There is nothing in angling I enjoy more than stepping down a mile-long run on a big river, hurling long casts with a two-handed rod, swinging a wetfly for big trout, steelhead or salmon. But, I also love the intimacy and compressed challenges of brooks and streams far too small for any practical application of even the most demure spey gear. I’m talking streams than can easily be covered with a 7-foot, 3wt single-hander. If a large river be likened to an 18-hole golf course, then a small stream is miniature golf, presenting quirky, fun challenges, yet also sharing things in common. The downstream-wetfly approach and methodology applied on larger water is effective on small streams as well, modified to meet the more nuanced flows and obstacles of small creeks and brooks.
As a fishing kid in the 1960s I read everything on the subject of fly fishing I could get my hands on. Particularly articles dealing with trout, written by angling greats like Ted Trueblood, Arnold Gingrich and Lee Wulff. This was back in the days when you graduated from bobber fishing to fly fishing, and never the twain did meet. And, I don’t think the bobber was eschewed because nobody had considered fishing a fly or jig under an ‘indicator’, rather, I suspect it was more a matter of honor and respect for trout in the hierarchy of fishes, to the extent that in Britain strict rules were imposed on the proper taking of trout. For instance, there is still club water on the British chalk streams where only dryflies are allowed, and these are not allowed to be cast unless over visibly rising trout (Ironically, when taken, it is required that these trout be killed.) This is considered the honorable, hence right, way to play the game. Be that as it may be, that philosophy was imported to the New England of my youth and, if not actually practiced by the majority of American anglers, still held up, at least obliquely, as an ideal to aspire to, and that reflected in the trouting articles found on the pages of popular outdoor magazines of the time, wherein it was generally understood that a fly, wet or dry, was best presented upstream, dead-drift. “Drag” was anathema to the presentation, and allowing it was considered an indicator of mental deficiency.
“Some paradigms are merely the constructs of overly zealous conformists. There’s more than one kind of flyfishing.”
– Steven Bird
Once upon a time there was a race of giant brook trout inhabiting Northeastern streams, both anadromous and not, fished to near extinction by post-colonial market fishers employing simple equipment and a deadly methodology: A rod was carved from a maple sapling and lined with a braided horsetail line (tenkara-style), rigged with a cast of up to eight wetflies. The presentation was decidedly downstream, the operator stalking down, the flies swinging in the current below, dangling, fished very similar to the way a spey angler fishes the hangdown, though mostly leaving the gangion of flies in the water while walking downstream. A combination of the hang-down and walk-down.
As a kid I certainly considered trout the finest and most desirable of fishes, and the idea of catching one on a dry fly from an English chalk stream was a sporting fantasy of mythic proportions. However, there being no chalk streams holding canny English trout within bike-riding distance of my home in western Massachusetts, I was forced to confine my trouting to the several local brooks I could reach. These were very small, secretive waters appearing as obscure blue lines on maps of New England, barely visible except where they slipped through culverts under roads; the roadside culvert pools often the only water visited by anglers. Most often the brooks flowed through lush, thickly canopied corridors of tangle and sweat. In addition to wood and poison ivy, there were lots of ticks, mosquitos, biting gnats and deerflies. No country for old men. The brooks were the private domains of the most intrepid of fishing kids.
A 10-inch brookie was a real trophy, most fish well under that. An overhead cast was out of the question, and even roll casts rarely possible. So, bait or fly, I adopted a downstream methodology that mimicked that of the earlier Yankee commercial fishers, yet limiting the number of hooks to just one. There were days when the little brookies responded so well to this presentation I felt like I was vacuuming the brook.
Those glory days of the woods, ponds and wee brooks came to an end when my father, a tool and die maker, moved the family across the country to Southern California, seeking gold in the booming SoCal aerospace industry of the 1960s. This was a traumatic move for a fishing kid from rural New England – like being deposited on the hot, urbanized desert of a waterless, alien planet with a choking brown atmosphere.
Fortunately, turns out, there was an easy escape, and water holding trout. We had landed in Glendora, at the base of the San Gabriel mountains, not far from Azusa Canyon wherein flows the San Gabriel River, where I became a regular.
