Opinion: 16 miles for two fish

So last week we took a couple of days and hiked seven hours and over 16 miles to catch a couple of fish up the North Fork, one which came unhooked almost immediately and the other which quite honestly, didn’t fight all that hard.

Still, it all seemed worth it, despite the brush and breaking off the fly line in a tree. We use a Tenkara road, which is just a rod with a fly line and leader attached. The fly got caught in a tree, I pulled on it straight and the end of the fly line broke, leaving the leader and the fly in the tree.

End of fishing trip.

Our camp wasn’t at the same place as where we  fished, so we hiked back to camp on what was otherwise a pleasant, but occasionally brushy, walk. There wasn’t a soul around – the third time this year we’ve camped in Glacier and not only did we not have another person in camp, we didn’t see another person on the trail or in the drainage, for that matter.

Pretty rare these days, but the brewing storm and weather forecast probably had a lot to do with it.

I thought for sure we’d get dumped on, but we lucked out. We broke camp early Friday morning and the first sprinkles were just hitting the windshield as we drove away from the trailhead a few hours later.

Tenkara rods, from a backpacking perspective, are just about the perfect setup. The whole system weighs in at about a pound, even with the tube, and setup is easy. The rod is very long, even by fly fishing standards, at over 11 feet. The only thing I hate is the braided line, which I guess is traditional (Tenkara has its roots in Japan), but which is almost impossible to untie if you get any sort of a knot or tangle in it, especially if the knot gets wet.

When I got home I replaced the braided line with a length of regular fly line, which works far better in my initial tests. It also seems to cast a bit better and a traditional fly line won’t knot up like the braided line.

At any rate, this fishing excursion came in at about 26 miles total. 

Still, it was relatively flat and aside from tearing a gigantic hole in a favorite pair of pants and seeing almost no wildlife outside of a couple of black bears on the drive to the trailhead, there was relatively little misery in all of this and it was oddly fun.