Having lured the fish to the surface, a dry fly angler’s triumphs or tragedies reside in the public domain. When a fish rises to your fly and just as it is about to take it down you jerk it away in a fit of schoolboy nerves, it is hard to blame your ineptness on a rock or stick or some other unseen underwater obstruction as a nymph fisherman can. Best you can do is to reclothe yourself in what shreds of dignity you can muster and press on to the next success or humiliation. I once missed nine fish in the space of thirteen casts. In front of a client. I handed her back her rod.

“See, I told you it was difficult,” was all I had left.

Despite glaring evidence to the contrary, in the form of rising fish tugging, chewing, inhaling and ingesting their flies, some fishermen still try to put the blame anywhere but themselves. The guide is an obvious target. I generally point out that short of leaving them in the parking lot and fishing in their stead, once the fly is in the fish’s mouth there’s not a lot more a mortal can do. Others get more creative. Among the excuses I’ve heard, “The fish on the Arkansas take a dry fly differently than most other rivers. They seem to gum the fly, rather than take it with their teeth,” and “They seem to be just slapping it with their heads rather that biting it, like they just want to stun it,” are personal favorites.

So yes, I do get excited when fishing dries. I get excited when I get it right. I get excited when I get it wrong. I get just as excited when others get it right or wrong. I’m not sure that this is healthy in a fifty-two year old. Still, it could be worse. I could be one of those types that dream of articulated streamers. Now that’s disturbing.

Five or six days a season, you make every cast with the expectation of there being a fish at the end of each drift. On these occasions it is easy to believe the assertion of the local fisheries biologist that at any given time there are between four and seven thousand fish per mile of river of river. These are the easy days to be a guide – dip your oars in the water, crack a few jokes, let the fish do the educating. You even overlook the sacrilege of someone throwing a woolly bugger while the fish rise all around you. Even NASCAR tastes deserve to be indulged from time to time.

There’s even room in the day for the occasional existential crisis that comes with drifting a fly for five minutes or so without sign of a fish. Is my fly too big? Should I be further from the shore? Maybe the hatch is over? Invariably, such thoughts are barely expressed and the fly disappears in a toilet-flush boil and you raise the rod tip and feel OK about the world and your place in it once again.

The trick is to appreciate these days for what they are – reward for persistence, for showing up, for all the times you froze your ass off or spent your day deciphering golf ball sized tangles of flies and tippet and indicators twisted around rod tips. As Woody Allen once famously observed, ninety percent of life is merely showing up. Just step up to the plate and start swinging. Once in a while, you’re bound to connect with the sweet spot.

The fish, on the other hand, seem to harbor no such thoughts of sympathy or admiration for their plight, gorging themselves on the steady stream of protein that comes to them like hors d’ouvres on a conveyor belt. The challenge for the fisherman on such days is to be able to accurately cast, and then identify, a tiny grey fly on a grey river under grey skies with a swirling wind scuffing the surface this way and that. Perhaps once in five casts you see your fly, the rest of the time you play the zone, setting the hook to any rise that might be near where you think your fly is. Like a slugger swinging at fastballs, most you fan on, but every now and then you connect.

After a couple of hours, it was time to head home. The hatch was still in full swing, the fish still rising, but I’d seen enough. A particularly strong gust of wind almost blew me off my bouldery perch into the river, and I somehow contrived to break my fly off on a back cast. Faced with the choice of retying or heading home, I chose the latter, leaving the river to its business.

There’s always a nagging doubt when fishing dry flies on a slow day, as to what might be going on in the river’s depths. Does the lack of feeding activity above the surface mirror that of below, or is there an orgy of feeding of catholic proportions going on that I’m missing out on due to stubborness and a deluded sense of superiority?

I’ve found it pays not to think about that too much. Instead, I pressed on upriver, and after fifteen minutes caught my first fish, coincidentally aided by the very wind that had made accurate placement of my flies difficult. Drifting the upper reaches of a pour-over, where a side dumper emptied into the main body of the river, an errant gust blew my flies a couple of feet to the left of where I’d intended. Despite thinking the water too slow and shallow to hold a fish at this time of the year, I resisted the urge to pick up and cast again and was rewarded with the nice, aggressive take of a lovely rainbow, charging about under water like my pup on the river bank earlier.

