2012 Species update, Season Recap, & Thank You

Two fish were added to my fish list in 2012, bringing my total up to 45 different species of fish that I have caught over the years.  The first of the two was due to a planned mission on a summer vacation to Estes Park, Colorado.  Jen and I were fortunate to catch a few gorgeous Greenback Cutthroat trout while hanging out with an awesome local guide.  The second species caught was not planned, not pretty, and not wanted.  While I was trying to make a drift to active steelhead through a technically difficult seam, I was rewarded with a big creek chub on the Wisconsin Brule River that had taken my dropper egg fly.  Good governor!  But it adds to my list, and it relieves the magnificent weight on my shoulders of being able to cross a chub off my list of things to get in my life.  Doh!!  Did I just say that? 

 

The rest of the fish/things caught over the season encompassed my usual fare of rainbows, browns, brookies, smallies, pike, steelhead, trees, rocks, cased caddis, myself, trees, shrubs, logs, many 1st & 2nd cousins of the Snagasaurus family, and sadly not muskies. 

 

While I did fish subsurface with nymphs and streamers this year for many of the above mentioned quarry, all of the trout were caught on dry flies.  The dry fly challenge this year wasn't planned initially.  It started out with great dry fly fishing this spring on the Big Horn River in Montana.  Mother Feiker and I had a lot of fun with it and even came up with ideas on that vacation for patches and stickers for us such as "HA!" (for Headhunters Anonymous-with a picture of fish skull that has one of those voodoo bones going through its' nostrils) and "HHH" (for the Happy Head Hunters).  There were other ideas we came up with too that week, but those were the ones that stuck with us through the summer.

When I returned to my home waters is when I challenged myself to continue on with the "Dry or Die"campaign.  I enjoyed it this summer, it was good timing for me and gave my ol' game of fly fishing a new twist.  Then I bought a Tenkara rod, which also encouraged me to keep fishing on the surface.  Don't worry, I am pretty sure I won't become a dry fly snob or anything like that.  I have been reading more about the Tenkara fishing, and I have learned that there are subsurface tactics that I need to try out if I am going to learn all it has to offer.  In fact I ordered a couple of things online today specifically for Tenkara fishing including some funky hooks for some Tenkara fly patterns I want to attempt to tie. So we will see how that turns out this winter.

As for you, yes you. Thank you very much.  I would like to say thanks to you and all the people that have provided me with positive and encouraging feedback on my blog over the years.  I sometimes forget that people actually read what I write and every time someone says to me "hey, I read that and..." or replies with an email response it makes me smile and brings me warm fuzzies.  Not that I write for those reasons, but it is nice to know people don't always delete my posts when they get sent out to your email inbox. To date, this will be my 147th post since February 2005.  If you are looking for those 16 posts of my first year, you may not find them as they were on my initial attempt at blogging.  You're not missing much as they were, well, kind of weak as I wasn't yet clear with what my intention(s) was going to be with writing a blog at the time.  So there was a conversion period where they were at the time and where the blog is hosted now on Blogger. 

To everyone:
Happy Thanksgiving, tight-lines, be well, namaste, live long and prosper, hug your loved ones, fire-cracker-fist-bump, and all that jazz.

Critter
 

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My last weekend with Ed.

Saturday morning:

So for our last weekend hanging out together before Ed moves to Texas for his new job, we started off early Saturday morning.  We started off with breakfast over at the San Padro cafe in Hudson.  I highly recommend it to anyone and will be back there again.  We basically found it by accident as we were fifteen minutes too early to the nice cigar shop we wanted to check out called the St. Croix Cigar Company which had a large variety of products from my current favorite cigar brand, Perdomo Cigars. We were very impressed, and the guy behind the counter seemed to be an encyclopedia of cigar knowledge.

 

Then we moved on to River Falls to check out both the Kinni Creek Lodge fly shop and the new Lunds Fly shop out of curiosity and to maybe get some insight on what the fish have been hitting on.  We eventually did make it to fishing.  We started out fishing Lost Creek and worked our way up on the Rush river to El Paso.  Ed borrowed one of my bamboo rods to see what fishing one was like and I strung up another for myself for the weekend.  We had some success with sulphur parachutes #18 and comparduns #18, and white parachute BWO's.  Word on the river was that others had good luck using caddis patterns, but I did not have any success using them.  The trout must not have appreciated my artistic interpretation of the caddis flies I tied.

 

Saturday evening:

The reason for our fishing up to El Paso, WI was that our club was celebrating its 60th anniversary and the dinner was being hosted at the El Paso Bar & Grill.  We had a great turnout with many members and their spouses and significant others.  Everyone seemed to be having a good time.  Denny even set up a banquet table with some old club memorabilia, which I thought was a very nice touch.  To save us a lot of driving a few of us spent the night at the local Super8 motel; which sadly has been the nicest motel room I've had in a long, long, long time.  But it's not my fault, it's the fishes fault for not having better places for me to stay at when I go visit them.   



