Wes Smalling

Star-Tribune Outdoors Editor

It's bad luck to hook a fish too soon. When you get to the river, it's better to bumble around for a while first. Snag a tree limb on your backcast. Slip on a wet rock or something. Then start fishing for real. Catching one too early curses you for the rest of the day.

Last week the flow on the North Platte dropped out of Gray Reef Dam so I ditched work for the afternoon to throw some flies at the river for a couple of hours. The river was running nice and clear, the weather was perfect and I was the only one there. It felt like I had the whole river to myself.

I tied on the usual stuff, a black leech and a red rock worm.

If you're ever in doubt about what bugs to use at the Gray Reef, start with those. Sure, to a fly-fishing purist they're a couple of the goofiest looking fly patterns you'll see, but they almost always work on the Platte. The leech is pretty much just a clump of dyed bunny hair or squirrel hair tied to a hook, and the rock worm is only a skinny red ribbing wrapped around the shank of the hook.

The only fly combo that's sillier looking is an egg pattern and a San Juan worm (might as well put a salmon egg and a night crawler on your hooks). The old "ham and egg" combo of an egg and a worm is something a guide on New Mexico's San Juan River will tie on for a rookie who's used to bait fishing. The fish tend to hit it harder than other flies, letting the rookie know with a hard yank that it might be a good idea to tighten the line and start reeling in at that point.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no fly-fishing snob. I'd tie on a stick of dynamite if the regulations would allow it. So I'm not above fishing a ham and egg, or the old reliable leech and rock worm.

Third cast: The strike indicator twitched and I set the hook into a freight train, a big rainbow trout that raced downstream, came up to the surface and rolled with the big leech hanging out of the side of its mouth.

Oh boy, this is gonna be a great day, I thought.

The big fish kept rolling and twisting, wrapping the line around his body until he was foul-hooked with the rock worm stuck in his tail.

A foul-hooked fish is twice as strong. Hooked from the tail or somewhere else on its body, it can turn away from you and swim with a full head of steam. This fish did exactly that. It shot downstream so fast the fly line burned my finger. In the two or three seconds I'd let go of the line to shake my hand in pain, the fish did a Harry Houdini, somehow wiggling, twisting and unraveling himself out of the straight jacket tangle I'd had him in and - pah-tooey - he spit out the hook.

Well so what, I thought. I'd hooked into a big one on the third cast. This is gonna be a great day …

For the next two hours not a nibble. Nothing.

I cast just about every fly in my box at that dang river. The weather turned cold. The wind started blowing. It rained. Then at 5 p.m. everybody in Casper got off work for the weekend and it felt like the entire town came to my fishing hole. There were more people on the river than at happy hour at The Wonder Bar. They were next to me, across from me, floating past me …

I admitted defeat and went home. Next time I'll remember to hook myself in the hat or something by the third cast.