Three-day Fall Trip #1 (Oct. 10-12)

I headed up to Peters cabin after class finished up, arriving a little after midnight.

The fall colors were beautiful and we were in mostly sunny with 60's and 70's for temperature.  There were a lot of people out fishing every day.  Some were grouse and woodcock hunters who said it was too warm to hunt their dogs, so they decided to go fishing instead.  Looking at the falling temp's in the forecast this week, that shouldn't be a repeat occurrence.

Thursday-Muskies

Fished for muskies with Peter and Wendy on the Flambeau

I hooked two but didn't get to fight them very long before losing them.

Headed up to the Brule motel, fished for steelhead.

Friday-Steelhead

1st day Jen caught a brookie on an egg fly and I caught a brown on  a nymph.  We ran into Peter who had some luck catching a couple steelhead.  He had to bug out back to his cabin as he was going to guide a couple of people over the next two days.

Met up with several of my St. Paul Fly Tier's at the Kro-bar who were up for our annual Steelhead outing.

Saturday-Steelhead

2nd day, I caught two steelhead.  

Ed caught his 1st steelhead about midday.

Overall, it seemed that the fishing was not on fire, but it didn't totally suck either.

We headed for home Saturday evening so that I could spend Sunday doing schoolwork and incubating a crappy head cold that I have the pleasure of  dealing with now.  :)

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Big Horn "Plan B" 2013

After the deception, lies, and fleecing of America by that little rodent who goes by the name of Punxsutawney Phil (I'll call him Punky for short).  It seems that Punky has finally unleashed Spring upon us after all his tom-foolery and media shenanigans.  That rodent really needs a new agent, anyways I am watching the feet of snow melt down to inches and walking around creeks of snow-melt in the street and driveway to get the mail while wondering if I should take my motorcycle out of storage this week.  Spring is here. 

 

I will not be joining my buddies this Spring for the annual Big Horn river midge trip due to conflicts with school.  However, that does not mean that the Big Horn river or the infamous Cottonwood Camp will elude me.  Nope, it just means that I jump on an alternative opportunity that should be just as fun and adventurous.

 

This year, over my summer break I'll be heading out on a trip with the guys from The Fly Angler to Montana to fish the Hopper Hatch (or whatever else the trout may be feasting on at the time).  Plans are loose at the moment, but that will remedy itself as we get closer to August.  So far, I know I am going, I have the vacation approved by the bosses, and I'll be floating with Peter and Doug.  Heck, that's a pretty good  "plan b" for me.  :) 

 

Now, where did I put my cigar lighters, wading boots, turkey calls, motorcycle helmets, homework notes, and........or maybe I'll jus take a quick nap.

 

Wishing you a genuinely Happy Easter weekend.

 

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Fly Fishing Expo 2013

As many of you know this weekend the Tom Helgeson's Great Waters Fly Fishing Expo is taking place.  And holding true to tradition, the past couple of days has been full of fly fishing vendors, presentations, reunions with old friends, and meeting potential new friends.  

This year a met a couple of budding fly tier's, I should say they are already great even if their feet don't quit make it the floor as they are tying in their chairs.  Also there are three representatives (one from Grand Marie, MN, one from Columbus, OH, an one from Colorado) here talking about the latest buzz in the industry, Tenkara fly fishing.  

I didn't see a casting pond this year, but there were two different areas where you could shake a stick to convince you to just buy it, or you can work on casting with the FFF peeps to get rid of some of those bad habits.

So far I scored on a cool rod rack, a funky fish art coffee mug, and a nice brown furnace dry fly cape.  I also donated a little bit to the Project Healing Waters supporting wounded veterans who fly fish and bought a raffle ticket from Twin Cities Trout Unlimited chapter for a bamboo rod made by the hands of the illustrious Dave Norling.

I'm finishing up breakfast right now and am on my over for the final day of fun and tying flies for people on Fly Tier's Row.  

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Tenkara Presentation Delayed

Tenkarausa©

Tonight Sensei Eric and myself (Tenkara kid) were scheduled to give a presentation to our fly fishing club on Tenkara style fishing.  We had gadgets, rods, flies, and a power point presentation all set up to go.  But we got bumped out of our meeting room at Schroeder's by some other riffraff group that went by the St. Paul Winter Carnival planners or something.  So our presentation has been rescheduled for next month.

Regardless, it was good to see the guys and finally meet Eric's very nice wife.  In fly tier's fashion, we made due and quickly conducted a business meeting in the bar in preparation of the upcoming Great Waters Fly Fishing Expo in two weeks. Minutes were taken down on a napkin and then we were back to swapping stories and generally enjoying not being trapped our houses.

I'm looking forward to another great fishing season and with Wisconsin C&R open, I wish you all the best for in your fishing adventures and hope to see you at the Expo!

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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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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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2012 trout fishing practice run.

First time out with the fly rod for this year and it went pretty well.  Had breakfast in River Falls at the South Fork Cafe with a pretty good sized group of the club members of the Saint Paul Fly Tiers and then left for fishing from there.  The sun was out, snow was melting, I'm guessing we were in the mid 50's for air temperature, spring was definitely in the air.

