On this side of the river was a gravel bar, a mud bank stippled with elk tracks, and riprap to hold the road and on the other, a 3-foot bank, undercut in places, thick with grasses and tangled willows hanging over the water.

It was public land, public water with a good road alongside. I like to fish as far away from the road as possible, but this time might be different, I mused. The river poured into a lake from which there might be trout running up into the tributary.

We passed a pullout where two anglers plied the water. Then the valley opened up. My eyes were on the river. Here was a big, slow bend with riffles above and below.

“Stop here!” The driver mashed the brake and my friend Colin and I climbed out. We pulled on our waders as the rest of the group continued upstream. Colin set off to try his luck from run to run. I surveyed the water.

Fast, riffled current was fended off a ledge into the big bend hole, the current holding to the other bank, a large back-eddy on this side, then as it turned, river right, a big bouldery tailout spilled downstream in one last riffle before the rapids below. Deep enough to hold feeders throughout the water column; a big puzzle to solve.

Deer hair dry & hopper

To start, I tied on a deer hair stonefly. As an afterthought, I knotted on a 12-inch fluorocarbon section of tippet and a tungsten beadhead with a peacock body and rubber antennae.

Low in the eddy on the outside corner, I cast into soft water above a boulder and was rewarded with a sharp tug-tug grab and release. Two casts later, drifted into the tailout, a heavy fish grabbed and took a lot of line. I followed along the rip-rapped bank and brought it close. A 20-inch whitefish. When the hook was out of its mouth, it shot back down into the deep riffle from whence it came.

A few casts later, eyes on the dry, I saw it plunge as another fish grabbed the nymph. This one was a cutthroat, maybe 10 inches. I wasn’t to catch another fish this small for the rest of the day.

On the drop after heavy snowmelt and the rains of the week before, the water was clearing, but visibility was no better than about 2 feet. I began to make searching casts farther upstream, and I lengthened the dropper, now to 24 inches.

This big bend hole was deeper than it first appeared, 7 or 8 feet deep. Another trout took the nymph, this time it was bigger.

Weighted streamers mid-column

The nymph was working, but I cut off the dropper and the dry in favor of a red-beaded black leech. With the heavier weight, it would run deeper yet. I began to turn my attention to the back eddy.

Each move deeper in the water column brought more action and different fish. Streamers with rubber legs turned the biggest fish and when I made the first real probings of the back-eddy, I hooked one that went straight to the surface, thrashing like a silver salmon, its orange fins lit in the morning sunlight. I guessed it at 20 inches, but it was probably not that big. I wondered what else might lurk in the deeps.

Crayfish imitations

The next trout brought to hand were 14-inchers, one after another. I cut off the little streamer and tied on a heavier one with a tungsten bead, brown body and orange tail. Thinking it looked like a crayfish, I cast downstream along the seam, through slack, let it sink, threw more slack, let it sink more, then began to tighten up, crawling the fly, I imagined, as close to the bottom as I could get it. But I knew I wasn’t all the way down yet.

At the bottom of the back eddy, was a pile of drifted bark and branches, dark against the otherwise green of the bottom. Cutthroat like such places where bugs are concentrated and they stay hidden from above. Boom. The fly stopped in something live and large with orange-tipped fins. It fought deep. It fought at the surface and then I guided it into the shallows where it measured almost 18 inches against the rod.

The next fish was bigger, but it showed me no more than a flash before it snapped the line.

When our ride hove into view, I’d landed and released seven trout, the biggest 17 inches, plus the whitefish. Eight fish from one big bend hole. There remained more trout to catch, but it was time for lunch.

A multi-layered complex bend hole can hold a lot more trout than might be guessed at a glance. If such a spot comes to mind, approach it with at least two rods pre-rigged for fishing down through the water column. There might be bigger trout there than anyone guessed.

• Rainy’s South Fork Secret (deer hair stonefly)

• Tungsten Rubber Leg Prince (on dropper)

• Schiel’s The Producer (olive)

• Kure’s Squirrel Micro Zonker (gray)

• Double Bunny Gold Variant/White

• Tungsten Egg Sucking Leech (black)

• Tungsten Orange Barred Rubber Legs Black

• Empie’s Deadly Shiner (white, pearl)

• Carpenter’s Sweeney Todd (black)

• Stalcup’s Sculpin 
Sex Dungeon

• Bitch Bugger (orange)

— Gary Lewis