This is an excerpt from Chapter Seven of our forthcoming book, Reading Waters. Chapter Seven is entitled “Reading Rapids.” The excerpt below is about one of the least understood aspects of reading rapids, “The Secret River.” This is just a very small sampling of the mass of information that we have built into the book.

Rapids are tough places to put a fly down and expect it to float with any sort of decent dead drift. But there are some tricks to it. First comes reading waters, then comes the fishing. In all rapids, there is a secret river. It may be quite narrow, and then again it may be fairly wide. It’s the easy water, the place one can toss a fly without much need to do more than use a Harvey-Style leader to get a good float. During the Salmon Fly hatch, the fishing can be fast and furious in the secret river, and it’s the first place I hit. It’s the water right against the bank. You know, that stuff you wade through to get out there in the real river. But think about it for a moment. Where’s the best place for Mr. or Mrs. Energy Conservation to park himself/herself and get food in the easiest fashion? That’s right. In the slow water next to shore where the stoneflies are hanging on every bush like overly ripe fruit, ready to drop to the surface at the blast of a vagrant wind roaring up the canyon (and believe me there are plenty of them).

So, lesson number one in reading rapids is very simple—find the secret river on either side of the rapids, and fish the liver out of it. Some of it will be deep, some of it will be shallow, so expect to find a mixture of Prime Lies and Feeding Lies. Some of it may have undercut banks, sometimes there are great boulders blocking your wading; too deep on the outside to go around and to tall to clamber over. One has to haul out and walk around. But when you do, watch it! The hydraulic cushion right in front of that boulder may be holding a boulder-sized brown waiting for a chance to have some stonefly cutlets for lunch. Don’t race through the secret river.

Jason and I had gone to fish this stretch between Hebgen and Quake lake during the Salmon Fly emergence and egg-lying period. The bugs were there, and we were confident that we’d find the fish. There are a couple of places that one can cross from the dirt track that borders the west side, if you know exactly where they are, and if one is a bold wader. Being with another person is a good idea. We linked arms and marched across like we knew exactly where we were going—which we did. On the other side, Jason went down to fish back up, and I went up to fish even further up.

I hopped into the secret river, and almost immediately began taking fish. They were in tight, most places, because the secret river, that in-shore strip of water that offers food and slow currents, is narrow in much of this section. I knew that, and fished the fly up with a Puddle Mend, sometimes literally a few inches from the shoreline. Fish would occasionally come out of the deeper water, a foot or two out, and pick off the imitation in a few inches of water only a few inches from shore. It was one of those days that sticks in the memory banks for a lifetime.

As I fished up, a couple of other anglers showed up and watched me land one, cast and hook another. They dove in the river and waded out as far as possible and cast as far a possible. I don’t have to tell you the total number of fish they caught. I just kept picking them off, and that only got the other guys pounding harder. But fishing fishless water is never successful, no matter how hard one applies every trick in the book. I felt bad for them, but there wasn’t really anything I could do at that point in time, except catch more fish, so I did.

This photo of New Zealand's Hunter River clearly shows the "Secret River."