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.

www.critters-corner.com

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

 

www.critters-corner.com

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.

The last four days was kind of like Christmas for me.

The last four days of the Great Waters Expo was kind of like Christmas for me.
To keep things from getting long winded on this post, I will just note my highlights from the week, so as to not bore ya too much.  So hang on and here we go!

A year ago, at the expo I was not really enjoying it as much as I could have.  With the weight of having been informed that my department was being off-shored and I was to be out of a job soon, having my DVD player stolen at the expo, and wrapping up all the mess that was involved in replacing the engine in my truck, I was having a serious bad streak that was beating me down.

With that in mind, we flash forward a year for the 2010 expo, I am in a different place.  A happier and more appreciative place.
 
Thursday:

• Thursday night at the club, we had a great presentation by Jeff "Bear" Andrews from Michigan on fly fishing for Labrador Brookies.  The photos and the stories had me dreaming of going on such an adventure.  In support of Bear (and my want for a fresh lesson) I purchased one of his fly tying DVD's on tying trout flies.
• Thanks to Andy Fiskness's hard work, we also got our hats and clothing back that night with the new club logo embroidered on them so that we would have them for the expo.

Friday:

• Greg Meyer gave me a nice display piece of driftwood that I can use to display my flies on when I do tying demonstrations.  It's very cool!
• Mark Tibbetts brought his 105mm lens for me to use to see if I like the results in regards to my macro fly photography.  I can't wait to set up Critters Fly Studio and start snapping a few pictures to see what happens!
• The Fly Tiers gang had supper at a nice Italian restaurant, called Biaggi's, that was way too good and way too filling and way nice atmosphere.  I HIGHLY recommend it as a must try for anyone needing a night out.

Saturday:

• I scored three dry fly capes for the price of two.  I only intend on keeping one for myself, and donating the other two as raffle items for our club presentations.
• Then, from the chicken pimp, I scored four nice sections of cock feathers, each different colors, for use as hackle that will be suitable for 18 - 24 flies, along with two hen necks.
• My buddy Jeff Kennedy and artist, came up to me on Saturday morning as I was set up doing some fly tying demonstrations and asked for one of my flies, so I gave him one of my Spruce streamer flies and he headed back to his booth to paint it.  He painted up a very nice water color portrait of it then returned the fly to me along with the water color painting.  I was very shocked and VERY grateful for the gift.  I have purchased some prints of his work in the past along with his recent book, Drawing Flies 365, and to have an original painted by Jeff of a fly tied by me...well that's something I just can't describe in words.  Wow.
• I found a nicely made 4wt Pennington bamboo fly rod that felt very good and is going to work very nicely on about half a dozen streams I know.  Not to mention that both Steve Pennington and his wife were extremely nice and wonderful to talk to and talked a little about his home waters in Northeastern Iowa.  The feel was right, the price was right, and now, I am in need to find the right reel for it since I bought it home.
• Another bonus was that I had several opportunities to socialize a bit more with another tier, Bill Heckel, whose flies and personality I really admire.  A Really nice guy, with some illustrative and funny stories involving his friends Lefty Kreh and Dave Whitlock.  He also was nice enough to tutor me on a technique to improve a problem I was having with the wings of a fly I was struggling with, which worked instantly to improve the quality of the flies I that I was tying at the show. 

Sunday:

• We started the day with breakfast at the french restaurant across the street.  I normally get their awesome eggs Benedict, but this year I chose to deviate from the tradition and ordered their French Crepes made with salmon and dill.  It was very good, but something that would have made a better dinner then a breakfast as it gave me strong salmon breath.  I'd do it again as there was no need for lunch after that.
• I was able to take a breath from the show and go to two hour-long seminars.  One on fishing the Timber Coulee, a river I want to get to know more about since my last encounter where I had an epic battle of man vs. trout, and the trout won.  The other seminar was actually not a seminar but a open forum workshop for those looking for help with writing and publishing.  I found it very interesting and wished that we could have had an additional hour for the discussion to continue.

So that was my weekend in a nutshell.  I hope everyone that attended had a great time, it appeared that everyone from the club that was volunteering was having a good time.  I think this was the first year that I wished that the expo would have gone on for one more day.  Usually I am completly worn out, this time, I was energized by it all.   

So as promised, I won't get into all the other sub-stories to keep this post short. Time to kick off the socks and grab a beer.

Team Scandinavian Scores Gold!

