Greenstone

I had a blast fishing the Greenstone River, and I think Julie had a pretty good time too. While of course I wanted to catch some fish, Julie really just wanted to watch me catch one and she did. The river lived up to its reputation, and even this hack of a fly fisherman, yours truly, was able to land a few big ones. Here's how it went (note: this may be of limited interest to some!):

Day 1: Dropped off at the Divide trailhead and headed up to McKellar Hut, about 4 hrs away. Arrived at hut, swam in river (really just a little stream at this point). Saw lots of little trout. Later on, met Doug and Katie from Jackson, WY (Katie noticed the JH sticker on our water bottle). Doug had been fishing Beat 1, the section I was assigned to the next day, and had caught about a dozen fish. A few years ago fishery managers wisely decided to make the Greenstone a "controlled backcountry fishery" which requires anglers to obtain a free online permit to fish it on a first come first serve basis. They divided most of the river into 3 separate 'beats' which can only have 1 or 2 anglers on them per day. The main purpose of this is to preserve the backcountry experience.

Day 2: Following Doug's advice, Julie and I walked about an hour into Beat 1 where he said the river finally got more accessible and large enough to hold some big fish. I said goodbye to Julie for the day; we decided it would be best for her to get to Greenstone Hut early enough to get a good bunk, and I would just fish my section and head in later on. The first hour started a little slow...I spooked a fish or two before finding a bigger and deeper section where I could sneak up a little better. Spotted a good sized fish and my first cast landed the fly a foot or two from its nose--wham! Nice big rainbow. After I released it I found that the pool was loaded with at least 5 other trout of the same size...but they were all shook up so I moved on. For a while I had one fish at the edge of a riffle very interested, but just a bit too suspicious. Then, in the same pool, hooked up with another large trout, but after a minute or two the fly came off. Tied on another, then soon after I had what may have been the biggest fish I was to hook...but this one came off the hook, which was bent when I checked it. BY this time it was time to eat lunch. For the rest of the day, I had several hits but did not hook another fish. The wind grew stronger and stronger (about 20-25 mph downstream) as the day went on and really made for difficult casting and fish spotting. So reluctantly I headed back on the trail at about 3:30 or so, not getting to Greenstone Hut until 6 or so.

Day 3: Made an attempt to get an early start up to Beat 3 but got talking with Doug and he asked me how long of a leader I was using. When I told him it was about 9 ft or so, he did not look satisfied and said, "let me lengthen that for you", and told me that he used to be a fishing guide out in Jackson for about 20 years. He said that leader length was really key and that he almost always lengthens or ties his own to at least 12 if not 14 ft or so. He tied two new sections of leader on for me in a flash and told me to take some of his big Royal Wulffs when he saw I only had size 14 flies. He gave me some more pointers and then we got into a discussion about stream ecology and then about his time sailing in the Bahamas. Then Julie and I hit the trail and walked all the way to the start of Beat 3. Another beautiful day, but windier already, damnit! Didn't see any fish in the first few pools, but practiced casting the longer leader a bit. Julie patiently put up with my scouting and sneaking until finally we came upon a pool that was just too perfect not to have fish. Crouching and shielded from the wind by a tree, I started advancing my fly into the pool. After a few floats I was almost going to move on when a big white mouth surface and swallowed the fly. I set the hook and slowly started bringing the fish in. Good sized fish but not a jumper. When I finally got it in it had clearly swallowed the fly pretty well and when I tried to remove the hook it bled from the gills. I had been on the fence the whole time on whether or not I would keep any fish (1 per day was the bag limit), but this was clearly the one as its survival was tenuous at this point. Way more than I could eat, but we knew there would be no problem finding someone to share it with back at the hut. So I filleted it then and there with a swiss army knife. Must have been at least 6 or 7 lbs. After that, caught one more medium sized fish before we called it a day. The hut warden happily gave us a glass of homebrew for a fillet. It was delicious. And someone, must have been Doug and Katie, left us some olive oil and seasoning back at the hut!

Day 4: Really hoped to have little more fishing on our way out, and I hooked into yet another nice fish in a deep pool that unfortunately took the fly off. Then had to walk past some really beautiful sections of the Greenstone as we had to make it back in time for our shuttle bus at the end of the track.

It was a really awesome experience. Gotta go pick up Tom and Diane!!