New Years Eve

I spent yesterday at Putah Creek. I'll have a report shortly. In the meantime, I had to post a link to this video I came across from the North Umpqua.

http://theflyshop.com/Mikes_Folder/kindofabigdeal.mov

This is one of the better videos I've seen from the net for both steelhead fishing and two handed casting. The vantage point that the camera man has is excellent. Not only can you see the casting perfectly, but you can see the steelhead going after the skating fly. And of course you see him catch a couple as well.

Most of the videos I see are people casting endlessly and then magically they cut to a guy with a fish on. In this video, you actually see him catch the fish.

We need more of these!

Fly #39: Earth Tones and Muted Colors

Now that I've been tying larger size 4's, these size 10's are starting to look puny. Regardless of what I think, these flies work! Not only do the trout suck them up, but steelhead around here love them too.

Basically, this fly is a miniature version of the larger spey flies. Only with very muted colors. Trout absolutely dig these when swung in the current, and steelhead will grab them too.

Fly #38: Green Hornet

The following fly was tied on Christmas night after my wife and son fell asleep. Again, it is another feather wing spey. This time on a size 8 silver hook.

Green Hornet Spey

Hook: Size 8 Tiemco Silver
Tag: Gold Tinsel
Body: Green Floss, Oval Silver Tinsel rib, Black and Green Dubbing
Hackle: Black Schlappen
Collar: Natural Guinea
Wing: Bronze Mallard

Fly #37: Another Strip Wing

Here is another size 4 using a Bronze Mallard strip wing. I'm still finding my way with spey flies, but they are looking better each time. I'm also concentrating on making them more durable by doing the little things to keep them from shredding apart after some use. This one will hopefully hit the water soon. The Holidays have kept me indoors with family.

No Name Spey

Hook: Size 4 Partridge
Tag: Silver tinsel
Body: Hot Orange Floss, Purple and Red/Orange dubbing with Pearl Tinsel rib
Hackle: Black Schlappen
Wing: Bronze Mallard
Collar: Guinea

Fly #36: New Materials

Santa arrived early this year and delivered a bunch of material. I've been tying when free time permits and below is one of my creations.

I just recently received a steelhead fly tying DVD featuring Marty Howard and Dec Hogan. Marty is in my opinion, one of the better fly tiers out there. His work is not just effective, but nice to look at. Likewise, Dec is not only a world class steelheader, he can also tie up some beautiful flies. After watching the DVD, I discovered some new techniques and was able to learn a lot. Some of that is represented below. Check out Marty's website here if interested in his DVD (I do not benefit from this link, just want to point out good instructional material).

Hot Orange Spey

Hook: Size 4
Tag: Silver Tinsel
Body: Hot Orange then Orange Floss with Black/Purple Dubbing
Ribbing: Oval Tinsel
Hackle: Orange Spey
Collar: Mallard Flank
Wing: Bronze Mallard

This guy hasn't seen the water yet. However, I know it will do well. And confidence is half the battle when swinging for steelhead.

Fly #35: Teal and Mallard

Santa is delivering a lot of tying material for Christmas. I can hardly wait to get to work. In the meantime, you can check out another fly from a frenzy of tying activity that took place in the last week or two.

Another simple fly, this guy was tied on a size 10 Tiemco 7999. The tag is silver tinsel, the body is brown/yellow dubbing, wire rib, and mallard flank hackle. Lastly, the collar is a blue/green guinea feather.

This fly hasn't seen the water yet, however, I know just by looking at it that it will be successful. I cannot wait to try it out.

Fly #34: Blue Guinea Wing

While messing around with different ideas, I quickly tied up this simple fly on a size 10 Tiemco 7999.

The components are pretty self explanatory. Silver tinsel tag, tan dubbing with wire rib, a natural guinea collar, some flash, and two blue guinea feathers for wings.

Report: Trinity

For one reason or another, I've been having a hard time finding motivation to write this report. Finally here on this Monday morning, where I'm even less motivated to begin work for the week, I've decided to finally sit down and peck this out.

I drove up to the beautiful and productive Trinity River a couple of weeks ago. Unlike the other trips so far, this would only be a one day excursion. With the price of gas falling, I felt a little better about short time spent on the water. Still, this is quite a drive for only one day of fishing. Although I think the results made it worth it.

Arriving before sunrise, I started rigging up by my car's dome light. The air was cold and I needed a few layers to be comfortable. By the time the sun was high enough to see, I was ready to head down to the water. My location was somewhere along Steiner Flat Rd. This was chosen for a couple of reasons. First, less driving distance. Second, the area was worth more exploring.

