Long ago, in a fly-fishing life far away, I used to lean quite heavily on the Renegade as my dry fly of choice. I learned to fly fish on streams that lacked the kind of megahatches Montana is known for; hatches so thick everyone, including the trout, takes notice. Hatches where the insects rise like cumulus just above the water and the trout refuse imitations even slightly off from the real thing.
No, on my home waters I don’t recall a hatch that captivated a river’s inhabitants that way. In those sparse pickings there was rarely a time when I couldn’t grease up a Renegade, the ultimate attractor pattern which some derisively label bait, fish it in the best runs at the head of pools and scare up some trout.
It’s been a long time since I’ve caught a fish on a Renegade. I haven’t fished my home water in more than 30 years, but I still carry a few in my fly box.
Then there are times when a fly fisher needs to plumb the depths. I used to fish a Wyoming tailwater quite a bit. We fished that river from December through April.
I returned to that water last week, and though the March weather was quite a bit more pleasant than I remember, the tailwater was just like the old days. I fished a spot we called “The Bucket,” where the river slammed into a high cliff and bent 90 degrees to the east. The bucket is on the inside of that bend. I was eager to fish, so I started with a simple, single-fly, nymph rig, and of course that fly was a red San Juan Worm. If the Renegade is bait, the worm is a PowerBait popsicle.
I was just a few casts in when I had my first hookup, a decent fish I promptly lost. Then I lost another. I’m a bit out of practice. My 2025 fishing season ended in May due to a shoulder injury. In my eagerness to get a fish to hand after nearly a year, I put too much pressure on the trout.
I continued to drift the worm through the bucket. Experience has taught me I could fish that same run for an hour or two and catch maybe a dozen fish, without moving more than a rod length in either direction.
Then a bigger fish hit, a fish that readily took line as it raced out of the bucket into the deep water of a downstream pool. I played this fish a little more gingerly after my earlier failures and it paid off. The fish took a bit of line, but not so much I could see my backing. I canted my rod to the left and tried to put enough pressure on the fish to tire it. When I’d worked it in close, the trout decided new tactics were in order and leaped about three feet out of the river, close to eye level as I was in it up to my thighs.
It was a brown, a trout that gets out of the water more than its reputation suggests. It jumped again, about as high, spun and cartwheeled toward me. A perilous moment, but I managed to keep sufficient pressure on the fish, so my barbless hook stayed put.
I eventually slid the brown up the sandy bottom close enough to net. The worm was locked in place, in the corner of its jaw. It was a 17-inch brown. Not so big to be a fish of a lifetime, but big enough to remind me how much I love fly fishing for wild trout and how much I’ve missed it.
Judge my fly if you will, but only if you also consider the smile on my face as that fish swam out of my hand, back into The Bucket.