New Blog Post from NWSchoolofFlyFishing: Tailwaters Rivers are classified by fly anglers as either a tailwater river or a freestone river. For years I never really knew, much less cared, about the type of river I was fishing. It was just a river and I was too busy fishing to care. But the more l fished the more I learned about the many differences that tailwater rivers have and the complexities they unveil to the average fly angler. At first it seems simple; tailwater rivers are rivers behind dams and freestone rivers are rivers with no dams. It’s the fish in the waters that make the real difference. The water coming out of a dam and forming a river below it is coming from the bottom of the reservoir and usually stays at or near the same temperature all year. This new water creates a tailwater river and a bio system that just can’t be duplicated by a freestone river. This biomass enriches the river with enormous plant life that helps breed healthy populations of aquatic insects that are so important to the health, size and population of the trout that reside in them. The consistent low water temperatures helps to keep the river healthy even during the heat of the summer whereas freestone rivers will normally suffer high water temperatures and low oxygen levels that further stress the trout that live in its waters. There is a certain fatal attraction that pulls fly anglers from all over the world to fish tailwater rivers. Some of the most famous rivers in North America are tailwater rivers. Madison, Yellowstone, Bighorn, Henrys Fork and the South Fork Snake are just a few. Anglers are drawn to these rivers because of the size of the trout that live in them and the size of the insect hatches that drive these trout to their flies. It’s amazing the power that these famous tailwater rivers have on the average fly angler. We spend millions of dollars each year just to fish for the first time or to come back again to these great waters that fuel our dreams during the winter. The more I think about it the more I realize the huge impact tailwater rivers have had on my own life. When I look back, many of the events that have helped shape my life can be traced back to some experience I had while on a tailwater river. My early childhood was certainly shaped and formulated from experiences learned while on a tailwater river. My earliest memories of childhood are of me playing on the shores of the Kern River throwing rocks and then playing in the shallow shores. Those memories imprinted in my brain the love affair I have always had for any activity related to the outdoors. I learned how to fish as a young boy on a tailwater river and the seed of my lifelong passion for fly fishing was begun. My father taught me how to swim by tying a rope around me and tossing me in the current and aggressively yelling at me that I had nothing to fear because I had a rope around me. It wasn’t the river I feared but the rope dragging me down to the bottom. When all hopes of surviving were exhausted the rope became tight around me and I was dragged to shore like a drowned rat. After repeated lessons it became clear to me the only way to avoid the rope was to learn to swim. The benefits of being taught to swim this way were that I soon acquired a compulsive need to be swimming and diving, without fear, in the same rivers and streams that eventually I would become intimate with as a fly angler. As a young boy I would roam in the tailwater river where my family spent most of their free time, I would fish with salmon eggs and worms the deep tailouts and pocket water. My limited years of fishing on my own had taught me where the best spots on the river were to catch trout and the best ways to get my bait in front of them. My fishing tackle was limited to a Zebco rod and reel and a small box of hooks. Most often I used an old steel nut for a weight and some worm I dug up from the garden. But as a young boy that was how it was and as long as I could catch fish I didn’t care what I used to do that in the process. Most of the places I fished as a boy were tailwater rivers but they were just rivers to me. You could call them any name you wanted, they were just swift deep water moving by that was fun to fish and play in. It wasn’t too many years later that I made the connection of what a true tailwater river was. The Kern River is where I had my first experience with fly fishing. Now I knew what fly fishing was but I had never seen it done before. The Kern River below Isabella dam is very rocky with deep holes and strong current. I had fished there many times and as a young teenager I could pretty much fly over the rocks to get to where I wanted to fish. This particular day was extremely hot and the water was high and fast. I had the whole river to myself that morning and was able to fish any part of the river without much trouble. It wasn’t until I came to the log laying deep into the river that my luck began to run out. You see, for me to get the boulder in the middle of the river I had to walk down the log, then with one long jump I would be safely on the boulder. Without even thinking I got a running start on the log but the last step before jumping did me in. With the high water the log was wet and my old tennis shoe a little too slick to make the jump successful. I went backwards head first into the river crashing into the river like a pilotless plane. I managed to drag myself to shore and crawl up a big rock to dry off when I glanced down river and saw another angler looking at me and shaking his head. This particular angler was different than all the other anglers I’d ever seen on the river because after his amusement wore off I saw him staring into a box. Now I watch this guy attach something to the