It has to be under the floorboards," he concluded.

It was time to rouse Tennant from his postpartum apathy. His color had shifted from green to pasty gray, and he moved when roused like someone swimming through an atmosphere that was thicker than that experienced by other humans. Nonetheless he made a good catch when I swung my Orvis fishing bag toward him.

"See if I brought my Swiss Army knife or Leatherman tool," I said.

He rummaged unhappily through the bag's several pockets. The zippers seemed deeply mysterious to him. As I suspected, the desired items were not in my fishing bag, but rather on my dresser back at the Captain Cook.

"Don't worry," Tuna suddenly exclaimed. "I found my screwdriver."

He held the welcome object aloft. It was cheap-looking, like the tools you see in the 99-cent bucket beside the cash register at TruValue. It was rusty. But it was, by God, a screwdriver. Tuna instructed Tennant to take the tiller and fell to work in the bottom of the boat, reming the half-dozen screws that pinned the plywood floorboard to the raised ribs of the hull.

Complications ensued. When we slid down the face of a long wave, Tennant failed to back off on the throttle. The boat gained suddenly on the fish.

"Slow down, slow down!" I shouted, too late. There was a big belly in the line. I cranked rapidly to try to take up the slack before the fish could slip the hook. But my cranking was rowdy and undisciplined. It caused the rod tip to jiggle, and this, my first crude move, threw a loop of slack line around the tip-top guide on my fly rod. I knew instantly that this meant trouble, and sure enough, when the boat slowed on the uphill side of the next wave, the fish took off, yanking the top section of the three-piece rod from the ferrule where it joined the middle section. The jerk of the separating rod seemed to inspire the marlin to try out its overdrive. Line peeled from the reel and I watched the end section of my rod, firmly looped into my line, disappear into the waves.

"Don't worry," Tuna said, looking up from his work. "We'll get the rod tip back as soon as I get the boat fixed. Just hold on."

Oh, yes, of course.

"I have it!" Tuna called in a few minutes. I watched over my shoulder as he held aloft a big square block of wood that had been whittled into a blunt point on one end. I wouldn't exactly call it a square peg, but I could see, given its irregular shape, how it had slipped out of the perfectly round hole in the transom. In any event, Tuna pounded it home and scooped out the last of the water. Then he took the tiller again and once more we went pelting after the marlin and that portion of the fly rod that was now in its possession.

After 30 minutes of playing the fish on the stumpy butt sections, I had regained enough line to catch sight of my missing tip section, still firmly looped in place.

"How sick are you?" I asked Tennant.

"I'm better," he said. "Still a little shaky. I'm all right."

"Then I need for you to get up here in the bow and put this rod back together when I reel the tip section back in. Do you think you can do that?" "I'm not sure. I'll try," he said.

The only problem, of course, was that Tuna had to gun the engine so I could regain line. The extra speed pushed the boat into the waves so hard that its bow was rising and falling 6 or 8 feet at a sweep. I was sure the bucking-horse ride at the front of the boat would make Tennant spew again as soon as he got in position. On the other hand, I knew that Tuna had to be at the throttle if we were to have any chance at all. As for me, I was not about to surrender the rod. So there was nothing to do but send my ailing friend forward.

Tennant is, shall we say, an unhurried person. To say that he took up his station in the bow deliberately is to exaggerate his speed exponentially. I passed the time by explaining how he was going to have to take the tip of the rod in hand without stressing it, then unwrap the half hitch that the fouled line had thrown around the rod's top guide. He had to perform this quickly but be all the while prepared to let the whole works go if the fish sped away. Once he had the rod tip in hand and the knot undone, he must deftly reunite the male and female sections of the rod ferrule, or joint, all the while making sure that the guides were properly aligned. Given the lack of cooperation from the fish and the speed at which the boat was moving, this would not have been an altogether easy task in calm water.

Finally Tennant was in position and I cranked the tip within his reach. He did everything perfectly, and suddenly, we were not sinking, the tackle was in order, the line was tight, and Tennant was not throwing up. Our great travail was over, but my expectations of whipping the fish by the end of the fourth hour proved illusory. Even so, in midafternoon, the wind backed around to the south and the seas flattened a bit. We were able by gunning the boat to close to within 20 feet or so of the marlin. I could see my fly plainly in the corner of its mouth. I had a solid-gold hookup. Tuna was coaching me constantly, warning me not to get impatient and apply too much pressure, and his eagerness made it necessary for me to declare an intention I thought he would oppose.

"We're not going to kill this fish," I said.

"Don't worry," he said. "We'll just get the fly back and take some pictures."

