I didn't start out to be a fish hobo is just happened. It took years of life's ups and down to create the fly angler I am today. When people think of hobo's they instantly picture a rail bum who's been riding the train for weeks, needs a shave and eats his dinner out of a can. Hollywood has ingrained into the public an image of a hobo as a dirty old man walking down the tracks with all his belongings hanging from the end of a stick which he carries across his shoulders. We know from the past that hobos hung out at places like Hobo Jungles. In my home town we had a place on the beach where the trains used to slow down called "Hobo Junction". As a boy I used to camp out there while fishing for surf perch and watch how the hobo live their lives.

Even as a young boy my interest in the Hobo life was one of fascination and intrigue. My curiosity peaked when I met my first fish Hobo. I was camped up on Piru Creek with my dad and my friend Wayne. Dad had taken us up the road along the creek and dropped Wayne and I off a few miles downstream so we could fish our way back to camp. Piru Creek is a small pocket water creek full of trout and the perfect little creek for a couple of novice fly anglers to leap frog around each other and catch plenty of trout. Back in those days when I was on a creek fishing for trout I had a one track mind and that was to catch trout.

Piru Creek runs through a steep canyon with lots of big rocks and pools so you have to be in pretty good shape to get around. Wayne and I had been hopping around doing pretty good, catching pan size trout when around a bend I came across a large plunge pool that was sure to hold some large trout in it. The problem was I had to work my way down the creek to a beach and cross the creek over a water logged tree that was laying across the creek to get into a good casting position. I could see Wayne back down the creek fishing some pockets working his way towards me so I was pretty intent in getting good position on the creek before he came up to me.

With my tennis shoes already soaked and the bottoms coated in sand I started to put my plan for crossing the creek into effect. As I climbed the log and started across everything was going perfect as usual. That is until I worked my way along to about the middle of the log. I didn't know it at the time but the middle of this log was extremely slippery and within a millisecond I had slipped and was on my way down into the creek. When you're fifteen years old you do things like that because you're unbreakable. Today I would never have even thought about doing something like that but at that age the consequences are bearable.

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During my lifetime of fly fishing I have had the opportunity to fish many rivers and streams throughout the West. Some of these waters are famous trout rivers and streams of the Northwest while others are little known or known only to local fly anglers. I have some special rivers I like to fish that are outstanding rivers and grow huge trout, and I fish quite a few little creeks that I think are the best of the best. I fortunately have the benefit of being able to travel the Northwest much of the fishing season and feel fortunate to fish many rivers and streams, each one uniquely different and rewarding. One thing all these fishing hot spots have in common is the presence of other anglers, crowded boat ramps and full campgrounds. However negative that may sound, most often it's worth it to have the opportunity to catch beautiful native trout. For me it was the beginning of a fly fishing quest.

Eighteen years ago I started my quest for a body of water where no human had ever cast a fly to, where the fish were wild and had never seen a human much less a wading boot. Most of my fly fishing friends thought I was crazy, saying those places just don't exist anymore. I figured that living in Idaho I could probably find that little creek within a few years. Well a few years came and went and I had given up looking for something that I no longer believed existed. It just sunk in that there just isn't any trout water in the lower 48 that just isn't getting fished.

I think in the back recesses of my mind, somewhere among the cobwebs and empty spaces, I still thought that someday I might be fortunate to discover some little creek untouched by the dry fly. Occasionally I would spend a couple of hours at a time looking over all my maps and day dreaming about some of the little blue lines I saw coming out of those topographical mountains. Sometimes I even made a trip to some of those mystery creeks I spied on the map only to see anglers, signs of anglers or a parking lot full of cars before me.

Just when I think I've forgotten about my little virgin stream I pick up a magazine and read an article about some lost forgotten river somewhere on our earth or I'll pick up a book written by some well known fly fishing author and read about their adventures on some little stream they say must remain "unknown". Now I understand the reason for keeping their little "unknown" a secret but these authors have a knack for describing streams, fly fishing and trout with such clarity that leaves me with my tongue hanging down which is probably why they do it for a living.

Read more: Little Creek

As far back as I can remember I've heard the phrase, "Never say never" and nowhere is that more accurate than in the world of fly fishing. How many times have you caught yourself saying, "I'd never do this "or "You should never do that". I sometimes catch myself doing that while teaching fly fishing to a new student and then have to explain that there are exceptions to every rule. The look I get back can range from somewhere between confusion to ineptitude.

For years I've fished a small trout stream deep in the Rockies and over the years I've gotten pretty intimate with that little stream. I know every run, hole and slide like my own back yard. But there is on section of river, maybe a couple of hundred yards long that I never fish anymore. It's not that I've never fished it; it's just that when I did I never managed to catch any trout there. So it was just a matter of time before I no longer took the effort to work that water.

Last year while on that little stream fishing with a good friend, I drove past the section that I never fish anymore and he looked up at me and asked why I passed up all that good water. I said I never fish that section because I've never caught fish there before. He looked up at me like I was crazy and said, "How can you pass up one of the best sections of water on the stream". The fact that I never fished there because the fishing has always been slow for me made no sense to someone who always caught fish on the same body of water.

The other day I was watching a video on streamer fishing by Kelly Galloup. Kelly Galloup in some fly fishing circles is considered an expert on streamer fishing. As I'm watching his video I notice he is using sinking line in one of his segments. I had just finished answering a question on streamer fishing on what type of fly line to use. I had advised never to use sinking line from a drift boat because of the fast sink rate and current induced drag plays havoc on retrieves from a moving boat. Now I'm being told it's OK to use sinking line. Never say never is all I can say.

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Rivers are classified by fly anglers as either a tailwater river or a freestone river. For years I never really knew, much less cared, about the type of river I was fishing. It was just a river and I was too busy fishing to care. But the more l fished the more I learned about the many differences that tailwater rivers have and the complexities they unveil to the average fly angler. At first it seems simple; tailwater rivers are rivers behind dams and freestone rivers are rivers with no dams. It's the fish in the waters that make the real difference.

The water coming out of a dam and forming a river below it is coming from the bottom of the reservoir and usually stays at or near the same temperature all year. This new water creates a tailwater river and a bio system that just can't be duplicated by a freestone river. This biomass enriches the river with enormous plant life that helps breed healthy populations of aquatic insects that are so important to the health, size and population of the trout that reside in them. The consistent low water temperatures helps to keep the river healthy even during the heat of the summer whereas freestone rivers will normally suffer high water temperatures and low oxygen levels that further stress the trout that live in its waters.

There is a certain fatal attraction that pulls fly anglers from all over the world to fish tailwater rivers. Some of the most famous rivers in North America are tailwater rivers. Madison, Yellowstone, Bighorn, Henrys Fork and the South Fork Snake are just a few. Anglers are drawn to these rivers because of the size of the trout that live in them and the size of the insect hatches that drive these trout to their flies. It's amazing the power that these famous tailwater rivers have on the average fly angler. We spend millions of dollars each year just to fish for the first time or to come back again to these great waters that fuel our dreams during the winter.

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