There followed a long drought, drifting my pmx trailing a caddis over the top of some lovely structure – riffles, pockets and eddie lines – but the sense of doubt didn’t return. I’d caught a fish on a dry, teased it from its world briefly to mine, and the rest of the afternoon could pass by fishless for all I cared. And it nearly did. Late, the sunlight softening and the air calming, I spotted a fish rising in a glassy run against a sheltered, grassy bank. Several changes of flies were required, each smaller than the last, until it finally rose to a sprout baetis, technically a dry fly although some nymph fishermen will tell you 75 percent of it hangs below the surface.

Two hours on the river, two fish landed, beer in the fridge. It was time to head home. I have no idea how many I’d have caught with a nymph – maybe less, maybe more, but since when has keeping count been the point?

So I’m not too sure what to make of this spring. There is a surreal quality about floating the Ark in shirtsleeves in March, the fish as active as it were a summer’s day. I guess I would feel more comfortable if there was more snow in the mountains, but it is also a reminder that you take what nature, through the river, gives you. It seems a waste to not enjoy it for what it is on account of what might happen later in the season.

Maybe April will revert to type, and we’ll see the peaks shrouded again, and the blue wings blown into the nooks and crannies along the rocky shore where the fish sit and sip while flurries swirl. Or maybe we’ll continue with the balmy temperatures and the fish feeding like its July. Either way, might as well get out and enjoy, for who knows what tomorrow brings?

It seemed like a great day for a midge hatch, so I figured if I wanted to find some surface feeders, I’d need to locate a spot where the water was slow and deep, and sheltered from any wind that might blow a hatch off the water. There’s a place just below town that meets those criteria, and has delivered for me in the past. I’d not been standing on the bank two minutes when I saw the first rise, quickly followed by several others.

So far, so good. The next step was to actually catch one. My experience of fishing such situations is that with all that calm, clear, slow moving water, the fish can be fairly finicky, not to mention spooky. After ten minutes of no action on a parachute gnat, I tied on a small Griffiths gnat behind, using the parachute to sight my flies in the gloom, avoiding using floatant on the Griffiths to get it down in the surface film.

Straight away, the action picked up, and over the next half hour I landed four nice rainbows, and got spanked by several more. By this stage, it was late afternoon, my feet were cold, the clouds were lowering and wisps of snow swirled about. Time to head home to the hearth and contemplate a red letter day – fresh powder in the morning, dry flies in the afternoon.

When a recent family event necessitated an impromptu trip back to New Zealand, a day on the Mohaka was my number one recreational priority. I managed to hook up with Steve, a friend who’s been fishing and hunting the central North Island for the best part of three decades. In that time of guiding the rich and famous he’s walked away from helicopter crashes, dodged the slings and arrows of outraged husbands, caught more fish than is decent, and like most guides probably drank enough to kill several small elephants in the process.

It had been over five years since I’d had oars and feet planted in a New Zealand river, and in terms of my fishing technique, it showed. Despite knowing better, it always seems to take a while to reintroduce myself to the realities of New Zealand fishing. You tend to not get too many opportunities, so a fish missed as the result of a clumsy cast or mistimed hook set or too tight a rein always leaves you pondering, wondering: will the river will give you another chance, or has she shut the door on your face and turned the key? Gentle Colorado-style hook sets get treated with head shaking disdain, while attempting to arrest that first charging run with a drag set too tight results in bent hooks and the kind of language that would make a sailor blush.

Fortunately this day, the Mohaka was a patient mistress. My first fumblings were tolerated, and after taking a break for lunch and a beer, I got my mojo working at last. The reward for me was a couple of lovely fish, a rainbow and a brown, a day spent on a special river in perfect company, and the commitment to ensure that it is not another five years hence before I again get to immerse myself in the sights, sounds and smells of one of the most special places on Earth.

“Nah, it’s nice down here – barely a breeze, and the sun’s shining.” Pink lives on the river in Howard, in many ways something of a parallel universe to Salida, separated not by a wafer thin membrane, but a few miles of blacktop. “We’ll float from my place to Vallie Bridge. Should only take a couple of hours.”

Not for the first time, my wife regarded me that look that is equal parts amusement and pity as I announced my plans for the afternoon. “You’re doing what?” I shrugged,and seeking respite from her gaze, headed for the refuge of the garage to dig out my waders and gear. The day before, I’d biked Cottonwood , sections of the trail blanketed in six inches of snow, so how bad could it be?

As it turned out, Pink was right. While an occasional wind gust rattled through the cottonwoods, sending dead leaves scratching and scurrying across the ground, the sun rode high over the clouds on the peaks, bathing the river in a late fall glow.

