Reno Trout Envy

New Year, New Blog

2011-01-01T00:27:00.000-08:00

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.

Big Changes

2010-06-23T15:27:00.000-07:00

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!

Beckwourth Ponds

2010-06-16T19:13:00.000-07:00

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):

Union Valley Reservoir

2010-06-16T19:07:00.000-07:00

(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

Catch-up #3: North Carolina

2010-06-14T16:57:00.000-07:00

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.

Catch-up #2: Thomas Creek

2010-06-10T12:20:00.000-07:00

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.

Whole Lotta Lead

2010-06-09T09:48:00.000-07:00

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).

Catch-up #1: Pyramid Lake

2010-06-08T17:50:00.000-07:00

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.

At the bench

2010-05-13T16:30:00.000-07:00

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.

More of the 'mid.

2010-05-07T11:41:00.000-07:00

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.

The Lightning Bug

2010-05-04T13:46:00.000-07:00

This is my favorite searching nymph of all time and, in #14 pearlescent green, is responsible for a lot of nice trout on the truckee during the summer months. Generally this is tied in with a pheasant fiber tail and legs on a straight shanked hook-- but this is the form I've settled on: quick to tie and effective:

MATERIALS:
thread: Danville black 6/0 (or other)
hook: #12-20 tiemco 2457
bead: gold colored tungsten to fit
body: mylar tinsel (pearl shown)
ribbing: small ultrawire (or x-small for #20's)
Thorax: Arizona synthetic peacock
or similar dubbing

More recently I decided to try other colors of mylar tinsel and have caught fish on almost all colors. In the fall the red color in #12's & 14's can be a nice reprieve to tying red copper johns, in the winter the black and the blue colors in #18's & 20's make for an effective attractor midge that may (slightly) out perform your standard zebra midge. As for the violet I haven't used it much but on my last two trips to pyramid it caught fish-- shown below are sizes #14-20 in five flavors of utc holographic mylar tinsel:

The Illustrious Possie Bugger

2010-04-22T16:54:00.000-07:00

Lately I've seen quite a few posts on this fly but I still wanted to put up my own. This is a fly I first saw on the caddis fly blog and it's a pattern you don't see a lot of people using on the truckee. However I've found it to be an effective summertime fly for the truckee. The guide's choice hare's ear has some similar qualities but I like to tie this in in #6-10's, load it with a lead underbody and use it as a lead fly above a caddis, mayfly or other small attractor nymph. It's also not a bad dropper when fishing big streamers. I think it's mostly an attractor but maybe the fish take it for a stonefly, cased caddis, crane fly nymph, or some sort of emerging bug on the swing. I also think it acts like a mini streamer and I get a lot of takes just as it begins to swing when it is still on the bottom-- a lot like the takes I've experienced swinging streamers.

You might look around a bit as there are a lot of variations with CDC, possum fur (that's where the name came from), etc-- but this is how I like to see them:

The Possie Bugger:
MATERIALS:
thread: Danville black 6/0 (or other)
hook: #6-10 tiemco 3769
bead: gold, brass bead sized to match (1/8" shown above)
tail: natural rabbit fur clump, 2 strands of pearl flashabou
body: Natural Rabbit dubbing
ribbing: pearl flashabou w/ silver wire for reinforcement
hackle: natural partridge or speckled hen
Collar: peacock black ice dub

Spring Fishing at Pyramid

2010-04-15T19:04:00.000-07:00

I seem to always find myself saying "yeah I was meaning to make it out to --insert body of water here-- a lot more this year and learn how to fish it." Generally this is an empty statement and more wishful thinking than an actual prospect. However I did make it out to pyramid lake a two times this last week. I made it out there the first time because the truckee has been a little slow and there's been quite a few more anglers than I'm used to... the second time I made it out there I realized two things:

1. Pyramid Lake is like traveling to an alien planet that is beautiful, mysterious and has all sort of weird animals and fishes to observe (or catch... or not catch).

2. My casting skills are sub-sub-par. And standing on a ladder in the wind, with nothing but expansive water around you, with the prospect of a giant cutthroat-- isn't the worst way to hone some casting skills.

I landed a couple of "small" fish with various sparkly nymphs fished fairly high in the water column and Justin did considerably better fishing various woolly bugger combinations on a long sink-tip.

Of course I'm beginning to form a theory that Justin is taking me to the noob spots -- observe: Fish caught while fishing with me:

Fish caught the next day while I was pounding my head against a keyboard at work:

hmmmm....