Now the fish was swimming right beside us. Another few feet and Tuna could have touched the leader, which under the international rules of billfish tournaments meant the fish could be counted as caught and released. The rule is a conservation measure, the logic being that if a fish is that close to the boat, you could snag it with a long-handled killing gaff if you chose to. Since we were not in a tournament, had no gaff anyway, and had already cast aside the holy rules of flyfishing, none of this really mattered. But I understood Tuna's reasoning immediately and bought into it. If he could get the leader in hand, we could honestly say we had fulfilled the technical requirements of "catching" this fish.

Perhaps it was the vibrations of our optimism that provoked the marlin into showing us what it had left.

Which turned out to be a lot.

One moment, we were going along side by side and Tuna and I were plotting how to get the leader close enough for him to grab, and the next the marlin was tilting its nose down and playing submarine. That is to say, with me exerting maximum pressure by jamming my gloved hand against the spool of the reel, the marlin sounded.

Down and down it went, as if it had an Evinrude strapped to its butt. My two football fields of backing melted away and I could see the exposed spool. When there were about a half dozen wraps of line on the spool, I clamped down, figuring to break the fish off at the leader rather than the bitter end of the backing and thereby save my fly line. The line came tighter and tighter; the tip of my rod plunged into the water. By the fraught feel of things, I could tell that everything between me and the fish was at the breaking point. And then the last thing I expected happened. The marlin stopped its descent and began swimming horizontally again at a leisurely pace exactly 699 feet below us-600 feet of backing, 90 feet of fly line, 9 feet of leader.

At this great depth, the fish swam more slowly, with a kind of casual power. We motored along, keeping pace. The rod was bent to its most severe arc, the line pointing straight down in the piercing blue ocean, as if pinned to a peg at the center of the earth. There was no question of pumping the fish to the surface with main force. Fly rods are notoriously short on lifting power, which is why you don't use them in bottom-fishing for grouper or halibut or for that matter were able by gunning the boat to close to within 20 feet or so of the marlin. I could see my fly plainly in the corner of its mouth. I had a solid-gold hookup. Tuna was coaching me constantly, warning me not to get impatient and apply too much pressure, and his eagerness made it necessary for me to declare an intention I thought he would oppose.

"We're not going to kill this fish," I said.

"Don't worry," he said. "We'll just get the fly back and take some pictures."

Perhaps it was the vibrations of our optimism that provoked the marlin into showing us what it had left.

Which turned out to be a lot.

Field & Stream Adventure: The One That Got Away, Part I

fieldandstream-editor — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 05:20:00 -0400

This is a South Pacific fish story that begins on Darky Lake in Canada. In June, for four or five years running, my sons Ben and Jeff and I went there to flyfish for smallmouth bass big enough to swallow those we caught on mid-Atlantic rivers like the Potomac and the Delaware. The wilderness fishing in Ontario's Quetico Provincial Park was dreamlike but repetitious, and in 1995, at our familiar campsite, I experienced a sensation so unusual that at first I did not recognize it. I was bored with the best fishing of its kind in North America.

Upon returning to my newspaper job in New York City, I conferred with my closest friend from back home in Alabama. Tennant McWilliams is a university dean, justly renowned in educational circles for his sound judgment and steady temperament. We have hunted and fished together since we were 15, and for years, I have relied on him to talk me out of the wild-hair schemes that come to all fishermen. He had seen me through a teenage phase of chasing giant hammerhead sharks in small boats and later impulses to invest money in "undiscovered" fishing camps. I thought he would talk me out of my newly conceived plan to battle angling ennui by fishing in all the exotic places we could never afford while raising our families. Now, in our early 50s, we were both well-employed and beyond the reach of alimony, tuition, and orthodontia bills. Even so, I thought Tennant would say "you're crazy" when I said that only an expensive excursion to Christmas Island via Honolulu in pursuit of our first fly-rod bonefish could restore our zeal. Instead he said, "Sign me up."

The Republic of Kiribati does not refer to its Christmas Island atoll as a "paradise of fish and birds" for nothing. In a few days we had caught so many bonefish on flies that we turned our thoughts to the bigger creatures outside the reef. So it came to pass that we chartered Tuna Smith, a well-known bonefishing guide who owned a panga-like skiff, to take us offshore in search of giant trevally. We cast with spinning rods and trolled with conventional tackle to no avail, at which time Tuna, a strong, cheerful man who greatly resembled Don Ho, inquired about the contents of my tackle bag.

"Have you got any big streamer flies?" he said.

