A Good Year

Photo: USFWS Mountain-Prairie/Flickr

I’d heard good things about a freestone river, two hours away from my house. It flows into a reservoir—as far too many rivers do—and crosses mostly private property, but if you put the work in on the public sections, it was supposed to be pretty good.

So, early in 2024, my buddy Alex and I loaded up the truck and drove across the valley to explore this river. Low clouds spat snow flurries, and the ever-present Wyoming wind cut through our layers as though Gore-Tex was no more resistant than plastic bags. The river looked good, though, and we set up shop at the tail of a deep run. The river supposedly had a good population of cutthroat trout, but the first few fish we caught were mountain whitefish. A good sign, because if whitefish can live there, then so can trout.

The weather stayed awful and cold but the fishing heated up the longer we fished that run. By the time we made it back to the truck, we’d both put a handful of nice trout in the net, including an 18-inch brown and a 16-inch cutthroat. The early-season gamble paid off, enough so that we made plans to try our luck again soon.

Just a few weeks later we were in Montana. Alex opened the motel room door and a couple feet of snow blew into the room. The sudden blizzard put the brakes on our plans to float that day (the boat ramps were inaccessible and the river was full of icebergs) so we called an audible and made for a nearby tailwater. The wind blew in halfhearted gusts, but the sun rose and warmed things up enough that mayflies started hatching in fits along the river. They ignored my dry flies, but Alex got into a few nice fish on small nymphs in the deeper runs.

Less than a month after that surprisingly good day, we floated down the Green River in Utah under a leaden ceiling of clouds. The blue-winged olives hatched in thick carpets, the fish fed with reckless abandon, and Alex got to experience the best dry fly hatch he’s ever seen. It was one of those days when the hatch is almost too good, because there’s so many naturals on the water that the fish have little chance of actually eating your fake bug. We didn’t catch many, but we worked hard for what ended up in the net, and I left the water feeling like we’d been fairly rewarded.

It was around this time that Alex told me he and his wife were expecting a baby in November, so we had to get in a lot of fishing before the baby came. We spent the summer bouncing from river to river, exploring new places and revisiting old ones, getting lucky and catching plenty of fish wherever we went. It wasn’t until early autumn that I looked back and realized we’d been riding a long string of great luck ever since early in the year.

I almost pointed this out to Alex, but I didn’t want to jinx anything, so I stayed quiet. I only brought it up after our first skunk of 2024, on a small stream in remote country where rain the night before had blown the river.

We left that river in silence, frustrated at the rain and things outside of our control, but neither of us could be too upset about it. After all, literally every other trip had gone in our favor, so complaining about one rough day would make us seem like a couple of ingrates.

The best day from that run of luck wasn’t the big brookie I caught on a dry fly, or an absurdly good night of big brown trout. It was an afternoon on one of my favorite rivers that I stopped to fish on my way home from visiting family in Utah. This river has a fickle reputation that’s well-earned, and it gets crowded on the weekends. On a Tuesday, though, you can have the entire place to yourself, which is how I found the river.

The fish here move around often, and a hole you had luck in a few days ago might not have fish in it the next time you’re there. With that in mind, I cast to the riffles, forgoing the runs where I’d caught a nice cutthroat a week before. For the next few hours I fished a mile of river and caught fish from every riffle, some of them good, but most of average size.

This day sticks out not because the fishing was great, but because it was unexpected. I’d planned to fish just for an hour, then get back on the road. I ended up fishing for almost four.

Fly fishing is inherently unpredictable, so when it all shakes out in your favor—better than you expected—it’s hard to think of anything more enjoyable.