end of his line and became mesmerized by the way he casted that thing in the water. It was then that I realized he was not just an ordinary angler but a fly fisherman. That’s when I decided that I wanted to become a fly fisherman also. I stalked the guy for the next hour or so just watching and trying to learn. I didn’t know it then but that lone fishing venture below Isabella dam changed my life. That was my introduction to fly fishing and it would captivate me for the remainder of my life. Tailwater rivers have deserved reputations for having the most trout per mile, consistently larger trout and the most finicky trout you’ll ever find in a river. I think for me those facts alone are enough to keep me coming back time after time. The largest rainbow, brown or cutthroat trout I ever caught came out of a tailwater river. Most tailwater river flows are controlled at the dam mainly for irrigation purposes which make them excellent for float fishing in drift boats and rafts. Being able to float fish a river gives the angler a tremendous advantage over bank fishing. Fishing from a drift boat allows you to fish more water and to fish water you can’t get to from the bank. Fishing a tailwater river from a drift boat has its disadvantages too. In a drift boat you can very easily pass by productive water and you run the risk, however small, of swamping your boat. I learned that lesson years ago with my first drift boat. I had launched my boat on the lower Snake River hoping to have a great day fishing for smallmouth bass. Timing is everything and on this day Idaho Power decided to raise the flow of the river to 19,000 cfs. The river still looked fishable but I couldn’t say the same for the old wooden drift boat I had bought from a used car salesman. The biggest problem with tailwater rivers is they can become unpredictable. That was the case for me. What I was used to was a gentle flowing river but what I got that day was a powerful current with deep waves in the middle. After fishing the river for hours and catching lots of bass my confidence level was high and I was only a mile from the take out. With my guard down and my arms tired from rowing one slip in the boat was all it took to swamp the boat in the middle of the river. I was lucky everything turned out alright. We managed to survive the rollover in one piece and managed to get the boat to shore with most of our equipment. Every tailwater river is different. The differences can be as subtle as how big or small the river is to what types of fish live in them. Some tailwater rivers can distinguish themselves by what topography they lie in. The Henry’s Fork flows through some of the most beautiful pine covered forest in the West while the Owyhee River flows through the high desert and red canyon lands of the Snake River Plain. Both offer some of the best fly fishing for brown trout in the West. Each tailwater river with their own unique characteristics has an uncontrollable draw to many fly anglers. Sometimes this can be a detriment to the angler in the sense that they will fish a tailwater almost exclusively to the point that they will give up other fine streams just to remain on their favorite tailwater river. By fishing one tailwater river exclusively like that you tend to repress the other fishing skills necessary to fish other trout water successfully. The underwater world of the tailwater trout is strikingly different from the stark life of trout existing on freestone rivers. Tailwater trout enjoy a underwater world made up of tremendous biomass of aquatic plants that breed an endless supply of aquatic insects that feed the trout on a year round basis. The ecosystem of a freestone river has only a little biomass, by comparison, that could support only a fraction of the aquatic insects that breed in a tailwater river. Because of this, freestone trout are by comparison much smaller fish than their tailwater brothers. Many anglers believe that tailwater trout are very smart, or selective in their feeding habits. The trend is you have to match the hatch to be successful. We will go to many extremes to tie or find the most effective fly to combat these tailwater trout. That may be true to some degree but science will make the argument that tailwater trout are no smarter than any other trout. Their contention is that tailwater trout aren’t so much smart as they are conditioned by their environment to have very narrow prey images. (On the contrary, freestone trout have a very large prey image) Feeding trout are only interested in that very small size 16 caddis emerger that is floating just under the surface during a caddis emergence. To be successful you must use a fly that is in that very narrow sliver of a window called a prey image. Any other fly you float by may be food to you but is only debris floating on by to a tailwater trout. To air breathers like you and I all those flies we floated by are food but not to the trout. Trout are incapable of cognitive thought so only the caddis fly emerger floating by during a caddis hatch is food. This doesn’t make the trout smart or selective but can make the fly angler look dazed and confused. Because tailwater rivers consistently breed large trout and have the ability to feed large populations of trout, they will always be the big draw among fly anglers. That’s the biggest problem these rivers face today is overuse. Big tailwater rivers fuel the economy of many states by what anglers spend to fish these big waters. On many popular tailwater rivers fly shops, guides and a myriad of other commercial establishments provide overuse and overcrowding. I have been on big rivers and have seen fishing guides who are yelling and screaming at other guides and other anglers from shore yelling