As we pushed away from shore, it occurred to me that this was the first time I’d floated the river in November. Does an aging memory play tricks, or is November the new October, weather-wise? Either way, it was great to be out there again, feeling the motion of the river beneath the boat, trying to guess where a hungry fish might reside on such an afternoon.

While the activity wasn’t prolific, we each felt the weight of a fish on the end of the line, enough stragglers camped along the edges of eddies and riffles to make the afternoon worthwhile, a success by any measure. All in all, you’ve got to love living in a place where, even when there is snow on the ground, you can mountain bike one day, and float fish the next. Thanks for the call Pink.

Half the fun of these kinds of trips lies in the anticipation, poring over maps, tracing contour lines and drainages, looking for places where the rivers and roads go their separate ways. Hence our decision to largely forego the more well-documented fishing opportunities on the main stem of the White, and focus on the tributaries.

Many things about the conditions reminded me of the New Zealand backcountry. Spruce and scrub oak grew thick down to the river’s edge, necessitating multiple stream crossings and in-river wading, the water cold and gin-clear. The substrate, a mottled mix of greys, browns and reds provided the perfect camouflage for a fish that wants to remain hidden. And not another soul to be seen.

The constant gradient of the river meant quality holding water was relatively sparse. We stalked our way carefully upriver, taking turns casting to the likely spots – the inside of a bend, the eddy behind a larger boulder mid-stream, the quiet of an occasional deep pool. These places were few and far between – sometimes we’d wade a quarter of a mile or more between casts. Caveman had his game on more than me, at least doubling my catch and break-off rate. Yet each night we’d regain camp, weary, thirsty and hungry, and there was no debate about whether we should move on to greener pastures, friendlier water.

I cannot think of more beautiful place I have fished, and the lure of what was up around the next bend kept calling us back each day. On the last evening, getting back to camp as the sun dipped below the ridgeline, we encountered a cowboy, saddling up a pack horse for a trip into an elk camp.

“How’s the fishing?” he asked

“Slow, but man, it’s beautiful up there,” I replied.

“How far up did you get?”

“About seven miles.”

“Doesn’t get good ’till about ten.”

I’ll take him at his word, but that’ll have to wait for next year.

High country fishing near Salida, Colorado. from Hayden Mellsop on Vimeo.

This particular stream is the outflow of a lake, meandering through a meadow laden with willows and wildlife – I’ve encountered fox, elk, beaver and deer. Half the stretch I fish, about a mile and a half in total, flows through private land. The first time I asked for permission, the rancher looked at me in surprise. After a few seconds of silence, during which I wondered if I’d managed to offend him, he replied “Sure. Its just, no one’s ever asked before.” Now we have an understanding. He knows my truck, and once in a while he finds a twelve pack on his doorstep.

There’s lots to like about fishing small streams. For starters, its easy to figure out where the fish are likely to lie – anywhere. While the bigger ones will naturally gravitate to the best places – insides of bends, undercut banks – the smaller ones don’t need much shelter to hide behind. A small rock in the middle of a riffle, a little pocket against the bank will suffice. You can pretty much cast anywhere you need to, and a single dry fly will usually suffice. In fact, often it is the only way you can fish. The need to tuck your fly under overhanging willows or cut banks often precludes a dropper, prone as it is to tangling and snagging. Fish that live this high, in these harsh surroundings, can’t afford to be as selective as their big river cousins. Get a good drift, and they’ll pretty much rise to anything you throw out there.

Another thing to like is the surprise of the catch. It could be a brown, it could be a rainbow, it could be a brookie, it could be a cutt. It could be four inches long, it could be fourteen. There’s the enthusiasm with which these fish patrol their domain, feeding aggressively on whatever floats by. Big or small, once hooked, they will head for the nearest logjam, rootball or undercut. Battling a small fish with a two weight rod on a stream ten feet wide is in many ways as exciting and challenging as a sixteener on the Arkansas.

And last but not least, there is the overarching peacefulness of the surroundings. Far from any highways, the mountains are closer, the smells and sounds of the forest more prevalent, the air clearer and cleaner.

Its almost time to say adieu to the high country for another year. Hopefully I’ll have time for one more trip up there before it is too late. Temperatures are dropping below freezing each night, the ground is carpeted in yellows and golds, and it won’t belong until the fish are living under ice, theirs a world of darkness and torpor, until spring sets them free once more.

Missed Fishing, Missed Fish from Hayden Mellsop on Vimeo.

