July 20, Yellowstone

I don't know exactly what to say about to day except... it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. As you can see we caught some great fish, especially Stanch's brown and Wes's Bow, but we had long dry spells. The fish were not in the juicy looking seams that always produce fish. The river is still raging where we fished, but I could not figure out why it was fishing so poorly.

Just when we were about to give up, and most of the words coming out of my mouth were curses, the fishing turned on for about three hours. We almost had a double on big bows, something no one could predict that morning.

Wes had a few experiences that other anglers can learn from. It's funny, but I had just talked to Jim Saey about dominant hand wind versus western wind.

This is an age old debate as to which hand an angler should reel with. The classic style, brought from England and Scotland is to wind with your dominant hand. This is how I was taught by my grandfather and is commonly used by east coast anglers. Western Wind is to cast right handed and reel left handed.

My two Cents: Even though I learned English style when I moved to the west I switched to Western. I did this not just to fit in, it is more practical for trout. Why , oh why, would you want to change the rod from your right hand to your left hand in the middle of fighting a trout? It only leads to trouble as Wes found out.

We were in the sweet time of the day and strikes were coming more often when Wes hooked up on something big, probably a brown. The fish streaked off the bank and up stream closing in on his backing. In the midst of the battle Wes swapped the rod from the right hand to the left. Just as he did so, the fish turned and raced at him. He tried to get to his stripping finger to take the line in faster than is possible with a reel, but to no avail. The line went slack for a moment and that was all she wrote. The fish was gone. We had just talked about the inherent problems with dominant hand wind, and we saw them first hand.

I can see and have still used Dominant hand wind for large saltwater fish such as Tarpon because your hand can cramp from reeling for 20-30 minutes. It makes sense for long fights, but not for trout. In fact, I teach all new anglers to fight fish on the strip and to disregard their reel. Stripping in a trout is a fundamental as important as casting, mending and setting the hook.

Wes did get a consolation prize.

Stanch had a great fight on this brown. We were on a fast bank with a lot of dead fall. As we rounded an uprooted tree, Stanch threw just behind it and shortly there after hooked up on the brown. The fish jumped immediately and showed its size. It started to run to the bank looking for a snag to break us off in. Stanch pulled from one snag and it went toward another, We were barrelling down toward a tree stretching 25 feet out into the river. It looked like the fish might loose us under it, but Stanch made a great move and swept his rod under the tree and up the other side. After that we could move the fish out to the middle of the river and net it. It was a great move on a great fish. Notice how dark the fish was. In reality it looked black. It was also missing an eye from a tussle with another angler or with an osprey or Great Blue Heron. We must have fished him on his right side.