September 2013 - Tenkara in the Smokey Mountains

Went down to visit my brother in Georgetown, Kentucky for a few days.  He took us around to see several sites such as the Buffalo Trace and Wooodford distilleries, a Japanese garden, a horse retirement ranch called "Old Friends," and checked out a couple of local restaurants.  

After that we went camping in the rainy, foggy Smokey Mountain National park at the Elkmont campground which had the very loud Little River that flowed through it.  We played tourist for a couple of days checking out some of the main attractions of old churches, water falls, old mills, and cemeteries. Then I had the treat of fishing some of the rivers on the Tennessee side of the park.

The West Prong of the Little Pigeon River

Open during the day, but the Chimney Tops campground is closed at night due to the high amount of bear activity there.  I caught a few rainbow and brook trout on the Tenkara rod.  They were not big, but they were fun to catch in the scenery was great, the water cold, and very few spots taken up by other fisherman.  This river was totally designed for Tenkara fishing!

Middle Prong of the Little River

Had a little luck on this river too, it had a little less gradient to it, less big boulders, and would have been better if I had used a normal fly rod as it it was much wider than the first river. 

I didn't take any photos of the trout caught, apparently I was having too much fun catching them and forgot to snap any photo's of the little guys.

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August 2013 Recap

Greetings my friends!  I know I have been a horrible blogger this year, but my lame excuse is that I really have been a little more busy than normal since going back to school for an MBA.  With that, I plan to do a couple of posts to highlight a couple of fishing outings taken in 2013.

This spring I managed to get out and fish the Rush River a couple of times.  Nothing epic, but it was all I could squeeze in before my August vacation.

Roughing it in Montana...

In August, I had the good fortune of spending a week with Peter and Doug fishing all over Montana.  Typical of August in Montana, it was hot, dry, and lots of natural bugs everywhere.  Fires in Utah and over nearby mountains caused for awesome red sunsets and red moonrise's.  At times it looked overcast and caused mountains to be foggy due to all the smoke in the atmosphere.

Do you see the black bear?

There it is!
He visited us in the back yard and then ran up to this nearby hill.

Evening Moonrise over the Cameron Mountains

Lets get to the fishing, shall we...

Critter with a Rainbow on the Madison

Madison River

We drove straight out to the ranch house we were to stay at for a couple of days in Cameron, Montana.  At the end of our driveway was the famous Madison River.  We prepped Peters new drift boat (the "Annie B") and floated the Madison River two days in a row and caught some rainbows on Trude's and pink nymph droppers.  The fish didn't come very easily, but Doug managed to catch a whitefish.

Doug on the Beaverhead R.

Beaverhead River

We then floated the Beaverhead River, which was a very pretty little thing.  It was barely wide enough for a boat at times.  But we managed, and that included us all getting on the floor of the boat as we went under one bridge.  We caught a few rainbows and browns, and things got better when I cracked the code with the "right" hopper pattern that they would go for.  Doug was able to hook and land a whitefish.  I could spend years fishing that river and be content as it had so much character.  

Stillwater River

Stillwater River

We fished a couple of sections of this river.  One was at a landing, the other was along the property of a lodge.  The owner-operator invited us to fish his property as he didn't have any guests staying there for a few days.  Which was really nice of him, but the fishing was pretty much dead.  Peter did land a couple of trout; Doug was able to land several whitefish!

Doug's first 20" brown!

Bighorn River

We moved on to fish the Bighorn river for our remaining four days.  We stayed at the Cottonwood and hooked up with our buddies from the Fly Angler fishing crew.  Peter, Doug and I caught lots of browns and rainbows. Doug managed to find and hook more whitefish....he sure has a way with finding those things.  On the last day I believe I lost the 2nd largest fish I have ever hooked on that river.  But all was great.  At one point, on the last spot we fished on the last day, all three of us had a fish on at one time.  We had a lot fun at that spot!    

Critter's 20" Brown on the Big Horn

Peter with a beautiful brown on the Big Horn

Close-up of another gorgeous brown!

from Left to Right: Doug, Peter, and Critter

This was a great trip and I very much enjoyed our fishing team as well as the Big Horn gang that we had the privilege of hanging out with at the Cottonwood Camp for a few days.

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Planning for Montana - August 2013

The past eight months have been busy, challenging and rewarding.  I must confess, I have put on less than 300 miles on my motorcycle and only one day on the river where I guided a gal fly fishing for trout at the Casting for Recovery retreat.  So now that I have a two month break between classes, I can enjoy summer.  Which means, time to go fishing of course!  Starting off with a trip to the Big Horn River with a group of people through The Fly Angler.

I have met up with my buddies a couple of times in the past two weeks to work out a general plan of attack for our ten day vacation in Montana.  All though I have fished Montana ten years (11 if you count this one) in a row, this will only be my 2nd time fishing it in mid-summer.  

