I just found out that I won an eBay auction on an 11′ 4 piece 5 weight fly rod blank – so it looks like sometime in the soonish future (when I can figure out what other components I want, and then scrape them together) I shall become an amateur fly rod builder. Woo hoo!
I might also wind up with an 11′ 3 weight blank, unless I get sniped in the next 24 hours. Such a long 3 weight sounds like a Czech nymphing rod to me. The 5 weight is going to wind up seeing big-water use and should make a great boat rod.
Broke my swearing off of Hagg Lake today. Actually it was the wife’s doing – she asked yesterday if I wanted to go out to the lake and take the kiddo and meet her parents out there – like we have before. How could I say no?
We left the canoe home today, so I was bank bound – which wasn’t horrible either, considering the dismal fishing last week. Why work extra hard, for no fish, in hot weather, right? It wasn’t a total loss today, fish wise, despite hot weather, an horribly large crowd of retirees, their grand children, a couple family reunions (who holds a family reunion on a Wednesday?) and some rather planetoid size individuals who thought string bikinis were sexy on women pushing 400lbs.
I took my little man with me for a bit today, in one of the Snugli chest carriers. This was his first opportunity to really fish with Papa – which he seemed indifferent about. He did NOT like it when I stopped and fished the lake proper – maybe the kid doesn’t like warm water fish (impossible!) or maybe he didn’t want to see the fat, mostly naked women. Probably the later.
Little buddy was well set himself – in his ball cap and sunglasses (got to protect those baby blues!) – so we set off from the lake for a little hike up into the creek, with the fly rod. I wanted to try out the new foam bee pattern I tied, so I rigged it up with a green soft hackle wet as a dropper. Non technical fishing for some small stream trout.
First cast in the first pool of the stream garnered a feisty, beautiful 12″ wild, native cutthroat trout. He was a scrapper – pulling line from the reel of my 4 wt. He ate the bee with gusto. Unfortunately, no fish pix today. I left the camera with Mama Bear while Papa and Baby Bear went fishing.
We only fished two pools of the stream – I wasn’t going to ford the stream with the little man strapped to me – especially in hiking boots instead of felts. It’s one thing if I break *my* neck while fishing – quite another if I break the baby’s.
I began instilling the value of catch & release for wild, native fish. Little man wasn’t terribly happy – then again, I think his fussing had more to do with me kneeling down and leaning over a bit rather than actually releasing the cutt. After a few minutes of fussing, James crapped out and decided it was nap time – didn’t matter if he was hanging off Daddy’s chest or not. If he was older I’d be worried about narcolepsy – as the little dude can go from 60 to 0 in 5 seconds flat. Funny how baby’s can do that.
I’m counting that trout as a team-effort fish – I mean, if I hadn’t had little man with me, I might not have had the mojo to get that fish. And little man was of course providing moral support, and I’m sure if he was talking better, he’d be giving tips on how to properly play the fish, like any good fishing partner will do when *he* isn’t the one landing the fish. 🙂
The rest of the day was largely fishless, until the end of the day. We’d changed locales, fishing the mouth of another creek that feeds the lake – where I ran in to some bass. Bites were good until a pair of jackasses in kayaks (obviously not fisherman) decided to paddle right through the narrow channel, where I was fishing, without so much as a word or apology to me. And of course when they realized that the navigable water ended 50 yards upstream of me – they had to turn around and paddle right back through the channel (which is only 25′ wide at it’s widest) spooking any fish that didn’t scram on their first pass.
I valiantly tried getting a few more fish after the kayak attack – but the fish weren’t having any of it, so I bagged it and called it a day. All in all, pretty great day with the family, and a couple fish. Tomorrow my wife and I are heading out for a Mommy & Daddy day alone at the lake – as Mommy wants a day out by ourselves in the canoe. Hopefully we’ll run into a few more fish!
I was planning something uber cool for my 100th post – really, I was – but instead, I’m saving the cool stuff for when I can devote more authoring time. Not only is this my 100th post, but we’ve hit another milestone in the last day – we’re over 4,000 unique page views, and there’s 24 people out there willing to admit publicly to reading the things and thoughts that pour from my head onto my keyboard and thus into your eyes (and maybe ears, if you’re using text-to-speech).
Thank you to my fans – er, followers – keep spreading the word, and thanks for putting up with my ranting, my raving, and my sense of humor.
Coming soon – more technique corners for both fly and spin fishing, gear corners on the Okuma Reflexions baitcasting bassin’ rod, a review of the Cabela’s Wind River 4 weight, and more fly tying pix and maybe even a recipe or two.
Thanks for playing
It’s been warm here in the Portland metro area for a couple weeks. Had a few genuinely hot days – Wednesday was one (although this is the first July in 20 years that we have not had a 90+ degree day in Portland proper – it’s been over 90 degrees at my home a few times, but I don’t live in Portland, so I guess that doesn’t count.) I thought it was going to be a nice cool, overcast day – since that’s what it was like when I got up. I wore shorts, since my typical long fishing pants were nasty dirty (forgot to wash them after the last use). No problemo, right?
