New Year, New Blog

Well we're pretty close to the new year-- as I'm typing this my clock says 10:56 and I've thoroughly enjoyed this new years eve.  It's downright frigid outside and I don't regret having done nothing but sit in my warm house sipping cheap wine and eating cheap chinese take-out.

And to be honest I'm excited that I finally got my ass in gear and developed a new blog- here she is:

THE HADDIS CATCH

As exciting as new changes are, it's been bittersweet leaving the reno trout envy world and, quite literally, testing new waters here in the Northwest.  It might sound a bit ridiculous but it felt like the end of what I thought was an exciting era-- an end which really hit me hard when I read about the Reno Fly Shop closing it's doors.  I'm unbelievably saddened by it.  Dave Stanley-- if you're reading this-- know that there are many like myself that learned to fly fish almost purely by hanging out at your shop, and that knowledge is invaluable as this sport is what mysteriously keeps me sane.  I wish you well wherever life takes you next.  

The same week I heard about the Reno Fly Shop, I changed out my nevada license plates for  oregon ones -- leaving me with a nice bit of aluminum for the wall by my fly tying desk.  One that will remind me of many good days on some awesome water.

Well I hope you all like the new blog and I have very much appreciated all the people I've met and the things I've learned through this blog.  I'll be leaving all this existing content up in case anyone uses it for reference and any feedback on the new blog will be highly valued information!

Cheers,

--Brian J.

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Big Changes

I was going to wait but... here's the deal: as of July 19th this blog will be inappropriately named Reno Trout Envy. Why? Because I will no longer be in Reno. Instead, I will be uprooting and moving about 530 miles north to the city of Portland, Oregon.

*Sigh* I will miss this place I've come to know of as home. I'll miss all the people I know here-- mostly my family, but also all the musicians I've played music with, all the anglers I tell fish stories with and I'll even miss these cheezy, shit-smelling downtown streets with too much plastic, too many drunkards, and enough blinking lights to make you forget what time it is. I will especially miss September, October & November on the Truckee river when the big browns get a little more active, the trees turn brilliant colors, and big stupid orangey-colored caddis flies rouse the appetites of large, shy trout.

I'll miss year-round sunshine.

But I think it was time-- I was getting fat and lazy here, not moving forward, not taking risks-- just hanging around just to hang around, if you know what I mean.

from this:

to this:

I'm excited for my new job, for a new place, to meet new people-- but in terms of fly fishing? I don't know a lick about steelhead, salmon, sturgeon, coastal cutts, or spey casting-- I feel like I was finally tasting the sweet bread of the truckee and now I'll be back to water and flour. It's exciting too, but I've also read a lot about the large crowds, the few fish, and the expensive gear associated with steelhead and salmon. I'm also an accomplished bobber... err I mean indicator fisherman and word on the street that not all consider that fair play for a steelhead river. I mostly don't care. Anyways...

Expect a few more updates from the truckee river and then from there... I guess we'll see. There will probably be an intermission and I will probably start a new blog with a different name. The noobery will assuredly be painful.

Signing off now.

--Brian J.


P.S. If you know a few good spots or at least a good fly shop in Portland then by all means feel free to pass them along!

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Beckwourth Ponds

About a week ago I got an awesome opportunity to fish some privately owned water near the town of Beckwourth, CA. It ended up being a tougher nut to crack than I would have thought for C&R only fish that don't see too many flies, but I still managed to land a few decent rainbows. There were two guys with spinning rods and two guys with fly rods-- and I have to admit it: the guys throwing panther martins absolutely knocked 'em dead!

I also have to say I didn't care much who caught how many fish-- none of us experienced a bad day of fishing with how beautiful it was out there. I would have been happy without a fish to my name out there. It was classic pine & meadow country complete with wildflowers, beavers and bears. Good for the soul.


Thanks again for having me out there guys! (here's two of many fish that these guys caught on spinners):

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Union Valley Reservoir

(cue: the final countdown)

In scoping out a place to have a bachelor party camp-out I spent a weekend at union valley reservoir off of Highway 50. I forgot to bring bowls, spoons, stove fuel, and a flashlight. I remembered cookies, my vest, rods, reels, waders and every fly I own. Go figure.