We had been trolling off the northwest corner of the island, where ocean currents boiled against the steep flanks of the old volcano. The water was hundreds of feet deep here, and its upper stories were trafficked by schools of baitfish that, in turn, pulled in schools of small tuna. From time to time, we could see the splashes of feeding fish, but we had no takers on our big plastic lures. So Tuna thought a smaller fly might attract a strike.

As it happened, I had a brand-new, tandem-hooked billfish fly purchased by mail order from the Fly Shop of Redding, California, for what seemed to me, then and now, the bargain price of $4.95. A nice fly it was, and I had bought it, as I buy so many pieces of tackle, prophylactically. I felt that someday, somewhere I might need it, never mind the fact that I had never caught a billfish and had, in fact, seen damn few in my life.

"How's this?" I said to Tuna, holding up a concoction of green and white plastic filaments tied like a ponytail.

"Perfect," he said. "Tie it on your 10-weight fly rod, and let's troll for a few more minutes before we go inside the reef for bonefish."

I tied my Fly Shop billfish fly to my 20-pound Orvis leader with the 80-pound shock tippet. I paid line from my Orvis Battenkill 10/11 Salt Water Reel and within minutes I was trolling with my 9-foot, 10-weight Sage fly rod. I confess that I was not casting my line as intended by the designers of all the products named above and as mandated by the International Game Fish Association of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I think of myself as a flyfisherman and so present myself to the world, but I was trolling as openly as any wire-ling, beer-gutted, bowling-shirted New Jersey plumber on his annual outing to murder a Cape May bluefish.

I think Tuna was explaining the fine points of how the international police force would operate when the strike came. He talked about that a good deal to fill the odd moments of the day. As ocean strikes go, it was gentle. The fish made a short run, pulling line from my fly reel, and then turned docilely and began swimming toward the boat and then past it. I had to wind rapidly to take the slack out of the line.

"What kind of fish is it?" Tennant asked.

"Probably a bonita," said Tuna.

At that precise moment, an astonishing blue-and-silver creation came out of the top of a Pacific wave that loomed above our puny boat like a hillock of cerulean jelly. There is something impressive about looking uphill at a fish that seems half as long as your boat. In The Outermost House, Henry Beston wrote about big rogue waves "coming like a king" out of the sea. That is how I think of that moment. The wave rose above us like a king, and an impossible fish climbed into the sky like the son of God. What I'm trying to express, I suppose, is that on the stroke of that moment something rolled over within me, something at the center of my chest. It was, I think, the tumblers of my heart.

"It's not a bonita," I said.

Tuna, whose attention had been elsewhere, saw the second of three greyhounding leaps.

"No, it's not a bonita," Tuna agreed in a tone of calm acceptance that I assume is taught in the temples of his Baha'i faith.

"It's a marlin," I finally managed to say, feeling a foolish sense of triumph at being able to state the obvious.

It was, indeed, a Pacific blue marlin, and by every available sign, this particular marlin was in fine fettle. It was a young marlin at the brimming height of its powers. Scientists of human aging would have to report that I, a stocky, graying man just past 50, could not be regarded as being at the height of my physical powers. On the other hand, I had reached through calculation and steady effort the ability to fish in some of the waters about which I had dreamed. So it came to pass that the marlin and I met in the roomy precincts of the far Pacific. Now we were both doing what we had to do. I was holding on. And the marlin, having gotten its introductory leaps out of the way, was hauling ass. [NEXT "Blueness and Bolts Therefrom"]

Blueness and Bolts Therefrom
I had always wondered what it was like to fight a big fish for a long time, and the moment of my education was at hand. I had the tangible sensation of learning new things, moment to moment, and it became apparent that the things came in two categories, those that are surprising and those that are boring. I also had the feeling that time had slowed down, and that while the pressure of the fish is always there, the mind wanders. When someone speaks to you, you hear what they said, but you also hear its echoes inside your head. So there was a long historic echo when Tennant spoke a sentence after the fish had been on the line for several minutes, and the affair began to settle down into an orderly struggle.

"You are handling this beautifully," he said.

I thought not of the fish or my friend's generosity, but of how much he sounded like his father and how pleased the old man, who was born in 1901, would be that these two boys he had shaped so forcefully, his son and his student, were still friends as we passed into our 50s. I thought also that in the becalmed waters of middle age, American men yearn for a certain amount of chaos. We will travel far and pay dearly to get it. And I thought that I, by God, was getting my money's worth.

