The man that taught me to climb trees.

John is one of the great ones. He is one of those people that love the fly game. He treats every outing as a chance to learn, and he actually cares about this little fly game we play. John is the owner/head guide at https://www.haresearflyfishing.com in Greenville, SC. So, if you are ever on his side of the mountain and want to learn a thing or two about catching fish on the fly hit him up. Tell him Kalyn sent you. John and I were getting our legs guiding up on the ridge in the Carolina’s at about the same time. It just so happened that we were both taking trips from a mutual friend and were supposed to meet each other to talk shop.

I was down on the east fork of the French Broad one day getting into the trout pretty well, but I was really sneaking my way down to a pod of fish that held a monster I had seen before. So, my back is smashed into an overhanging Rhododendron, and I’m slowly creeping around with my eyes on the water when I see a line come out of no where and land right where it should. I looked around the corner of this tree, and quietly said, “dude you scared the shit out of me.” I never heard him, and I’m pretty sure he never heard me, which in and of itself is no small feat on these rivers. I’ve always been a pretty observant guy, it’s a relatively quiet section of the river, and I got out stealth waded to the spot. Who is this guy and why is he doing things the right way? We end up talking about the run we were in, and reluctantly we both gave up the details of why we were working that spot. We’ve been friends ever since. 

Shortly after we met, we were on the phone quite a bit. We were talking strategies, flies, which fish we had found where, and every little thing we had come up with along the way. We were spending a lot of our time on the Davidson River outside of Brevard, NC. The D is notorious for being tough on certain sections during certain times of the year. This pushed people like John and me to new heights when it came to stalking, observing, and learning the water. One day John had found some nice browns that were setting up in feeding lanes during the day and he asked me to come out and fish with him. In the details he had mentioned that if I got there before him to take my time and watch the run while I waited for him.

I get down to the spot, and see that John is already parked and down by the river. I grab a couple of rods and slowly make my way down the path to where you can get a good look at the run from cover. Before I get to the end of the path I hear from off to my left and above me in a whisper, “HEY!” I slowly turn and see John up in a tree overlooking the run. He says to me, “hey man, don’t walk any farther down the path. Come up here by me. He’s in there!” I made my way over to John’s look out spot, and start peering over the edge down into the river. Sure enough, there is a nice sized brown on the back of the shoal, and he is indeed feeding. The bad news was that this was going to be a ridiculous cast, line management, and hook set situation. So John gets down and we go to work. “How long of a leader do we need?” The water is gin clear, the sun is out, and its warmer than we would prefer. “Do you think a size 18 or a 20? Well, if I go with a bead head the fly may never make it down to him. It’ll be too heavy to get through the shoal.” Not to mention this is going to have to be a 50 plus foot drift with a pile cast, major mending, and some weird current changes. Also, I will have to be on my knees in the sand casting over one thing and under another. So, we get something rigged up. As I remember it was some small dry to keep up a midge of some sort or another. The dry was going to serve to keep us right above the bottom, and the midge was the food of choice. John gets back to the observatory, and I crawl my way down to the only place that I can possibly fish from. It takes me a little while to work out where the cast is going to need to be. John is giving his best tips from way up above. I finally decide that we need to give this a shot, and see what happens. The fly drifts through ok, and for a second John was making quiet noises, and then says, “He hated it.” 

  Back to the drawing board. We aren’t going to get many drifts anyway, and, “he hated it,” doesn’t sound too promising. I finagled some way to get the rig, and start messing with stuff. I switch out flies, add a tiny split above the size 20 rainbow warrior I’ve switched to, and start talking to John about the cast and the drift again. I can’t see the fish very well at all, but I know exactly where it is. A cast, a reach mend, stacking line, and the drift is back on. This time I could tell he could see the fly when it came near him. John suddenly yells, “Set.” I do as quickly as I can, and the rig comes flying out of the water back toward me. “Could you not feel anything?” “Nope.” “Man, he was down there chewing on it.” Nineteen times out of twenty I certainly would have blown this fish out after missing the hook set but he doesn’t seem too bothered. We hold on for a minute. The fish is still there, but he shouldn’t be. Might as well let him set back up and start eating again. I am still on my knees by the way. “Alright, give him a shot.” That’s all I needed to know. He just grabbed something floating down the conveyor belt. Cast, mend, stack, and we are back at it. This time I’m watching John. I knew I was drifting the same way, and I was going to have to go off of him. I can’t see the situation well enough, and his face lets me know. Hook set. Big splash. Broken tippet.

“Oh God you had him!!!”

You win some, and if you are like me, you lose more, but the lesson was learned. Be sneaky. Observe the environment. Know your quarry. Be patient. And by all means, climb some trees.