Despite having to overcome the challenge of eating cereal without spoons or bowls, the wife and I had a great time camping out and I even managed to get some fishing in. Starting out I caught one ugly stocked trout on a sheep creek special and then caught a few smallies. I caught a couple of them while slow stripping a flashy woolly bugger for trout. Since I had all my bass flies with me, I went to stripping all sorts of rubber-legged, flashy, jigging action flies with erratic twitches and strips and only got a few hits. In the end I went through a pile of laboriously tied creations but nothing could beat slow-retrieving that darn flashy woolly bugger (in olive). Go figure.

Alas I never really caught anything of good size but I was happy nonetheless catching these little guys all day-- worth the $22.00/night fee plus the $20.75 for a two-day license *grits teeth* yeah I guess so:

bring the frog patterns next time... and the bowls

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Catch-up #3: North Carolina

Well this should be all for the Catch up game. The truckee is looking good and in shape and I'll be back in the hood with my rod chasing troutses again.

Like I had mentioned in a previous post I had all the hopes in the world of hitting the French Broad near Asheville North Caroliney for smallies. Unfortunately for the 8 days I was there it ended up being blown out the entire time. To put it in the words of a nice fella who I talked to at Davidson river outfitters "The French Broad? Well that'd be a waste of a day right now." I decided to take his word for it a took a couple of trips to some of the smaller water (the North Mills river) and had a great time catching little brookies in some beautiful country. It didn't take much wading to get away from the crowds and there were giant golden stoneflies all over the place. My biggest problem was that my stonefly patterns generally have a wide hook gape and these smaller fish really couldn't get it in their mouths. But it served as a good lead fly and I caught a good number of fish on pheasant tail, caddis and smaller stonefly attractor patterns.

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Catch-up #2: Thomas Creek

Small Creekin'

(above image stolen from here)

Per Murphy's Law I've been out of town on most of the days when the truckee has been fishable in the reno area. Thus, I started searching for something else nearby that would be something I could fish in the few spare hours after work.

Not being warm enough for carp (at the time) my first stop was Thomas Creek-- a puny little creek on the south end of Reno that turned out to be a beautiful place to just be. Let alone catch a fish.

The first point of action for fishing the creek was to go to walmart, buy a 20 dollar fenwick, chop the large half down to the first eyelet and epoxy the small into that piece. I then wrapped some kevlar thread around it for good measure and gave it another layer of epoxy:

Custom 5ft fenwick:

Then I took a couple of hours after work one day and drove around a bit and explored the area. It really is a beautiful little canyon and the road gets you up high for a good view. The creek is small and full of brambles-- the 5' fenwick performed perfectly. A #16 black lightning bug nymph worked the best and I landed a brookie and a couple of rainbows, the largest of which was about the length of my hand:

All in all a great time and it beats the pants off of watching T.V. any day.

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Whole Lotta Lead

In all the tying I've done in the last month (and that's no small amount I should say) this is the one I'm looking forward to using the most. With a layer of .025" dia lead and a second layer of 0.015" this fly may end up simply being an funny-looking piece of weight to sink other flies with... but I hope it will move a few trout:


I decided to tie these up after seeing Justin catch a 25" brown trout on a nondescript caddis dropper under one of Justin's big sparkly stonefly nymphs. I also tied some in black, black with an orange bead, and in 20 incher colors (green/blue & grey).

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Catch-up #1: Pyramid Lake

I just looked at the date on my last blog entry: May 13th. Damn.

I can't believe it's June already-- I've been doing site work at night (away from this computer), camping on the weekends, and I spent a week in Asheville N.C.

Now it's time to play catch-up.

The Pyramid Lake season officially closes June 30th but due to a recent bout of 80 degree weather I don't think I will go out there until next season. The last time I was out there it was warm enough for a swim, sandy enough to spend a couple of hours digging Justin's truck out, and fishy enough for me to land 4 fish. They were basically the smallest fish I've caught out there all season except for one twenty-something inch trout I'll post below. I never did catch the big one but I can't wait to try again next season:


Au Revoir.