Before its lower reaches were paved into a concrete washway in the 1930s, and three dams erected along its length at that time, the San Gabriel hosted a fabulous run of southern steelhead. As early as the late 1800s the movers and shakers of the rapidly growing metropolis of Los Angeles formed an elite angling club, headquartered in a log cabin on the Azusa Canyon stretch of river. They employed a full-time cook and hostler with a team and wagon to haul members and supplies up the canyon. The size and numbers of steelhead they caught are astonishing. By the 1920s, Camp Williams, on the East Fork, was a steelhead fishing destination for the sporting movie stars and Hollywood film makers out of nearby L.A. Then, by the late 1930s, alterations to the watershed ended the steelhead runs.
At the time of my arrival, trout were confined to the headwaters above San Gabriel Dam, some distance up Azusa Canyon. Comprised of four tributaries:the East, North and West Forks and also Bear Creek, the mainstem at median water was no more than a large creek, the four tributaries, small creeks. The lower reaches were sometimes stocked but a hike up the forks got you into wild trout country. Bright leaves of trout. While my high school buddies stoned themselves silly on weekends chasing imagined rainbows, I was usually camped six or seven miles up one of the forks chasing wild rainbows.
Though small streams coursing the semi-desert canyons of the San Gabriel were not as lush and tangled as the Eastern brooks, they still harbored plenty of challenging obstacles – alders, willow, stinging nettles, cactus, large boulders shaken loose from the steep canyon sides during earthquakes, and lots of rattlesnakes. I’d spend the day packing in, fishing my way up the canyon, casting upstream, short-line, high-stick nymphing or fishing a dry fly, and when arriving at a place to camp for the night I’d have a couple trout kept for supper.
I’d hang out upstream enjoying the isolation of the canyon until there was barely enough time to fish my way back down before dark. I had to fish fast, adopting a downstream methodology different than the slow-paced traditional upstream nymph presentation I used going in. I kept the cast short, fishing no more than 30-feet of line. The San Gabriel tribs, freestones with good flow most places, allowed me to dangle the fly as I walked down, swinging it from side to side, pulling it back and then lowering the rod tip to drop it down into pocket water and lies, roll-casting to one side of the stream then swinging the fly across to the opposite side. This was a departure from popular trouting orthodoxy of the time, and I’d often score better hustling downstream than I did fishing up.
The compressed, downstream swing, hitch-down, walk-down, and dangle, adapted from traditional swung-fly methodology applied on rivers, can be productive methodology for meeting small streams.
Keep in mind: the fly is your puppet on a string.
And this is particularly important for best results: Fishing downstream requires different flies than the drab, insect simulators used for presenting upstream, dead-drift. Flies that look more natural dragging in the current – small streamers imitating minnows or fry, and also trigger patterns that represent nothing in life yet work as lures, are choice. These are best tied sparsely, and no more than 1 1/4 inch long. A wee Royal Coachman streamer is my favorite for this approach. And for those with neoclassic tendencies, the fanciful Ray Bergman wetfly patterns are effective when fished downstream as lures, as well as old classics like the Alexandra, Parmachene Belle and Professor. I carry a few bead-head Thin Mints or Leech patterns for swinging into deep pools and faster pocket-water, though most of my small streamers are not weighted, sparsely dressed on #10, heavy wire steelhead/salmon wetfly hooks (with barbs pinched), the weight of the hook sufficient to sink the fly on most small streams.
More than anything, small stream fishing is a stalking game. Can’t stress that enough. Wear clothing that blends with the surroundings. Try not to let your shadow move over the water. Proceed quietly and with intent. Stay out of the water when you can, and when wading move slowly, making the least disturbance possible.
The advantage of a downstream approach to small streams is that we can cover more water quicker and easier than an upstream approach, with less casting, the fly more often hunting in the water as we walk down. And chances are, if we’re fishing a stream that receives some angling pressure, it is a fresh presentation trout probably aren’t used to seeing – and a streamer will interest any larger trout present.
The gear is as simple as it gets. My designated small-stream rod is a 7-foot, 3wt glass single-hand, lined with a 4wt, floating double-taper line. Over-weighting a step or two allows better roll and overhead casts with less line beyond the tip to load the rod. There’s seldom opportunity for the optimum 30’ of line beyond the tip the rod weight designation is based on.
That’s pretty much it. Add a 7’ to 8’ fluoro leader, a few small streamers, and we’re ready to hustle on down.
