By Jim Mize
Humility Creek is not its real name. It’s just a better name. Besides, if I used its real name, you might recognize the stream.
Let me describe Humility Creek and you’ll understand. For starters, casting here reminds me of throwing a thread through a straw. The trees on Humility Creek reach across to shake hands, leaving a narrow, crooked tunnel underneath. Going forward and back, your line has to move and unfurl inside this feathery channel of branches. Typically, this must be attempted while hunched over, peering around some obstacle and casting across your body.
To make matters even more challenging, these trees crossed somewhere eons ago with Venus flytraps. In particular, the hemlocks can snare the smallest fly with their outstretched fingers, closing their grasp around them like a Venus flytrap engulfs a moth. If you fish a fly with a dropper, the fingers of these branches can tie a knot with them before you can turn around to witness it. Invariably, it will be a foot beyond your reach.
I still remember my first trip to Humility Creek. I developed a metric that says everything about my day on the stream. It’s the “Tree-to-Fish Ratio.” Just divide your tree catch number by your fish number. Mine was a ten in favor of the trees. It has since improved, but only because I have moved each side of the ratio slightly in the right direction.
Calling the water of Humility Creek clear is like saying Tiger Woods can swing a club. Pouring gin into it would make it cloudier. So tactics here often rely on strategic uses of poor visibility. For example, riffles help a bit, but when I feel the need to cheat, I go deeper into the woods and fish in the shadows. Better yet, I pray for rain. Surface distortion and an influx of drowned terrestrials will bring the browns out like sharks in a cheap movie. Rewarding as this can be, I know I’m cheating.
Certainly, I want to take nothing away from the fish. You would need to go back many generations to find one with a hatchery birth certificate. Multiple generations of dodging herons, scooting away from otters, and tantalizing fishermen have given them skittish reflexes and the ability to see through the speckles on their tails.
Low profile hardly describes the required approach to these fish. You’ll wear out the knees of your waders on this stream long before the boots go. At times, I’ve slithered in under a bank so low that I’ve looked up to see a snake.
To catch one of these trout, I’ve resorted to fishing flies I judge to be smaller than the one used by the guy before me. To live on bugs this small, these fish survive on the equivalent of Nutri-systems by Orvis. But repetitive surface sippers are the mainstay and on a good day, they may just mistake my offering of lint on a hook for food.
With fish this smart and water this clear, you need advanced math to decipher all the X’s on the tippet label. Longer than my rod and finer than an inch-worm’s thread, my leader is designed more for tree tangles than fish fights.
When I fish Humility Creek, I always go alone. Not that I don’t value company, nor even am I concerned with revealing the stream to newcomers. It’s not like they could put a dent in the fish population anyway. More than likely, they would do as I did and merely feed the trees. My reasoning for fishing here alone, plain and simple, is that on a stream like this, who needs a witness?
When I can coax a backcast through the opening in the hemlocks behind me and unfurl it beneath the overhanging alders before me, I can land a twenty-something midge larvae in front of the nose of a brown trout whose weight exceeds the rating on the last eighteen inches of tippet and surely has more take-off power than the strength of the first two knots. With luck, he’ll sip in my midge in the same mouthful as a number of others and chew it long enough for me to sink a tiny barb into the corner of his mouth. He will then have a number of snags, rocks, and roots to wind my leader through and will use the entire pool to do it. On those infrequent instances the fish graces my net with his presence, the sparkling colors take my breath as surely as the struggle took his. At least a few moments are necessary to revive us both. I’ve never met a pan worthy of such a fish and regardless of the regulations, could never keep a fish from Humility Creek.
So by now, you probably have an inclination why I fish here. Perhaps you would be surprised to learn this tangled trap of vegetation is my favorite stream. Not because of the challenge or even the occasional reward; I fish here for the humility it teaches. All the other streams I fish train me for this one. Should I ever become master of this creek, I’ll surely give up fly fishing, having finally become too proud to improve. Luckily, knowing what I do about Humility Creek, I’ll never quit fishing.
“Humility Creek” is an excerpt from the award-winning book, A Creek Trickles Through It. You can purchase the book online or as part of a gift pack at a reduced price at www.acreektricklesthroughit.com.