Illinois River 7-25

    My grandfather-in-law, Joe B, is a retired doctor. He was actually one of the first doctor's in the Northwest Arkansas area.  Like most doctors back in the day, he made a nice chunk of change and bought a big plantation-style house on top of the hill, in what is now the historic district of Fayetteville. It's a gorgeous house with huge stain glass windows, a double staircase dozens of rooms hidden down dark narrow hallways.  In short, it's a hide and seek paradise complete with creaky floorboards and the distinct possibility of ghosts.   However, the house was sold about two years ago, since he hadn't been living in it for quite sometime. It turns out that Joe B is not your average doctor.  He prefers to wear his jeans tucked into his boots instead of the stereotypical khakis and loafers.  He is also a man who learned to fly fish at age 14 during a month long road trip to Colorado.  His supplies consisted of a flyrod, flies, a pup tent, a case of Aunt Jemima's pancake mix, a case of canned beans and a case of oil for the '38 Pontiac.  Needless to say some trout were killed during the trip, but he continues to lament killing the big ones. It turns out that they did not fit into the pan very well.  In keeping with his love of nature, Joe B purchased a 400 acre farm west of town that includes hollers, woods, pastures and, most importantly, a good 1/2 mile of the Illinois River.  Each of his sons were allowed to build a house on the property, which is how I came to get access to the water.  I truth, he'll let anyone fish the water provided that they access from the public bridge and don't disturb the cattle.  This is not something that you want to assume in Arkansas, as you are just as likely to get met with a shotgun as a "good morning".   Well, that's not exactly accurate, but it doesn't take meeting many shotguns to make a person skittish.
   The water tends to be muddy from chicken shit that's spread on the fields and two feet of visibility is about as good as it gets. I lived on the farm, with the girl whose now my wife, for a summer and managed to tread obvious paths through the streamside brush to the better pools. When I returned last weekend the brush was back, occasionally abbreviated by cattle trails.  Cattle trails are a mystery to me.  Trails made by cattle, or any animal, will inevitably lead you to water. I simply can't understand how such large animals can leave such a narrow trail. When walking down one, your feet feel like they are on a paved road while your flyrod gets constantly snagged by tall grass and tree limbs. This is one of the reasons why I keep my rod strung up once it leaves the truck. The line and leader keeps the tip section in place through snags and I'd much rather send a broken rod back to the factory than 3/4 of one. 
    When the water is at a fishable level it tends to glide by uniformly and at its leisure.  There are no tricky currents, making mending nothing more than a formality.  The technical aspect to fishing this water is provided by the spring rains that purge the banks of any trees clinging weakly to the banks.  The combination of poor trails, abundant water-logged trees and lazy current adds up to a fishing experience that most closely resembles a hidden bass pond on a breezy day with shade.
   There's no pressure or timetable.   I can drive my truck up and down either side of the river. There are no open container laws. If my wife needs me or if there is work to be done, someone can drive down on the ATV and find me.  Even the fishing is relaxed. Cast a popper to the bank, try to count to 100, strip, repeat.  Hell, the last to Kentucky's that I caught were hanging out in the middle of the river, so even accuracy is not that important.
  Last weekend I swung by McLellans and picked up some fancy deer hair bass bugs, including Whitlock's Fruit Cocktail, and one of those large angled scientific angler's fly boxes.  In an effort not to lose the expensive bugs I rigged up 3' of 20lb maxima chameleon off of the end of a clouser line.  It worked great and the fish didn't mind a bit, although I did bend the hook open on a taco pescado that was well hooked into a tree.  Not a branch, that would've broken, but the trunk of a tree.  At least I got the fly back.
  Muddy river, Busch light, bug.

Taco Pescado (before the tree incident) and pescado. Ran out of beer.

The Ride

After repeatedly getting blown around the Madison by strong winds and dumped on by afternoon thunderheads, we decided to work our way back to Arkansas.  Another 24 hour driving marathon was too depressing to consider, so we pointed the rig south towards Idaho. After a brief gas light scare and some helpful directions from the Slide Inn, we pulled into Mike Lawson's shop in Island Park to pick up licenses and flies. 

  Dinner at The Trouthunter was ridiculously good, with bruschetta, meatballs and spare ribs.  We fished the brown drake spinner fall of the South Platte that night.  Fly fishermen lined up twenty yards apart, casting silently as sipped giant bugs from the glassy water. When the rare fish was landed, there was no whooping or cheering, the fisherman would quietly land the fish, maybe snap a picture, release the fish and return to casting.  It was like church. 

  You can't fish for these fish. The best you can hope for is to melt into the dance between bugs and fish and give the fish the chance to choose your fly from the thousands of others on the water.  I forgot to take pictures that night. I hope yall understand.

  From the South Platte, we headed to Denver, grabbed a hotel and hit Cheesman after stopping by Blue Quill in Evergreen to absorb some local knowledge and purchase yet another license.  The trailhead was surprisingly empty for 4th of July weekend, leaving plenty of water open to a couple of anglers willing to hike an extra mile or two.  Unfortunately our 2 gallon reserve of water suffered a leak in the back of the drift boat so... we drank the rest of the beer. 

Gill Trail: a mile of switch-backs leading to trout fishing paradise. 

Map o' Cheesman- 99% of boulders not pictured

Cheesman has some Browns, as per the above picture. 

And some big ass rainbows

   That's the trip in a nutshell. The fishing was difficult, the weather was unpredictable and bitchy, and the fish were big for the most part.  I've got some fly ideas that I need to tie, document and field test, so I'll periodically update the blog with tying and local fishing experiences. Thanks for reading. 

Finally

  After plenty of recon at the local watering hole, we ran into some fellow pilgrims from the Northeast.  We traded bourbon for flies and awoke to find, in our possession, a handful of foam, hackle, elk hair, rubber-legged concoctions.  Properly armed, we set out on what turned out to be a suicide float from Windy Point to Storey Ditch.   Front after front has blown through in the past few days and today was no different.  The official report was sustained winds of 15 mph, but it felt like at least 30. The wind was blowing spray from the white water up into the boat and even the birds were having difficulty flying upwind.
  The stretch of river that we floated today was littered with volkswagen sized boulders that we were inevitably blown into, only to narrowly slide the nose of the boat inches from rock.  Most of the time anyway.  Kevin's Hyde had a handful of "character" touches added to it today.   We saw two bugs flying all day, but persisted with these big foam flies throughout the day.  We didn't do so hot in the numbers category, but I managed to hook this little fella'.

   This bruiser taped out at 21.5" and took me into my backing on a long fight downriver, which included sidetrips around some very nerve-racking boulders and the bank, which suddenly grew an infinite number of potential snags.
  Kevin and I have some more work to do on coordinating the picture taking, but this will do. We did our best to revive the fish and watched him swim off of his own accord.