A “victim” of the Clinton Pattern employed on the Missouri River by the worst flyfisher in the Black Hills, this smallmouth was soon swimming again. (McEnroe and Polovich: Sorry about that horizon. I’m still crooked.)

By Kevin Woster

I’m calling it the Clinton Pattern.

It’s pretty simple: Go cover a speech by Bill Clinton. Take your fishing rod, rigged with a jig.

When the former prez stops talking, you start fishing. Trust me, it works.

And the news story? Well, that can wait. It did on Sunday, anyway, for an hour or so.

The always-interesting words of the former president were still sorting themselves out in my head as I stood behind my pickup in a parking lot at Big Bend Dam, switching my reporter’s outfit for a pair of shorts and a t-shirt.

Oh yeah, and a spinning rig, with a bag of jigs.

Next up, smallmouths: Only two in a half hour of pitching jigs. But they were nice. Aren’t they always?

Next stop, the St. Mary’s Cemetery in Reliance, where my folks - Henry and Marie - lie buried with the other Woster and McManus kin, and where meadowlark song and ringneck-rooster calls add music to the vision of Medicine Butte.

After that, a dozen casts at Reliance Dam, and one small largemouth bass, caught on the tail end of the Clinton Pattern.

In-between, there was a quick chat with Robert Smith of Ellsworth AFB in Box Elder and his kids, Shaun and Charity, who were spending the weekend catching bass and walleyes at Big Bend.

They had a buddy with them. His name is Oreo. He looked like a pit bull to me. But Robert was specific on that: American Staffordshire Terrier.

Apparently, it’s a pit bull cousin? (When you get much beyond Labs and springers and wirehairs, they’re all dogs to me.)

Anyway, young Oreo was a friendly enough fellow when asked to pose for a group picture.

 But then, who wouldn’t be, on a fishing trip? 

Shaun Smith, 8, his sister, Charity, 9, and an inquisitive Oreo get ready for the water.

A diminutive Reliance Dam largemouth bit on the Clinton Pattern.

All seeing, all knowing, or at least theoretically in charge, GF&P Secretary Jeff Vonk preaches the power of fish and fishing at the Cleghorn Springs Fish Hatchery open house Saturday.

By KW

And Vonk said: Let there be trout; and there were trout.

Thanks, of course, to Will Sayler and the disciples of the spawn at Cleghorn Springs Fish Hatchery

Actually, there WILL be trout sometime about, oh, September, when the first 10-inch rainbow “catchables” will be hitting Black Hills waters. They’ll be the first year class of trout produced by the newly improved Cleghorn Springs Fish Hatchery in Rapid City.

GF&P held an open house at Cleghorn on Saturday, under partly cloudy skies and a breeze that might be considered a gale anywhere beyond the wind tunnel that is Rapid City. The party was aimed at showing off the new hatchery look, after $6.5 million in improvements.

Lots of fine angling folks turned out, including Randy Rick, his wife, Lynn, and their three little flyfishers (and musicians) in the making - Peyton, Laurel and Alison.

GF&P Secretary Jeff Vonk was on hand, too, of course. So was assistant wildlife director George Vandel, hatchery manager Will Sayler, fisheries program chief John Lott, retired chief Dennis Unkenholz and former Cleghorn manager Larry Ferber.

So were the fish, both rainbow trout and chinook salmon.

And Vonk saw the fish, and saw that they were good.

But they’ll be even better in about four months.

Amen.

Anderson Hill of Rapid City shows the bright eyes and smile of a future angler as his mom, Dodee, feeds the trout and his sister, Allie, takes it all in.

The Al Campbell memorial bench waits at the hatchery to give you pause.

And then there’s the fish, dividing the light from the darkness

 

Rapid City attorney Jeff Fransen slaps a left-handed restraining order on a feisty Roy Lake smallmouth.

By KW

With apologies to the boys at Sports Center, they were “en fuego.”

Jeff Fransen and Andy Damgaard, two amigos in law and angling order, were feeling the fishing burn during a chilly weekend at Roy Lake - Tony Dean’s favorite smallmouth water.

