Fly of the Week #20

Okay, so my fly of the week is more like fly of the month. Sorry about that. I just haven't been doing a whole of tying lately. This one was sitting around for a while waiting to have its picture taken. So without further ado...

(Click For Larger Image)

This is on a size 12 scud hook and is simply made up of tan dubbing in front and green in back. The hackle is natural colored Hungarian Partridge.

Trip Report: Tuolumne (South Fork)

What a day I was having. Other than losing a bunch of flies, a sink tip line, catching hardly anything, almost losing a flyrod and myself in the process.. I was having a good day.

It was 7:30 by the time I got to the Rainbow Pools. The plan was to just use the restroom and see if I had time to throw the line in. It was getting dark, but I tried anyway. Ended up fishing until after eight. It was so dark I couldn't see my line, if a fish were to get hooked, I hoped he would make it obvious!

Surprisingly enough, I didn't wander very far away from the car. I stopped fishing and felt my way back to the parking spot. By the time I broke everything down and got on the road again, it was 8:45pm.

If you count the Main Toulumne as two rivers (which it really is above and below the Kirkwood Power station), that's four rivers in 13 hours of fishing. Considering I didn't catch much of anything, it was a great day. I enjoyed it thoroughly. Except for maybe that scare on the Tuolumne.

Trip Report: Tuolumne (Main) (Round 2)

As I left Cherry Creek, I wasn't sure what I was going to do next. It was only 5:30 or so. I had a couple hours of fishing time left! My thought was to go to the South Fork of the Tuolumne and see if my luck would change.

On my way out of the area, I had to pass over the Main Fork of the Tuolumne again. The bridge is downstream of where I was earlier in the morning. I stopped the car and looked out. Below the Kirkwood power station, the water was thundering out. It was deep and fast. The signs warning you not to enter the water were plentiful. I decided to try it anyway. This was a perfect chance to try out my new second hand grip on my fly rod. The plan was to attach a heavy sinking tip, a heavy wooly bugger and spey cast (again, no back casting room) into the current.

The rod worked like a charm, I was able to fling that heavy setup wherever I wanted. I was surprised. Thanks to the nice even current, there was no need to mend, and you could just swing the fly across, hoping for a bite. Once again, no fish were interested. It didn't really look like a fishy spot. The water was just really swift. It was more of a casting experience than anything.

I worked myself closer to the bridge and was about 10 feet away. I was river left and after the fly is dangling below, I would spey cast back slightly upstream. This worked fine. I decided to do some snake rolls. No problem, everything worked. Then, I pushed my luck.

I was messing around and somehow whipped my line into the bridge structure about 10 feet away and 20 feet up. Luckily the sink tip was wrapped around and not my fly line itself. I knew the fly was lost. But I was really concerned about breaking my fly line.

I had to pull extremely hard to break it off. I was really surprised how much force it took. Lucky for me, the connection on the sink tip failed before my fly line did. I lost the sink tip, but saved the line. Whew.

Just when I thought everything was okay. I didn't know that the top half of my rod had come loose. I brought it around and it fell into the river! Not only have I lost 10 or so flies today, but I was about to lose my fly rod.

The current is really fast here. Lucky for me, the fly rod fell apart upstream of my position and I had about 3 seconds to grab it before it passed me and was lost forever. I scrambled down from the rock I was on and grabbed it. Almost dunking myself in the process. In retrospect, it was really foolish. I saved a rod, but almost fell into water that was well over 10 feet deep and moving at a sprinters pace.

I was lucky! Needless to say, I packed it up and head for the car. But my day wasn't over yet!

Trip Report: Cherry Creek

The day was very familiar to me. It was an almost exact repeat of a trip I had last Summer. If you recall, I went to the Main Tuolumne in the morning and was skunked. Afterwards, I went to Cherry Creek and ended up catching more than 20 fish!

With that day in mind, I was excited to get back to Cherry. Visions of catching multiple fish was getting me excited. Unfortunately, it didn't end up as successful of a day.