Shlupdate

2010-04-13T12:01:00.000-07:00

Well I thought I'd just stop by here and offer a quick update. Firstly I've been hitting the truckee a little bit with mixed results-- mostly the fishing is a bit slow with the most significant hatch still being those BWO's and they seem to range in size-- on warm days I've seen them up to about size #12's. On a particularly tough day I got the skunk but got to see this beast get caught (more details here):

Other than that I've been particularly blown away by the patterns showing up on the weekly fly particularly Harley Reno's Orcky and Willy Self's crazy rabbit

Also the fly factory himself has been putting up some awesome patterns made with craft store material for those ~~cheap-ass~~ guys with a limited budget. Check these out-- the first was made with a type of gorilla glue and the second with a type of stretch cord from wal-mart. Awesome.

Saving $$ - part II : The Sparkle Pupa

2010-04-02T17:24:00.000-07:00

So it's been a pathetically long time since I posted something substantial. I would love to say that it's been because I've been so busy being outside and catching fish... instead the truth is that *insert* Whine whine whine I'm overworked and underpaid blah blah blah *end insert*

So what little free time I've had has been spent making my fingers raw via guitar or tying a few flies in the dead of night. I think my poor wife feels like a widow. Anyways-- here's part II of the saving money series which really can't be called a series yet:

Part II: Scamtron Yarn

Ok, that title is harsh... I just couldn't think of anything more witty... wittier... more wittier... whitier... $#@$%. Anyways... I've bought a lot of antron yarn-- I just like the stuff. And it seems that anything labeled with the magic words "fly fishing" will be cost more than is sustainable on my budget (that doesn't necessarily mean it's that expensive). I have a lot of colors of the stuff-- mostly from the bargain bin in those worthless but nonetheless eye catching colors that are said to catch fishes. But in the end the best luck I've had is with the white stuff that never seems to find it's way to the bargain bin. In fact, here's a little secret: My favorite october caddis pattern is a sparkle pupa in rusty orange, tied with a white antron bubble:

Now, on a recent trip to the craft store (the kind where I tag along with the wife and then spend more money than she does there), I saw something that looked awfully familiar:

It was a couple of bucks so I committed, made the just-in-case $2 investment and, lo-and-behold, it looked even more familiar when combed out a bit:

Now I'm not saying that this stuff is the same as antron, or that it works as well as antron, or that you shouldn't buy antron at your fly shop... but I just have to say this is DAMN close to the real McCoy. And I now have a lifetime supply. So I'll be keeping these little caddis imitating biddies stocked in my box, and you probably should too-- Gary Lafontaine's sparkle pupa. I keep tan & olive in #16-12 and orange in #10-12 around for good luck (and, you know, fishes or something) and I'm going to give a chartruese #16 a go this year-- here it is:

The Sparkle Pupa:

MATERIALS:

thread: black or brown 6/0
hook: #10-16 tiemco 2457
tail: a few antron fibers
body: tan, olive or orange rabbit dubbing
ribbing: (optional) small copper wire
Gas bubble: antron pulled over, tied down and
then loosened for a bulbous shape
Legs/Hackle: partridge or hen back
thorax: I like pt or peackock colored arizona synthetic

2010-03-29T18:00:00.000-07:00

Man I've watched this so many times. I first saw something like it in catch magazine and then stole this from this is fly (daily):

And I know it's lame that all I've posted lately is videos. But damn I'm busy.

Sonnnn!!

2010-03-17T11:14:00.001-07:00

I was looking for this video for a long time-- thank you Justin for finding it. This is my favorite fly fishing personality in amazing form-- I wish I was this eloquent when expressing my excitement over a big fish:

My new goal-- say this as often as I can: "I'm a fire in the rain"

On the E-dub (the long version)

2010-03-16T14:13:00.000-07:00

The EW at roughly 26 cfs:

Man. I'm too damn busy. I can't believe I haven't fished the truckee in over 2 weeks with the amazing weather we've had-- and flows look absolutely fantastic holding fairly steadily just below 400cfs... Anyways, I had an amazing day on the East Walker the weekend before last with a couple of fishing friends -- overcast but warm weather, a deserted stream, and about 40 fish to hand personally (Justin had about the same). It took me a while to get a feel for casting a small nymph rig from my knees and how to sneak up on a hole without spooking it. I also made constant adjustments to my nymph rig for about two hours of fishing until I settled on a combination of a stonefly with a disco midge or a bwo nymph for a dropper. Both combos ended up being dynamite.

