By Patrick Straub EBS CONTRIBUTOR
The pace of
winter fishing fits my style: slow, gradual and deliberate. The quietness of
the river is eerie, like the green at a small college on Sunday morning.
On the
morning of December 21—the first day of winter and the shortest day of the year—a
few years ago, I stand on the bank with my 18-month-old daughter Adela,
watching the currents in the Gallatin River flow past.
Snowflakes
hit the water, disappearing instantly. Occasionally, a trout rises to a
hatching midge. Despite her silence, I know Adela is in tune and observing the
scene. For me, the quiet is reassuring.
With Adela
bundled up and loaded into the kid-pack, I step into the river cautiously,
armed with waders, outerwear and a three-weight fly rod. In my first few steps,
the water I encounter is warmer than the air temperature. My fingers stiffen in
the cold.
Eventually I
tie a couple feet of 6X tippet to my leader and onto that a size-20 parachute
Adams. I make my first presentation to the rising trout.
“Watch this
kiddo,” I whisper to myself.
But the fly
only drifts past the rising trout and continues on. A few more drifts and I can
feel Adela looking over my shoulder, expecting something.
I cut off
the dry fly and retie 18 inches of fluorocarbon tippet and two size-20 beadhead
zebra midge flies, the first one red, the second black. Above the knot of the
new tippet, I tie a small tuft of yarn as a strike indicator. Adela watches as
the trout continue to rise.
With my
new offering, I make a drift to the rising fish. “This will get ’em,” I say,
this time loud enough for her to hear.
The orange
wisp of yarn goes underwater. I raise my rod and a trout leaps into the air,
trying to toss the fly. Adela squirms, her small legs kicking against my back.
I bring the fish to hand and then release it back into the clear, cold water of
the Gallatin.
We work
along the bank, hooking several colorful trout and landing a few. Eventually,
they cease feeding—their window of activity is short in winter.
Back on the
banks, Adela and I giggle as we make angels in the fresh snow. I stand up from
the cold ground, reaching down to grab her hand. Our two snow angels lay
side-by-side: mine, large and clumsy; hers, tiny and delicate.
In the
months since, the memories of trout and the zebra midges have faded, but I
vividly recall laying on my back below the blue winter sky and the warmness of
my daughter’s laughter as we played in the snow.
A 20-year veteran fishing guide, Patrick
Straub has fished the world-over. The co-founder of the Montana Fishing Guide
School, he’s the author of six books and owns Gallatin River Guides with his
wife in Big Sky.
A version of this story first appeared in
the Winter 2014 edition of Mountain Outlaw.