at one another about stream etiquette. These may be the extreme but you rarely hear about fly anglers having a confrontation on a freestone river. Part of the draw to tailwater rivers is that many anglers don’t have many opportunities to enjoy fly fishing and when they do, they tend to make the effort to fish popular famous rivers. Some tailwater river fishing trips may be the trip of a lifetime for some anglers and so you can’t very well blame them for choosing a famous stretch of river when they have the chance. People are drawn to tailwater rivers for other recreational activities that do not include fly fishing. From white water rafting and camping to just plain old swimming, whatever the activity is, it just seems people are drawn to tailwater rivers. As long as there are tailwater rivers there is always going to be people there to enjoy them. I find myself drawn to tailwater rivers more than most fly anglers today. I am happiest most when I’m with my family and when I’m fishing on a tailwater river. For me all rivers are alive and even though a tailwater river may run from behind a dam I find them to be both wild and untamed. For many it’s the high quantity of large fish that keeps them coming back but for me it’s like visiting an old friend again. There is a certain part of me that the river knows and loves. While I love to catch those large trout that everyone comes to fish for, the experience I receive while I’m there, is more a gift the river has given me for being its friend and caretaker for most of my lifetime. For most of my fishing life the feeling I get when I first arrive at a tailwater river is one of delight and anticipation of the day to come. Sometimes after hours of driving and conversing about how the river is going to be, how the fishing is going to be and the excitement of a well planned fishing trip is about to begin is enough anxiety to press even the most seasoned angler. But once I have arrived it’s like a pressure valve has been opened and the steam is allowed to escape. Almost always, after I’ve turned off the engine and opened the door my first sense of the river I feel is the sound of the river. Next is the visual sense, seeing the river for the first time up close fills my eyes with its beauty and magnificent. And last it’s my sense of smell that delightful fragrance only moving water can bring to your nose. They say that the first impression is the lasting one but with a river the dynamics of its personality only makes the impression first gained a lure to what great experiences lay ahead. Other fly anglers have similar experiences on tailwater rivers. Recently while I was spending a few days fishing on the Madison River in Montana, I had spent most of the day fishing and was finally returning to the campground where I was camped hoping to cook up a quick dinner and head back out. As I turned into the campground I noticed a young fly angler standing in the middle of the gravel road that was leading into the campground, practicing fly casting. It was the first time I had ever seen anyone practicing fly casting on a road with a five star blue ribbon tailwater river fifty feet away. When I finished cooking my dinner I quickly made ready a pot of coffee for when I arrived back from the evening fishing and proceeded to go back to the river for the evening caddis hatch. When I arrived at the turn out I noticed that I recognized the truck parked there as the one belonging to the guy who was practicing his casting back at the campground. As I watched him for awhile from the bank it wasn’t too long before he landed a nice brown trout. I yelled down as he netted it and he signaled me to come over and look at his prize. It was a beauty. He released the fish, stood up and looked me in the eye and told me that was his first fish he ever caught on a fly rod. I spoke to him quite a bit over the next few days and even had the opportunity over the evening fires to coach him a little on some of the trickier aspects of fly fishing. But the last night around the fire, before going to bed he had kind of a strange look on his face as he told me that the Madison River will always hold a very special place in his heart for the rest of his life. If Tommy keeps up the life of fly fishing it shouldn’t take him long to learn that all fly angler have large hearts, they just keep getting bigger to hold all those special tailwater rivers they come to fall in love with. Tailwater rivers have a habit of changing fly anglers. During days when the fishing is particularly good you just can’t wait to get back, and on days when the fishing is more than challenging you can’t wait to get back and defeat those challenges. For Tommy the Madison hopefully sparked an interest that will become a lifetime passion or at the very least, the beginnings of a love affair for the sport of fly fishing. There were many firsts for me on a tailwater river. My first trout caught, my first swim across a river, the first time I ever drove a car, my first fly fishing experience, my first date and my first beer. The list can go on and on. It seems to me that some unknown power keeps pulling me toward tailwater rivers and life just takes its course once I arrive there. There is a magic in the joy that tailwater rivers bring to me. Memories of past adventure, exciting fish catching and the time spent with family and good friends. When my life finally comes to an end I hope my ashes are spread of a tailwater river and my family and friends will remember all the fun and joy we enjoyed together there over my lifetime. Mike Sandifer The post Tailwaters appeared first on Northwest School of Fly Fishing.
Posted on: Fri, 18 Jul 2014 21:18:48 +0000
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