Research and development on the river

Successful fly-fishing involves research and development.

A few weeks ago, on a chilly, raw morning on a somewhat swollen Beaverkill River in New York, Gary Dodson and I rolled up expecting to have the area to ourselves.

We did not.

There were four anglers clumped together right under the covered bridge where famed angler and fly-tier Theodore Gordon did a lot of his research and development. Gordon did his in the late 19th century, when R&D was a little easier in the sense that getting to the river meant walking or catching a ride from a passing horse and buggy. It would have been unusual to see four anglers anywhere, never mind in a bunch.

We bypassed these researching developers and made our way downstream. The river was high enough to make wading tricky and cold enough, at 48 degrees, to make the trout sluggish and uninterested in participating in R&D.

I managed a couple of bumps on small, heavy nymphs, and Gary caught a handful of dinker browns who, he said, had trouble getting their little mouths around a size 12 soft-hackle wet.

The important thing here was that my new right hip didn’t give me any trouble.

“Let pain be your guide,” said the doctor, Yoda-like, when he took me off the injured reserve list.

And by golly, he was right.

It is traditional to complain about the weather. It is also boring, so I won’t do it, except to say that in the last few weeks sometimes it was cold and sometimes it was unusually hot, and none of it helped.

But it was good R&D.

Example: I was wet-wading the Housatonic and environs by the third week of May. This is the earliest I can recall doing this.

The Hous water temp was at or near 70 on May 20, which made me think it was time to deploy the Woolly Buggers in search of smallmouth bass. Since I had the wrong rod for the job, this was a sloppy and cumbersome maneuver. It resulted in one rainbow trout of modest size, no doubt a recent arrival from the hatchery, and precisely what I was trying to avoid.

The basic hatchery rainbow as plucked from the Blackberry River. This one was hanging around in the most aerated water available, and took a heavy, sparkly Surveyor nymph. Patrick L. Sullivan

But it was momentarily satisfying to have some development to go along with the research.

My friend Dave Edgerly came up, and we took a whack at the Blackberry, where the water temps hadn’t reached the danger level, and we plucked a few from the foamiest, most aerated water we could find.

Years of R&D have taught me that, given the choice between breathing and any other activity, trout opt for the former.

So if things are slow in the long, slow, deep pools, find the white water and watch for a few minutes. Chances are you’ll see trout sticking their heads up, grabbing whatever bugs are coming down the pike.

In a situation like this, I take it straight to them, with a couple of heavy nymphs — one drab, one gaudy — launched straight into the foam.

How big and how heavy?

“Let pain be your guide.” Or, in this case, “let getting hung up on a rock and having to rerig be your guide.”

Start with the big ones. If you’re getting snagged, switch out to the smaller ones. Eventually, through careful application of research and development, you will find the answer.

Or not.

Failure is a big part of R&D. If it starts to get on your nerves, just remember this:

In most endeavors, if you fail 70% of the time, someone will suggest a new line of work.

In baseball, a hitter who fails 70% of the time over a 20-year career goes in the Hall of Fame.

Fly-fishing is like baseball in this sense.

So relax and get on with the R&D, en route to the HoF.