This time, I started downstream of the Cherry Lake Rd. bridge. I didn't get any bites or see any fish. I know they were there. It may of just been a little too cold for them, and they were hunkered down in the rocks. Whatever the case, I wasn't pulling them out.

After getting restless, I went upstream about a mile stopping at all the fishy looking locations. This took several hours. Anyone that knows Cherry Creek knows it isn't a big river, and it is filled with boulders that require a lot of hopping around and pin point casting with little or no back casting room.

Lucky for me, I just modified my rod with an extended handle on the butt. This 4 inch handle provides extra leverage for spey casting. I can easily whip that rod around and cast 50-60 feet without any room behind me. Although Cherry Creek is normally smaller than this, the second hand handle came in handy (say that 4 times fast!) quite often. This rod now works great for single hand pin point casting, or two handed spey casting. You wouldn't be able to spey across a large river, but you can easily do it on small to moderate ones. Leave the big rivers for my new 10'8" switch rod. More details on that later.

Hours have gone by and I still haven't caught any fish. It would of been a disappointing day if it weren't so pretty out in the middle of no-where.

The wind was starting to pick up and I was getting a little bruised from scampering around on boulders. I decided to head back downstream towards the bridge. Almost directly underneath the bridge looked to be a perfect spot for trout. The sun was shaded by the overhead structure, and the layout of the stream looked perfect.

I stealthily worked my way into position. Moving quietly through the water, I hid behind some boulders and gently casted into the current. My 9ft leader had a 3-4 foot tippet on and a size 16 soft hackle tied on the end. This setup was gently presenting itself to the enormous trout that lie underneath.

As the fly dangled in the current - directly below me, I felt a tug on my line and pulled a fish to hand. This 3 incher put up an enormous fight! Well, okay, maybe not much of a fight. At least I knew there was a fish in this river somewhere.

Before this happened, I was getting frustrated. Not by the lack of fish being caught, but by the number of flies I was losing. I don't know what was going on, on that day. But flies were just getting hung up everywhere. Cherry Creek snatched at least 4 more from me.

I had run out of water and decided to go back to the car to refuel. Anyone that has been to Cherry Lake Rd bridge knows that the trip to the creek is a very steep climb. With the loose rocks it can be kind of hazardous. After getting to the car, I figured it wasn't worth going back down again. Especially since I wasn't catching anything.

Trip Report: Tuolumne (Main)

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to step out for a day of fishing. I ended up going to three rivers and decided to break up each report into separate posts.

The first stop was the Main Fork of the Tuolumne River. Arriving at 7am, I stepped outside of the car to a brisk 31 degrees air temp. Being the only one around at the day use area near Kirkwood Power Station, I walked upstream to throw the line in.

I didn't have a water temp gauge with me, so I cannot be very accurate, however, I'd guess the water was in the upper 50's and very clear. The flow was almost exactly as it was the time I was here last Summer. What the actual numbers are, I'm not sure.

My first stop was at a deep pool where water was plunging in and the floor was made up of good sized boulders. Plenty of hiding spots for fish. It was too early in the morning to see into the water very far, so I didn't actually see any fish. I can only imagine they were there. After a good 15 minutes I decided to move upstream for better water.

As the sun rose, the air temp warmed. My multiple layers were starting to be too much. After taking off a pullover, I was back in business. I tried various runs, ripples, and pools. No bites. I did see some fish as the morning wore on. They looked to be in the 10-15 inch area and they were feeding. I threw various patterns in trying to get them to bite. No luck.

The fish were mostly in the 5-9 foot depths. Although I did see a few hovering a couple of feet down and gobbling up bugs as they floated by.

This day was the day for losing flies. Here on the Tuolumne, I lost a pin-on fly patch that had 4-6 flies on them drying off. That was disappointing. However, if you keep reading, you'll see that this was only the beginning of losing flies and worse.