The way you whip a big fish is to chase it for as long as it takes. The trick is not new. Izaak Walton, writing in the 17th century, recommended throwing the pole into the water and letting the fish drag it around until it was exhausted, a trick that I sometimes saw replicated by Alabama cane-polers during my childhood. Tuna planned an open-sea version of this strategy, with our boat as the cane pole. We learned in short order that he was a marvelous boat handler. We raced through the ocean's hills and valleys behind the marlin, and it was thrilling to be up in the high bow of the boat, tasting the warm, salty spray and feeling the relentless pulse of the fish, leading us south. Tuna coached me constantly not to put too much pressure on the line. We would tire the fellow out in due course. All we had to do was be patient.

There was something else about Tuna that I apprehended in those first pelting minutes. He really wanted to catch this fish. Beyond that, he believed we were going to catch it. A guide cannot fake conviction, and there is nothing worse than being in a boat with someone you are paying, but who does not much care, one way or another. Right off, I sensed something elemental in Tuna's response to our situation. I can only describe it as the primal optimism of someone who has grown up conquering sea creatures of all sizes and for whom there is no other business than living the life that the sea and the world have put in front of him. More than anything, I did not want to disappoint him.

The fish had slowed in its swimming a bit. It was still going steadily away, running about 6 feet under the surface, out to the side of the boat so there was a long bow in the line. I asked Tuna to move in more directly behind the fish to reduce the drag on the line. I was afraid the weight of the curved line would pull the hook or break the tippet. Even though the seas were running 10 feet or better, the waves came in long swells, without a lot of surface chop. So Tuna was able to gun the boat ahead, closing on the fish and enabling me to regain a hundred yards or so of backing.

After we had been engaged with the fish for some time, perhaps a half hour of bouncing along the waves, up and down, I heard a strangled noise from the rear of the boat and glanced back over my shoulder. Tennant's head was hanging over the gunwale, and from time to time, he shouted passionately at the sea. He is not a large man, but he seemed to hold quite a lot.

Seeing my friend in the embrace of mal de mer reminded me of a comment I had read that compared being seasick to a lover's jealousy. You think you're going to die and everyone else thinks it's funny. One glance at Tennant, who had ceased shouting at the ocean and had fallen back into his deck chair, convinced me that this would not be a good time to share this witticism.

"Drink a Coke," I told him.

"I don't think I can keep it down right now," he said.

Even so, I was encouraged. He had spoken a sentence free of complaint and containing no mention of the shore. Good thing, since there was no way in hell he wnd until it was exhausted, a trick that I sometimes saw replicated by Alabama cane-polers during my childhood. Tuna planned an open-sea version of this strategy, with our boat as the cane pole. We learned in short order that he was a marvelous boat handler. We raced through the ocean's hills and valleys behind the marlin, and it was thrilling to be up in the high bow of the boat, tasting the warm, salty spray and feeling the relentless pulse of the fish, leading us south. Tuna coached me constantly not to put too much pressure on the line. We would tire the fellow out in due course. All we had to do was be patient.

"Drink a Coke," I told him.

"I don't think I can keep it down right now," he said.

Even so, I was encouraged. He had spoken a sentence free of complaint and containing no mention of the shore. Good thing, since there was no way in hell he w

Stories from the Sea: More Classic Photos from the F&S Archives

fieldandstream-editor — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 10:00:00 -0400

Check out this gallery of classic salt water fishing prints from the 30s through the 60s, dug out of some old file cabinets in the New York office. We've re-scanned them to fit our site's new larger format, and this time included scans of their backs, on which past editors of the magazine sometimes scribbled notes to each other.

Adventure/Travel: 15 winter fishing hot spots

fieldandstream-editor — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 04:15:00 -0500

For hardcore anglers, myself among them, just about any fishing is better than none at all. It's not even necessarily a matter of traveling to a warmer climate. It's the fishing, which is why I sometimes toss piles of fleece and Gore-Tex into the truck and head for a winter steelhead river, where I can wade happily for hours and cast along the edges of icy slush. Sometimes I catch something, but mostly it's just a way to scratch the deep itch of winter.

Winter is also an opportune time to fish those places you've always wanted to try or for those species that have always fascinated you. Some years back, I fished with a longtime Florida bass guide who confessed in a quiet moment that his lifelong dream was to go tarpon fishing. This seemed odd since there was good tarpon action off the coast, a scant 60 miles away. When I asked why he hadn't tried it, he shrugged and said, "I dunno. Just never got around to it, I guess. But someday."

Don't let that kind of inertia get the best of you. Whether you're a young turk thrashing the water or an old-timer who takes fish with more guile than energy, fishing time travels a one-way street. "If the fishing is good, go now," Lee Wulff told me years ago, "because tomorrow may be too late."

Here are 15 top winter fishing destinations in the Lower 48. They aren't the only ones. But I was trying for geographic variety so that most readers could reach one or more without having to spring for an airline ticket. So, check the list, check your gear, and scratch the itch.

