how to fly fish like a depression era railroader

The second part of Trout Fishing in America by The World's Best Mechanical Engineer.

Rawlins Wyoming is only about 20 miles from the Platte River, and 40 miles from the "Miracle Mile". The Miracle Mile is really the Miracle Six Miles, sandwiched between two reservoirs. It has some of the best fishing in the lower 48 states, and there are plentiful trophy fish in those waters. We never fished the Miracle Mile with our grandparents. Instead we usually fished in beaver dams on the fringes of the Medicine Bow National Forrest. We became specialists in how to fish this peculiar habitat with obsolete gear. Today we still fish the same area, with the same techniques, and with the same ancient gear. Now you too can fish like a depression era railroader, just read on. (Given the current economic conditions, this could be really useful).



To effectively fish beaver dams you need to have at least a passing familiarity with their architecture and environment. The dams we fished straddled the border between the high dessert and the forest. You can stand on top of the plateaus and believe there's no water or trees for 50 miles to the North, and only pines to the south. But when you hike into the canyons, many have spring fed creeks with aspen groves huddling the banks. In this country, where there are aspen groves and creeks, quite often there are beaver. Beaver are amazing critters that completely transform the landscape. They build a dam so they will have a mote for their beaver hut. Gradually they clear the aspen from the banks of the creek. Their short legs do not favor long distance travel on land. So they build beaver runs that extend from the sides of the dam towards the edges of the aspen groves. This allows them to swim most of the distance; they are nothing but grace in the water. Soon willows take root on the face of the dam, providing easier forage for the beavers. The trout usually lie in four main places: in the beaver runs, in the inlets, within a few feet of the face of the dam, and near the entrance to the beaver hut (if you can figure out where that is, it is underwater). Brown trout in particular like to lie in the beaver runs.

The best way to approach a beaver dam is to wade into it from the inlet side. This allows you to have a back cast area that is either reeds, grass, or water, all of which you're unlikely to snag on. It's hard to imagine a more treacherous terrain than the inlet of a beaver dam. There are hidden holes and holes lined with sharp beaver gnawed sticks. The silt is so fine it penetrates and stains everything, and sometimes grabs your feet like quicksand. I've seen my retired grandfather wade into dams like this time and again, and he always emerged in one piece, so you can too. Fan your casts, and if possible align your back cast with a inlets or beaver runs to minimize the chances of snags. It also gives a tiny chance of accidentally catching a trout on your back cast when the fly flashes across the water. I've seen my brother do this a number of times at McLean Creek. If there are any large logs down in the water, fish often lie under them, but your casting needs to be spot on or you may spend your day disentangling yourself from logs.



In the thirties and forties there was only one fishing pole material for the serious fisherman: bamboo. In the modern day world, the bamboo poles have been mostly usurped by graphite and other composites, although there are some very expensive bamboo poles still made. The quality bamboo poles are hexagon shaped. The bamboo is split into very small triangular strips, then bonded together into a hexagon.

Today my brother fishes with my grandfather's pole, although he gives up a few feet of casting distance compared to the yellow Eagle Claw he fished with as a teenager. He uses it in homage to our grandfather, and I have to say he looks brilliant using it. Not that there is anyone watching but me. My grandfather's pole was a nice American made bamboo pole when it was new, probably 60 years ago. He never bought luxuries, this pole is as close as it gets. I'd guess it's probably worth four figures, but it's much more valuable to us as a symbol of an excellent part of our past. Every time he puts it together he rubs the connectors on his neck to lubricate them just a little with skin oil, just as my grandfather had taught us.

I had my grandmother's bamboo pole repaired a few years ago and I generally fish with it. The first time I ever caught a rainbow trout it was with this pole. I was probably 8 or 10 years old, and when the fish hit I grabbed the pole and dashed full speed up the bank. Unfortunately in my excitement I broke the pole cleanly in two.

By coincidence the pole builder that repaired my grandmother's pole had a nearly new WWII era Japanese bamboo backpacking pole that he'd picked up in a trade. I bought it from him for remarkably little. Today grandmother's pole needs some more repair, I'm a bit hard on equipment. In the meantime my backpacking pole fills my need for an antiquated bamboo pole quite nicely.