I'm excited to hit some new rivers that I have not fished before and too see Western Montana.  By the looks of it, we will be driving to Ennis.  Why is that significant?  Because it is more west than Livingston, a town that I have visited once before and fell in love with because of the feel of both the town and the beautiful scenery.

Cigars have been ordered from CI, fishing license purchased online, and I have spent the last two nights in my Man-Room and at the fly shop, fiddling with flies, sorting out rods & reels, checking equipment, and making my "List" of what to pack and in general day dreaming about whats to come.  It's been a year since I've taken more than a couple of days off and I am in need of some unwinding time.

My triad will be departing early Friday morning, on the 16th.  I'm so excited for the trip to get started!

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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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Rocky Mountain Vacation Summary (Picture Heavy)

As promised to many of you, though a little late, here is a recap of our most recent vacation, we hope you enjoy.  :)

 

 

A week ago we got back from a week vacation with Jen's family.  Troy and I rode our motorcycles out to Estes Park, Colorado while the girls rode together in the Highlander.  We left on Friday with perfect weather drove through South Dakota and arrived on Sunday afternoon to our campsite at Moraine campground in a pretty heavy rain.  It cleared up in an hour or so.  In fact pretty much every day it rained from 2pm to 4pm and was partly cloudy and pretty good the rest of the time.  For temps at the 8,000' level where the campsite was, it was mid to high 40's at night and high 70's to low 80's during the day. But pretty much every day Jen and I wore our fleece jackets as we were higher up where it was chilly and very windy a lot of the time.  At one point in the week we ran into an overlook where the ground all around us was freshly covered with sleet and snow.   

 

Monday, Jen and I went out to explore the park and found that the air was thin up there.  We really noticed it during our hikes, which surprised us since we had changed our workouts at home thinking it would help prepare us for this.  Fact is, we live at 950' in elevation, our campsite was around 8,000', and some of the spots we ended up visiting was between 12,000' to 14,000' in elevation.  We were flatlanders in foreign territory. 

 

We saw elk, lots of mule deer, big horn sheep, moose, gray jay's, fuzzy cute birds called Clark's Nutcracker, smelly llamas, the puppy-like marmots, and pikas.  I have to admit I really liked the marmots and pikas and they made me smile and laugh often.

 

We drove up Trail Ridge road is a must for anyone that goes out there.  I really enjoyed visiting the Toll Memorial Trail that is right off of the road.  There were marmots, pikas, a neat marker at the top of a bolder pile at the top of the hill, and wide open views of many mountains in all directions surrounding us.  Further up the road was the Alpine Visitor center which had a great view and the mountain side was littered with mule deer sunning themselves.

 

We hiked around Bear Lake, Sprague lake (and fished this lake too), several other hikes that led to water falls.  The major trek being up the Longs Peak Trail by Peacock pool on up to the beautiful greenish-blue Chasm Lake, where Jenny dipped her feet into the 35 degree snow melt lake.  Jordon and I went a bit further and dunked our heads in, but Andrew took the prize for stripping down to his boxers and totally jumping in.....twice.  The second time was for the photo for proof of craziness. 

 

Wednesday, Jen and I had a day fishing with a guide.  We fished the Big Thompson river, the St. Vrain river, and the Alluvial Falls where we caught brookies, browns, and Greenback Cutthroat trout.  Our luck was on Hopper and midge patterns like the mercury midge and the RS2.  Later that day is when I landed my first fish on my Tenkara rod, a 10" brookie that took a #14 Hemingway Caddis along the trail of Sprague lake.

 

The evenings were filled with family gathering around the campfire at our campsite with many conversations going on at once with suppers, munchies, cocktails, cigars, and stories to share.  We had three campsites for the thirteen of us, all in a row.  In the mornings we would wake up at sunrise and watch the deer walk among the tents while grazing.  They must have been on the Parks Payroll, as they gave us plenty of photo opportunities every morning.

 

Thursday morning Troy and Laurie headed out to Sturgis, South Dakota on the Harley where they would spend the next week of their vacation at the annual Sturgis motorcycle rally.  The rest of us broke camp Friday morning and all made our ways back to our home states of California, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.  Our 15.5 hour drive via Nebraska with the idea of making it back over two days, turned out to be a 17 hour drive straight through with a small forced break at the Perkins in Albert Lee, MN to wait a thunderstorm out that had winds reaching 55 mph.  Not the best thing to be driving through, pulling a loaded trailer late at night and having been on the road all day.  But really there was nothing between Omaha, NE and Des Moines, IA, and when we reached Des Moines I thought we could make it home with now issues.  We finally pulled in around 3am Saturday morning and immediately found the bed.  A very welcome site for our lower backs after the putting on over 1,000 miles on the motorcycle, long hikes in the mountains, sleeping on the ground all week, and of course after sitting in the truck all day for the drive home. 