Last night I got a call from my buddy, Canadian-Ben (SWE) to see if I wanted to go fishing Sunday in spite of all the bad reports about how the rivers were blown out by mid-week.  He was watching the flow plummet back to normal and the weather forecast was optimistic.  I was easily swayed since I had my heart set on fishing this weekend since being skunked last Monday.  We set a time to meet at his place for breakfast, and spent the next 20 minutes getting my stuff together for the trip.

The alarm went off at 6am this morning, I was out the door by 6:30am.  I got to Ben's place, it was still dark thanks to the daylight savings time switchover, and he made a great breakfast.  We headed out and found our way to the riverside by 8:30am.

The fog had lifted, the sky was overcast, and the water was very cold.  We headed to a favorite spot of Ben's and to assure me that there were trout here, he caught and landed a nice buttery Brown trout to show me.  That was very kind of him, but now Team Sweden was ahead of Team Norway in the medal count thanks to a size 20 brassie.  The water was near its previous flow from a week ago and was somewhat stained, but it had gradually got better as the day progressed.  We fished awhile until we thought we pretty much checked out all the possible feeding lanes, then headed back to the car to move on to other possibilities in warmer water.

Along the way, we stopped in at Lund's so that I could check out the fabled Hardware store that had fly fishing stuff that I had heard about over the years.  That was interesting, they definitely had a large fly assortment.  It was still kind of weird to go into a hardware store and see Filson clothes, Fish Pond fly vests, echo rods, and Dr. Slick tools.  I did my obligatory purchase of some flies, as I try to do at all "normal" fly shops that I have visited and we continued on our way to fish some more.

A short walk later we were back in the water, and it wasn't long before Team Norway (that's me) evened up the Medal count with a respectable Brown trout on one of my double secret zebra midge variations, in a size 22.  We made a few more casts and then decided to leap-frog the guys below.  There was a light, but steady hatch all day of little black stone flies as shown in the picture above, running about size 12 to 8 and the fish were not taking them on the surface.

We hit here and there and eventually ran into, Team Sunshine.  Team Sunshine comprised Sid, Joe, and Tom from our fly tiers club.  When we came up to them, Sid and Joe were relaxing and enjoying all 68 degrees of sunshine and a cigar, with Tom just down around the bend.  For those wanting to know, Team Sunshine had no medals earned at this point.  We chatted a bit and continued on our trek.  The air temperature had risen quickly, and all the clouds had left for the day.   It was a nice day, and that sentiment was echoed by the other dozen or so fly fisherman that we came across who all had been unsuccessful.  I have to suspect that it was because a lot of them were just getting on the water when the sun had come out instead of fishing the "better" overcast weather earlier in the day.

So, Team Norway and Team Sweden decided to form alliances to ramp up our medal count and we formed Team Scandinavian.  Which just really meant that we had enjoyed our time out on the water, and that the we needed to hold a celebratory feast at a nearby respectable Wisconsin beer burger joint Ben knew of.  We spent a good 6 hours in the cold water, and we had "earned" it.  It was nice way to wrap up a day where we had both got our first trout of the 2010 season on what was a to be considered a tough day of fishing as far as the trout not cooperating.  For the record, the leinie's honey weiss tap beer and Spotted Cows on tap waffle fries were very good. 

WI Trout C&R Opener

Jen and I went fly fishing for trout over in Wisconsin today and we were skunked.  Which was better then yesterday when we "tried" to go fishing and every single place I knew and some new places we discovered had too many cars for any non-combat fishing.  It was more crazy then I had expected.

Today it was overcast and chili on the water, not terrible for a day off from work, but it could have been warmer or less windy.  Their was a good wind that was blowing up-river which didn't help things for a first fishing excursion of the year.  After spending so many hours on the Brule last fall, I had forgotten how skinny and clear my little local trout water is.  Wow!  Guess I am getting used to bigger waters, thanks to the Brule and Montana rivers.  The snow along the banks was also deeper and heavier then I had anticipated, but nothing to stop anyone with any decent sense of balance from getting out.  Jen used my 4wt Winston rod and I opened the season with my custom 5 weight bamboo rod hoping for some magic. 

We did run into fisherman today who said he had caught one on a #20 BWO, and the other half dozen where on a zebra midge.  We saw very few risers, but we did see some healthy brookies and browns racing up stream from us.  There was a brief hatch, but is was a sparse one, and nothing to write home about.

The lessons learned today were 1) leave a little earlier in the morning then we did to get a spot on the water, 2) my left foot of my waders has a small leak, 3) packing a lunch for the drive home would have been nice (I can only eat so many of those health food bars in one day before I getting tired of them), and 4) don't forget the cigars again (it's proving to be bad luck for me).  

