Every year since its inception, The International Women Fly Fishers organization has hosted an annual Festival at a different location around the country in order to help fly fishing women connect with each other and learn more about the sport they all share.
In October, 2007, IWFF held the Festival in Utah near the newly rehabilitated Provo River. Women from around the country fished for brown trout in its beautiful runs and riffles and hiked along the river at nearly all of the designated access spots that have been so carefully created by the restoration effort. It was truly one of our most successful Festivals and certainly the most fish-filled.
The Festival always includes lots of workshops and presentations on fly fishing, fish species, and more, and there is always a first-rate auction and annual dinner to bring participants together to celebrate fly fishing.
One of the activities this year was a “walkabout” of sorts where guides and more experienced women in attendance accompanied newcomers to fly fishing for a walk along the river. The idea was for the novices to get a first-hand opportunity to get information about reading the water and finding fish that they could use during the event and also take away with them for the future.
The woman I walked with had been fly fishing just about a year and was already beginning to feel comfortable about her cast and her ability to select the fly and present it satisfactorily. What she wanted to learn was where the fish were.
We started at a beautiful stretch of water that was pretty flat and not very deep. As we watched, fish began to rise all across its expanse. She couldn’t believe there could be so many fish in just that one section of river, and asked if that many fish were likely to be in that area all the time. That led to a discussion of fish’s tendency to move from place to place depending on the hatch.
Where should she look for fish when there wasn’t a hatch going on, she asked. It was just the right question, and we moved up along the twists and bends of the river examining each few yards for likely holding water.
We identified lots of beautiful runs of varied speeds and configurations and how to fish in the run, along side it, where it began, and where it smoothed out into a pool. She learned that edges were one of the preferred spots for fish to hold in.
As we progressed, lots of holding water appeared. Large boulders breaking the water provided great resting spots for fish both behind and in front of them, and logs and other debris in the water did the same. We talked about how hard it would be to get a nymph drifting correctly into the slick water behind the boulders and how quickly a dry fly presented in the same spot would get pulled along by the current below.
Some deep pools, created by the careful construction in the rehab effort, afforded the opportunity for us to talk about streamer fishing. She hadn’t been very successful in trying to fish pools, and was relieved when I explained that they are often the hardest part of the river to fish successfully, because the angler can’t tell at what depth in the water column the fish are holding.
Besides just looking at different types of water, we also discussed how we might fish them and with what type of fly. She had had only a bit of experience nymph fishing and said that, so far, like many new anglers, she preferred fishing a dry fly which she could see, to one that she couldn’t see. That brought us to a discussion of how and why the nymph might be the better and more productive choice in different types of water.
We ran out of water (because of anglers already there) and we ran out of time long before we examined all of the water we would have liked to, but the mile or two that we wandered provided many opportunities for actually seeing and analyzing a real river. At several spots where we stopped, the fish began to rise as some graceful mayflies emerged, and we wished, of course, that we could have been fishing. She’ll be back to that wonderful river she promised herself, and so, hopefully, will I.
Pudge Kleinkauf has owned and operated Women’s Flyfishing®, her instruction and guide service, for twenty-one of the thirty-eight years she has lived and fished in Alaska. She is the author of two award-winning books, Fly Fishing Women Explore Alaska, Epicenter Press, 2003 and River Girls: Fly Fishing for Young Women, Johnson Books, 2006. Visit Pudge’s web site at www.womensflyfishing.net and e-mail her at pudge@womensflyfishing.net
article and photos used with permission
