In my fly-fishing life, going on thirty years, float tubes have been a constant part of my experience and enjoyment of the sport. On one of my first trips out of California to visit Henrys Lake in Idaho, my fishing buddy, Whit, insisted we stop by the Buck’s Bag float tube “factory.” In the early 1980s, it was about the size of small auto shop. The only model they made came in one size and color, which shows you don’t need variety to make an excellent choice. Tan, brown, and signal orange was the color scheme, and in that simplicity lay a universe of trout fishing opportunities.
I don’t remember catching a lot of fish when we were tubing at Henrys Lake, despite a lot of big trout hanging around the hatchery water. Whit, for his part, caught and released many brook and cutthroat trout larger than I’d see myself for a few seasons. An opportunistic angler who also fished conventional tackle, I had learned the subtle art of fly casting the hard way, by trying. Whit was catching fish all around me, which was fine. I was learning, even if I wasn’t catching, and Henrys Lake is one hell of a fishery on which to learn.
The float tube, at least, worked exactly as it should, taking me to areas that were inaccessible from shore and near fish that might not expect me. With a little effort, I could put myself over many big, colorful trout, even if I couldn’t hook them. I did not care. Just the experience was like nothing I’d ever tried. But soon I’d want to have it all. And that meant realizing what fly fishing from a float tube could mean.
The next season, we read a short column in the “green sheet” of the San Francisco Chronicle that mentioned the Desolation Wilderness. The writer, Tom Stienstra, spoke of a Sierra drainage both spectacular in its beauty and loaded with worthy trout: the Rubicon Valley. Indeed, the valley drains an incredible expanse of granite. It’s wide, deep, and mostly steep sided. Islands of lodgepole and ponderosa pines dot the canyon walls wherever they can grip, growing in size lower down and becoming continuous along the river bottom. But to suggest this valley is made up of rocks and trees is insufficient. It’s like saying the Yosemite Valley is surrounded by cliffs.
The Rubicon cuts deeply into pure stone several thousand feet high and a mile wide. The forests that grow in the low or flat places give relief from the sun and weather. They offer a refuge with dirt just deep enough to pound in a tent stake. On a sunny morning, the needles glow from all the light, the blue sky and bright sunshine glancing off spar-
kling granite. On wet days, the effect is equally powerful, but the opposite. The wet walls and floor suck in light and give off no color at all, just a flat darkness that’s grayer than a storm cloud. Of course, water pours off the sides of the valley and can fill a tent in a few minutes, so it’s best not to pitch one too low in the dirt, but perfect placement is hard to achieve, because ground soft enough for a bed can be found only in the low spots. If you’re too far in when the weather gets ugly, it’s easy to end up shivering inside a boggy tent, deciding to cut your trip short.
In fact, that’s how the trip we decided to take ended, in a terrific May rainstorm. But that wouldn’t happen for several days, and when we hiked in, there was absolutely no indication of the weather to come.
Looking east from where the valley drains into Pleasant Valley Reservoir, the forest floor and the course of the Rubicon River are broken by three short reservoirs. The middle one is not man made and the only true “lake.” It is almost entirely surrounded by granite, yet in many places fairly shallow. Once we arrived, we immediately started casting off the wall beside our camp. With bait or a lure, I forget which, we induced a fourteen-inch wild rainbow up off the bottom and into a frying pan before we’d barely got our tents up. The best part was the prospect that I would be fishing from the float tube I’d fairly easily packed in.
The next morning, Whit and I rose early and launched our belly boats from a granite dock into water twenty feet deep. Around the corner, an outlet caused some nervousness in the top water. This was broken up by an enormous boulder that rose just high enough to offer a ten-by-ten granite pad above the water, so a little current appeared to run all around this rock We docked our identical tubes on top the boulder and began casting, with our fins slapping wet on the granite. Whit pulled the rod from my hands and cast directly into the current. He waited a few seconds at most before retrieving and immediately hooked a heavy fish. The modest four-piece rod bent over more than I’d ever seen it, and quickly, a big, colorful rainbow trout was rolling between us on the rock island. I might have been mad that Whit had grabbed my outfit, cast it, and caught a beautiful fish that could have been meant for me, but I was too excited with the whole spectacle.
Where we stood and what we’d extracted from the water moving all around us was new to me. I’d never been anyplace like this or seen a trout caught so quickly and expertly. Now, looking back, I can appreciate that besides that trout, it was I who was caught — and for life, as it turned out. Tubing can do that to you — take you places where you find who it turns out you’re going to be.
Later that day or possibly the next, Whit went out by himself and returned with a brown trout that pushed three pounds. Twenty-five years later, I recall the sight of him casting against a vertical wall with a Black Leech and stripping it back in quick, eight-inch pulls. Seen across the lake, his tiny form, floating in the tube, was a picture of concentration and intent.
Though Whit could catch trout every way you can think of, his favorite and most deadly method for taking big fish was with a fly rod, stripping a leech imitation under a sinking line. I did not see him actually catch the trout that he brought back that night. It was the biggest fish of the trip, and in those days, “first, most, and largest” were the measures of our skill. So Whit took home the trophy, as he almost always did.
