May 12 2008
What’s A Yeti?
Just yesterday I was fishing with my three brothers at a favorite childhood fishing hole behind the house where we grew up. While we were fishing, my little brother accidently brought up an interesting topic that I decided to discuss today.
The four of us went out fishing, and neglected all sense of dignity and talent and chose to fish with worm and bobber. After a long while of fishing, one of my older brother commented as to how his bobber was floating against the current. Upon this discovery, my little brother, in an amusingly arrogant tone, stated, “That’s not a fish biting it, that’s just because of a Yeti!”
In actuality, a Yeti is simply a fictitious, apelike, snowman that is said to inhabit the Himalayan regions of Tibet and Nepal, rarely found in the shallow rivers of the eastern U.S. On the contrary however, an eddy is an area where water, due to a series of diverging currents, the water tends to flow upstream, against the natural flow of the river. Eddies typically form on the downstream side of objects that hinder the flow of water, such as rocks, logs, or bridge pillars.
Eddies are particularly important to fishermen because if the influence that they have on the location, and feeding habits of fish. Because of the hindrance to flow of water, a dead pocket of water forms directly behind the object. The two currents flowing on either side of the object diverge just downstream from the object, causing a small whirl of water to occur. Because of this, the water begins to actually be forced upstream.
It is in these pockets of up-flow that trout will tend to sit due to the fact that they can easily access food without having to exert much energy. Trout will sit directly behind the hindering object where they can sit without having to swim against any current. By sitting there, they can easily feed of nymphs that float by along the sides of the object. Therefore, it is very productive to cast inside these eddies, and fish along the edges, and directly behind such disturbances.