I’d guess it’s Jeff Fransen’s favorite, too, given the size of the smallies he hung, including the 4-pounder above. He landed a couple other hogs, too, which hammered his crankbait and elevated his spirit.

Damgaard, who guided our favorite creekside lawyer to a bit of East River angling heaven, nailed some smallmouths, and a walleye to put on the wall

8 pounds, 12 ounces, I believe. Check it out below.

It all warms me up pretty good, and I don’t even have a law degree.

Sioux Falls attorney Andy Damgaard summons the strength to show off his braggin’-sized walleye.

Jim Goodrich of Rapid City shows off a couple of nice brook trout taken Sunday from Dalton Lake.

By KW

You don’t have to ride an ATV to hang out at the Dalton Lake Campground.

But if you do, you’ll probably feel more at home.

Dalton Lake - a nice little pond four miles off the Vanocker Canyon Road - is smack in the middle of the Nemo ATV world.

Ruuuuum-ruuuuuuuum.

You’ll hear some of that while you fish or hike or picnic.

And the lake’s fishing potential is limited, like its size.

But Sunday afternoon, Jim Goodrich and his dad, Jim, realized enough of that potential soaking worms on the bottom to take home a couple - by the time I stopped for a chat and picture, at least - of nice brook trout.

I managed a 5-incher on an elk-hair caddis over by the cattails, keeping intact my four-year string of never catching a brook trout bigger than eight inches. But that’s another story …

Darin Laue presents his 6-pound, 6-ounce state-record smallmouth bass.

By KW

Wow.

No, seriously.

Wow.

What a smallmouth.

Darin Laue of Castlewood caught it on April 27 in Lake Pointsett, to become the new state smallmouth record holder.

Don’t ask me how, but I managed to forget I had this picture. I managed even to forget who sent it to me.

Maybe it was shock.

Anyway, I was chatting with our favorite creekside attorney, Jeff Fransen, about his recent fishing adventure on Roy Lake (which included some pretty good smallmouths, photographic evidence of which is soon to be presented here on TIO) when it occurred to me that I’d forgotten this big brute. (The fish, not Laue).

Next up, I gotta call the guy and get the details….

The confluence of Crow Creek and the Red Water River.

By KW

It’s possible I trespassed to take this picture. If so, I apologize to the landowner.

But how could I not snap this image, on a beautiful spring day of sunshine and mostly blue skies sandwiched in between blizzards and monsoons?

I believe the property is actually owned by Black Hills Power, and I wandered in so very briefly while fishing adjoining private land.

It’s a gorgeous joining of tributary streams. And at one time I heard that it was on the donation block, possibly on the way to becoming public fishing water owned and managed by GF&P.

I’m was never quite sure what happened to that plan. It just disappeared.

But I posed this question to GF&P Secretary Jeff Vonk, who confirms the general story that I heard: That the deal would have involved a clause that said that GF&P must manage the water on the BHP land as catch-and-release only.

The version of that story I hear is that some of the GF&P boys got their nets in a bunch and decided they wouldn’t be told how to manage a fishery - even one so lovely as the one pictured above, offered as a gift.

So, let that rattle around in your bait bucket for a minute. Apparently the deal fell through because somebody at some point in GF&P wouldn’t accept a beautiful piece of land and unique stretch of fishing water, simply because of a catch-and-release stipulation?

If that’s really the case, I’ve got a question for whomever let that deal go south: What, are you nuts?

A retired Milwaukee Journal reporter and a working fisheries biologist recover their adolescence along a western South Dakota trout stream.

By KW

After seeing the picture down below of yours truly holding a rainbow trout, my big sister e-mailed a message: “You look just like a little boy.”

OK, OK, forget the gray hair and gravel-road face for just a moment. Go with the grin. Just the grin.

It’s a kid’s grin. A fishing kid’s grin.

It appears whenever kids of any age go fishing.

It’s obvious in the image above of Don Bluhm, a 70-something retiree, and Keith Wintersteen, a 40-something wannabe retiree.

