"BIG UGLY"
John Berry
[email protected]www.berrybrothersguides.comSeveral years ago my wife, Lori, and I went to West Yellowstone, Montana on a fly fishing vacation. It was her first fishing trip out west and our first trip together. It was a magical time. We fished some of the great western streams, the Madison, Yellowstone, and Gallatin Rivers. We even shared the second meadow at Slough Creek with a grizzly. We would fish like demons all day. We had our picnic lunch streamside and reveled in the wildlife. At night, after a late supper, we would leisurely stroll through West Yellowstone stopping in every fly shop to read the bulletin boards and talk to anglers, guides, and shopkeepers trying to figure out where and what to fish the next day.
One night, in one of the many shops we visited, Lori saw it, the big ugly. It was a huge stone fly pattern with a spun deer hair and foam body. It was garishly colored and had twelve rubber legs. It looked more like a bass bug than a trout fly. The guy in the fly shop assured her that this was the hot pattern on the Yellowstone and her life would never amount to anything unless she bought one. I on the other hand was not impressed. This was not my first time out west. Over the previous twenty years, I had accumulated hundreds of patterns on various trips and I had all of them with me. I was sure that there would be no hatches we would encounter that I was not prepared for. As a fly tier, it corroded my soul to pay $2.75 for a fly I could tie myself (if I had brought my vise and invested $25.00 in materials). I told Lori that the fly would be difficult for her to cast with her four weight rod and I would be impressed if that ugly thing could catch anything. She listened to me intently and immediately bought one. She spent the remainder of the evening romancing it.
The next day, after a hearty breakfast at a local diner, we got an early start and drove through the park to Buffalo Ford on the Yellowstone River. After lunch, which included an unexpected visit to our picnic table from an inquisitive buffalo, we were fishing near a blow down and observed some large trout feeding on the surface. There were probably five hatches occurring at the same time. We saw stoneflies, gray drakes, two different caddis flies and pale morning duns coming off.
I studied the stream intently in an effort to determine which insect the trout were keying on. After a while, I determined that they were concentrating on the grey drakes. I searched through about four fly boxes before I found them. I tied on a fresh tippet and a gray drake. I carefully dressed it and began casting to some nearby risers.
I smirked as Lori tied on the Big Ugly and cast toward the blow down. The gargantuan fly was all but too much for her delicate rod. It hit the water with a loud kerplunk and drifted downstream about two feet. Suddenly a monstrous trout broke the surface and rolled over the Big Ugly like a ton of bricks. It took off like a bullet and Lori’s four weight was bent nearly double. He made a run straight up stream. Before Lori could react she was in the backing and the trout was still running. He suddenly turned and ran straight toward her. She began cranking in line as quick as she could. Somehow Lori managed to keep the line tight. The fight went on for an eternity but the huge fly was impossible for the fish to shake.
I quickly cranked my line in, laid my rod on the bank, and waded over to where Lori was to see if I could assist in any way. The struggle finally ended when the twenty-five inch native Yellowstone Cutthroat slid into my net filling it to capacity. It was a fat, gorgeous, brightly colored male. It was without a doubt the largest, best-looking Yellowstone Cutt that I had ever seen and was the biggest trout Lori had ever caught. As we were taking the photos she asked me if I was impressed.
That night I bought a Big Ugly. I have even taken to fishing it here. Last week I caught an eighteen inch rainbow at Rim Shoals on the Big Ugly.
