Of course it's impossible to predict these opportunities; you just have to be on the water for a day of fishing anyway, and more importantly, you have to be ready to run! Graphite and water are both excellent conductors of electricity, and wading waist-deep while holding up a nine-foot lightning rod is just asking to complete a ten-million volt circuit. A safer bet is to wait until a few days after the storm, when the silt has settled out enough that the water fades from opaque chocolate to translucent green. Some fly anglers curse this colored water, complaining that the lower clarity interferes with a trout's ability to see and rise to a dry fly. I believe this as well, but the lack of surface action doesn't bother me since I prefer to bump weighted flies along the bottom, where all the trout are feeding! You didn't think they just starved until the water cleared enough to satisfy the dry-fly purists, did you? Habits may be hard to break for humans, but fish are much more flexible, and when they decide to forgo winged insects to root around in the rocks for minnows and nymphs, you need to get down to their level.

On recent visits to the river during these green-water conditions, I've noticed few trout rising, even during blizzard hatches of trico flies. As the water clears, more fish will key on these tiny dries, but if you insist on fishing at the surface during periods of reduced clarity I'd suggest a large stonefly or grasshopper pattern slapped down with authority and twitched to cause a commotion; this will allow trout to home in on your fly even if they can't see it well. Exact imitations are not critical in these conditions, as I found last week when a sixteen-inch rainbow rose and engulfed my yellow Styrofoam strike indicator. I fought this trout for a good five seconds, quite a while when you consider that the indicator has no hook.

By late summer on a dry year, the Carson runs low and clear, making a stealthy approach with a minimum of stumbling and splashing critical to a good catch rate. When the river turns green with runoff though, reduced visibility helps keep trout from noticing that tourist teetering precariously at the head of the pool, frantically waving a fly rod, his gold wristwatch and white hat gleaming in the sun. This has helped me on recent guide trips, and while watching beginners do nearly everything wrong and still hook up is fun, it also reminds me that there are several skills involved in river fly fishing, with coaching and practice needed to develop each one. Let's take a look.

Wading: Having been a river rat for much of my life, I sometimes forget how difficult it can be for a novice to wade in even moderate current. Those who try to play it safe by fishing from the bank, however, may find that their casts cannot reach much of the best holding water. Even expert fly casters will find that bank-side brush and canyon walls often limit backcasts, with complex mid-river currents in some spots necessitating short-line, high-stick techniques to achieve a drag-free drift. On the East Carson, 'getting your feet wet' is not just a cliché, it's a requirement.

While the Carson is low and flows relatively gentle at this time, there are still sections with enough speed and turbulence to topple the unwary, and pools with enough depth to drown non-swimmers. The riverbed has a combination of mud, sand and rounded, slippery stones- the mud sucks at your boots, threatening to pull them off your feet, and the stones seem to slip right out from under your soles, until you find yourself falling in what I refer to as 'the banana peel effect'. Even the innocuous-looking sand will erode beneath your steps, sliding you deeper into the pools than you care to go. Green water compounds these hazards by making it hard to see the bottom and choose where to place your next step.

Tips for wading include moving slowly with bent knees, shuffling your feet forward along the bottom to find a solid spot before putting weight upon your next step, and walking between the larger streambed stones, not on top of them. Footwear choice is also critical, with felt-bottomed wading boots far superior to your old pair of sneakers. Tahoe Fly Fishing Outfitters rents high quality Sims wading boots for a nominal fee when you book a guided trip, and I recommend these to all anglers without their own boots.

Hooking Fish: Here we're skipping ahead of a number of skills needed to get to this point, including reading the water, fly selection, casting, and maintaining a dead drift, but hey, this is a free online magazine, not a virtual guided fishing trip! Okay fine, let me take you on a trip I did at the end of July, when I fished first-timers Colby Cumber and Aron Bartle from Virginia. We arrived at the wild-trout section to find the water deep-green from the latest series of storms, with thunder rolling in the distance as black-centered clouds scudded in over the canyon walls. After I helped them tie on suitably flashy flies and coached them on nymphing techniques, they had numerous bites yet could not keep their fish hooked for more than a moment before losing each one, because they couldn't remember to set the hook DOWNSTREAM.

Trout in moving water tend to face upstream, into the current. Setting the hook in the opposite direction drives the point solidly back into the fish's jaw; second best is a vertical hookset, which will peg the fly into the roof of its mouth. Yanking upstream simply pulls your offering back out the way it came, resulting in missed hookups and in the case of these clients, strings of colorful, southern-accented curse-words.

