Now that it's over, there's still time to fish

It's a good thing - more like a blessing - that the river is still fishable at this point in November. Especially this November.

Maybe God knew we'd need a break, a time to refresh and restore our souls after this election, and so in His divine mercy he extended the days that are warm enough to fish for a couple of weeks after the polls closed. At least that's what I want to think.

The river, which in past years has been iced over by now, is still in decent shape. The weather, some days, is surprisingly pleasant.

I may go down by the river just to be there. Or I might cozy up in my hovel, put a rack of favorite CDs in the player, and tie flies.

I might start by tying slender and sleek marabou leeches. The biggest trout I ever hooked took a #8 marabou leech. The leeches are good warm-up patterns for the fly tyer who hasn't tied recently. And going into this winter, that includes me.

There will be other patterns as well. I'll tie and carry some stonefly nymphs, big heavy ones in #6, and some flies I call food-form nymphs, those buggy and nondescript flies that look like food to the trout. My favorite is the Bird's Nest.

I'm lucky. I was the first person the late Cal Bird shared that fly with when he first tied it. I still have materials from Cal's estate that I use to tie Bird's Nests. You might say the flies are authentic. I do know they catch trout - they work even when they shouldn't.

My friend Marshall White would fish his #12 and #14 Bird's Nests in a variety of colors clear into and through the winter and regularly caught fish on them.

And, I recall one early November day some years ago when I fished the East Fork with a hopper-dropper rig. I expected to catch a few fish that might be taking the big orange caddis nymph underneath.

That plan didn't work out. I fished for a while with no takes on the nymph. I changed the bottom fly to a stonefly - still nothing. In one pool I got a hit on the hopper. Fish make all kinds of crazy mistakes, I thought.

I landed that fish, then missed another. Then a third took when I twitched the top fly. Landed that one as well, then took the nymph off and lengthened my tippet to do business with the hopper.

For the next couple of hours I twitched that hopper, threw it near the banks in slow water, fished the edges of fast water in the main runs. And I caught trout: hard-fighting rainbows with vermillion sashes on their sides, cutthroats with salmon-colored bellies and bronze-green backs, all of them good-sized and full of fight. The fish kept hitting even when heavy flakes of snow started to fall.

I don't know if I'll ever replicate that day again or not, but I'll always carry hoppers late in the season and just for grins, drift and twitch one every now and then on what might be the year's last sunny day.

After all, the trout don't know that in a galaxy far, far away, a frost they never felt killed the real hoppers off. No matter, so long as they still remember those hoppers - and eat mine.

Another dry that I'll carry, of course, is the Brindle 'Chute.

And midges: don't forget midges, and don't forsake fishing them. Yes, yes, I know - they're too small. You can't see them. They're hard to tie on. The leader is too fine and you keep breaking off.

But still - what are you going to do if a pod of fish is on them and you're totally unprepared? Better to carry a minimal assortment of teeny tiny midges in black, red and white. And prepare to have some fun.

Same with blue-wing olives. One of my most memorable fishing days came when a blizzard hatch of blue-winged-olives came in the midst of a cold and nasty blizzard. A school of huge - huge - brown trout came up on those blue-wings in a frenzy I'll never forget.

I'd like to report on the big fish I tangled with that cold November day, but that would be a stretch, even in an election year. All I had with me was streamers.