Evidence

I was recently asked to provide some evidence of my work around the house. Here you go, some scenes from around the Black River Compound....
I did a little branch trimming and dropped a couple of trees behind the house. I didn't feel real great about it, but it does allow me to see the gar roll from the deck. Now if I could just catch one, I suck...

The wood already under the shed should get me through the next two years. The wood piled up could get me through another two years. Seeing this reminds me of something I read the other day. "A lady asked me if heating with wood really saved that much money on my heating bill. I replied, I don't have a heating bill."
The retaining wall is leveling off an area where we will eventually have a fire pit.
The fence keeps the rug rats in.
Potatoes on the left, strawberries on the right. The strawberries did great this year. Next year this entire bed will be strawberries.
The garden is growing well. That is a newly constructed compost bin in the background.

Ok, that's it. I'll work on getting some fish pics up soon.

4th of July carp

Was a hot 4th of July in Iowa. I spent a couple hours this afternoon tramping a skinny warmwater stream. We've gone 7 days without rain so I decided to fish a local creek that is more dirt and sand than some of my other options. Was happy to find a couple hungry carp that would move for a Clouser swimming nyph. Feels like summer fishing when you're dripping with sweat and deet.

chopped head and blurred fish. shooting with a timer... almost the money shot

tactics for small stream warmwater fish

Swinging streamers for smallies. Dead drifting nymphs and buggers for quillback. On my local warmwater streams the same trout tactics I would apply to driftless area trout streams apply to warm water specs. On this outing I observed quillback taking insect larvae in the lower sections of riffles. Neat to see flashes of silver as the sucker would twist into position to grab a bite.With the water being very clear the smallies would spot me from long distances. The fish on this stream haven't been too easy to catch. Just enough of a challenge to make it interesting.

The silver of a quillback

good looking warmwater stream in Iowa

Iowa Bedrock

There's a creek I fish locally that is geo-awesome. The sandstone creek has remnants from the Devonian era some 375 million years ago. In Iowa, rocky streams mean a better chance of clearer water and easier catching. It's hard to imagine that my great grandparents could once see the bottom of my larger local rivers. It's estimated that an average Iowa acre loses 5 ton's of soil per acre per year. I "hope" there's a growing recognition among farmers and land owners that they need to stop the bleeding with buffer strips, no-till, etc.

 rock bass

Look out smallie!

Angling Artists:

Check out Tim's blog and support the efforts to protect Bristol Bay.

Angling Artists: The Beginning...: "Alaskan rainbow trout sipping caddis. Photo by Monty Thierry. It is the beginning of my time in the Bristol Bay region of Alaska. I work an..."

On a driftless trip this March I purchased a couple Giclee prints from Tim. His paintings are awesome and reasonably priced. So check out the Bristol Bay prints and pay a visit to River Blend Studio
http://riverblendstudio.com/home.html

recent activity

I’ve been busy around the house lately: Here is a short list of some things I’ve been doing.

Helped plant the garden, created a new garden

Built a retaining wall below the house

Put up a new mailbox

Spread some poultry manure over the yard

Built a 300’ fence around the yard

Cut down and trimmed some trees, split, hauled and stacked wood. I’m set for the next two years.

I did manage an overnight trip to Iowa with Johnny and another trip to SE Minnesota with Dan H. Here are a couple of highlights.

Brookie
Bow
The largest trout stream in the Driftless Area

Tossing Rocks

When fishing with my son Quade, who is nearly 2 years young, the rock tossing is the main show while swinging streamers is secondary. As we made our way upstream we walked by a nice smallmouth in the background of the first picture. After we had sat and thrown about 20 rocks Quade allowed me to make a couple swings while he continued his work streamside. The fish I had walked by was still sitting there and hit the streamer on the second swing. A nice strong fish that snapped my leader at the tippet connection. Oh well, we came to throw rocks anyway.

walleye

fishing with Dave, 2001

My good buddy David and I had loaded the john boat in the bed of the pickup. I backed the truck out of the garage and immediately hit Dave's Chevy Lumina with the corner of the tailgate. Put a nice hole in the rear side window. I remember telling mom I hit Dave's car and that we were leaving for some fishing. We caught the fish featured in photo. Sometimes a few dings happen on the way to catching fish. 