Not to say they weren't good sports; they were happy with the action and tried hard to remember my repeated admonitions to set downstream. As beginners though, they had not yet reached the point where logical comprehension translates to muscle memory- The brain understands, but not the hands. After many near misses, they managed to bring a few trout to my net, and when they had thoroughly fished one pool and we were ready to move on, I said "There's still that one spot right up against the canyon wall on the far side, that you haven't quite been able to reach. Let me show you how I'd cast to it and see if we can hook something in there." Sure enough, one cast, one drift, one downstream hookset, and I had a fish. Aron was closest, and I beckoned him over, taking his rod and handing him mine. "You play it." I said casually; the colored water prevented me from seeing what I'd hooked, and I assumed it was a thirteen or fourteen-inch trout. As soon as he took the rod though, it strained into a deep, quivering curve, and a five-pound rainbow flopped to the surface! Had I known this when I hooked it, he would have had trouble prying the five-weight St. Croix from my fingers! ("Just let me tire him out for you first...")

Fighting Fish: This is another skill where reading books, watching instructional videos, and even on-the-water coaching can only take you so far. You need to feel fish on the end of the line to learn how to bring them in, and it's helpful to start with small fish and work your way up in safe increments. In this case, my client went right from first grade to graduate school, and when the 200 pound man asked me in a shaky, high-pitched voice what he should do, I told him to pray.

I also gave him more useful tips, such as keeping the rod tip up, letting the fish take line quickly when needed, then stripping in just as quickly and even backing up onto the bank if the trout ran towards him.

"Keep the rod bent- that's your shock absorber!" I shouted as his big trout ran to the head of the pool. Then it began a series of leaps, and just as I realized we had not yet talked about what to do in this situation (point the rod toward the fish and give line liberally), it broke the four-pound fluorocarbon tippet. Far from being upset, Aron was fired with adrenaline and ready to redouble his efforts. By that time we'd worked our way a mile or so downstream of Hangman's Bridge, and though my clients wanted to hike further into the high desert canyon, I pointed out the nuclear-mushroom thunderheads closing in from the south, and they agreed to fish back upstream toward the car.

A steady drizzle started in as they cast to pools they had already worked, with even more fish hitting than on the first pass. I had to prod my anglers along as gusty winds increased to a steady howl, and by the time we reached my truck, it was pouring. Over Luther Pass on Highway 89 going back to Tahoe, spectacular streaks of lightning split the sky and the rain seemed to come not in individual drops but in waterfall sheets, punctuated by short bursts of marble-size hailstones. We had to pull over during the worst of it, waiting for a slight let-up so we could see the road!

Species: Rainbow trout predominate on the East Fork, with hatchery fish most common in the easy-access roadside stretch, and big, wild 'bows becoming more frequent the further you venture into the wild trout section. Backcountry bonuses also include cutthroat and brown trout, and today's mystery fish, the much maligned whitefish. This species is native to the Carson, and is a member of the trout and salmon family. Some anglers denigrate the 'whitey' as a trash fish, but they hit the same flies as trout and fight hard! The whitefish pictured in this article was caught last week, and at nearly twenty inches in length, it was my big fish of the day, reconfirming my respect for 'white trash'.

Flies: if we get a week or two of dry weather and the water clears, dry-fly enthusiasts would do well to carry small olive and tan caddis imitations, as well as some tiny tricos. Tahoe Fly Fishing Outfitters carries these black flies down to size 26, but a parachute Adams in a size 18 or 20 will work in a pinch. For those of you who get eyestrain fishing flies smaller than the period at the end of this sentence, big stimulators, Chernobyl ants, and other stonefly/hopper imitations will also draw strikes.

For nymphing techniques, a variety of imitative and attractor patterns work here, with showy flies working best in green water and muted colors preferable as clarity returns. Just remember that one of the keys to fly fishing is to take simple things and give them fancy names. A bit of extra line tied on the end of your leader must be referred to as 'tippet', little bobbers that twitch when a fish hits are called 'strike indicators' , and all the best flies have funny monikers as well. Chartreuse marabou caddis, flashback hare's ears, beadhead pheasant tails, zug bugs, and The Fly Formerly Known as Prince are all good on the Carson. Another favorite of mine is "Momma's Fur Coat", which is basically a simple hare's ear, so named because I tie it from material given to me by a friend whose mother had an old, moth-eaten muskrat coat she was going to throw out. I love mentioning this pattern to well-heeled fly anglers with expensive equipment and every known fly in their boxes, then watching them scratch their heads and walk away stumped because they're too proud to ask what the heck I'm talking about.

One last fly I would not be without on the Carson is a small woolly bugger, fished not as a streamer, but dead drifted as a nymph. This pattern has accounted for many of my largest trout here, and although you can buy woolly buggers at any shop that sells flies, I tie my own with a few special features. I have listed the complete fly recipe on the fly-tying message board of this website (click on the Hot East Carson Fly message on the Fly Tying board). A key element of this variation is a body of peacock herl, but apparently my editors have their profanity-blocking software cranked up a bit high, because this ingredient is now listed as "peathingy". There you go, another great, bizarre name for a fly- The Peathingy Bugger!

Conditions: It rained again on the morning of August 31, and at press time the East Carson is not blown-out brown, but has received a fresh coat of green. Even if dry conditions prevail for the next week, expect off-color water to remain, and expect big fish to slam flies tapped along the bottom!

Until next time,
Mark (The Trout Whisperer) Wiza
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