Small streams, big(er) fish, and dry flies...

For most of the summer I have been driving over a small stream on my way to larger, more productive trout waters. This isn't to say that this creek doesn't hold trout, because it does. It just doesn't fish well during the summer, at least not for me. But in September, this stream comes alive with fish that are disproportionately large relative to the size of the stream. Most runs are knee deep, and during the summer I presume too 'exposed' for larger fish to hold in them. But during the fall, as the bigger browns get ready to spawn, they move up into these runs and get pretty aggressive. Last September I caught a couple of 14 inch fish from these shallow runs and spotted a few others.

So it was with great anticipation that Sam and I hit the water this past weekend. We were armed with streamers and dry flies and our goal was to find some large fish sitting in shallow water. I started out fishing a black foam-bodied terrestrial with rubber legs and never had to change flies. The best fish of the day was this 16 inch brown (below) that rose out of a knee-deep run to take my fly. I lost one fish that was bigger (I think) after it went air borne and shook the fly.
Fish of the day!

From this run...

Small streams, big(er) fish, and dry flies-if only fall could stick around a bit longer.

Low Creeks

The creeks in my area are low and clear. These conditions make for some predictable smallies.

There were a bunch of frogs on the water. I smacked a popper along these rocks and that was the best producer.

Goat Roast

A week or so ago we were invited to a neighborhood goat roast. What, you’ve never been?

The whole thing started with a couple of guys talking about buying, slaughtering, and smoking a goat-doing it all from start to finish. Things progressed to the point where a goat was purchased and there was no turning back. On a cool autumn night down by the Black river, the deed was done. Here are the highlights in photo….

A lot of peopled warned that goat doesn’t taste good. But they were wrong, it was really, really, tasty. Of course, anything that has been rubbed down with spices and smoked for 4 hours is bound to taste pretty good.

The Goat

A very hairy goat...
Starting to look like food...
Oh yeah, smoky, spicy goodness.

Smallies

Fishing as a Dad

Last summer I fished like a mad man. This year, not so much. I'm working on his cast.

Featured drum caught in July or Aug?

Iowa August Trip

I'm in the middle of an August Iowa trip. After work last night I fished a pretty well-known pasture section of a pretty well-known wild trout stream. I was getting into fish pretty good with streamers when I noticed a bull in the pasture. This was a very large bull and he was not happy to see me. I very calmly and quietly walked downriver, hopped the fence and booked it out of there. I fished some other spots that are more marginal than the pasture and caught a couple of small fish. Some little fish were rising to a sparse BWO hatch and I caught a couple of fish on dries. Nothing special.
This AM I headed over to another creek. Here's a good story...So there I am rolling a scud and nymph along the bottom of a great looking corner pool when a large brown trout makes a perfect head-to-tail rise. As the fish returns to the water I think to myself, "wow, that was a nice fish". Then I think, "that rise was perfectly in line with my fishing line". Then I realize that on its return to the water, the fish is at a perfect 45 degree angle and heading directly toward my flies. Then my line tightens and it was on. Nice 17 (or so) inch fish. I was certainly in the right place at the right time. Right stream, right hole, right drift.

Iowa July Trip

A couple of weeks ago I fished in Iowa with John. You can find some highlights here:
http://flyfishingwarmwater.blogspot.com/

Pretty much every river was blown out from recent rains, except two. And those two fished pretty well. There really is nothing like camping in the far NE of Iowa where your cell phone doesn't work, and you are surrounded by steep bluffs, farms, and trout streams. The camping is also free, which means you can pretty much set up shop along any stream in the area. So easy, so good.

That one trip when Dan got a fly stuck in his nose.

On a 'family' fishing trip I met up with a good ole fishing pal Dan H. Dan has fished with me for years, going back to Grad school, moving through me have my first kid on my back, to now both of us having kids on our backs. Here are the pics and short narrative to describe the antics.

Here we are all loaded up and ready to go. With any luck both kids will be asleep in half an hour.

Ok, so not long into our adventure Dan catches a trout. I come over to show it to Sam because he likes to touch them. Dan holds up the fish so both kids can see it, fish flops and somehow lodges the second fly (Dan was fishing a two fly rig) into Dan's nose. Great.