Based on information from the day before, our little sub-group of the club ventured over to the Rush.   We explored several bridges only to find that the river was blown out.  Total Chocolate milk. 

Without getting into all the drama this may have entailed, and losing the Canadian....again, we went back to the Kinni and rigged up.  Oh, and I found out that what Mother Feiker calls the Pig Farm, didn't have any pigs.  Yeah, I gave him a lot grief on that one.  Seriously, only my friends would name something after something that's not what it is.

Anyway, the Kinni was stained, but fishable.  We all caught fish, using wets and nymphs.  Small black Stone flies and midges were present, but there was no dry fly action on our stretch.  Bummer. 

The added bonus to being out on the river this beautiful spring day after being cooped up for four months was that I got to fish with my newest bamboo fly rod that Steve Yasgur had built for me.  It was a lot of fun, but I need a couple more outings with it to be thoroughly sure of it's fun factor.  ;) 

That's it, that's all I got for you for this report.

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Reminders...

After spending several hours in the initial attempt to straighten out the Fly-tying/man-room last night, and waking up to fresh snow this morning I definitely have trout on my mind.  So I just thought I would send out a post with a couple of reminders.

Fly Tying related:

As winter sets in and we restock our fly boxes, keep in mind that the St. Paul Fly Tier's meet every week on Thursday nights at Schroeder's Bar & Grill in St. Paul.  It's great way to get out of the house, socialize, and keep you motivated in your fly tying.

The Fly Angler has a variety of Tying Classes you can sign up for during the winter months to develop those skills of yours.  They also have been hosting an "open tying" night once a month where you can bring your own vice and materials to tie whatever you want in the company of other like minded fisherman.  And if you forget something, they probably can sell ya whatcha need right there. 

Fishing related:

If you are getting twitchy, there's always a trip down to Iowa where the fishing season never closes.  Otherwise the MN Winter catch-and-release season opens to a select number of rivers on January 1st.

For the love of the trout:

I know the past couple of years have had a bumpy road financially for the nation, but don't take it out on the trout.  Personally, my donations this year have been significantly less then in years past however they have been more strategically picked.  So I limited myself to only three or four organizations/causes rather then a dozen that were a little lower on my social responsibility radar.   

1) December 8th, 2011 from 6-10pm is the Annual Holiday Dinner and Fund Raising Banquet for the Kiap-Tu-Wish chapter of Trout unlimited.  Buy tickets in advance and save a few dollars so that you can spend it on the silent auction!  This can be an excellent opportunity to pick up a Christmas gift for that special fly fisherman on your list.  Hope to see you there!

2) February 11th, 2012 is the Annual fund raising event for the Twin Cities chapter of Trout Unlimited.  This has been a a great "Date Night" in years past for my wife and I, loaded with tons of energy, excitement and friends while donating to a good organization.  And who knows, maybe you''ll find a unique Valentines gift for the loved one in your life.

Fall day on the Namekagon

Consider supporting a newer organization that has been in the works since this summer called the Namekagon River Partnership.  Their mission is to celebrate and conserve the cold water fishery of the upper Namekagon River.  This group is made up of citizens, business owners, and government conservation entities, and non-profit organizations.  I wrote a check out this morning to them in hopes it will help the Partnership pave their way in protecting this great Wisconsin resource.  If you've never fished it, you are missing out on one hell of a great north woods experience.

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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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Fall fishing, closing one season and starting another!

Brookies, Browns, Muskies, and Steelhead, Oh My!

Wednesday:

I left early morning and headed southeast to Vernon county to close out the inland trout season.  There was much uncertainty the night before at the Fly Angler trying to decide where to go since so many rivers have been impacted with all the rain, but I rolled my dice to see what I would find.  I rolled into Viroqua, WI and headed straight to the Driftless Angler fly shop for some local intel.  The guy at the shop was way helpful with where to go, where to avoid, and what the hot flies were.  Turns out the rivers North of town were cloudy to blown-out and the rivers south of town were clearing up really well. 

A total of twenty minutes spent at the shop and I was out the door to my first destination where I rigged up my 4wt bamboo rod for the occasion.  That day, with no exageration, I caught close to fifty brookies and browns.  Mostly all the fish were caught on nymphs.  The 15-20 wind pretty much blew out the Blue Wing Olives that were around and killed any hopes for a little dry fly action.  There was one rocket of a trout that shot out for the ant pattern I threw.  He managed to take my line over a big branch sticking out of the water, so when I crossed the stream to "save the trout" I blew a perfectly nice pool only to find that the trout attached my hook to the branch and had left before I got there.  The tricky little bastard conned me.  So not only was he not there to save, but now I had to wait a while for the fish to return to the pool.

At the end of the day, I set up camp and then went to town for a great German beer at Chilito Lindo, the local Mexican restaurant, run by a frazzled Asian girl.  I know, odd three-way combination, but it all seemed to work out okay.  Especially since my order was messed up the least by the cooks.  They must have been new.  I returned to camp shortly after and fell asleep to the sound of the Amish horse and buggy traffic driving through town near the campground.