Table of Contents

[NEXT "Washington"]

1 Ocean Runners [BRACKET "Washington"]
Steelhead in the Pacific Northwest are perhaps the most intensely politicized fish on earth. They are big, beautiful, and hard to catch. Their runs have been decimated by decades of habitat loss and overfishing. Freshwater trout are a sport, but oceangoing steelhead are a passion. It is a tilting-at-windmills sort of fishing, hard labor in lousy weather, all for the rare thrill of a violent yank at the other end of the line. There are still fishable winter runs of both wild and hatchery steelhead on Washington's Olympic Peninsula, perhaps the prettiest of all the regions they call home. Hatchery steelhead, identified by a clipped adipose f, start returning to coastal rivers by mid-November in most years. These runs usually peak in December, with fish averaging 5 to 9 pounds and occasionally reaching 15 pounds or more. By mid-January, wild fish, commonly 10- to 12-pounders with a few at 20 pounds or more, have often started their winter run. Even 30-pounders are possible, though exceedingly rare.

Steelheading on the peninsula revolves around the little town of Forks, Washington, in the northwestern corner. It's near the Sol Duc, Calawah, and Bogachiel Rivers, which together form the Quillayute system. Other well-known steelhead rivers, such as the Hoh, Queets, and Quinalt, are a short distance south, along the western side of the peninsula. It is all difficult fishing under uncertain weather conditions, whether you're using fly or conventional tackle. A heavy downpour can make a river almost unfishable for days at a time, and it rains a lot here. The fishing is really bad when it's bad, unforgettable when it's good.

Contact: For details on local accommodations and fishing guides, see the Forks Chamber of Commerce website at forkswa.com. Olympic National Park and Olympic National Forest cover much of the land area. For regulations and other information, see nps.gov/olym and www.fs.fed.us/r6/olympic. [NEXT "Colorado"]

2 Ski-Slope Trout [BRACKET "Colorado"]
There are some truly crazy trout fishermen in Colorado, where tire chains and four-wheel-drive vehicles are basic equipment for winter fishing. If those can't get you to your favorite December water-and yes, that happens-you may need a snowmobile, too. Flyfishing for snowbound trout isn't about to replace alpine skiing as a growth industry here, but in recent years it's been getting increasingly serious attention.

Aspen, Vail, Breckenridge, Steamboat-scratch deeply enough around any major Colorado ski resort and you'll find at least a few winter flyfishers. They've figured out that as long as there's some open, flowing water nearby, the trout will eat something no matter how cold it is outside. They've also learned that the same sort of high-tech clothing that makes skiing pleasurable makes winter trout fishing bearable, too. Just trade your breathable ski bibs for breathable waders and wear fleece underneath. The water you're standing in will likely be warmer than the air anyway.

The best such fishing comes in tailwaters because water flowing from the bottom of a dam is warmer than that in a freestone stream full of slushy ice chunks. This means more active trout. One way you can approach them is with the Steamboat Powdercats, operating out of Steamboat Springs in northern Colorado. For $350 a day, they'll take two people by snowmobile into the Yampa River tailwater below Stagecoach Dam, which happens to be full of feisty 16- to 20-inch rainbows. They provide waders and tackle; you provide your own warm clothes.

A little more civilized (insert snooty sniff here) option is on the fabled Fryingpan tailwater near Aspen. It's a 14-mile stretch, which stays open all winter, where big rainbows and browns feast on Mysis shrimp flushed out of Ruedi Reservoir upstream. You can drive to this one as long as the canyon road upstream from Basalt has been cleared. The biggest rainbow I've taken in Colorado came to a small midge fished here during a late-season snowstorm. I froze my butt and loved every minute of it.

Contact: Check out Steamboat Powdercats at steamboatpowdercats.com/vacation/fly_fishing.htm. For general winter trout fishing information, check the Colorado Division of Wildlife website at wildlife.state.co.us/fishing. [NEXT "Georgia"]

3 Fresh Stripes [BRACKET "Georgia"]
It's a little hard for many out-of-staters to think of Georgia as a striped-bass powerhouse, but consider these notes: The state-record striper is a mammoth 63-pounder taken from the Oconee River in 1967. Ancient history, you say? Nope. In 2002, another giant a few ounces shy of 60 pounds came from Lake Hartwell along the GeorgiaÂ¿Â¿Â¿South Carolina border. And while baitfishing is usually preferred for big stripers here, just last fall a flyfisherman caught and released a 43-pounder from the Chattahoochee River below West Point Dam. Clearly, this is serious striper country.