Although the fly was stuck in past the barb, we got it out using the grip-it-and-rip-it method. Here is a youtube video of the technique:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKAAGWZskGg&feature=related

I learned it when a friend had to remove a hook from my finger one very cold November day. Remember that Snus?
Anyhow, it barely left a mark. And we were back fishing again.

And he's asleep.

Look at this handsome family.

We went on to catch a few fish that day. No monsters, but a solid couple of hours of fishing, with one memorable fly-in-the-nose.

This seasons flows on the Black River

It has been a rough season on the Black this year. Things started out great in April when I was sight fishing for Gar when the water was low. I spent most of May trout fishing, which in hindsight blew most of the opportunity on the Black. Since the peak flows in mid June I've been out only a handfull of times (during the lows on the graph). But even then the water is still higher than I'd like. I want nothing more than to gar fish tonight, but it doesn't look like it will be worth it.

The Native Ultimate 9.5

A while back some soulless bastard decided that he or she deserved my canoe more than I did, and took it. My canoe wasn't expensive, but it was the ultimate river canoe, 14.5 feet long with two seats for plenty of people and gear, but still small enough to solo paddle without much effort. It didn't track particularly well, but I got used to the way it floated me from place to place. There is a certain grace to canoes that kayaks, with their nimble and speedy nature, can't match.

I purchased a kayak recently, to replace the canoe. I did this on the premise that I will one day buy another canoe. But for now, a kayak would be a nice option. For one, I needed something that I could carry up and down the hill to the river easily (since I won't be storing it down there anymore). Secondly, I rarely take anyone out fishing on the river with me, so I don't really need the extra space.

After much thought and consideration, I purchased a native 9.5. Now if you read online about the native 9.5 you will get the impression, as I initially did, that this is a kids kayak. I was impressed by its open cockpit and size (9.5 feet and 40 pounds). After speaking with some gearheads in Madison and Minneapolis, they assured me that the 175 pound maximum weight limit was overly cautious and that although they were marketing the boat for kids and small adults, it had plenty of stability.

Already at Home on the Black!

So far so good. It has bit of a wobble to it when you first get in, but the secondary stability is good. I've fished out of it a couple of times now, with modest success. It is extremely quick and responsive compared to my old canoe. As I mentioned earlier, I had gotten used to the way the old boat used to glide around. This boat moves quick, which means that you pass over some fishing spots a bit too fast, but it also means that you can get back to them easily. I think I just need to get used to this feature.


Perhaps the worst design flaw on the boat, and probably the worst feature I've seen on any boat ever, is the lip on the side of the boat. The sides of the boat wrap around in a U shape, making it impossible to get all of the water out of the bottom of it. You have to unscrew a little port on the top of one of the sides and let the water drain out of it, which takes way too much time and effort. Perhaps I'm missing something here, but this seems ridiculous.

Another ridiculous feature is the seat. It is ridiculously awesome, rivaled only by my Herman Miller Aeron chair at work.



At 9.5 it is a small boat, but I have pleny of leg room (I'm 5'11). Dig the seat.

The Summoned Self

Some quotes from a nice article by David Brooks:

A 24-year-old can’t sit down and define the purpose of life in the manner of a school exercise because she is not yet deep enough into the landscape to know herself or her purpose.

Life comes to a point not when the individual project is complete but when the self dissolves into a larger purpose and cause.

The entire article:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/opinion/03brooks.html?_r=1&hp

July in NE Iowa

Spent the weekend up in Allamakee County with Uncle Nate. We were in search of clear streams and willing fish. Thankfully there are a couple streams in Iowa that will stay pretty clean with almost any amount of rain.


This small stream was loaded with small brook trout. I'd like to see the beaver dams knocked out so the flow would improve.




The brown above was the fish of the trip caught on a challenging stream that has no stocking - all natural population of browns.
No bulls in the pasture above. That's always a plus.


John

Acadia NP

I've been traveling a bit of late. After I got home from Santa Fe, I headed out to Acadia National Park for some work. We are working on the Shoodic Peninsula trying to help the park ameliorate negative impacts on the flow of animals into and out of the park due to a planned development. See Winter Harbor Holdings and the trail of newspaper articles here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schoodic_Peninsula
Hiked the somewhat famous beehive trial to the top of this small mtn.