You can actually pick up an antique bamboo pole on ebay at a remarkably cheap price. The Japanese WWII era poles aren't considered to be very lively, but for $25 you can't complain too much, it's worth that much as a conversation piece. There are American made poles that are better quality that run from $25-$1000. Most poles came with at least one extra tip, try to find one that still has the extra tip in tact. If the original cloth carrier is still with the pole, all the better. Find a pole with hexagonal sections, not round. Generally speaking a longer pole will allow you to cast a little further, so I'd get a 9 footer if available but it's not mandatory. It's hard to believe how many of these vintage bamboo poles are still around in decent or even pristine condition. Your antique bamboo pole may or may not be the finest fishing pole in the world, but when you have a golden brown bamboo rod in your hand you will feel like you can catch fish.

Dry the pole off when you are done fishing, and when you take the pole apart pull on the metal connectors, not on the bamboo sections. This will prevent unnecessary stressing of the bonded joints. (A little engineering aside here: fishing rod connectors are universally designed wrong in my opinion, and are therefore prone to pulling off the rod they are bonded too). In the event two sections of the pole won't come apart, squat down and put the pole behind your knees. Grab one side of the connector with each hand, put the pole in the crease at the back of your knee joints, then spread your knees apart. This technique provides excellent leverage, and almost no risk of breaking the pole accidentally.

For railroader style fishing you have a couple of reel choices. Engineering has come full circle on fly reels in the last 100 years. They originated as simple spools then evolved into the wind up "Automatic" Shakespeare style spring loaded reels, then they devolved back into the simple spools. The "automatic" Shakespeare reels had a clock spring that you wound up. When you wanted to take in line, you pressed a lever on the reel and it retracted the line automatically. Sure they have fancier drag and ratcheting mechanisms, but at the end of the day it's still a wind up spool. Modern reels may be made of aircraft aluminum and have 500 lightening holes in them, but to tell you the truth I've never lost a fish that I thought, "I would have caught that one if my reel was just 5 grams lighter". Today I use one of my grandparent's very old wind up spool reels, probably from the 30's or 40's. My brother uses a wind up Automatic Shakespeare reel, probably from the 1960's. Oddly in many ways his reel is more antiquated than mine since no one uses the "Automatic" reels anymore. You can pick up one these automatic reels for about $15 on ebay, keep your eyes open and you might get one with fly line still on it. Or you can get a spool type fly reel. Some of the antique ones are super stylized turn of the century designs in both brass and nickel-plating. It looks like the spool type reels range from $10- $50 on ebay, and some of them are pretty sexy. Whatever reel you choose, a drop of oil or two will probably extend the life substantially.

You'll want to get floating fly line from a tackle shop if possible. Fly line is a little expensive, but it'll last a decade or two. There are two reasons a tackle shop is worth the few extra bucks for fly line. First, they can look at your pole and recommend a fly line weight that will cast decently for that particular pole. Since I change my gear so rarely (like never), I don't have a good grip on how to match the line to the pole, but the guy at the fly shop will. I'd put it to them as a kind of hypothetical question, "Supposing hypothetically I wanted to fish this ancient bamboo pole and H.G. Wells reel, what weight of line would I want?" The second reason to go to the tackle shop is to deprive the nimrods at Wal-Mart of your business.

While you're at the tackle shop, you'll need a tapered leader too. This is where some of the depression era thinking comes into play. Modern fly fishermen will fish with anywhere between 7 and 10 feet of leader. My grandfather would buy double tapered leaders, and cut them in half so he'd get two leaders for the price of one, but each leader was only about 4.5 feet long. I don't know if he also liked the improved controllability of the shorter leader. You can't buy double tapered leaders anymore, so my brother and I cut down regular tapered leader to about 4.5 feet long. This is where our methods sharply depart from the usual modern methods. We tie a loop on the end of the leader, just as you would a bait hook leader.