Georgia has long aggressively stocked the species in many of its major lakes. As with most landlocked striped bass fishing in the southeastern United States, the bite peaks in winter. Stripers turn on in the cold, feeding on schools of shad and blueback herring. Most of the action is found in the state's northern half, although there's some as far down as Lake Seminole, in the extreme south. Top waters include Clarks Hill and Hartwell Lakes in the northeast, both part of the Savannah River system; Lake Lanier on the Chattahoochee River system just northeast of Atlanta; and the Coosa River system in the northwest, which has one of the very few naturally reproducing freshwater striper populations (the fish are normally anadromous). For those who can't take stripers without a hint of salt, the lower, tidal reaches of the Savannah River also host a fairly good winter fishery.

A striper is a striper, and the same fundamental rule applies here as everywhere else they're found: Find the baitfish, and you'll find the bass. In winter, shad and herring schools tend to congregate in the lower reaches of major reservoirs or the lower ends of creek-mouth tributaries. Catch some with a cast net, then either live-line them around the edges of baitfish schools or slow-troll them as you search for active stripers. Wide-spool baitcasting reels loaded with 20-pound-test monofilament are the general rule. Make sure yours has a very good drag.

Contact: Your trip planning should start with the Wildlife Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources' excellent website at georgiawildlife.dnr.state.ga.us. You can find a list of striper guides at 1fghp.com/ga. [NEXT "Florida"]

4 Smooth Sailing [BRACKET "Florida"]
You might be a snowbird looking for an easy daylong fishing break from a Disneyworld tour. Or you might be a serious angler heading south Wildlife website at wildlife.state.co.us/fishing. [NEXT "Georgia"]

4 Smooth Sailing [BRACKET "Florida"]
You might be a snowbird looking for an easy daylong fishing break from a Disneyworld tour. Or you might be a serious angler heading south

Adventure: Flyfishing Gone Mad

fieldandstream-editor — Sat, 17 Dec 2005 04:20:00 -0500

I was the bag man, there to stuff burlap sacks with body parts. We were in a dim alley behind a San Diego fish market. Conway Bowman's feet dangled over the edge of a Dumpster as he tossed tuna carcasses over the rim.

"Oh, bitchin'. Check these out," Bowman said as he slid to the ground and handed me two albacore bellies, the Dom Perignon of chum. We threw them in the sacks, nodded at two puzzled onlookers, and headed toward the Dana Landing Marina, where we would launch our chase for shortfin mako sharks on the fly.

Shortfin makos have been the focus of fishing lore for generations. They frequently occupied the tales of Ernest Hemingway and Zane Grey (including a piece by Grey in the April 1936 issue of FIELD & STREAM). But Bowman's angle pushes the edge of reason. It goes like this: Motor anywhere from 5 to 30 miles off the Southern California coast in a 24-foot open hull boat until the ocean floor drops away into canyons over a thousand feet deep. There, you ride the swells above schooling baitfish, mackerel, and tuna to chum, tease, and hook a predator as large as yourself on a 14-weight fly rod.

Imagine tying your fly line around the waist of NFL wide receiver Terrell Owens and hanging on as he runs a deep route. These sharks swim three times faster than T.O. sprints-up to 60 mph-and could easily hurdle the goal's crossbar.

Several weeks earlier, Bowman and his protÂ¿Â¿gÂ¿Â¿, Capt. Dave Trimble, had invited me and a couple of pals to spend a week fishing the new-moon tides. It would be the flyfishing equivalent of a Warren Miller extreme skiing movie-crashing on Bowman's floor, on the boats early, fishing hard all day, licking our wounds at night, and getting up to do it again. After some convincing, photographer Bill Decker agreed to tag along in a chase boat. The 58-year-old surfer and board fisherman was not fazed by the sharks; his reservations were about the flyfishing, "a sissy sport," as he liked to call it.

Once the team was assembled, we loaded the boats with our gear and chum stash and idled away from Mission Bay. I was nervous. You always feel anticipation as you head out on the water, but your worries are limited to Will I make the casts, Did I apply enough sunscreen or, at the worst, I hope I don't puke. On a mako trip, you worry that you might not come back whole. What sets these sharks apart from anything else you catch with a fly rod is that they can kill you. Before the trip, a friend had e-mailed me a story about a Delaware charter captain who died when his hand got tangled in a wire leader and the mako on the other end ripped him overboard like a rag doll.

