Neverwas Wet Fly and Mackinaw Trout

This is is a photo sent to me by my niece, Emily Bastian, of New Gloucester, Maine. She just returned after spending over three months out West, where she did LOTS of fishing. This is just one photo, a rather unusual image of a Lake Trout, or Mackinaw as they are called out West, with a Neverwas wet fly in its jaw. She caught some of them in the channel that flows between Lewis and Shoshone Lakes. I posted Emily’s writing below about this particular fish.

“Believe it or not, that fish that ate the Neverwas in the photo on your website is actually a lake trout (or “mackinaw” as they call them out west – we call them togue up here in Maine).  I caught it at the head of the Lewis Channel in Yellowstone.  There are both big lakers and brown trout in Lewis and Shoshone Lakes, and they can be caught on a fly rod in the shallows at the mouth, at the head, and throughout the channel connecting the two lakes.  The browns move into the channel to spawn in the fall, and the lake trout will follow, presumably to eat eggs.  Of course lake trout don’t fight like a brown, but it was fun to catch a different species of trout out there, and on a wet fly to boot!”

Neverwas

Hook: Standard 0x long wet fly hook, sizes #4 to #12

Thread: Black Danville Flymaster 6/0

Tag: None

Tail: Peacock sword fibers

Hackle: Green tied palmer

Ribbing: None

Body: Peacock herl

Wing: Orange duck or goose wing quill

Head: Black

Neverwas Wet Fly. In Ray Bergman's book Just Fishing there is a footnote on the page under the painting of the Neverwas, stating: "Not commercially available." Interesting...