warmwater fishin'

I'm home visiting family in NW Iowa. Spent some time this morning tossing streamers on the pond. Summers growing up were a routine of painting houses, playing baseball, chasing my girl, and fishing/swimming in the quarry. I don't make the visit home very often. It's fun to give the old pond a visit.

picked up crappie, bass, bluegill and perch

Iowa Trout Streams

Trip Report: May 13 & 14

Started my weekender on a small Iowa Put & Grow stream. This is a challenging little stream with anything 10"being a big fish. Large boulders serve as the deeper holding spots for the larger fish. Awesome scenery and no one there but me. I love those streams where you're surprised if you see another angler. Coulda fished this stream all day, but it was off to larger water to meet up with Nate.

This was a one night camp trip.  Thankful for no wind--tarp stayed up both days. 

Fished streamers, dries, nymphs, and the catching was excellent. Just what I needed.

Go North Son

I had a dream last night. I was on French Creek and the wild browns were dancing and everything in my world was good. I'm headed to NE Iowa on Friday -- and everything in my world will be good. 

from the bench

All the reading, blogging, tying, and thinking about fishing doesn't satisfy my hunger for being on the stream -- it makes it worse.

Here are a couple new patterns using some cool streamer skull heads. As well as some tinkering with deer hair heads. In both patterns I've loaded a lot of weight onto the hook. The skull heads are nice and heavy. The deer head pattern has a moderate sink rate--wrapped two layers of wire on the shank (otherwise I'm sure it would float). Deer hair is sweet for shaping heads but it's so buoyant and I want these guys to sink.

Adding drama

I don't typically do too much photoshoping to my pics. Mainly adjust the dark/light balance & crop. With these pics I've bumped up the drama filter. Some good memories tied to these fish. enjoy.

Do you remember this fish, Tim?

gnarly old brookie. Nate remembers this fish.

little bow in the current

big bow from big run

April Browns

The stream gave me a couple b-day presents. Two browns that were 19-20ish. Nate caught some luck also with two big ones of his own. It was a slow day of fishing and then all of a sudden we we're catching these beautiful big browns. I think we better repeat our b-day trips next year. I can't remember having better.

John's Bday

I helped Johnny celebrate his birthday over the weekend in Iowa. This was a family trip so we only fished for a few hours, but we came upon a stretch of river loaded with big fish. When I say loaded, I mean fish > 15 inches in almost every run.

John finished up by landing two 19-20 inchers and I landed a 20 incher. The photos turned out great. What a weekend! Typically we fish for days just for a chance at one or two big fish, his weekend we found some nice ones in short order. Happy B-day Uncle.

Black Eyed Snakes tonight in Winona-I'll be there, will you?

-Neck hurts today, great show as usual!

Fishin the Pond

My 19-month son will stand by me while I catch panfish from the backyard pond. He's really into all animals. For now dogs are at the top of his list. Soon enough it may be fish.  

BTW, that's the 3wt I recently built - tossing dries. Perfect for this. 

shallows

39 degrees--carp begin active feeding. 41 degrees--carp begin pre-spawn move to the shallows. I'm patiently waiting for the local waters to recede and warm up a bit.

9' 3wt build

I finished my first build a couple weeks ago. It's a 9' 3wt shown here with my 18month son doing some field tests. I had a blast building this rod. Learned a few things that will help the next build. Like make sure the tip top gets enough cement. I fished this new rod last week in WI and the tip top started to loosen. I kept fishing it and ended up breaking the tip top off. So I lost about a half inch of rod tip. Conveniently I had a larger tip top at home that I was able to remedy. I made the right choice to build my first rod as economically as possible. I found the best deal on a 4pc 3wt blank and the cork real seat is much less than the alternative. Tossing a dry fly with this new 3wt is pretty nice. I doubt the half inch I lost between the first and second guide make a difference. If you think it does, don't tell me.

Shown with new tip top