 



Calypso Cascades

15 minutes earlier we had clear skies

Clark's Nutcracker

Toll Memorial Boundary Marker

face on this 30' tall boulder.

a Pika

Marmot

 


Moose

Breakfast time

Sprague Lake

Park Ranger & her 3 smelly llamas

Warning!

Chasm Lake

Silly Time!

Me with first Greenback Cutthroat

Jen with first Greenback Cutthroat

Greenback Cutthroat

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Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado

Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado...that's where we are going for a one week vacation.  Jen and I spent the whole weekend preparing for our upcoming vacation with her immediate family (about 11 of us all together). 

Jen and I plan on the usual itinerary of some fishing, some photography, some hiking, and hopefully a lot of smiles, relaxation, deepening of my zen practice, and checking out some local watering holes.  We also hope to add the greenback cutthroat to our species list, and the potential additional twist of catching some on my 13' Tenkara Ayu rod that I have recently been fishing with that I bought from Kinni Creek Outfitters.  I don't think that will be too hard, especially since Jen and I booked a 6-hour trip with a local guide from Kirk's Fly shop that was recommended to us by my fellow Tenkara buddy, Eric.

We are adding another twist to this vacation in that Jen her younger sister will be in the Highlander with all the stuff for the vacation and the brother-in- law and I will be riding separately on our motorcycles out there.  I've got a '08 Yamaha Raider 1900, and Troy has a Harley Davidson Fat Boy (96cc I think.  I'm used to metric engine sizes and not sure how that works for a Harley.  Using the Harley engine measurements, I think mine is a 113). But I digress and it doesn't really matter cause, they are cycles and we are riding.  This trip should be a a great adventure. 

Oh and another thing, about five miles away, is a small 13-acre lake I loaded with trout that I want to visit due to it's name, Sprague Lake.  Sprague is one of the six or so spellings our family has that I found while do a lot of research on Ancestry.com, and thought it would be neat to see and maybe take some photos while fishing.  The adventure starts this Friday!  We will be staying at Moraine campground, which from what I have read, is very very basic, which is the way we like it,  Perfect!

The proposed route is the most direct route, but should be a heck of a lot more scenic then going through Nebraska.  We'll be going west via I-90 and have several of us meet up in Sioux City, SD for the night.  Then continue on through the bad lands the next day towards Rapid City or Cheyenne for Saturday night, and finishing up the drive to arrive at the campsite Sunday morning-ish for check-in. 

Updates on Operation Schultz Family Vacation 2012 to be continued.

 

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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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Friday



Big Bull passing through.

Friday we had a cold front come in and we may have reached the low 70's for air temperature.  It was a little chilly.  The hatches were not going well at all and very few trout were rising.  This was not good for the dry fly head hunters.  Mother Feiker and I are thinking that we need a patch or flag to hang on our pontoons that says something along the lines of the Happy Head Hunters or Head Hunters Anonymous and have a logo with a fish head that has a bone going through its nose.  We may have been out in the sun too long, but we think it would be fun to get something made up for our dry fly sickness we had this week.  We did the ten mile float from 3-mile to Bighorn landing and only saw two fish caught all day and both were people on guide boats fishing nymphs. 

 

Pretty horse and pretend horse.

On the way down we stopped at the corral, and we were pretty much kicked out as we were waiting for a hatch to start.  We had cow, a bull, and a few horses, and a pretend horse come into our area.  One of the horses even went so far as to walk directly through the spot where the fish were, thrash around and then came back to shore.  I found it comical, except for the part when the bull got too close for my comfort trying to cross behind us on a narrow path.  And turns out that any threats made to the bull about how it would taste with A1 steak sauce are pretty much ineffective in these situations.

 

 

Horse walking through our fish.

We floated almost half way down before we even wet our lines, and then I think I only fished 20 minutes before the rain put down the only pod of rising fish that we had seen all day.  We tried fishing a little longer as the rain came down, but it was "casts of hope" rather then anything else.   

 

 

 

 

 

Cold hamburger

In addition to the rain, we had more cows crossing the water were fishing in the flat water just above the Bighorn Rapids.  We seemed to be magnets for the farm animals.  At least I think the cold water got the best of him as he let out a pretty good beller once he got the other side.  Talk about revenge is best served "cold."  It was fun to watch the sparrows.  They were out by the hundreds swooping just above the water and circling back catching something in the air.  They were doing that all day, and it was ok until we started casting, then it felt as if you had to be careful and time the casts so as to not catch one of them as they flew by.

 





Fishing dries in the rain.  "Dry or Die!"

That night we got back to camp and Thor had made an awesome Pheasant dinner with wild rice.  Jim, and the normal crew as well as Kevin (one of the local guides) all feasted on this 5 star meal.  And then it turned out to be a good night for drinks, cigars, and story telling.  Not a bad way to end the day despite the fishless day.



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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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