CAMERON, MT — A recent survey by Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks (FWP) has anglers scratching their heads. “We’ve checked, double-checked, and triple-checked our data, and everything points to the same conclusion,” said Ron Castillo, FWP Director of Special Projects. “Every trout between Quake Lake and Ennis has been hooked at least once by an angler using Euro nymphing techniques.”
Euro nymphing is the generic name for a fly-fishing technique with roots in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and France. Instead of casting floating flies long distances on whispy leaders, Euro nymphing involves several weighted flies (sometimes called a brace) lobbed short distances on specialized color-coded lines. The technique has proven highly effective in competitive fly angling, and today, an extensive collection of magazine articles and videos makes this technique accessible to all anglers.
“The basic principle is simple,” says Ricco Strong, a three-time world champion angler. “Keep dragging multiple flies in front of a fish’s face for as long as you can, and eventually, one will wind up in its mouth.” This might sound like snagging, but Mr. Strong insists there is a critical difference. “With a snagging rig, you try to impale a fish anywhere on its body. You try to stick the fish in its mouth with a Euro rig.”
Fly fishing guides and outfitters have long acknowledged the proficiency of Euro nymphing. But until FWP analyzed the data from their state-of-the-art FishCensus® system, few believed the method could hook every fish in all or even part of a river.
FishCensus® is an extensive array of underwater drones resembling grass carp. But unlike real carp with their garbanzo-bean-sized brains, these carp see, hear, and communicate with a powerful robotic brain enhanced by artificial intelligence (AI).
“The carp drones, or carpones as most of us call them, are constantly listening and watching for trout activity in the river,” Director Castillo explained. “Their generative AI brains enable them to assign an identity to each trout based on its unique pattern of freckles, much the way the FBI uses fingerprints. Like Big Brother in George Orwell’s 1984, these carpones monitor every movement of every fish in the river.”
Through this extensive surveillance system, FWP researchers unearthed something even more unexpected than the astounding hook-up rate. “As we examined the data more carefully, we realized something more significant than the one-hundred percent efficiency of this method,” said Chloe DeRoot, Chief Scientist for Special Projects. “Much like domestic pets, trout can be trained through repetition, and our FishCensus® data reveal that Madison River trout have begun to wait on the bottom to be hooked by a brace of perdigons, green weenies, and full metal jackets. Euro nymphs hook trout the way video games hook teens. These fish are losing interest in all other activities.”
Understandably, anglers who prefer conventional methods like sitting on a log waiting for trout to rise to a hatch of mayflies or caddisflies are concerned about this report. But local angler Skip Jansson, who attended a town hall meeting at the Grizzly Bar and Grill in Cameron, is not. “I don’t know why the old guys are so surprised and concerned, bruh. I thought everyone understood the point of Euro nymphing is to catch every fish in the river.”