Jen took a few nice pictures with her new pocket camera and all three of the ones in this post were taken by her.  She also got a small taste of how to fish dry flies, more to come on that later this season.

Updates from the frozen tundra.

I see that it has been a little while since I've posted anything so I have a little update.  This past week I was feeling a little "off" for the first half.  Good or bad, I missed out on the open-tying night at the Fly Angler and couple other opportunities the weekend before, but I got a lot of sleep and filled myself up with lots of vitamins and fluids.  And after the past three days, I think my shoulder is back in where is should be, that is to say it has stopped clicking every time I raise it up now.

I had a blast at the Thursday night fly tiers meeting.  Anderson had a weird sense of humor that night, and it was making us all laugh our asses off.  I mostly just came to socialize and had tied a couple of flies at Feiker's vise when I decided he had abandoned his tying station longer then I could bear.  So he had a couple more flies in is box when he had eventually returned with a fresh beverage in hand.

Saturday was the highlight of the week for me.  Ben, his wife Amy, and Andy all came over for a Lie-n-Tie.  We had set an additional challenge for the event in that everyone could bring beer or wine, but they all in some way had to be related to fish, fishing, or rivers.  Most of our finds were pretty tasty.  Jen and I had cleared the kitchen table and turned on the Olympics for background noise and we tied flies from 1pm to around 7pm or so.   Amy brought some delicious goodies for the event, including home-made chips in the shape of fish.  How can you go wrong with that I ask?  Well, you can't!  Jen had also prepared chili in the slow cooker for everyone to snack on as we chatted and tied flies.

Baily checked in occasionally to see what we up to and more importantly to inspect what materials we were using.  I think, after last weeks 'encounter' were she found and distributed two full packs of peacock herl throughout the house, she now has a heightened awareness of the potential play things for her amusement.  I'm just glad she didn't get into the more expensive feathers.

At the end of the day, I set up my mini-studio to photograph some of our flies that we would use for the next four months for the "Fly of the Month" patterns, and called it a night after that.  I am positive everyone had a good time and that this is something we will have to keep in mind to do again.

Photos from last weekend at the Great Waters Fly Fishing Expo - Chicago

Hey everyone, I have spent most of my day doing some quick clean up, editing the photos I took last weekend at the expo.  Because there are so many of them, I posted them to one of my online web albums, which is at Picasa.  I hope you like them.  Happy viewing!

Saturday

The show is going strong. The turn out is good, the seminars and isles are packed, there seems to be a lot of "business" transactions taking place. We also set up a tying table close to the theater which I think assisted with increasing traffic to that area of the hall. Now its time for a beer break, I mean lunch.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

last night

The show opened on time yesterday. With two presentors (Sara Sanford and Jeff "Bear" Andrews) under our belt, it looks like we have most of the bugs worked out. I took a lot of pictures with the SLR and will share some of them later.

Dinner was had at a "dry" pizza joint and was pretty ok, but not what were looking for. I feel a do over may be necessary.

Afterwards about a dozen of the usual suspects had set camp up in lounge and we enjoyed great conversations in spite of our obviously board cocktail waitress.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Friday a.m. Setup

We arrived at Pheasant run hotel west of Chicago at around 1:30am this morning. We had a couple of beers and retired at 3am.

We were up by 8am and went to the local iHop for Swedish crepes. Set up went very quickly this time and we even have audio on our dvd recorder this time. I got to say some quick hello's to some friends I hadn't seen in awhile.

Now we are kicking back with a couple of brews before the gates open.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Ready...get set...

So I stopped by the fly shop last night for a couple of items.  The boys were a blur as they were packing up stuff for the Great Waters Fly Fishing Expo in Chicago.  We are all hoping for a fun and successful weekend.  Last year we got hit with a small snow storm over Friday night through Saturday morning.  Looks like the forcast for this weekend is just cold and cloudy, I can deal with that.

The crew members "representing" our club, will be Mother Feiker, Andy, Anderson, and myself.  We'll be taking off tomorrow after work and I'm really hoping for easy traffic.  At this point, it sounds like our main duties to help Tom Helgeson out at Chicago expo will be setting up and running the "Fly tying Theater" and all the Audio/Video stuff that goes along with it,  possible assisting with the local fly Tying group(s) with the "Teach a kid to tie a Fly" program (I'll be leaving that for the others who know how to talk short-people speak), and making sure that the Audio/Video stuff works for each of the featured presenters as they swap in their own equipment.  

