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
 

www.critters-corner.com

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

 

 

www.critters-corner.com

Open Tying Night

Last night was open tying night at The Fly Angler.  Several people showed up to tie with Mike, mostly members of the St. Paul Fly Tiers Club.  It was a good time!  Just before the tying began upstairs, one of my buddies working at the shop put together a nice set up that made me drool.  Seriously...  I only held it for like eight seconds and immediately handed it back.  It felt soo good and the cost of the set up....well let's just say I had to put it back or Jen may have started looking for a burial plot for me.  What was this set you ask?  It was a 8'6" Winston Boron IIIx 4wt, with the Abel Super 3N reel.  Simply AMAZING. 

Once I got upstairs and situated, I tied up a dozen of these Zebra midge variants.  It was the standard pattern but with a red butt that I saw in one of the shops fly bins.  Then I tied a few with a caddis green butt using a gun metal beadhead instead of the copper.  Made for what looked an like an upside down caddis.  Hopefully it will work for me. 

For those interested the next:

• The Rush River Clean Up on April 21st,
• MN Bass Expo 4/20 - 4/22 in Blaine,
• Open tying night at the Fly Angler is May 7th, 6-8pm,
• Club fishing outing on May 20th, 
• and as always, every Thursday night is the Fly Tier's club meetings.  I think there will be some trying their hand at tying tube flies on April 19th.

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Test photos of fly patterns

So I wanted to improve my fly photography by improving the mini-studio I built for taking pictures of flies.  I did a little research online and then picked up two new lights from National Camera Exchange to replace the old convoluted system I was using. 

 

I am now just using those two lights and a reflector inside a light box.  Before, I was using the light box, a reflector, three lights, an on camera flash hooked up to secondary slave flash via a cable, and the full kitchen table with two leaves in it.  Now I'm down to using a third of the kitchen table without the leaves in it.

 

Here are some photos of tonight's practice session (click on each to enlarge).

 

 

sparkle soft hackle

tungston zebra nymph variant

zebra stable (7 different variants): fresh off the vise last weekend

wet fly on bamboo background

wet fly on oak background

streamer with maple background

streamer with dark stained wood background

double midge fly

double midge fly 2

 

 

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Fly tiers Steelhead Outing (Oct 16 &18)

We came, we fished, we've had better successes.  The higher numbers of fish that I had hoped for failed to produce for the club outing.  But that didn't stop the gang from having lots of fun on a great fall weekend!

Jen and I went against our normal pattern and after a late night at the Kro, and short night at the hotel, we found ourselves fishing a little after 7am.  Which proved to be a good for both of us, as most of our hookup's for the weekend happened before 10:30am.  Jen lost a nice one after a long battle, I made the choice to touch the leader and snap it to save the steelhead.  It had taken her into a tough spot between two trees into deeper water.  It was that or kill the steelie.  We were majorly disappointed, but soon after we had another strike, then we gave up the spot to a Andy and his friend.  We had our fun, so why not share it.

It wasn't till the five o'clock hour that I had tied into another steelie, but it made short work of me and the line went slack.  Damn it!  Oh well.  What were the taking this weekend you ask.  Pretty much the everything seem to be on yarn flies this time.  Earlier in the afternoon I pulled a bone headed move and walked off the plank bridge at one parking lot as I wasn't paying attention at all to where I was walking.  Now I have a nasty rug burn on my elbow from it as well as both my knees now sore and bruised.  Beautifull, that will match perfectly with the popped blister on my toe and broken eye glasses. 

The evening was crazy with everyone back at the cabin, and with the addition of several visitors, there was a lot of excitement and conversations.  Chef Tony had been working on Supper since noon according to Rick and Rayanne, and it was pretty much the full Thanksgiving spread.  When I went to drop Jen off at the motel before going over to the Kro, I bumped into Peter. We shot the breeze for a bit, and shared the news of our groups general lack of success.  I also gave him some of my "secret" colored yarn for him to tie up some egg flies with, and wished him luck for the next days fishing.

I haven't heard yet how the fishing went for the gang on Sunday, but look forward to hopefully hearing some good news at this weeks club meeting.

Next up, a three day weekend on the river is coming up and hopefully some more stories to share.  Oh, and did I mention that a couple weeks ago that I caught a muskie on a fly rod?  Well, I did!!

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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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A UV parachute midge

Last year on the Big Horn River, there was a hatch we hadn't come across before that the trout were keyed in on.  After looking at a few, I had to come up with something that night that would come close.  Below is what we came up with at trout camp.

Hook: TMC 100 size 18 - 20
Thread: black
Body/tail: black Ultra micro-chenille
Parachute: 4 strands of Wapsi Tan UV Krystal Flash and black black polypropylene floating yarn, with three or four wraps of a light dun dry fly feather.
FYI: The over all length of this fly from tail to eye is about a half an inch.

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Ray Charles

In preparation for my trip to the Big Horn River that is coming soon, I tied up three different colors (orange, natural, and tan) of Ray Charles in two different sizes (#14 and #16) on a TMC 3761 hook today.