Makos are apex predators, torpedo shaped and all muscle, with layered rows of razorlike teeth. Although they have not earned the notoriety of bull sharks or great whites because they typically cruise deeper offshore waters, makos can be just as nasty. They're vicious even before birth; they cannibalistically devour their weaker siblings in utero. They have also been known to attack boats, and if one jumps in the boat with you, it can unleash a world of hurt. As a rule of thumb, when a mako jumps in, you jump out and hope he doesn't have friends nearby. [NEXT "Shark Park"]

Shark Park
The hull bounced hard on the water as we rode toward a GPS point named "Top of the Nine." We carried no guns, no gaffs, no means to subdue the mako. The best we could hope for was a draw. When the angler pulled the shark close to the boat, Bowman or Trimble would grab the leader and slide an improvised long-handled release tool into its mouth to pop the fly. Then you'd start over. For these guys, it was all a big game.

After half an hour, Bowman killed the motor and tied the burlap chum sacks to the side of the boat. We rigged wire leaders to gaudy red and orange flies. Thirteen miles offshore, I could barely see the silhouette of Pointoma. "Keep your eyes open," Bowman warned. Everything was hushed, save the steady breeze and swells lifting and slapping against the hull. "We have a good chance of seeing a big shark."

The truth is that "a big shark" out here is still young. The California Bight, where the ocean indents the coast off of San Diego, is one of three major mako breeding grounds in the world. (The other two are off New Zealand and Madagascar.) Recently pupped makos will hang around this area for two years before ranging out to sea.

It's a nursery, brimming with juvenile fish. The average mako cruising into a slick is about 80 pounds, but adults occasionally show up. A grown female can weigh over 1,300 pounds, and mature males can reach 500 pounds or more. Still, both captains say they rarely see sharks this size, and when they do, they don't cast at them-usually.

"There is a threshold for flyfishing, and sometimes you need to check your ego and just watch the fish swim by," Trimble said. "The pictures you see of huge makos caught off the east coast, that's a totally different business. They're caught with bait and balloons on heavy tackle. And fishermen kill the sharks to land them. Here, hooking, landing, and releasing a 150-pound mako on a fly rod is enough to kick your ass. And we can do that five or six times-which is like catching five or six tarpon-in a morning."

For the record, Bowman claims the biggest mako he has landed on the fly was in the 275- to 300-pound range. Trimble and a client once hooked and nearly landed a mako they figured to be around 500 pounds. I had set a lofty goal of catching one in the neighborhood of 200 pounds. As it turned out, I only had to wait about an hour for my opportunity. [NEXT "Game Time"]

Game Time
Ever since Bowman had dropped the chum bags in the water, Jeremy Hyatt had been craning his neck over the side, waiting for action. Hyatt is classic Colorado-a trout guide, rock climber, and whitewater kayaker-and we had brought him and Colorado fly shop owner Dan Hydinger along to get a comparative thrill reading when the sharks showed up. Now, as the first fin cut the water, Hyatt was pointing and howling wildly.

There is no rhyme or reason for when and how makos appear. Sometimes, on the ride offshore in the early morning, when the seas are calm and the wind is light, you might see one cruising under flocks of birds, or around kelp patties. Once you've set up a chum line, it might take five minutes or two hours for one to show. Or it might not happen at all.

If you use a surf-casting rod to throw a mackerel-head teaser around the boat, out of nowhere, a mouth may pop up and grab it. But most often, the mako arrives on its own terms, when you aren't expecting it. You may be laughing, talking, or eating lunch. Then, as you lean over to fling away a pickle slice from your sandwich, a 6-footer glides by within an arm's reach.

It's like hunting big game from a tree stand. You go from a semihypnotic trance to sheer internal chaos in under two seconds. One instant, you're barely awake, and the next, your heart is in your throat. That's how it happened with this first mako.

"He's a gorilla. One-eighty, maybe 200," Bowman shouted as Hyatt and I scrambled around the deck. "I'm going to get him fired up." He dangled a mackerel head in front of the shark and ripped it away just before the shark lunged, banged the boat, and then circled out into the slick. Bowman dragged the teaser through the chum line again, like a bullfighter with a cape, then once more, from another direction. With each pass, the fish got more pissed off.

I threw a fly into the mayhem and gave the line a sharp tug to pull it taut. The shark spun an angry arc looking for the teaser but found my fly instead. He bit down and swam toward the boat. Not wanting to set the hook while the mako was headed in my direction, I gave him slack line as he spit the fly. No problem. Sharks are used to eating things that poke them in the mouth. Within a minute, he was back.

Another cast, another strip, another bite. This time he turned away from the boat, and I set the hook with three hard jerks. In seconds the shark had unspooled the fly line, then ripped backing off the reel so fast that the powder residue on the gel-spun material looked like yellow smoke piping through the line guides. As I braced the rod butt into my thigh, I accidentally bumped my hand against the whirring reel. It cut my right thumb as if I had brushed against a band saw.