I'd like to give a shout out to my pops, who just had knee surgery yesterday and sounds like things went ok.  I wish him a speedy recovery!

A fly filled week.

It's been a busy week for me in Critter-world of it being the middle of winter.

Back on Tuesday night Jen and I participated in the open-tying night at the Fly Angler.  I think around ten or twelve people brought their vises and materials for their fly du jour.  Like many fly tier gatherings, the group was an eclectic bunch with varying backgrounds and specialties.  All were outgoing and very sociable and  shared stories, laughs, and even some impromptu teaching of tying tricks.  We had a great time and met a couple of people we hadn't seen before and was a great way to get out of the house.  For those who attended, there was also the added bonus of a 10% discount on fly tying materials for the night.  I'd like to give a special thanks to Mike Rolek for hosting the event, I look forward to the next open-tying night next month!

Then on Thursday the club had our annual business meeting where we elected new officers for the year, appointed volunteers for various committee chairs, and set a tentative schedule for the fly fishing outings.  The results have been updated to the Officers page of the club website for those who are curious.  My three year term as a board member has ended with the passing of the meeting, but I was elected to serve as club Treasurer for 2010 and will still be actively participating with the clubs business meetings.  Congrats to all the new Officers, and thanks to the past Officers for your contributions to the club in 2009.

On Friday night, after a long and mentally draining week at work, I had decided to do something about my frustration with not being able to remember off the top of my head, the web address to this blog.  Not a big deal for those of you who subscribe and get emails sent to you automatically.  But when trying to give it to someone who is interested, I needed an address that was easy for me to remember so that I can pass it around.  Well, I fixed that.  I bought a domain name for the year which cost me eight-whole-dollars at NameSecure.com, coincidentally the same company I use for the St. Paul Fly Tiers website that I manage.  Which I think was worth the money to squash out my frustration and embarrassment when people asked about my blog and I got the deer in the headlights look when trying to recall the URL.  People can still find me with the current/old address, but now I can be found at: critters-corner.com  and be redirected here.  Much MUCH easier than the http://critter-critterscorner.blogspot.com/ for me to remember and for others to write down.

On Saturday, I was able to finally attend the Screaming Chicken's annual Lie-N-Tie after several years of missing out for various reasons.  I had set this in my schedule back in early December, and am very glad I did.  We had a good sized group attend, many of them were members of the Wis Fly board, so I knew most of them, if not by face, then by their on-line aliases.  So it was good to connect the names with the faces.  The Screaming Chicken was a very nice gentleman who had a great "Man-Cave" for the event which was very cozy and visually stimulating.  We had five tables of fly tiers in the middle of a large wood heated building, surrounded by tons and tons of hand made bows, arrows, Native American style painted jaws and skulls, and leather & bead garments.  It was the Possum lodge meets fly fishing meets the Anchor meets Native American archery.  Stuffed animals such as raccoons, deer, and a full size standing black bear looking over us.  Then there was the tom cat who checked each of us out and returned to playing with one of the fly tiers squirrel tail it was so enamored with.  While tying we had the chickens and very vocal turkeys outside letting us know they were there too.  I have to say, I loved it all.  And of course the most memorable thing to me was the old Herters vise that one of the grand kids of Mr. Screaming chicken was tying on.  I think it was an early model as it looked to weigh a good ten pounds and of old-school metal work.  I got a little crap from the gang for tying so many flies this time and not chatting as much as I normally do.  I didn't think I was too quiet, I was just "multi-tasking" more than usual as I really need to get my fly boxes refilled for this spring.

Program Night at the club house: Scott Thorpe on Steelhead

Last night, we had a great guest who did a steelhead presentation, his name was Scott Thorpe.  He started with a brief but cool video of the Talaheim Lodge, which he guides for in Alaska and features Helicopter fly-out fishing.  When he is not guiding in Alaska, he can be found guiding in Montana, Minnesota or Wisconsin.  Initially an Architect, he left the profession four years ago to "get serious" about his passion for fishing.

Even though the roads were crappy (as my work commute was two hours to get to and from home instead of 45 minutes) we had a good size audience.  GOTTA LOVE STEELHEAD FANATICS DISREGARD FOR BAD WEATHER CONDITIONS!

Scott covered fly fishing tactics, ethics, a little history, and his favorite flies, areas along the Minnesota north shore and the Wisconsin south shore, stories from his past 40 years of chasing steelhead as a fisherman and as a guide, and the nuances of how steelhead are not trout.

It was a fun night and I walked away with a lot to think to about, as I am confident that Scott has forgotten more about fishing steel then I have learned so far.

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.