Stevensville fishing guide John Gould test-drives one of his fly patterns on the Bitterroot River near his home recently.MICHAEL GALLACHER/Missoulian

Guide’s ‘half-down’ flies bring Bitterroot trout up

By BOB MESEROLL
of the Missoulian

STEVENSVILLE – You might have bumped into John Gould at some point while floating the Bitterroot River – literally.

He’d have been the guy wearing the mask and breathing through a snorkel. How better to get a trout’s-eye view of trout chow, and trout for that matter?

“My first few years here, I’d snorkel from Hamilton to Lolo every year after high water and just see,” said Gould, a 39-year-old New Hampshire native who owns Double Up Outfitters out of Stevensville. “It’s nice to get down there and say, ‘Hey look at that, there’s a big chunk of sod here and there’s three big browns just laying there.’ I definitely like to get down and do that.

“It’s wild how short your visibility is even in crystal-clear water. There are so many fine materials getting scrubbed off the rocks and floating down through there. A lot of times, even in the most crystal-clear conditions, you can only see six to eight feet away from yourself. Looking up, you can definitely see a little bit better with the backdrop of the sky.”

And that’s how trout see their food, at least the portion of their diet that consists of adult flies floating along on the surface of the river. That kind of information can prove valuable to anyone sitting at a fly-tying vise who is trying to mimic what the trout are seeing.

“I dabbled in looking at the flies and seeing how they moved, but I didn’t trust my fishing buddies,” Gould said with a laugh. “I figured they were going to try to hook me when I was looking at the flies.”

Gould took that knowledge, and the experience gained from countless hours fishing and guiding, and developed his own series of flies, the half-down patterns.

For the most part (a stimulator would be a notable exception), dry flies have traditionally been tied on straight shanks because the fly is meant to ride flat on the surface of the water. Gould took the standard hook and bent it, maybe a third of the way down the shank from the eye.

By bending the hook, the butt end of the fly rides below the surface, while the wings and abdomen still ride up top.

“It turns out that when you’re fishing a dry fly, the first thing a fish sees is whatever is down in the water column the farthest,” Gould said. “When it’s coming into a fish’s window of view, they see whatever is sticking down, then they see a wing, then it disappears and they just see the glob of the whole shape.”

The half-down “technology” can be applied to numerous patterns – hoppers, stoneflies and ants, to name a few.

The patterns have been marketed by the Montana Fly Company, a Columbia Falls-based manufacturer that sends flies all over the world.

MFC co-owner Duncan Oswald says sometimes it’s hard to get Gould to part with his latest innovations.
“I have to wait until he’s somewhere downstream and get in his cooler and into his fly box when he’s not looking,” Oswald joked.

But Oswald said there’s no disputing their effectiveness.

“It’s probably that half-down look, where it does look like a partially drowned insect,” he said. “People like that partially drowned insect look, but it has that post and wing so you can see it well, too. We’re selling them to customers throughout the world, particularly to South America as a hopper pattern.”

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Easterner comes to Montana on vacation and never goes home.
That’s Gould’s story in a nutshell.

“I came out here in the early ’90s with a girlfriend at the time,” Gould said. “I was on a three-week vacation and after about three days I faxed the company I was working for my two-week notice.

I didn’t even go back and get my things for almost 2 1/2 years.”

He got into a routine most fly fishermen only dream of.

“Pretty much every day I’d grab my mountain bike, strap on the (kick boat) and pedal upstream somewhere and float down to Lolo and hope the girlfriend was there by dark to pick me up,” Gould said.

“It wasn’t the best financial move I ever made.”

That precipitated a summer in Alaska working on a salmon processing barge to “make some of that retirement fund back.”

Once back in Montana, Gould went to work as a guide for the late Paul Kohler, then the owner of the Missoulian Angler fly shop.

“He said, ‘Here’s a boat, take me down the river. OK, nice work, you’re a guide,’ ” Gould said. “That worked out pretty well and I’ve been doing it ever since.”

Gould got his outfitters license four years ago and opened Double Up Outfitters. Now he’s his own boss.
A common complaint among fishing guides is that they never get to fish. Gould bucked that trend this year.
“I fished more this spring than I have in the last nine years combined,” Gould said. “I can’t seem to get sick of it. I get far too tickled when I see ... browns in the sneaky spots, finding them in inches of water and wondering why isn’t there a part of that fish sticking out in the air. That blows me away every time I see it.”

Gould doesn’t have to wander far to see fish. He and wife Jamie, daughters Jaden (4) and Jesse (1), and
3-year-old Buddy, a behemoth of a yellow lab, live a couple hundred yards from the Bitterroot River near Stevensville. Out in the backyard is a pond and yes, it holds trout.

Gould gets a kick out of the popularity of his half-down series of flies.

“A lot of guides and outfitters float by and say, ‘Hey, your fly is working,’ ” Gould said. “I usually don’t think about it until someone floats by and says something. I won’t mention Peter’s name, but every time I see this one fella he says, ‘Hey, we’re fishing half downs.’”

Gould still ties them for his personal stash, but often finds himself tinkering instead.

“I’ll sit down at night and I need to tie a dozen of these hoppers because I know they’re working great right now,” Gould said. “I know I’ve got to do it and the next thing you know I’m experimenting. I tie three of the ones I want, then I’m tying something different.

“It’s good, though, to keep the fish guessing and not show them the same thing all the time. I’m not sure if educated is the word, they just get sick of them. One year fly X is working; the next year X will catch a couple of fish, but Y will beat them up. I cycle through patterns each year.

“That’s why I still like to tie as much as I do because every year it’s something different.”

Missoulian sports editor Bob Meseroll can be reached at 523-5265 or at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .