Pro Beads: An Argument for Gear Fishing with a Fly Rod

Come August, Southwestern Alaska fishing guides begin to gather toothpicks, orange plastic beads, and various shades of nail polish and get down to the business of fooling big rainbow trout in little creeks.  Tying vises sit idle.  Rabbit strips are of no use when trout have tunnel vision for little 6 millimeter orbs of protein that will sustain them through the long winter ahead.  Sure, silvers eat big gaudy articulated bunny flies spiked with enough tinsel to decorate your tree in December and their run upstream from the salt coincides with sockeyes beginning to pair up and dig redds, but if your job is to put clients on rainbow trout, in August you better not climb in that DeHavilland Beaver without a well stocked bead box or you are in for a long day.   I learned about bead fishing on August 3rd of my first summer guiding in Alaska.  I remember the date because that is my birthday, and that day a few of the senior guides gathered five or six of us rookie guides and told us to meet them at the plane in 15 minutes ready to fish.  It didn't take us more than 10 minutes to get ourselves up there, rods and gear in hand. The stars must have aligned that day and the fish gods decided to smile upon us, because a layer of fog covered the pothole lake where we would land and hike to the creek.  We landed on the big lake to wait out the fog while all the other fly out lodges chose other destinations to take their clients.  Our patience paid off because once the fog cleared and we were able to land, we had lower "Bear Creek" all to ourselves.  I started out fishing a white leech because that had worked well for me for the first few months of the season, and it produced a few fish in the first hour, but everytime I came around a corner and saw one of the old guys, he was fishing an indicator rig and he usually had a big rainbow attached to the end, bending his rod double.
 
I finally cought up with Glo Bug, one of the senior guides, and hit him up for some help.  After some groveling, he handed me a half dozen orange beads that were all banged up and chipped as he had already fished them, and he told me not to come back for more or he would drown me.  Typical Glo Bug, but later that day, after I had hooked and landed many rainbows that exceded my biggest trout ever caught to that point in my fly fishing career, I realized that those beat up orange plastic beads with a thin layer of milky white nail polish on them were one of the best birthday gifts I had ever received, right up there with my first BMX bike and my first baseball mitt.
 
Since then, I've been through thousands of beads and many different shades of nail polish and I've seen over and over that the big trout of the Iliamna and Katmai areas of Alaska cannot resist a well drifted bead once the sockeye start digging in that perfect spawning gravel.  I've also come to realize that bead fishing is a controversial method and it blurs the line between fly fishing and gear fishing.  You might say that a fly fishing purist should not come to Alaska to fish for trout between late July and mid September because he will have to compromise his ideals and attach what could be considered terminal tackle to his line to hook the fish he seeks.  These methods blur the same line that cause some flyfishermen to forego using bead-headed nymphs, indicators, or streamers tied on jig hooks or weighted with lead eyes.
 
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game defines a bead as an attractor that may be allowed to slide freely above the hook or fly, or it can be affixed to the line by pegging it with a toothpick or various other materials no more than two inches above the hook or fly.  In fly fishing only waters, a fly must be used below the bead and guides often skirt this technicality by tying "micro flesh" flies with miniscule amounts of rabbit or other materials, or by tying thread flies on stout glo bug hooks.  In other waters, beads can be affixed above a bare hook.  This fact also offends many flyfishers ideology.  
 
I myself am pro-beads and I look forward to August and bead fishing for several reasons.  The first and foremost reason is that many big trout are taken during the sockeye egg drop, often the biggest and strongest fish of the year and it is a style of fishing that most clients can become proficient at quite quickly.  Traveling flyfishermen looking to rack up big numbers of 20+ inch fish with legitimate daily shots at 25+ inchers need look no further than to August availability to book their trip of a lifetime to Alaska, but act now because slots are limited.  Also, the waters where these techniques are used, often small creeks and clear, gravelly streams, allow many opportunities for exciting visual fishing where the fishermen can follow their presentations and often see big fish move to take their "fly".  The fact that many of these fish forego the safety of cover and expose themselves in areas where they are easily seen and caught to eat eggs proves the value of this protein source to these fish's fitness.
 
Don't get me wrong, given the choice, I would prefer to catch big trout on streamers early and late in the season, and there is no better way to catch a big leopard rainbow than on a skated mouse or lemming pattern, but for guiding purposes, bead season provides guides with a lot more hero days than streamer fishing.  Many guides say they would prefer to forego bead season all together and  some dread the onset of August.  They argue that the fish are beaten up and taken advantage of in those small tributary creeks and they are right, but if they are assigned to hike clients up or raft down one of those creeks, you can bet they are packing their best egg imitations, in the form of painted beads instead of glo bugs.  Being a capitalistic Alaskan guide, I appreciate every one of those big trophy rainbows that gets dumb for eggs once they start to smell the salmon ripening and see the clouds of silt from sockeyes cleaning their natal gravel, because those fish on the end of a line can easily make a fisherman's day.
 
Of course, bead fishing isn't without it's drawbacks.  The biggest drawback is the obvious wear and tear on the condition and appearance of these fish.  In sections of these creeks that are accesible to daytrips by the multitude of flyout lodges in these areas, the trophy rainbows are an abused resource.  Because the fish take the bead and the hook is several inches away, they are usually hooked on the outside of the mouth.  As a result, fish often have obvious hook marks and damage to their mandibles.  Some of the grizzled veteran trout of "Bear Creek" lack mandibles and many have had so many battles with lodge clients that their mouths close like curved pruning shears and their jaws protrude at grotesque angles, not what you'd call picture fish, but they still  peel line off reels like steelhead bright from the ocean.  If glo bugs were still predominantly used, many of these damaged fish may not be around to take "flies" as a result of being throat hooked too often.  The way that these fish inhale eggs, if the hook were attached to the bead, we would see a lot more deeply hooked and bleeding fish and would likely see a much higher mortality rate, so this drawback is muted by the fact that these fish survive a high percentage of the time when hooked on beads and are still alive to battle again.
 
So it doesn't matter which side of the fence you reside upon, barring a change in regulations from the ADF&G, bead fishing is here to stay.  I guess you have to ask yourself why you flyfish.  Is it for the excitement of a big fish pulling on the end of your line or is it so you can say that you are purer than someone who fishes with a spinning rod and terminal tackle, or an indicator or weighted fly for that matter.  Having done them all in my fishing career, I can honestly say that I'm in it for the pull.