Hannah Baron Spencer is a tall athletic woman with an engaging presence and winsome smile. She is a wife and the mother of lively twins living a homestead way of life on the Salmon River; she’s also a fly fishing and whitewater rafting guide, and an artist. The vibrant colors of her primitive woodblock prints capture visions of the life she lives. To take a look, go to http://www.hbsartworks.com.
I met Hannah before her marriage and move to Salmon, when she was living in the Bitterroot Valley.
She was equally at home wearing her broad-brimmed straw hat and long flowered skirt, riding her bicycle to Farmer’s Market on one Saturday, and under that same hat and wearing cargo shorts and wading sandals, pulling her full-laden raft over a shallow riffle the next.
She was more than a capable guide and her clients – regardless their level of experience – took to her immediately. I booked her out of my shop when I could, which wasn’t often enough. She stayed busy.
She was a favorite guide for a posh lodge on the Blackfoot whose clients often had never experienced Montana – or fly fishing – before their luxurious stay at the lodge.
Hannah’s day with the ants
I remember a time when she was headed to the Blackfoot and stopped by for flies. She had a call again from the lodge. She didn’t know what to expect from her assigned clients – would they be old hands, or more likely, total greenhorns? She wanted to be equipped for anything.
It was about this time of year – hoppers were on, spruce moths were pretty well finished, and it was a bit early for the fall drakes. She picked up a handful of her favorite hopper and attractor patterns and asked if there was anything else I’d suggest.
I showed her some sparse deer hair black ants I had been tying.
“You might try these,” I told her.
Her response was simple and knowing: “Hmm...”
She saw the potential in the fly – she didn’t need to be told why it might work.
She could fish this #14 fly behind a bigger hopper pattern and not encounter the tangles that often occur when neophytes attempt to cast a double-fly rig. Anyone can tangle a heavy nymph tethered to a big bulky dry.
The little ant would go along for the ride, about two feet behind the bigger fly. Any tangles that would occur might come anyway.
As it turned out, the couple she guided were completely new to flyfishing. There was a quick casting and fishing lesson. She taught them how to strike when a fish ate their fly.
At first her clients missed all their takes on the ant. They saw the hopper “hop” on the water, but thought those hops were just the hoppers hopping by themselves. She explained, as tactfully as possible, that the hopper moved because the line came taut when a fish ate the hard-to-see ant.
They caught on, and finished the day with twice the number of fish to the boat as the lodge’s other parties. About half of the fish, she told me later, came on the ant.
All hoppers aren’t alike
The other fly she used that day was Schroeder’s Parachute Hopper. It has the color and silhouette of a real hopper, you can twitch it, and it lands on the water about the same as a natural.
Foam hoppers float forever but land with a splash that can spook fish. Hannah’s lodge clients, fishing the more natural Schroeder’s Parachute Hopper, had an added edge: the fly didn’t spook the fish – they ate it.
When to fish beetles
My favorite foam fly is the Foam Beetle. There are many variations but they’re all basically the same: a strip of black foam forms a very beetle-like body over the top of the fly.
My friend Mike Lawson has a favorite strategy on his home waters of Idaho’s Henry’s Fork. When there’s a finicky trout rising near a grass bank, Mike won’t waste time matching the mayfly hatch. Instead, he’ll tie on a beetle – and usually take the trout on the next cast.
Beetles live where there’s vegetation close to the water. Where those places might hold a trout, on a river the size of the Henry’s Fork or a small mountain stream, tie on a beetle. You might get the same results as Mike.
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