The shark jumped twice, cartwheeling over the waves. Then, for 30 minutes, I cranked the rod down toward the surface, strained and lifted, then cranked again, gaining sacred inches of line and occasionally licking the blood off my thumb. Eventually, we cheated and motored up on the fish to gather 200-plus yards of backing and fly line. Decker, shouting from the chase boat, said he wanted photos. I wanted this battle to end, one way or the other. When we were finally close enough for Bowman to grab the wire, the mako thrashed his head, snapped at Bowman's arm, and stretched his jaws so wide we could have dropped a 5-gallon bucket inside his mouth.

"That fish was 200," Bowman said as the shark finned away and we wiped the sweat off our faces. I flexed my left hand open and shut to coax blood flow back into my forearm. I was toast. [NEXT "You First"]

You First
We spent the next several days working the same drill-Hyatt, Hydinger, and I trading turns hooking and fighting makos, and Decker firing away with the shutter, barking "Get closer!" as sharks leaped around the boats. After a while, we even got a bit comfortable with the routine. But that didn't last.

One night, late in the week, we found ourselves rolling through La Jolla in Trimble's classic ragtop Cadillac Eldorado. He drove with the seat half reclined, his left arm resting on top of the steering wheel. At that angle, I got a good look at the detailed tattoo of a mako chasing yellowfins on his forearm.

"Is Decker serious about the kayak?" he asked Bowman. "Yeah, he says he wants to get pictures of us fighting a mako from one," Bowman said. I figured they were joking.

Sure enough, at 6:30 the next morning, Decker sauntered down the dock with a blue sea kayak balanced on his head. Two hours later, we were back on "Top of the Nine," bobbing in silence, when the first mako, maybe an 80-pounder, came barreling up the oily slick.

We traded glances as Decker dropped the kayak in the water. For a long moment, there were no volunteers. Then Bowman handed Hydinger the teaser rod, picked up the paddle and a fly rod, and jumped in. I was running the chase boat, feeling as n my direction, I gave him slack line as he spit the fly. No problem. Sharks are used to eating things that poke them in the mouth. Within a minute, he was back.

Another cast, another strip, another bite. This time he turned away from the boat, and I set the hook with three hard jerks. In seconds the shark had unspooled the fly line, then ripped backing off the reel so fast that the powder residue on the gel-spun material looked like yellow smoke piping through the line guides. As I braced the rod butt into my thigh, I accidentally bumped my hand against the whirring reel. It cut my right thumb as if I had brushed against a band saw.

The shark jumped twice, cartwheeling over the waves. Then, for 30 minutes, I cranked the rod down toward the surface, strained and lifted, then cranked again, gaining sacred inches of line and occasionally licking the blood off my thumb. Eventually, we cheated and motored up on the fish to gather 200-plus yards of backing and fly line. Decker, shouting from the chase boat, said he wanted photos. I wanted this battle to end, one way or the other. When we were finally close enough for Bowman to grab the wire, the mako thrashed his head, snapped at Bowman's arm, and stretched his jaws so wide we could have dropped a 5-gallon bucket inside his mouth.

"That fish was 200," Bowman said as the shark finned away and we wiped the sweat off our faces. I flexed my left hand open and shut to coax blood flow back into my forearm. I was toast. [NEXT "You First"]

You First
We spent the next several days working the same drill-Hyatt, Hydinger, and I trading turns hooking and fighting makos, and Decker firing away with the shutter, barking "Get closer!" as sharks leaped around the boats. After a while, we even got a bit comfortable with the routine. But that didn't last.

One night, late in the week, we found ourselves rolling through La Jolla in Trimble's classic ragtop Cadillac Eldorado. He drove with the seat half reclined, his left arm resting on top of the steering wheel. At that angle, I got a good look at the detailed tattoo of a mako chasing yellowfins on his forearm.

"Is Decker serious about the kayak?" he asked Bowman. "Yeah, he says he wants to get pictures of us fighting a mako from one," Bowman said. I figured they were joking.

Sure enough, at 6:30 the next morning, Decker sauntered down the dock with a blue sea kayak balanced on his head. Two hours later, we were back on "Top of the Nine," bobbing in silence, when the first mako, maybe an 80-pounder, came barreling up the oily slick.

We traded glances as Decker dropped the kayak in the water. For a long moment, there were no volunteers. Then Bowman handed Hydinger the teaser rod, picked up the paddle and a fly rod, and jumped in. I was running the chase boat, feeling as