Mother Nature is a cruel, cruel woman who likes making us mere mortals pay for such fool hardy decisions. I wound up with a horrid sunburn on my knees and inner calves. Really bad. Couldn’t walk without pain until Saturday. That’s why I don’t normally wear shorts.
I was going to go fishing with my wife – our first alone-alone trip since James was born. It wasn’t to be, either, as our baby sitter fell through last minute. I wound up fishing with my nephew Tyler, instead. We took the canoe to the lake – figuring on hitting some great panfish action. It seems Mother Nature wasn’t going to let that be either. In the week since I’d last been to the lake, the water level was down 18 inches, the weeds exploded (literally growing a few feet in a week), the god damned wake boats had kicked up so many large wakes and eroded the exposed mud banks that the normally crystal clear water was down to about 12″ visibility around the lake edges, and the panfish were off their beds. Tyler picked up 1 fish on his fly rod right off the bat, I got one shortly there after, and then the bite died, for hours. After paddling around and finding everywhere fruitless, we hit one last cove, looking for bass. Ty had a couple good hook ups on a crank bait. I hooked and lost a nice one myself. We decided to take the canoe out, and salvage the last fishable hour or so we had by fishing one of the lake’s feeder creeks for some trout.
Ty had never fished these waters before – where as I make it a point to fish them a lot during the open season (or I have, in seasons past). The creek was unseasonably low – which I don’t get. We’ve had more rainfall than normal this summer, with generally cooler weather. The creek was down to a more fall-like flow than I’ve seen for years.
The water WAS ice cold though – which felt great on my sun burn. I managed to take 3 trout, Ty was shut out.
My first good strike came from the run pictured below:
He hit once, i missed him, and I couldn’t buy another strike from him after that, so we pressed on.
Coming to the next run, I told Ty where the fish would be. I made a single cast, and landed a pretty little 5 inch long Cutthroat. I did not have the presence of mind to get a picture of that fish, or any of the fish that day. Hell, we were out for 8 hours, and I never pulled it out until we started fishing the creek.
I told Ty to try the run, since there’s usually more than one fish in that little spot. Ty got nada. I mentioned to him that I’ve tried mostly unsuccessfully to get a cast up into the dark, shaded area because of the brush all around. On the way back down, I managed to fanagle a single half-assed pendulum cast with a Royal Coachman in there, and got a 4″ cuttie. I’m sure his big brother is in there too, hugging closer to cover. Proved my point though.
We pushed up a couple more pools, without anymore hits. I did fall in the stream though – we hadn’t really planned on stream fishing, so I left the waders and felts at home. Anyone out there who honestly believes that banning felt soles is a good idea, needs to be forced to wade a couple miles on a free stone stream in hiking boots. While wearing a lead vest. Felt saves lives, and would’ve saved my ass from getting bruised!
All in all, it was still a fun trip, albeit disappointing. I’m pretty much done with the lake until fall comes I think. There’s other, better fishing lakes to try, and I have not done nearly enough stream fishing this year.
Top it off, I just broke down and ordered a Cabela’s Three Forks 8 weight rod, since they’re doing a 50% off sale on them right now. Double duty rod for salmon/steelhead and big bass bugs. If I break it on a big fish – I won’t cry, since the rod only cost $29.99 right now. If it’s anything like the Three Forks 3 weight I had, or my Wind River 4 weight – I’m sure I’ll love it. It will also give me a properly sturdy rod to swing those steelhead flies I tied up with, so yay for that!
One last thought – I picked up a hundred and fifty feet of paracord the other day, with a scheme in my mind of building a new rear seat for my canoe. I can’t take the low-slung factory seat anymore – and really don’t want spend $100 for a pair of swivel seats & bases yet. I’m going to try making a woven seat that fits level with the gunnels, which will raise my seated position about 6 inches – which *might* be easier on my back. I’m hoping.
Howdy folks, this week’s Blogger Spotlight comes to us from the east coast – Mark from Fishing Small Streams. That Mark and this Mark seem to have at least a few things in common – besides our names. We both love fishing small free flowing streams for wild trout with lighter gear.
Mark does a much better job of taking his camera along (and using it!) than I have been doing of late – and he’s got the gorgeous pictures up there to prove it.
Not only is he a fly angler, he’s a fly tier, and he’s got some wicked cool flies featured (I’m going to try tying up a bunch of those little Bomber variants he uses.)
If you enjoy fishing small, rugged streams for “little” (gotta think in terms of scale, a little fish in a big river can be an average to big fish on a small stream) fish – pop over and check out Mark’s blog.
Floggin' Water 