They met near trout water. Minutes later they were pals - cracking jokes, telling tall tales, exchanging Sage advice (that’s a flyfisher’s joke) and going positively gaa-gaa in unison at the rise of a fish.

Just like little boys.

Funny how that happens, when fish and fishing rods are involved.

What’s that they say about a blind hog and an acorn? The worst flyfisher in the Black Hills shows that good things can happen to those who wait - and cast.

By KW

Man, it was muddy out there.

The creeks I mean. A day after the trout in Crow Creek shared a little sugar with Old Donnie Boy Bluhm, the little stream that could was a flood of chocolate on Wednesday.

We didn’t get out of the truck.

Red Water River? Still running high.

Spearfish Creek? Don’t even think about it. We didn’t. But we did enjoy the drive through still-wintry Spearfish Canyon.

Little Spearfish Creek? All snowed in.

Upper Rapid Creek? Get serious. It was pouring up there.

So, mid-afternoon found us back in the walk-in area along Rapid Creek in Pactola Basin - walking in.

It was wet, and moderately wild. The pattern was simple: When it rained, the fish bit. When it didn’t, they didn’t.

It rained often enough.

Donnie Boy caught a nice little brown, and missed a fish or two more. I fooled the intellectually challenged rainbow cradled in my happy hands above and had a brown nearly as big up near shore before it spit the fly.

Then, three or four casts later, I hooked and lost the biggest trout I’ve ever hung on a flyrod.

It whacked my Parachute Adams, made a hard run, turned and snapped the 5X tippet halfway between the fly and the double-surgeon’s knot, and left me standing on the shore speaking in angling tongues:

“Hanaaaa-whaataa-baabaaa-naaaannyyy-maaaaammmmmmmmaaaaaa.”

Or something like that.

Which goes to show you that good luck, earnest effort and favorable weather conditions will only take you so far.

Sooner or later, it comes down to skill.

I hate that part.

With a backdrop worthy of a Robert Redford movie, Don Bluhm fine-tunes his terminal tackle.

By KW

For those who might wonder how a day of fishing without catching can be fun, just check out that red bluff behind old Donnie boy.

Check out the blue sky.

And the priceless reflection of a man lost in the world of fish and flies.

Bluhm actually caught three or four brown trout yesterday, including one dandy on a stretch of Crow Creek running through private property (yes, we asked). He also got smashed an hour later by an even bigger brown that erupted from the surface and slashed at his fly in the otherwise-placid pool.

Just seeing that almost-catch made my day.

Actually, there was plenty that made my day - including the swarm of warblers in the creekside brush, the one fine take by a worthy brown that was too quick for my feeble reflexes, the gentle music of the water and, of course, the soft swish-swish of wadered legs moving against the current.

I would have enjoyed it all even more, of course, if I’d landed a fish or two.

But it was almost perfect, just the way it was.

Don’t let the grin fool you. He’s cranky. But Whitefish Bay, Wis., dry fly fancier Don Bluhm couldn’t help but feel the love after fooling a feisty Rapid Creek rainbow Sunday with the old standby - the Royal Wulff.

By KW

Don tried the blue-winged olive parachute I recommended. And another fly or two. But when he’d had enough of passing browns and rainbows, he went to his version of old faithful: the Royal Wulff.

Badabing-badaboom: He caught a 16-inch rainbow.

 Not a bad way for a cranky old retired newshound to start his week of flyfishing in the Black Hills. And speaking as his cranky old not-yet-retired newshound fishing companion, I’m looking forward to more where that came from.

I’m on vacation this week, showing Don - who worked as a Milwaukee Journal reporter for almost 30 years - around the Black Hills trout streams.

We got off to a shaky start, with murky runoff from a foot or two of snow up in the Rapid Creek watershed flooding our minds with doubt. But things cleared up by Sunday. And we’re feeling pretty good about the week to come.

I’ll be checking back with you from time to time. Right now, however, I’ve got to tie on one of the Royal Wulffs I borrowed from Don.

Tomorrow….