Rivers are part of the commonwealth. They belong to everyone and no one.
But when I’ve driven for hours, rigged up, waded in, and set up to fish a nice run, I feel a sense of ownership. The river is mine. So too are its many fishes. Keep out. Beware of dog. Protected by Smith & Wesson.
I don’t like to share.
To get a river to yourself, you could buy it. If you own the land on both sides, you can put up gates and staple No Trespassing signs to every tree. But I don’t have riverbank-money, so I have to get creative.
I don’t fish on weekends. Most people work for a living, so there are a lot fewer anglers on the water Monday than on Saturday. I know not everybody has the privilege of being a full time trout bum, so I’ll share a couple more tricks.
I don’t fish rivers that are easy to get to. Even people who have to work on Monday take breaks, and if you’re within sight of a parking lot, their lunch-hour casting practice might ruin your day.
Instead of easy waters, I go deep into the woods. If you’re determined, you can almost always out-walk lazier fishermen. Then you’re rewarded with fish that don’t see a lot of artificial flies on a stream that doesn’t see a lot of wading boots.
Lastly, when I’m really craving some alone time, I pull out the best trick in my book and I fish in shitty weather.
It had rained for thirty-six hours straight. The headwaters of the Davidson looked like the Class V rapids from the movie Deliverance. The thermometer on the dash of my car said thirty-four degrees, but evidence suggested it was colder.
If you’ve ever eaten a fudgsicle, you know the texture of quiescently frozen confections. On a hot summer day it’s great. But on a December morning, when you’re thigh-deep in a blown-out river casting nymphs at imaginary trout, quiescently frozen is the last thing you want. I had to de-ice my rod about every third cast.
I didn’t catch any fish, but I did have the place to myself.
After a solitary but disappointing day on the Davidson, I met up with a friend and a guide for a day on the Tuckasegee river. That would be a different story.
The Tuck is a beautiful river, with rainbow and brown trout just stacked in it for miles. But it’s in Bryson City, The Fly Fishing Capital of the South. Those fish get a lot of pressure. There are parking spots all along the river, and anglers don’t have to work too hard to get on the water. With the promise of afternoon temps in the fifties, even the morning chill wouldn’t keep people away. Lots of fish. But also lots of people.
When confronted with a fight-or-flight situation, my general inclination is to turn tail and run. Conflict aversion has kept me out of a lot of bar fights, but it’s also cost me a lot of good fishing. As we waited for our guide to meet us, I figured we’d probably cede the river and retreat to tributaries where we’d fish skinny water for tiny little wild fish.
When our guide pulled into the parking lot in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle with a Punisher bumper sticker that read Molon Trout I knew we’d be trying a different approach.
He parked the Bradley on a riverside turnout and we got in the river. I was working a nice seam, casting to rising fish when interlopers started infiltrating our perimeter from upstream and down.
A single warning burst from the Bradley’s chain gun was all it took to clear out our section of the river. Molon Trout indeed!
I changed flies a few times, missed three eats, and finally connected with a nice rainbow. It took a stonefly nymph, fished deep through a cut in the river.
It was combat fishing–nobody’s favorite. And while it goes against every instinct I have to muscle my way onto a river, that big ‘bow was worth a little conflict!