That same evening, however, I was slowly trolling around the curve of a deep, steep-sided bay. In the middle of it was another large hump of granite, but the water was quite deep between it and the semicircle of shore. Suddenly, the lure that I was trolling jerked back with a long, strong pull. I was fast to something large and much deeper than I could see. Eventually I got the trout into the tube with me and extracted the hook from its wide, toothy maw. This was the largest trout I’d ever caught — the largest I had ever seen with my own eyes, a dark, thick-bodied rainbow that became too much for me to handle. The trout gave a slippery hip shake, got loose around the seat of the tube, and I never saw it again. It was my first chance to best my friend for the largest trout of the trip, but the story I told was almost as satisfying. I learned then that the fish that get away are often more interesting that the ones you capture.
The second float tube I ever loved was a lot like the first, but much lighter. It was a $75 U-Boat I bought at the Fred Mayer in Eugene, Oregon. I still remember it hanging above the outdoor section looking innocuous — lonely, even. Well, that tube has gotten me into more sport and adventure in some of the most remote places than I could ever have imagined that day when the clerk pulled the boat off the wall. It was the last one in the store. I still have it fourteen years later. Doing the math, investment divided by trout and time on the water, I couldn’t have done better buying Apple stock at its first offering.
The beauty of this little float tube is how easily it fits on a backpack and what little effort is needed to carry it a few miles. Mount Hood is well known for all the little lakes that fill the flat places around it. I have a list provided by the National Forest Service, and just the lakes that hold trout number seventy-five or so. That’s a lot of places to fish.
It’s true that most lakes up there do not hold large fish. A twelve-inch brookie is the bull of the woods for these impoundments. Occasionally, when there is natural reproduction in the inlet or outlet, trout may get a little bigger. Some of these lakes can have quite good hatches of Callibaetis mayflies. In lakes where there are clouds of these insects drifting over the surface, larger trout underneath are looking skyward.
Each little lake, with however many wild trout live in it, is a wonder unto itself. Most of these places are seldom visited, and even the ones a short hike from the road or trailhead see only a few visitors every week in July and August. Even these do not get fished very hard. People pack in and drop a line with PowerBait or worms. They catch fish, I’m sure, but most of these lakes are so brushy and full of deadfalls and snags around the bank that shore fishing is limited.
This is what makes tubing in a three-pound U-Boat with a fly rod worth its weight in fantastic good times. All those areas inaccessible to bank anglers become prime fishing spots over which to cast a fly. Up on the mountain, trout love those snags and dead trees that fell in many winters ago. A few weeks ago, my daughters and I swam around Middle Rocks Lake with our swim goggles and chased more trout than we could count. Almost everyone was ten to forty feet from shore, right where the water went from swimmable to cold — five feet deep. And every time we swam near a snag or downed tree, invariably, a trout would dart out from the shadow into deeper water.
A float tube lets you cast a fly over all these places and these trout. Sure, you can snag on a limb or rock, but you can put your fly over any trout that swims, particularly if it’s a dry fly. Still, I’ve learned, there are some tricks to this kind of fishing.
In the absence of a hatch, I like to fish an ant or beetle imitation. When termites are around, a great big ant with three sections is particularly effective. After that, I like to fish a leech pattern or Woolly Bugger on an intermediate line and cast it just a few feet from the shore. Before the water warms in the spring and again in the fall, this method brings up many and often larger fish. The object is to fish along the bottom, but not scrape it. Yes, one’s fly may get stuck on something, but from a tube, it’s easy to get it back.
Another method that works well from a float tube is dragging a Callibaetis-style nymph (Pheasant Tail, Hare’s Ear, or any variation in size 14 to 16) along the bottom. That’s effective even during a hatch. Dragging nymphs along the muddy bottom where Callibaetis are hatching and trout are feeding may seem counterintuitive, but the results are often better than if fishing at the surface.
In July and August, a favorite lake of mine often has a blizzard hatch of the tan mayflies. Its trout, though, are not easily fooled by an imitation. It doesn’t matter how long or light your leader. You may switch from a size 14 to a 16 Adams with no result. These fish are smart. So tie a nymph to your floating line and add a split shot to get it down. For this type of fishing, you want to drag the fly along the bottom. I sometimes use my intermediate line, and it literally lies along the bottom, so I know my fly does, too.
There’s something not very elegant about this method. It’s unorthodox. It’s also damn sneaky, because your line is not above the fish, possibly spooking them. I don’t care if no one else tries it. I’ll just keep this wacky little method for myself. I will call it . . . let’s see, not “lift and settle” or “hand twist.” Those have been taken. How about “dragging the lake”?
And a float tube makes it all happen.
Editor’s note: Monty Orrick has a YouTube channel, Von Wiley Brothers, which is about his fly-fishing adventures and is dedicated to the memory of his friend, Chris Gariffo, aka “The Wily.”
