Big Fish Bring The Magic Streamer...

This tale is for and about my good friend Ryan May  and a couple of magic days we spent on Slaty Fork several years ago ....


       It had been wet and I might add unseasonably cold for May which was generally viewed , around here , as a disaster of biblical proportion given that the Sulphurs had already started and now the "red fog" would surely be reduced to the "red sparse wisp" until the forecast improved . It would have been very easy to sit around muttering and whining about things but Ryan was having none of that .... "Let's go up Slaty and chase sharks" . Now I had been content to sit and whine , smoke Marlboros , drink coffee and dream of the Snout Soup that would surely return with warmer temperatures but the river was brown and rocking and chasing big Slaty browns is one of my very favorite things to do . This being the case it was off to the upper river , the whining would have to wait ....


  Day one of the adventure started out as a very typical Slaty high water day with both of us hitting good fish early and often . See the very best time to fish Slaty is when no one wants to fish it , that time being when she is blown out . This is when the real beasts of the river come out to feed mid-day on the little wild bows for which Slaty is known . It makes for a good time once you get used to dealing with the shear volume of water roaring around you , pushing you downriver with your cleats scraping the rocks . You have to fish water you will not want to fish ... 


Anyways rounding the bend between the 2 twin holes we encountered something most unexpected in the high brown water ... rising fish ! Lot's of rising fish . Lot's of very LARGE rising fish and all of them of the brown spotted variety . Sulphurs , thousands of them , #14's , were unable to get off the water with the cold temperatures . Instead the big duns were stuck riding downstream ,  like an early season olive hatch , into the sea of snouts to be slaughtered ! I had never before seen the BIG fish up like that on Slaty . With shaking hands (and not from the cold I might add) we tied on #14 Usuals and it was on . An 18" male here , a 21" hen fish there , etc .  Sitting here typing this years later I can still feel the moment ... true magic in it's purest form . 


That evening we decided to invite a couple more brothers to go the next day just in case the magic repeated , with an identical cold day being forecast . 


Day 2 saw the 4 of us hiking back down into the promised land with visions of giant Slaty butter , caught on dry flies dancing in our heads .  Lightening indeed struck twice , with one differernce ... sure enough ,they were up again , huge browns ,  but this time rather then right up the gut , they were rising  clear across river on the far side of the heavy current in the slack water by the hemlocks . The one was at a minimum 24" , heavy , with huge hooked jaws . A magnificent fish ! Try though we might , and we did ,  none of us could get the drift . It was obvious that you would have to cross the swollen river to have a shot . My friends , 20+ years younger headed to the tailout to attempt a risky bounce crossing . I smiled and headed upstream to the tailout of the Boiling Hole smug in the knowledge that my friends had chosen unwisely , there being an uncrossable trough 2/3 of the way across down there that would foil their efforts. 


I made it , barely , lit a smoke and headed down toward the gap in the hemlocks holding the giant snout , with a spring in my step ,  ready to get a much closer look at him and feeling almost cocky about my choice of crossing locations .Arriving at the spot I did get a closer look at the 25" male but unfortunately the look I got was at the huge brown in a net . To this day I don't see how they made it across . The vision of Ryan with that big brown is forever burned into my head , great memory ! The fight had put all the others down so it was obviouly time for the 4 of us to move upstream and continue another epic day of Shark chasing ! At this time 2 in the group suddenly came down with what a Slaty high water fisherman could only view as a disease of sorts , this malady being a desire to go up one of the tribs after brook trout  or brook chubs as we often called the little fish . An effort was made to bring them to their senses but they were having none of it and off they went forsaking big Slaty butter for the little fish of the fountains leaving Ryan and myself to our shark chasing . 


It was at the point in the day that the real magic started ....


Ryan ties wonderful large streamers and is always testing this or tweaking that . Well he showed me a new one he felt was promising , the only one of it's kind so far . I agreed it looked good but felt with the Sulphurs still coming off heavy that I was better served with a pair of Magic Bunny emergers . Well that day they turned out to be kinda ok, small fish catching,  Bunny emergers . Ryan's new streamer on the other hand .... good god everytime it hit the water hell broke loose ! Bam a 21" hen fish , whack an #18 bow in a little pocket , smack a 15" sucker . Nope not a misprint it is still the only fairhooked sucker on a streamer I have ever witnessed . The more he caught of course , the harder I fished  but the magic was obviouly not with me on this day . At the head of the boiling hole Ryan waited until I was finished and ask if I minded if he gave it a go . I said sure , have at it and headed for a seat and a smoke as he flipped the streamer just to get it in postion for a cast ... FISH ON  . What the heck was my 1st thought thinking he was screwing around but the bend in the big rod told me this was not the case . Within a minute or 2 the 22" male was in the net . It had been laying 6' from me the whole time ...


Upriver we went with my luck improving as the day went on and with Ryan putting on a clinic , just wailing big fish . Just below twin tubes I decided to take my improving luck upriver , ahead of Ryan who was maybe 100 yards ahead of me . I got out and had just started up the bank , in the high weeds when I saw them ... bear cubs , little guys . Hmmmm that means mamma must be .... there !! Oh my god and a big mamma she was . She looked right at me with a definite "I am a bear skinny boy ,STEP OFF" kind of a look . I nodded and thought to myself , "yep got it" and I slowly backed away reaching the swollen river and then started across , somewhat  picking up my pace . I looked upstream and noticed that Ryan was working his way down stream towards me butmore importantly straight for the bears ! I yelled loudly and made the internationally recognized "whopping big bear , killer no doubt , stay away " sign with my arms spread high and wide above my head and a fierce scowl on my lips . Inexplicably my friend reeled up and headed straight for me (and the bears! ) at a trot ...


  Now what had been a potentially bad situation (my buddy getting eaten by a bear) had become an infinitely worse situation (I might be the one getting eaten by the bear what with him herding them my way ) . I'm not real proud of having measured the degree of gravity involved in the changing situation that way but I guess that is just a character flaw I will have to work on... At this point I threw caution to the wind and pretty much ran for my life pushing my way through the waist deep , fast paced water , leaving a wake as I went ! Reaching the far bank , alive I noticed that Ryan had turned around and was now crossing a couple hundred yards upstream . When he arrived minutes later I asked him why he had ignored the "whopping big bear , killer no doubt , stay away " signal to which he replied ... " I thought the signal meant BIG FISH , BRING THE MAGIC STREAMER ". He continued by saying it was only when he saw me crossing water I shouldn't have even tried to cross , at my age , atr that speed , that he sensed something wasn't right ....


I thought later that evening that life is so often like that . It is a series of seemingly  random events , punctuated by mis-communications and potential pitfalls and yet everything works out just fine . 
See you on the river !