Denny's Table





Amy, Angie, and Jen



 

 

 

 



 

social hour

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday morning:

Ed fishing bamboo for brookies

Sunday morning Ed and I had breakfast with Yoda and his saint of a wife, Sandy.  And we were off again fishing the Rush river.  The trout pretty much took to Sulphur parachutes and comparaduns, white post parachute BWO's.  Ed mentioned that it was kind of fitting that we fished at the Stonehammer bridge to catch his last Wisconsin trout before moving to Texas as it was the first place he caught a trout on the Rush when he moved here to Minnesota.  We had rising fish and the fishing was good until the bikini hatch broke out.  We had six girls in two piece bikinis and one guy in shorts trying to float the river on little black inner tubes.  While the scenery was appreciated as they all modeled their swim suits very well, they put the fish down dammit.  The last gal who was a little behind the rest of her group was not so impressed with the decision to float the 40 degree water and said she would rather be fishing with us then floating in the cold water.  I told her that this was the first time in the ten years of fishing this river that had seen anyone try to float it.  Too bad, I didn't have an extra set of waders for her.  Anyway, Ed and I adapted and we sat on the bank of the river and lit up a couple of cigars and waited for the fish to come back.  It didn't take too long and they were back rising. 

 

Sunday afternoon:

After a good morning on the river, we left for lunch at the Silver bridge in Martel.  The club was having one of our monthly fishing outings and grilled brats with sour kraut were on the menu!  I think we had around 15 people or so attend.  After lunch, one of our newer members, Eric, was showing us his new Tenkara rod he bought the day before at Kinni Creek Lodge.  While showing us how to fish it on the section that goes by the park, he hooked five fish.  They all got off before he could land them....but he's still working on figuring that part out.  :) 



And that was our weekend.  Not bad if you ask me.  I wish Good Luck to Ed and his girlfriend Angie on thier new chapter in thier life in Texas, even though I warned them numerous times that Texans live in Texas.

Doe and a fresh fawn

 

 

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Last Day

Saturday was our last day of fishing for Mother Feiker and myself.

 



The weather was great, with 70s' for the air temp, and NO RAIN.  We agian signed up for the 3-mile to Bighorn float, and probably didn't need to.  We floated down river for only five minutes when we pulled to a bank to fish at the old school house to LOTS of rising fish.  We could have walked that.  They were fun, tricky, and hungry all at once.  Some would take comparaduns, some took midges, others only took parachutes, a couple took a trico pattern I had that I snipped the tails off of.  It was a smorgesboard.  We fished that spot for way too long, but it was hard not to when they kept biting.  finally at 2pm we moved on as we still had another 9.75 miles of river to float. 

 

We found several more areas of rising fish, that we successfully harrassed before and after the Bay of Pigs, and we also had some luck by the Twenty Dollar hole.  There were other places that we could have fished as well, but we pretty much determined our stops by who ever needed to pee.  You may be laughing, but that what we did.  And it worked out and we caught lots of trout that way.

It was great that we could end the week on a good note....but wait.  Did someone forget to arrange a shuttle for us?  When we got to the landing, both my vehicle and Andersons' vehicle were not at the landing.  I know we asked for a shuttle as I made the arrangements and gave Thor the keys.  Great.  Effed again!  Luckily three guys that had pulled in to the landing offered me a ride back to camp so that I could try to resolve our little surprise.  I grabbed Kurt, got the keys the keys that were still in the fly shop...something of an explainaition that was offered by the camp hosts of "they had a dabacle" and missed voicemails between the shop closing in the morning and reopening in the afternoon and three vehicles were not shuttled as a result of the communication breakdown.  Well, we had two of the three vehicles.  So in effect, effed again...twice. 

 

Really though I had to blame the Bob's.  Both have had thier history of shuttle debacles and they happen to share this expierence with me for good sport I guess.  They've both had issues at the Bighorn a few times, then there was the time at the bass outing two years ago when everyone forgot about them, and then there was the Brule where the Canadian forgot the key in the first truck so they couldn't get in the one at the second truck.  So they are pretty much seasoned veterens in this situation. 

 

Anyway, everything worked out, we got the boats back to camp, had a bloody mary with our dinner - it was taco night!  And just hung out for awhile out on the patio lauging about lots stuff including the "shuttle debacle."  

Sunday we packed up, showered, paid our tabs, and were on the road by 10:30am.  I dropped off Bob at his place just after 1:00AM Monday morning, and I was home about 2:00am.  Jen woke up and we started talking about the week for a little bit and then...a big flash and the power went out at 2:30AM.  Effed again...



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Encore Thursday

Today was similar to yesterday.  It was hot, we were getting more dry fly action, and we had a rain storm that forced us to hang out on the banks for an hour or so due to very high winds.  But after the storm was done, unlike yesterday, the hatch continued on and we got to fish for several more hours.