Thursday:

I woke up in the tent to mid 30's accompanied by pretty damp surroundings.  Nice!  I packed up the site then made breakfast of oatmeal and peanut butter sandwich in make-shift cheap plastic water bottle.  That didn't go too well, I don't recommend making oatmeal in cheap bottles.  It kinda shriveled up and didn't mix as well as I thought it would.  Lesson learned I guess.  Oh and the cheap spoons I commandeered the night before from the gas station doesn't work too hot either when they were heated up by the boiling water.

Anyway, I found and paid the nice lady for using the campground and for my new membership to the West Fork Sportsman's Club.  After shooting the breeze with her for a bit I headed fifteen minutes West to fish, where I caught a really beautiful fall brookie that made my trip that measured twelve inches in a very hard place to fish with crystal clear water on a pink squirrel.

I moved on to another river 45 minutes East towards home and had a blast catching a bunch of browns, picking one to two fish out of a pocket of water, then moving up river to the next pocket for one to two more.  I did this pattern of "run-n-gun" a good ways up the river till evening.  When I was at the bridge earlier deciding whether to fish up stream or down stream, I noticed two signs down stream.  The one closest to me stating that it was open to the public for fishing, and the one back further stating "Beware of Bull."  Some land owner had a sick sense of humor.  Since I wasn't armed with a meat grinder or hamburger bun for a Bull-encounter, I thought it best to fish the other side of the bridge upstream.  I jetted home at the end of the day completely happy.   I stopped in for dinner at the St. Paul Fly Tier's meeting at Schroeder's Bar & Grill and reported the great fishing I had enjoyed to some buddies.

Friday: 

After a less then satisfying day at work, I headed up to Peters cabin in Northern Wisconsin

met up within ten minutes of his arrival, we settled in, set up our fly tying vises and cocktails and tied Steelhead flies until late while catching up and swapping stories.

Saturday:

Peter made a great fisherman's breakfast with the added bonus of some good tea that I brewed up.  We were out the door an hour later to our meeting point with Wendy from the Hayward Fly Fishing Company for a day on the Flambeau River chasing muskies.

Peter spent a little time with his special technique of casting flies in the trees, but that didn't slow him down from catching three muskies.  Must be some secret there I don't yet understand.  I caught my first muskie ever.  It was about 32" on a 9wt rod with a big 6" black and orange puglisi fly.  I got to keep the fly in honor of the occasion too!  It was a fun fight and I could hardly believe that it was finally going to happen.  The next thing I knew we had it in the net in the boat and my camera was Peters hands.  Way cool!  The weather conditions were pretty unstable, there were spurts of rain and heavier wind gusts with the sun shining at the same time for most of the day.  Wendy is always fun to spend a day with, and did I mention that I caught my first muskie?!

We returned back to the cabin to pack up the muskie stuff that we used to catch my first muskie, then I converted some stuff over to for Sundays fishing trip to the Brule River for Steelhead.  Once that was done, we celebrated at the local supper club with some cocktails, local micro brews (appropriately named "Mouthy Muskie Light", and the "Crappie Flopper"), animated discussion of various subjects, including each of us writing down on napkins the species of fish we had caught this season.  It was a fun mojo thing.  Peter kinda kicked my ass in that department as my count was 13 different species this year and his count was 23 or 24 species.  For the record though, he did have a minnow marked down on his list.

We moved on back to the cabin and with a little inspiration from our celebrating, some "interesting" flies were tied and then we talked ourselves into retiring for the evening so that we would be ready for more fishing the next day.  And maybe spend some time dreaming of the Muskie that I caught.

Sunday:

With the fading smell of the muskie slime on my hands from my first muskie, we packed our stuff up and closed the cabin down as we were not returning.  We arrived in Brule, WI where we stopped first to look at a potential fishing cabin in town that was listed at an attractive enough price for me to actually think about it seriously.  It could pass for a nice fishing cabin, but it is in the middle of town, which could be both good and not so good.  After a quick inspection we headed to the river to try our luck fishing.

The morning started out slow, but it was beautiful.  We had seen a ton of turkeys everywhere we drove over the past two days and the fall colors were putting on a show for us.  It was perfect fall weather in Wisconsin.  We decided to drive to a different location which proved to be the right thing to do.  Peter landed a 22" chrome Steelhead mid morning on a caddis nymph and I had missed my first take of the season, which made me confident that I was doing something right and that they were in there.

The very few people we ran into said they hadn't had any luck, which wasn't encouraging, but

in the last hour of light of the day on the third stretch of the Brule further down river, I "got on the dance floor" as Peter put it.  I briefly caught and fought a Steelhead long enough for it to launch clear out of the river and spit my fly back at me. I am pretty sure he stuck up his middle fin at me too while laughing at me.  And that was pretty much the end of the action for the day.  We changed out of our waders at the local gas station and headed for home very happy with ourselves.

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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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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. 

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!

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.