The Brotherhood of the Traveling Fly Floatant

By: Joel Anderson

“Plop!” We’ve all heard that awful sound. It’s the sound that tells us something just fell out of a fly vest pocket carelessly left open. It sounds expensive. You just hope it’s not the new Orvis sunglasses or that 100 meter spool of 6X fluorocarbon expensive. Hopefully it’s something with which you can live without for the rest of the day.

I watch helplessly as the now identified item of this particular mishap, a new bottle of Loon Aquel floatant, circled in the eddy below me. I briefly considered jumping in after it, but the water was far too deep and fast to risk it. So I waved goodbye to the bottle as it caught the main current and headed downstream. I was then resigned to fishing soft hackled wets and nymphs for the rest of the day. No problem. I didn’t really need the floatant as it turned out and I enjoyed excellent fishing.

As I headed back to Rangeley yesterday, I remembered I hadn’t yet replaced the floatant. “Oh well”, I thought to myself, “I’ll be fishing wets and nymphs most of the day anyway."

Most of the early part of the day was exactly as envisioned and I enjoyed fair subsurface success. Later towards evening, however, a few fish started to rise to caddis. So I put on an Emergent Sparkle Pupa, sans the floatant.

The trout and salmon were definitely looking up yesterday and dry fly fishing proved to be very successful. Each fly, however, was good for only one fish before it had to be changed, and with my limited dry fly supply, I was literally running out of flies.

Later in the evening I made my way down to the finger currents that flow through a series of rocks breaking the main current. Big (I mean BIG) brook trout nose up into the finger currents and feed on caddis all day long. I was happily surprised to find the area vacant of fisherman and the telltale red fins of the brook trout were showing as the fish lazily surfaced.

I was struggling with the visibility due to glare and trying to keep my fly floating, missing several strikes as a result. Then I heard a voice behind me politely announcing that he was going to cross the river well above me. When your concentrated on big fish, such a voice out of nowhere is always startling.

I turned to see a somewhat familiar face, but let’s face it, we all look the same in ballcaps and sunglasses.

“You look familiar”, I said.

“Greg Hutchins!” he answered.

Somewhat taken aback by being in the presence of someone who’s reputation as a fly fisherman and fly tyer precedes him, I awkwardly replied, “No f’ing sh#$! I’m Joel Anderson.”

Greg and I of course knew of each other because he tied the beautiful set of flies I won at the Conclave last week, but we had never been formerly introduced. A very pleasant conversation followed, where we exchanged secrets, and then Greg generously pulled out his fly boxes and gave me several dry flies he thought might work on these tough trout.

BTW, if you're not overly confident in your fly tying ability, don't ever look into one of Greg’s fly boxes or you will suffer an immediate inferiority complex.

While we talked, I handed Greg my Harms Convex taper to try. He immediately dried my fly with Frog's Fanny before making a cast and I was amazed how it brought my soggy dryfly back to life. I’ve tried desiccant powders in the past but have given up on them. All I can say now is that Frog’s Fanny is the cat’s ass.

Then I mentioned that I was struggling keeping a fly afloat because of the lack of floatant.

“Here!” Greg quickly replied, “Take this bottle.”

“No, I couldn’t do that!” I said reluctantly.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s free. I found in downriver awhile back.” Greg insisted.

Greg handed me a bottle Loon Aquel floatant. What are the chances it’s my exact bottle lost the previous week upstream on the same river? By my calculations, pretty damn good! Like I said in a previous post, I’m just dumb lucky that way!

Thanks to Greg's generosity with flies and floatant, I hooked several more trout, including a couple of the tank brookies that come out to play just at twilight. You should have stayed until dark, Greg. The last hurrah was truly epic dry fly fishing.