I recently watched a video posted by some local guides who were on the Madison filming themselves trying to catch a trout on a salmon fly. What fun! They captioned the video “Big Bugs = Big Misses.” The lads work for a fly shop here in town and were chucking the large dry fly into the banks and the sticks…floating it, jigging it, twitching it. Trout were leaping, swirling, flashing and slashing at the fly. No fish were hooked or harmed. The idea of the video was first and foremost to market the image of the fly shop, the end result being “stop by the shop, we have the flies you need, the guides you need, the advice you need,” and to show how difficult and frustrating the salmon fly hatch can be on the Upper Maddy. No human faces were shown, and the voices were run through a changer app to sound like a water buffalo in heat every time a fish made a move at the fly. One of the comments on Instagram offered “But Kelly Gallup said that fish never miss a fly!!!?”

Like most Instagram trout fishers, the commentor was clueless. Kelly Galloup, of course, is widely known in the flyfishing world, with a gazillion followers on social media. His YouTube videos/Podcasts cover it all, and he does it with a wry sense of humor, often debunking the many myths and misconceptions which have infiltrated and corrupted our sport. Kelly has forgotten more about flyfishing for trout than the commentor (and the boys in the boat) will ever know.

Kelly’s premise is that trout seldom “miss” a fly. And he’s right. It rarely happens. But they REFUSE fake flies all the time, especially large, bulky bundles of deer hair, foam, plastic or rubber…meant to imitate Pteronarcys Californica…the salmon fly. And they especially like to refuse large, fake dry flies on the Upper Madison river during the salmon fly hatch. The Madison is overcrowded, overfished and over-pressured during “the hatch.” The trout are spooked. They are scared to death. Every time they go to bite they get stuck with a hook. So they learn. They will come right up to your fly. They will nose it, sniff it, bump it, swirl on it, flash on it, slash at it, jump over it, even open their mouth to swallow it, only to chicken-out at the last second. This causes great consternation. The guide declares “you missed another one, you jackwagon!” The buddies laugh and giggle and chug another IPA. The angler has deep feelings of doubt, angst and loss of self-worth. The Slide Inn Podcast Ep. 31: How to Fish Salmon Flies

Years ago, one of our old guide tricks was to chum the hatch. We would pull the boat in down at the very end of a long salmon fly bank. The guide would walk up through the bushes to the head of the run and thrash and shake the shrubbery, dislodging hundreds of salmon flies, caddis, golden stones and various other critters into the river. Trout would gorge and feast on the floating smorgasbord and the angler would commence to fish his/her Sofa Pillow wading upstream, picking off large trout one by one. Great sport! Or sometimes we would park the boat upstream, chum the run with large naturals, then float down the bank casting big dries into the mouths of large, hungry trout. It worked like a charm “back then” but not anymore. The Madison gets pounded so hard the trout even refuse the real thing.

Of course, even the refusals during the salmon fly hatch are exciting. It’s the one time of the year the really large trout will leave their lair and rise. One of the classic refusals is what I call the “fake bite.” This is when the fish opens its mouth wide to take the fly and at the last second realizes it’s a phony and says “no.” Trout don’t have air brakes so their momentum carries them above surface with great commotion and movement of water. Sometimes they even go airborne. “He took it” “He ate it” “He’s got it” “You missed another one, you fool” No, no, no and no. I saw this ‘fake bite” thing all the time when I was guiding tarpon in the Keys. The tarpon would open its mouth so wide…you could see the fly suspended in its great maw. Then, with a massive push of water and a powerful swirl, it was gone. The fish did not miss the fly, it refused it.

Back to the video. The poster claims angler error. Apparently loose fly line, over-mending and shitty trick-casting leads to missing strikes. Duh. Since the trout in the Madison hate the fake dries so much, let’s turn the salmon fly into a streamer! A muddler! Ya, that’s it, twitch that thang! Twitching dries is nothing new. I still guide two anglers who are experts at it. Try it in the slicks behind the rocks in late Sept/Oct. Twitch a hopper along the grassy banks of O’Dell Ck. or The Channels. The guys in the know have been doing it behind the huge boulders in the Bear Trap for years. But it’s not really dry fly fishing now, is it?

Trout refuse flies on the Madison because of too much fishing pressure. If the Upper Madison River was closed to all fishing for one year, and re-opened at the beginning of the salmon fly hatch the following year, I promise you the fish would hammer the big dries. They wouldn’t miss. Even the boys in the boat would get a bite. It would be just like the “good old days.”

I should know. I was there.

THE SALMON FLY HATCH…MYTHS AND LEGENDS | Randy Brown’s Madison Fisher

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