The first two pictures were taken with my 18-55mm Nikkor lens.  The second two pictures were taken with a lens that is on loan to me, which is an older fully manual Micro-Nikkor 105mm lens.  I love how detailed the ribbing is, especially since the x-small ribbing is so very thin to the naked eye.  Enjoy!

Hook: 3761
Tail: tan hen fibers
Body: Ostrich herl
Ribbing: red (x-small) wire for some, and for the others copper (small) wire
Shell back: mylar tinsel, Pearl
Thread: dark red

 

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Jen catches her first trout of the season.

About a month back, Jen and I made plans to go fishing with a friend of ours, Mister Hinz.  It's been years since we'd gone out fishing together, but we were determined to fix that.  And we did.  Last weekend, everything went as planned and Friday after work, we were on the road to another adventure. 

We got into town and checked in at the motel, where I got a quick run down on the fishing reports of the day (which were promising), and got the room number of where Mister Hinz was staying for the weekend.  The three of us hooked up in the parking lot, and Mister Hinz had told us that he had already hit a spot and caught a couple of trout before we got there. 

Excited to hear more, we headed off to the local burger joint for supper and to hear more about the local waters of the area.  Typical of rural trout country, the establishment was adorned with local taxidermy of fish, furry things, and fowl.  This was just what the doctor ordered!

Saturday morning after breakfast we headed to our first stop, changed into waders for the day, and grabbed our 4wt rods.  I had brought with me my new bamboo rod that I bought the weekend before at a very good price that I couldn't pass up.  A 2 piece, 7' 4wt, with two tips made by Steve Pennington.  We set Jen up in a nice area that had some fish occasionally breaking the surface here and there, but nothing  too consistent.  She fished for awhile and then we had her switch to a rod that was set up a little differently.  It didn't take long and she was getting some action.  After a few "practice" sets thanks to the playful trout, Jen caught her first brown trout of the season.  It was a blast to watch, as she was really excited while she was trying to land him.  Her smile was huge, and now she could relax a little about the rest of the season.  Mister Hinz popped a beer and I lit a cigar in celebration of her victory.  We have confidence that eventually Jen will develop her own sinful victory dance, but until then we've got her covered. 

She caught a couple more, and then finally I couldn't refrain from trying my hand at a trout I had been watching downstream of her this whole time.  I tried my best sight fishing for the one nice sized trout, but after many last second refusals and several different flies, we moved on to another spot. 

Contrary to all the grim weather reports of rain and wind, it was a blue bird day with very comfortable temps.  In fact the whole weekend had great weather, we really lucked out.  We jumped from spot to spot, occasionally getting in the truck and moving to other sections to try out.  As our streak would have it, there were once again lots of various mayflies popping throughout the day, and the trout would have very little to do with taking them off the surface.  They were keyed in on emergers, and thus most of the fish caught were on nymphs and midges in the size range of 18 to 22.  I was really excited to catch several browns on one of my newer variations of the old zebra midge.  This one had a little flare and an additional twist to it.  I'll keep that pattern a secret for just a while longer. 

When the day was done, we had all caught several trout, and they all were scrappy fighters.  We had a lot of fun.  We also tried something new that I heard about and never done before, which was we did a rotation so that only one person was fishing at a time.  And we stuck to that most of the time.  It made it fun by keeping us close together and we all felt that we were a part of each take, miss, and landed fish.

We ended the day back at the same burger place were visited the night before to crush the well deserved appetite. Then went back to the hotel where Mister Hinz and I had a few refreshments and looked at a lot of fish porn that was on his digital camera from his past several trips of the year. 

It was a great April Easter weekend and I am pumped to get back out on the river for more fun.

Two soft-hackle wet fly patterns

Yesterday, while milling about in my fly tying room, I came across a scrap of paper with my chicken scratches and a crappy fly drawing on it.  The chicken scratches turned out to be a materials list for a fly pattern that someone at some point must have given me.  After doing a little research, the fly is a "classic soft-hackle" from way back before my time.  It is similar to a fly known as a "Blue & Black wet fly" even though there is nothing blue in it.  One deviation from the classical pattern is that I used a wire rib instead of tinsel, and I'm okay with that. I think it the would not have been as sleek looking and not every fly needs "flare."  If I were to tie some with tinsel, I would go all out and use either the silver holographic or red holographic that I have laying around.  The other deviation is that the one I tied here, didn't have the Golden Pheasant Tippet tail.

Hook: TMC 200, #12 - #16

Thread: Red Uni-thread 8/0

Rib: copper wire (small)

Body: Black dubbing

Hackle: Black Coq De Leon (I’m sure any black hen feather would suffice)

Note: I took the extra time to spruce up the fly by applying a coat of Sally Hanson’s “Wet & Wild” red nail polish on the thread head. Once it dried, I applied two coats of clear Sally Hanson’s nail polish.