As usual, I started with a set of smaller flies to get a feel for the fish and what their mood is. I had an intermediate poly leader with a couple feet of tippet separating the size 10 and size 14 flies. The front and smaller fly was a winged wet, the back was a bead headed soft hackle.

Within ½ hour of swinging, a large fish was hooked. The bite took place about 60 feet away from me just after the dead drift as the fly started to swing across. The fish was strong and bolted for cover near a large boulder. That was the end of that. The fish was off and after a closer inspection, I could see that my soft hackle hook was bent.

I found a similar replacement in my box and tied it up front where the winged wet was and then tied on a slightly larger generic spey fly on the rear. If I catch him again, maybe he'll go for the stronger salmon/steelhead hook and it won't bend. I decided to leave this fish rest a bit, hopefully he hadn't left the run completely.

Went downstream to the next good looking spot and swung through with no results. Now, it was time to go back upstream and try that initial run again.

After getting back to almost the same exact spot, I hooked another strong fish. Was it the same one? Who knows. It didn't matter, it was a nice fight that lasted a few minutes and put a good bend in my 7-weight. I tailed the wild fish and removed that spey fly from his mouth without lifting him from the water. Since I didn't pull him out, I couldn't get an accurate measurement against my rod. I'd guess he was somewhere between 22 and 26 inches.

The rest of the day was almost a mirror image of the early morning. I hooked around a dozen fish, landing 6 of them (I caught several smaller trout, but I don't count those). All of them caught were healthy and strong in the range between 18 and 25 inches. A few of them were very bright.

The Trinity continues to be one of my favorite destinations. I hope to get out there again in the not so distance future.

Fly #33: Mallard and Orange Spey

It has been quite a while since the last fly post. Because my latest tying obsession is feather wing spey flies, I may as well show one here.

This particular fly was responsible for that decent sized rainbow on the Yuba river.

Mallard and Orange Spey

If you'd like to build your own, here are the specifics. Tiemco 7999 size 10 hook, Hot Orange Spey Hackle palmered up the dubbing, guinea collar in natural color, mallard flank wing. There is a silver tinsel butt, an orange and red dubbing with wire ribbing to give a little weight.

Report: Yuba River

I had an opportunity to sneak out for a day of fishing, so I decided to give the Yuba river another swing. After December 1st, the water above Highway 20 is open again, so I figured this would be my target.

I arrived a little late (the morning fog slowed my driving time.) I was finally fishing around 8:30am or so. I had walked to a point upriver where I had never been. Saw some riffles well past a rather long stretch of still water that went for many hundreds of yards. Since a cliff blocked my access on river left, I needed to cross. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a shallow enough spot, so I walked back downstream to the last decent looking fishy area.

Early morning; looking downriver.

I was swinging various wet flies. I had a two fly rig with a smallish winged wet in front and a soft hackle in back. The flies were rotated every so often and mixed in with some hair wing steelhead flies as well. As mentioned in another post, I've been tying a bunch of hair and feather wing flies. My most recent builds even included my first official entry (to be classified as a true spey fly, it must meet a few requirements that I hadn't yet done) into a spey fly. I'll post pictures of those soon.

By noon, I had gotten a few tugs, but nothing more. It was rather quiet. Typical Yuba fishing. The only thing I was getting, was a plethora of casting problems. I'm not sure what happened, but I regressed a little and my casting was sloppy and I had a hard time getting the distance normally accessible with my two handed rod.

I changed setups several times trying to guess where the fish were. Started with a 3.9 ips sinking poly leader, then went to a furled neutral leader, then finally settled on a intermediate sinking poly. I threw on a little split shot to sink my unweighted flies a little lower. This is something I had never done before while swinging. It worked out pretty well.

Around 2pm, I was downriver from where I started, but still well upstream of the 20 bridge. A size 10 bead head soft hackle in the rear and a size 14 winged wet upfront made up my rig. That bead head was giving me some depth, where I assumed the fish must be. My current target was the tail end of a small rapid section, and more specifically, the seam from fast water to slow. On one of my casts, when the swing crossed that seam, wham! The jolt was so sudden, it almost pulled the rod from my hand.

As quick as it came, it was over. The fish released himself and I never saw as much as a flash. I imagine he was pretty good in size. He hit me really hard. This is why I love swinging flies! Hard hits that can scare the crap out of you.

About ½ hour later I started swinging just below the surface while a hatch was going off. I caught and landed a few smaller fish in the 12-15 inch range. Towards 3:30pm I was swinging one of my new spey flies (pictures below), it was accompanied by a size 10 soft hackle. In the heart of the swing, I felt another huge jolt.