Ed and I fished for trout, while the Bob's were trying for some carp that were rising.  Both hooked up twice each, but the broke the leaders on the hook sets due to the aggressive takes.

Pretty much everyone we talked to today had a great day and lots of opportunities to catch fish and ours seemed to be a bit bigger today, averaging around 20 inches.

We also fooled around with the video camera today and we might be able to figure how to get some of that posted in an abbreviated short video.  Hopefully the section were we drifted by half dozen turkey vultures on the side of a cliff turns out.  They looked kinda out of place on the bank that was almost straight up and down. 

Today's pictures:

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Wacky Wednesday

We did okay yesterday, but it was a hot one.  Several of us had got a bit dehydrated and sun burned floating from 3-mile to Bighorn landing.  Today got a bit more exciting on the same float.  It was supposed to be in the 90's today, so we dragged our feet and didn't get on the water till about 10:00 am. 

The dry fly action was going pretty good in few spots, mostly on BWO parachutes and cripples size 18.  We saw another bull snake swimming across the river, a couple of muskrats, and then a prairie dog.  The Prairie dog was swimming at me from the opposite bank and when I moved to grab my camera it was about 2 rod lengths away and realized he shouldn't land on me and continued on passed me to the bank. 

Sometime around 3 or 4 pm, a front moved in very fast, the temperature dropped about 20 degrees and a thunderstorm blew in.  The rain was hard and almost felt like hail.  Feiker and I scrambled toward shore and when they started to blow off we scrambled to save them.  Anderson was laughing and then he bolted off toward his drift boat as it started to sail away from the shore.  If I had to guess I think the wind was probably around 30mph or better.  Luckily, four of the five of us know Montana well enough that we had rain jackets packed.  We learned that our cigars were storm proof as they kept going all through the down poor.  So they are now a MUST for future trips. 

All the other boats on the river were paddling by, but we were not trusting that 1) our kick boats would stay upright in the storm, 2) that our rods wouldn't attract lightning, 3) our aluminum oars wouldn't attract lightning, 4) that we would have any control of steering our boats.  So what else were we to do but waited out with cigars and Leinenkugals.  Everything passed and an hour later it was done. 

After the storm cleared up, the hatch was done, so we pretty much just floated the remaining five miles of river to the landing hoping for rising fish.   We didn't see enough to make us stop at any one spot.

Then at the end as we were coming up to the Bighorn landing.  Bob threatened the other Bob that he was going to crush him, then after passing him he actually ran his boat into mine while laughing manically.  I suggested that we need to pull his captains license, but since he doesn't have one it turned out to be an empty threat.  :)

We got back to camp, had grilled steaks, hung our wet gear up and called it a day. 

up river

The Drive In

Who let the dogs out

Incoming thunder storm

During storm

Bent rods in storm

After the storm

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Day 2.

Last night we got to wet our lines, but the fishing wasn't easy.  It seems the Dry fly fishing has calmed down a little from the week before.  The other three others that I went out managed to get a fish or two eahc, but myself.....it was a different story.  I had a dozen takes, but couldn't execute any lands.  It was not a pretty sight as I may have voiced my opinion about that to the fish while I was trying to get them.  My buddies were laughing at me.

Today was better, we staked a spot about midday and we were able to catch a decent amount of trout on dry flies.  They were fussy, but it was very rewarding.  Not sure what the deal was for me, asI threw pretty much every variation of BWO's I had (since that is what was hatching) and got nothing.  The Smoke Jumper turned out to be my answer and I landed almost a dozen brown trout in the 15" to 18" range. 

Water was clear and 48 degrees, and the air temperature reached the mid eighties.  Some harrasment on the stream from Kevin (one of our favorite guides on the river) and from Thor and Jim Schollmeyer.  It was all in good fun of course.

Here is a couple of pictures of the day. 

Anderson and Ed

Schoolhouse

Barber John

Smoke Jumper

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Blue Wing Olive UV-Parachute thread body

So to add to my arsenal of flies, I tied up some BWO UV-Parachutes tonight that have a thread body.  I don't normally tie flies with a thread body unless I am tying midges.  But, a few weeks ago, we had a guest speaker who is a commercial fly tier and fly shop owner (Joseph Meyer) do a 'Parachute' clinic for us at one of the club meetings.  The pattern he used had a thread body, so you could say I am a little inspired to add some thread body flies to my boxes.

Hook: TMC 100 (or other dry fly hook) size 16
Thread: Uni-Thread 0/6 Olive Dun
Body: Tapered thread body using the Uni-Thread 0/6 Olive Dun
Tail: three or four light dun cock barbs
Parachute: 4 strands of Wapsi Tan UV Krystal Flash and white polypropylene floating yarn, with three or four wraps of a medium dun dry fly feather.

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