The next fly I tied was based on the previous one and similar to the "Blue & Black wet fly," but I modified it so as to incorporate some of the new Golden Pheasant Tippet that I got for Christmas from Mrs. Critter. The Golden Pheasant Tippet was listed in the Black & Blue pattern.  I also substituted the black hackle for a Brown Speckled hackle.  I am sure if I researched a bit, that both flies have have a name.

Hook: TMC 200, #12 - #16

Thread: Red Uni-thread 8/0

Tail: Golden Pheasant Tippet

Rib: copper wire (small)

Body: Black dubbing

Hackle: Brown Speckled Coq De Leon (or other brown speckled hen feather)

Note: I spruced the head of the fly with the same steps as the previous fly.

I have not fished either of these patterns, but I tied up a dozen of them in two different sizes and I look forward to trying them out this spring.

Skinny Nelson

The Skinny Nelson

Hook: TMC 200R #20
Body: Black 8/0 thread
Rib: silver wire (small)
Thorax: two strands of peacock herl
Shell back: Pheasant tail
Tail: Pheasant tail

Griffiths Gnats

Tonight I noticed that I only had bigger Griffiths gnats that survived last trout season, so I tied up a dozen size 22's to fill that void.

Hook: TMC 100 size 22
Thread: 8/0 Black Uni-thread
Body: Ice Dub Peacock black
Hackle: Grizzley
Post: Black 'Float-Vis' (a high float material to help see the little bugger at dusk)

"Craft" project

So for lack of a better title, I have been working on a "craft" project the past couple of nights.  With inspiration from a previous post showing a picture I had taken of a fly I tied, it hit me that I could do better.  And since I had all the camera equipment to make that possible, I set out to see what others do.

I surfed and surfed and saw some themes of how people set up to take good pictures of flies and I built my own "portable studio."  The total cost of this project for me was $0.00.  I just happen to have all the crap crafty stuff I needed around the house to make this thing.

I grabbed a mid sized cardboard box and mutilated it with a razor.  The idea was that the object inside the box would be lit up by lights outside the box, hence the holes on the opposite sides and the top.

Then, I added the "deluxe" option to this project which was adding a piece of Velcro to the back of the box and to the back of various colored file folders.

To the bottom of the box I taped in some white ink jet glossy photo paper to reflect light back up to the bottom side of the fly.

I re-enforced the box with packaging tape and then covered the openings with two layers of that gifty tissue paper stuff.  Here now, is the set up.  The camera is a good distance away because the lense I am using is the Nikkor 70-300 with the Macro option.  So, unlike a normal macro lense, I needed a little distance before the vise and fly where in focus.

The other thing you will notice is the vice is in front of the box instead of inside it.  After a couple of hours of messing around with different positions of the flash and trying to get it to work with the slave flash, I had to change tactics.  I wasn't getting good lighting, or when I did a huge shadow would be cast upon the background making for a serious distraction.

Once I brought it out in front of the box, the shadow issue disappeared and I could adequately light the fly enough for a descent picture that could go along with a pattern description.  It's obvious that I'm no Jim Schollmeyer, but I have to start somewhere.

So here are some of the pictures that I did while playing around with this project.

 

 

 

A good weekend

Friday night Jen and I had a dinner date with Ben and Amy at a little Russian Restaurant called Moscow on the Hill.  It was pretty fun, the foods were good, the staff was fast, and several vodka shots tastings were had.  They had more choices of vodkas and specialty drinks then there are pine needles on a tree.  My main entree was a pork dish with apples and almonds inside it, and it was very flavorful.  Jen ordered a salmon fillet with dumplings on the side.  She raved about the dumplings.  I tasted the salmon and thought it was the best I'd ever had in the Midwest.  The appetizer was very good as well, it was a smorgasbord of things, and surprisingly, we all were digging the beat salad the most.  I' would definitely do it again.

Saturday morning Jen and I ran around picking up the house a little, wrapping presents, and last minute shopping.  Ben stopped over after his shopping was done for the day, and we set up to tie flies around the kitchen table for the next four hours.  We did take a brief break with a quick visit to the Fly Angler down the road, as I needed some more hooks and beads for the pattern I was tying.  We just plain enjoyed the day, a couple of cocktails (our friends bourbon, spiced rum, and crown paid us a visit), tied a few flies, had Christmas music on in the background.  Later on in the evening I did some consolidating of my many random post it notes listing flies to tie and made a consolidated list that was more manageable to read then my various chicken scratches on yellow squares.  Overall, I'd call that a good day.

Sunday we didn't leave the house.  I made a hearty breakfast, we paid some bills, spent some time  on both the wisflyboard and then on the Flytyingforum websites, opened our stocking stuffer gifts to each other, and then I was back to the fly tying bench with football on in the background and VH1's top 40 videos of the year.  Inspired by a fly pattern I saw online today and by the theme of the flies I'd been tying the past week or so, I came up with a neat pattern.

Hook:  TMC 3761 #12
Thread: 8/0 Olive Uni-Thread
Tail/shuck: 2 strands of pearl accent flashabou
Body: Ultra-wire green (size brassie) and Ultra-wire copper (size medium)
Thorax: Black UV Ice Dubbing
Hackle: Hen English soft hackle