Our flies are snelled to match. All modern fly fishermen tie the fly directly onto the end of the leader, then cut it off when they want to change the fly. Snelled flies allow us to change flies quickly without gradually cannibalizing our leaders, and the fly is easier to change when your hands are cold. The only down side is that we will occasionally loose a fish that strikes at the knot between the snells instead of striking at the fly. . Today it's impossible to buy snelled flies, we buy them and snell them ourselves with about 5 inches of leader. You can look elsewhere on the internet for the knots (the knot to tie the fly to the leader is a cinch knot). One upgrade we've made to the knots is we put a tiny drop of super glue on both knots on the fly to diminish the odds of knot failures.

My grandfather almost always purchased dry flies, but wet fly fished with them. He used to buy some of his fishing flies at the territorial prison in Rawlins, where they were made and snelled by inmates. In wet fly fishing you typically let the fly land on the surface of the water, then it usually sinks below the surface while you draw it toward yourself for maybe 10 seconds. He wasn't fishing with dry flies by choice so much as it was nearly impossible to find wet flies when we were kids: everyone was dry fly fishing at that time. In dry fly fishing you make several overhead casts to dry out the fly, then let it sit on the surface for only a few seconds, and periodically dip it in a fluid that helps it float. As a result dry flies are lighter and intended to float, and wet flies tend to be have heavier bodies and are more inclined to sink. It's been my experience that there are few dry fly patterns that won't sink eventually.

My grandfather always fished with two flies on his leader. The second fly is attached to a loop about 16" from the top of the leader. Fishing with two flies has a several advantages: it allows you to try out different fly patterns faster, and it offers two different potentially appetizing meals to the trout. You can also use the upper fly to alter the presentation of the fly on the water. A "parachute" pattern on the top fly tends to kind of float down onto the water, which is great if the fish are easily spooked. A large beetle type pattern can be used on the top fly to limit the sinking depth of the bottom fly to keep it out of moss or other obstructions. There is a downside though, and that is in mossy conditions a multiple fly rig will get fouled more often. Mossy damns seem to go hand in hand with lots of trout, so this can be a chronic problem. Over the last couple of years I've evolved over the last few years towards a single fly while my brother continues to use two. I guess that some of the old timers used to use 3 flies, but this would seem to be a cumbersome rig at best. A few good patterns if you're getting set up with gear are Parachute Adams, Mosquito, Royal Coachman, and Wooly Bugger. It's a good idea to get something of a smorgasbord of colors so that if you see a hatch of something on the water you can at least match the color. My brother and I both prefer the buggier patterns, flies that look like they are a little beat up. There is a school of thought that the smart trout prefers the injured insect to the intact one because it is less likely to get away. This follows from an entire First Law of Thermodynamics view of hunting animals, that the caloric energy expended on hunting prey must be less than the caloric value of the prey, or the hunter will perish.

Sadly a few trips back the plastic sheets in my grandfather's fly book were shattered by baggage handlers on my plane. It was designed for snelled flies and seems to be irreplaceable. Even ebay doesn't seem to be help on this obscure artifact.

My brother and I make an annual pilgrimage to Wyoming to fish the same general areas. For decades we were able to fish a set of dams just inside Medicine Bow National Forrest. My Mother had fished these dams, and my grandparents had fished these dams all the way back to probably the 1930's. My brother would routinely catch between 20 and thirty fish in an evening (catch and release). A few years back however, they logged this valley down to pretty close to the water. The fish vanished. I don't know if they spilled something in the water, or fished it out, or if too much silt is reaching the creek in the absence of the forest. But the brookies are gone.

Our other great traditional spot was the Red Meated Dams (we named these dams after the pink meat possessed by the monster brook trout in these waters). Unfortunately some calamity befell these dams as well, and a few years back the fish vanished from this dam as well. I suspect that they possibly got too warm one hot summer. The fish at this dam always bit right at dusk, possibly due to the water being marginally high for trout in the first place.

The combined failures of these two waters have forced us to look for new dams. It's difficult since some end up being on private property, some washed out, some are too shallow, and some simply lack trout. But there are the few with spectacular fishing. My brother and I recently caught (and released) over fifty fish in a single afternoon in one set of dams. The last couple of years we've also been experimenting with fishing some alpine lakes in the nearby Snowy Range. But in the alpine lakes it is us who are the fish out of water.

The End.