Ate some lobstah-that's right, you did detect an East Coast accent.

The views didn't suck.

Rain Rain go away

It feels like it's been raining every day since April. On the local streams where I fish smallies I need a good dry spell before the stream clears up and fishing is good. I may have been spoiled by last years mild summer. I hope July brings low clear water and hungry smallies.

practice casting the 10 footer with a gar fly

Crawlers

I fished for an hour or so on Sunday with a hook, worm, and sinker. I dragged the bottom while drifting in a circle around the back eddy below the house. I caught:

a fresh water drum
A mooneyeAnd two Catfish, one small (not pictured) and one bigger one (about 6 or 7 pounds).


If I have to dead-drift something on the bottom of the river, it might as well be a night crawler.

Valles Caldera and Jemez Mountains

When my plane landed in Albuquerque on Friday it was 102 degrees. I made a quick stop at Petroglyph National Monument and saw some really cool carvings. http://www.nps.gov/petr/index.htm
As I made my way up to the Jemez mountains I watched the temperature drop to 85. I set up camp in a National Forest campground and as the sun set, I fished for a couple of hours on the East Fork Jemez River. I spooked more fish than I caught, but manged to land a few small ones (10 inches). Where I fished it, the river was a series of plunge pools like the one shown below. On all sides of the river were steep rock walls and so to fish the river I needed to stay in the river and walk up. Which is why I spooked so many fish.


Pocket water on East Fork Jemez
A plunge pool on the East Fork Jemez


On Saturday, I made my way over to Valles Caldera Preserve, registered, and took my designated place on the water. The fishing was interesting. I actually think it was more like golf than fishing. The water was small and the wind was up, which made casting difficult. But if I could get my fly on the water, I'd catch a fish about 6 or 7 times out of 10. I used foam beetles and hoppers and never needed to put on a nymph or streamer. All the fish were small, less than 10 inches, but really fat for 8 and 10 inch fish. I doubt that anything larger lived in this water, but I could be mistaken. I rate my experience at Valles Caldera very high. I went there so I wouldn't have to put up with a lot of people and that paid off as I drove past fishing parking lots outside of the park that were jam-packed. I saw some elk which is a big deal for someone as interested in ungulates as I. I caught a ton of fish on dry flies, practiced my casting, and did it all in a beatifull environment.
A typical San Antonio Creek brown, 8 inches of chunky fish.
A brown with San Antonio Creek in the background. The stream is really narrow and difficult to place a fly. Challenging but very rewarding.
. Another section of San Antonio Creek, this one a bit wider and easier to fish.

Elkhorn River, June 11

Each year in June I meet up with my brothers, dad, buddies and local river rats for a weekend of catfishing. This year we set a date and made the trip despite a forecast for high water. Wow, I didn't anticipate the river being this high. We managed to set lines in some flood waters, however, didn't hook into any cats. We spend a good portion of the weekend watching trees float down the river, pretty impressive. On Friday night our tent and tarp shelter, which we were proud of, was flattened in a mini-hurricane.

Valles Caldera

I'm off to Santa Fe for some work and fishing. With any luck I'll make it back without out any Cormac McCarthy like incidents-you know, being in the SW and all. I'll be camping in the Jemez Mountains http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jemez_Mountains. I will be trout fishing for a couple of days among lava domes in Valles Caldera National Preserve http://www.vallescaldera.gov/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valles_Caldera_National_Preserve -Note the several western films that were shot at Valles Caldera.

I'll be fishing on San Antonio Creek http://www.vallescaldera.gov/comevisit/fish/SanAntonio.aspx The preserve has very strict rules about fishing in the park, mainly to insure that you don't encounter a whole lot of people http://www.vallescaldera.gov/comevisit/fish/FishingTips.pdf. I'm fishing reach 1 on the far East of this map http://www.vallescaldera.gov/about/maps/static/fishing2009.pdf. Note the five domes just to the south of the river. Those are old lava domes. I can't wait. I have a box full of hoppers, ants, and beetles-which I've been told is all I'll need.

gar

I finally purchased a new battery charger for my camera and retrieved this photo. Not a great photo. Nevertheless, it is in fact a gar, caught on a rope fly (shown with black and pearl flash).