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At the bench

This post is brought to you by my idiot friend, Sir Brimley, who decided to jump into a lit barbecue. Methinks the hilarity of the situations outweighs any loss of fly tying materials-- especially since there never was much fly tying potential with the hair on his face:

I didn't get a very good picture but he seriously lost a lot of hair-- the big tufts sticking out his ears and the whiskers above his eyes are completely gone and though you can't see it in this picture he lost about an 1/8" all around... not the brightest cat I've known.

Other than laughing at my not-so-bright feline friend I've been spending a lot of time at my tying desk in the basement for hours on end drinking beer and muttering a lot of innapropriate things when I break my thread or I can't find something important (the real question is-- is any of it truly important?). The reason for this is that I will be going to North Carolina for 7 days here at the end of this month and I will be staying about 5 minutes away from the French Broad. Smallmouth fishing here I come.

In order to get ready for the trip (that's the excuse anyways) I've been tying all sorts of streamers. Clousers, Rubber-legged woolly buggers, home invaders, crawdads, estaz jigs and bellyache minnows are just some of them -- fortunately most of these should be effective on the truckee too. Here's a few that I thought turned out pretty well -- I can't wait to fish these:

Home Invader Streamers

I saw Doug McKnight tie these on the weekly fly --you can see the progression of the first home invader I tied (on the left) to the decent looking one on the right that finally has about the right silhouette. However arctic fox is great stuff and can be bought at around $7 a tail if you look around a bit on the interwebs. I'm hoping to get some browns to look at these size 2's on the truckee too.

The other thing I've heard is a must have for smallies is crawdads-- which conveniently catch a lot of nice fish on the truckee too. I tied up some realistic ones and some quick impressionistic patterns both designed to ride with the business end up:

Raccoon tail hair for arms:

Something a bit closer to the real thing:

Now I've never actually caught smallmouth on the fly so I'm looking forward to this opportunity greatly. I have to throw in that it's mostly a family trip but I'm hoping to get in a couple of hours here on my 8wt. If nothing else I think I'll will hopefully be able to catch a few bluegills or sunfish. :-)

Know of any fishing spots I simply shouldn't miss near Asheville NC? Let me know!

Cheers.

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More of the 'mid.

I heard this lake called "the 'mid" recently-- and I like it, it's got a ring to it and won't be lost on people like when I call it "p-middy". So dumb, I know. I've never caught a crazy amount of fish at this lake (of course I've only fished it a handful of times)-- it's always just a two or three fish in a day with a few more bumps, taps & lost fish. But, if you haven't yet, you should check out this fish on the reno fly shop blog (I run that one too) to see why I keep going back!

So about a week and a half ago I had the chance to kill an entire day on this lake and I showed up at 6:30am with a shiny, cheap, new box from walmart full of bright fluffy hair & feathers and sparkle. As Justin would so eloquently put it: "these fish eat sparkly shit."

midnight cowboy in action:

I met my Pops and my brother in law and we got to casting-- two lure casters to one fly fisher. I think we should've started earlier because by 7am the wind had calmed down and sun beat down on smooth water. This isn't always the best scenario for bringing in the fish to casting range and they're more likely to stay deep. I promptly switched from fishing nymphs high in the water column to a 30ft 240gr sink tip (which is actually a blast to cast) and slow stripped a variety of big fluffy woolly buggers and foam beetles & tadpoles. A couple of hours in and I had the first hook-up:


This fish taped at 25" long -- a nice fish most places but nothing to write home about on this lake-- it was however enough (I think) to convince my Dad to switch to a fly rod. He rigged himself up and was casting for about an hour before I took a look at his rig-- let's be nice and say he probably wasn't going to catch anything on it, haha! I re-rigged him with some nymphs some casting tips and before I knew it he was into a fish. I was extremely happy that he was able to hook into a fish as, to be honest, I didn't think he was going to catch anything given the amount of fly casting he's done in the last 10 years:


It was a pretty average fish but could we maybe say it-- he's hooked? We'll see. Stillwater seem to be an equalizing sort of experience when talking fly vs. spin but I'll let you decide who the winner was this day:


By the end of the day I had put almost 12 hours of fishing in and landed only three fish but -- spending time with family, getting invaluable casting experience, and putting a first timer on a fish on a beautiful lake? Wouldn't miss it for the world.

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