Immediately, the line started ripping across the current. The fish was probably 70 feet away from me and had covered at least that distance cross river in the blink of an eye. He stopped in an eddy and I gave a few cranks on the reel. That woke him up and he zinged down river and it stripped more line off. I had a player this time.

About 10 minutes later, I muscled a 24-26 inch beautiful missile shaped rainbow to my hand. He was hooked squarely in the side of the mouth. This is the one of the biggest fish I've ever caught on a fly rod. And he gave a real good fight. In fact, this was one of those time I actually needed to use two hands to keep him under control. even noticed that someone had stopped at the road above me and got out of their car to watch the battle. Luckily for them and more importantly for myself, I didn't disappoint and lose him.

The fish was lifted out of the water very gently and I quickly removed the hook. After putting him up against my rod for a measurement. He was lowered back in and I let him sit behind my leg for a few minutes while he was cradled with my left hand.

I was a little concerned because he showed no sign of trying to get away from me. I moved him a little bit out into the current to try to get some oxygen to him. But, I didn't want to lose my grip and have him belly up. After a few more moments he gracefully swam out of my hand and sought refuge in a stream depression about two feet below me. He stayed there for another few minutes before swimming off like nothing ever happened.

While there was still another 45 or so minutes of fishing to come, that would be my last catch of the day.

Report: Meramec

While visiting the folks over Thanksgiving, I took a day out to fish the Meramec River. I've been on this river before, and in fact you can go back and read that report here. This time around, it was much colder and in fact, a couple of inches of snow had fallen the night before. The ground was still warm enough that the snow all but melted before the end of the day, but it still made for a picture perfect day.

The temps never rose about 33 degrees and this caused not only my guides to ice up, but my line became a little stiff as well. No big deal and all part of the fun. I'm not sure what the water temp was, but you can imagine it was also a little chillier than my last trip.

Icy lines...

On this outing, we parked very near where we were last time. If you recall, I scrambled down “Suicide Hill” to get to the water on that day. With the ice and snow, I thought that would be a bad idea to attempt such a thing this time around. Instead, I opted to park at “Cardiac Hill”, which is not very far away. You end up maybe ¾ of a mile or so upstream of Suicide.

Upon reaching the river, I realized that the water was extremely low and clear. Not what I expected. With the snow and rain a couple of days before, I expected it to be much higher. In fact, the water seemed to be a lot lower than when I was here last time. The fishing near where the path reaches the river did not look inviting. So, I went upstream. I was easily able to cross the river every 100 yards or so to access the sand bars that were on the inside of each bend. This made for easy traveling. I went quite a ways and found a few spots worth fishing, but there were not any lengthy runs/riffles like I had hoped.

I fished at the best looking spots and didn't get so much as a bite. The fish were down today, most likely in deeper pools. Problem was, I couldn't find any deep pools. Where were these guys?

I traveled far enough upstream that I was ready to turn around. I only had a half day to fish, so I needed to keep moving. I went back downstream and passed the Cardiac Hill path. I went far enough downstream that I ended up at Suicide Hill and where I was last year. The water was so low, I barely recognized it. It was a little disappointing. After several hours, I decided to head back upstream towards the base of Cardiac (last year it was almost impossible to go very far upstream of Suicide because of the water depth).

Over the course of the morning/early afternoon, I received a some bites and some good tugs. I hooked and later long distance released a good sized fish. But it never made it very close to my hand. The fish were definitely off their feed.

Trying to access the pool...

After getting back to the bottom of Cardiac, I climbed up on the bank and saw a bunch of trout eating deep down in one of the deeper parts of the river. Unfortunately, it was near impossible to reach them. I was 10 feet above on a steep bank and they were protected by floating debris. The trees surrounding me made it extremely hard to cast to them. These fish knew they were safe and picked probably the best place on the river to hang out.

Trees directly behind required an almost vertical backcast...

Next time I'm in town, I'll be checking out a new section of the river. Hopefully the water will be higher and the temps a little warmer. All in all, it was a beautiful winters day out in the Midwest fishing some usually fantastic waters.

Meramec River

I'll post a report soon on my trip to the Meramec River outside of St. Louis. In the mean time, since I haven't said much on this blog, I'll post a couple of pictures from that trip.

Here I am swinging a soft hackle size 10 and a winged wet sized 14. As you can see, it was cold and snowy. Besides the constant icing up of the fly line and the guides, it was fun to be out in such cold conditions.

Other than this trip to the Meramec and another to the Trinity, I've been on a tying spree. I've put together a bunch of hair wing and feather winged steelhead flies (finally went out and bought some mallard flank feathers). I'll be posting some pictures soon.