The lady I was guiding, Samantha, was having difficulty getting the timing of her hook set right. The situation wasn’t helped by the speed with which the fish were hitting the flies on the surface. When a caddis hatches, it rises from the bottom of the river, often riding an air bubble to the top, wings fully developed and ready to fly. Breaking through the surface film, it is off, like a rat out of an aquaduct, to quote Brian’s mother.

The fish know this, and know too that if they want to have caddis for dinner, they’d better be quick. Accordingly, you have to adjust your reaction time to the rhythm of the fish. Having missed several takes, in exasperation Samantha turned to me, handing me the rod. “You do it, show me how.”

It was then I went 0 for 9 over the next five minutes. Handing the rod back to her, I shrugged and suggested the river was telling us to break for a beer rather than let the humiliation continue.

This time of the year, the takes tend to be a little more languid. Fish are seeing and feeding on a lot of terrestrials. The conveyor belt passing over their heads carries lots of hoppers, beetles and ants, creatures not meant to be in the water, usually inept and helpless when they are. Fish know they have more time, so leisurely inspect their prey before committing or refusing.

In this situation, the challenge lies in not setting the hook too early, thereby pulling the fly away from a still open mouth. You get to watch the fish rise up to inspect the fly, sometimes drifting downstream with it, nudging it, before taking or refusing. The bigger the fish, the more time they tend to take. You need to discipline yourself to wait.

In New Zealand, it’s called the “God Save The Queen” rule. Downunder, until they sense something is wrong with their world, the big fish do everything slowly and with deliberation. No calorie of energy is expended unnecessarily. A fish rising to a dry fly will sometimes inspect it for five or ten seconds of more before deciding to take or refuse. I’ve seen them open their mouths around a fly, then drift backwards downriver for several yards, mulling their options, before backing away and returning to their station.

When they do take, it is usually so slow and deliberate that the fisherman, knees shaking in anticipation, must discipline him or herself to wait until the fish is back below the surface, mouth firmly shut, before reacting. Hence the mantra “God Save The Queen” before setting the hook.

All of this is a rather round about way of saying that on the day in question, it took me a little while to get my mojo working. For the first twenty minutes or so, and at regular intervals thereafter, I couldn’t hook a fish to save myself. I’ll put it down to lack of match practice – my other job has kept me from the river for most of this summer, which given the state of the economy over the last few years is a good thing, I guess – and keep telling myself that it just wouldn’t be as much fun if you hooked them all.

I’d checked the flow gauge that morning, and knew that the level had dropped to around 2000 cfs. Still pretty high for float fishing, but after the extended runoff, the river was finally clear, and the fish were bound to be hungry.

Back In The Saddle from Hayden Mellsop on Vimeo.

“I’d love to, but I’ve gotta work today. Maybe later in the week.” I silently cursed in equal measure the laws of economics, and the Puritans and their damned work ethic.

“What time do you finish? I’ll meet you at Salida East,” came the reply.

I thought for about three seconds: wife and kids out of town, no domestic duties, lawns are mowed, cat has food. “Good idea. See you at four.”

Anglers normally expect to lose the best part of the month of June to high water, but not since 1995, to my recollection, have levels stayed so high for so long. So the sight of the river finally clearing and dropping had me happy as a clam. I threw my gear into the back of the car and headed to the office, hoping that no one would walk in the door at 3:55 wanting to buy a house.

Luck held, and by 4:15 my rod was rigged, I had a cold beer in my hand, and it was time find out how often I could cast close enough to the bank, and how hungry the fish really were. The answers to those questions proved to be: sometimes, and pretty.

The tough part about float fishing at these levels is trying to get a drift of over five seconds duration. The river is moving so fast, and the fish holding so tight to the edges, that often there isn’t even time to mend before the current has taken hold of your line and dragged the fly out from the narrow strip of slow water along the bank. A fast action rod is a real plus, the ability to deliver the fly where you want it quickly really helps.

At least it isn’t rocket science figuring out where the feeding fish are holding. They are riding out the deluge in whatever slack water they can find, hanging on to the willows and brush piles along the bank, mixed in with all the Nalgene bottles, baseball caps and tevas, testament to several weeks of high water rafting carnage upstream. You’ve got to be prepared to cast your fly in there after them, and not be afraid to lose a few in the process.

Trying to slow the boat down isn’t easy either. On the oars, you’ve got to pick your battles, knowing when to put the brakes on for the slower water, and when to let the current take you where and when it wants.

As the river continues to drop, I’d expect the conditions to get easier, and the fishing to get better and better. We caught a decent number of fish, turned a few more, and got spanked by several. All in all a great day, with the prospect of many more on the horizon.