Thermopolis, Wyo. – Without using up too much fine print, we can identify three basic situations in which we try for trout.
Most often, we simply fish the water, an endeavor that involves equal parts experience, sorcery and blind luck. We guess at the right fly or lure, pick a likely fish hangout, do our best to make a good presentation and hope something down there bites.
Then there’s the intermediate opportunity in which we see evidence of the fish, as with a rise to an insect. We tie on what we think we saw the fish eat and try to make it take the imitation. This is a delicate and supremely interesting way to fish, but leaves us to guess the nature and size of the trout.
Finally, we have the fish we actually observe – sight fishing, if you will. Most anglers agree this is the ultimate in angling, whether it involves a marlin glowing behind a teaser, the tail of a feeding bonefish or a large trout cruising close to shore in clear water.
Which brings us to the rock-rubble rim of Boysen Reservoir, an impoundment that interrupts the flow of the Wind River in northwest Wyoming and, in springtime, provides us with many large and highly visible trout.
This is not an easy or a lovely place to reach at the end of a 5 1/2-hour drive, the last stretch through a landscape that resembles the wrong side of the moon. The names of local creeks tell the story well enough: Badwater, Tough, Poison.
The reservoir nestles in a jumble of sedimentary rock that hides the bones of dinosaurs and frames the hopes of parched locals eager for a day on the water.
A second angling option, less visual, exists here. Just below the reservoir, the Wind River enters its spectacular canyon, a marvel of geology and dark water known for large – and contrary – trout. Almost exclusively inside the Wind River Indian Reservation, the canyon requires a tribal permit, $25, available at area tackle shops.
At the canyon mouth, the so-called Wedding of the Waters, the river famously changes its name to become the Big Horn, a place popular both for floats and wading from shore, where access permits.
Both these options involve the first two, less-certain scenarios, which is why Joe Butler and Jim Lewis can be found perched on a rock staring into the limpid waters of the reservoir.
The Denver-area duo regularly travels the Rockies in search of trophy trout. Typical of big-trout hunters, they are partial to the ones they actually can see. A few feet in front of them, several deeply colored rainbow trout perform a springtime mating ritual – quarreling over territory, pursuing ripe females in a classic daisy chain or simply prowling the shoreline in a seemingly nonsensical parade. In western reservoirs, these antics rarely result in spawning success, but nature compels them to try.
A year ago, Butler and Lewis discovered hundreds of large rainbows where a small, nondescript creek enters Boysen. Now, with the water level 15 vertical feet lower, this shoreline congregation is greatly reduced and fish have shifted from the flats to steep, rocky points.
But the remainder is of uniformly good size and lovely to watch, satisfying all the requisites for visual fishing. Nothing in angling is quite so compelling as the approach of a highly desirable fish, the keen anticipation that comes with the sighting, the heart-thumping demand for an accurate and well-timed cast.
When that can be achieved, the only mystery is choosing what a trout with no real focus on feeding might be tempted to bite. On a visit to the same spot a couple of weeks earlier, Butler settled on an olive damselfly nymph with a tinsel strip along the spine. As these shoreline spawners often do from one time to the next, they refused the damsel but now opened their large, white mouths for a smaller olive scud.
It is a puzzle that annually confounds anglers in similar situations at places such as Colorado’s Spinney Mountain Reservoir, adding an element of intrigue to an activity that otherwise might be just a wrestling match with a big trout.
Near or far, these sightings always summons those stirrings deep inside that echo the primal instincts of the hunter: alert, eager, ready to pounce. That’s what makes this situation the most satisfying of all.
Charlie Meyers can be reached at 303-954-1609 or cmeyers@denverpost.com.