My stonefly nymph:

A chewed up #18 disco midge:

my bwo nymph (gray worked well there):

For the first half of the day almost every fish I caught took the disco midge. I tried a lot of other droppers including trying to match the naturals closely. I thought my bwo nymph in olive was the perfect match for all of the nymphs I was seeing but the gray ended up being a much more productive nymph-- this almost always holds true on the Truckee too... go figure. As for bugs the underside of every rock was alive with cased caddis and a prolific amount of mayfly nymphs. Toward midday there was also a bunch of bwo's coming off and almost every pool had small risers that would continue to make rings in the calm water right in front of you if you were sneaky enough.

hidden life:

a decent match?:

I hiked my ass off and learned where the fish were hiding. It seemed to be all about cover-- deep water with undercut banks or the water beneath big bunches of dead willows was the most productive water. I lost more flies than I care to think about but I got the hang of throwing side arm casts to get the flies under the bushes while keeping the indicator out from under the branches-- every time it was either a snag or a fish.

guaranteed to hold fish:

I caught a fair number of spunky browns mostly in the 12-14" range, a bunch of rainbows in the 14-18" range and a TON of whitefish, one of which was even 19". I think these are big fish for small water and to tell you the truth I liked catching the browns and the whitefish best. You might be thinking "What?!" -- but let me explain; Very few of the rainbows seemed nice and healthy (like the one below), most had stubby fins, a silvery color and were crawling with leeches. Gross. Now I know why the SJW is so effective on this river... However, all the browns and whitefish were feisty and appeared to be in great shape:

one of the browns:

one of the healthier rainbows:

one of many:

As I said I hiked my arse off and eventually I think I got to some water that doesn't get hit as often. I really started hoping for a bigger fish at this point and crouched lower and moved slower and tried my best to fish the difficult spots-- it finally paid off. Under a big clump of gnarled willows my indicator darted sideways and I set the hook on a fish that immediately took me up into some fast water then back down and under some branches. To keep it short this fish made me look like a fool l and I had to bury the rod tip under water numerous times to pull him out of the sticks with 5x tippet-- let's say I was a happy camper when I put the net on this guy:

Just shy of 20" and healthy
(took a disco midge):

I kept fishing landing a bunch more rainbows and after a while the disco midge started taking less and less fish and the bwo worked more effectively as a dropper. However towards late afternoon almost every fish was taking, yep you guessed it, the stonefly. I couldn't figure it out since there were bwo's all over the surface but, of course, I didn't spend too much time thinking about it since there were fish hammering my fly at every hole. Towards dusk it became apparent why the fish had been more prone all day to take stoneflies and an attractor versus a natural looking bwo pattern; Skwalas. These fish were gorging themselves all night on big protein-filled foodstuff:

mmm candyyy:

The very last fish of the day for me happened to be another nice brown, again, just shy of the 20" mark and very skinny-- it was an awesome end to an epic day and this fish and the other largish brown I caught were personal trophies that will keep me coming back.

I'd love to see this fish nice and fat:

At that point I would have loved to see what else the stonefly could raise out of the depths but the sun was almost gone and it was time to go. After all those fish, I envisioned the guys I was with thinking I was a bad-ass. But then Justin reminded me of my noobery and regaled me with similar tales of big fish numbers-- only he took all his fish in the slow slack water on small dries all day long. And, lo and behold, he caught the fish of the day-- a beautiful 21" brown that took a small (like size #16) attractor dry-- awesome:

Almost springtime... ?

2010-03-09T17:34:00.000-08:00

Lately it doesn't seem like the weather can decide-- this morning there were dozen's of car accidents because of some very slick snow-- by afternoon I was contemplating working on my tan. As much as I wish I was fishing at this very moment with the sun shining, it will have to suffice to blog about it and watch fly tying & fishing videos like rick takahashi tying the Go2 prince (thank you Juan!) or an awesome video about some trout hunters putting the hurt on the fish in New Zealand -- put to some pretty sweet tunes I might add (thank you moldy!).

As for a fishing update I had an epic time on the east walker this last weekend (post to come soon) and made it out for an afternoon on the truckee last week. It turned out to be a great time with fish still holding in some big slow water but they are definitely starting to wake up. Most of the fish took a #14 hotwire prince nymph with some very spunky but small fish taking it on the swing or right before the swing. A couple of small fish also took my BWO nymph in olive -- that's about all that was really hatching in any great quantity. That was until I decided to tie on a small tung teaser dropper. With this fly on I spent the rest of the evening catching nice fat rainbows that would hit the tung teaser right in the transition zone between mid paced water and the flat stuff:

Late winter/Early Spring BWO nymph:

After flipping through the book John Barr's "Barr flies" (a great book by the way), the tung teaser really has stuck in my mind as a possibly great generic fly that fish would take for multiple bug species. So I recently sat down and tied up modified version (a bit darker than the original on a #10 tmc 3769 hook) in anticipation of the green drake hatch on the truckee as well as some of the originals for attractors. I also tied up a couple of size #16's just to have and it was really on a whim that I added this dropper to my hotwire prince that day. Ok it probably wasn't even a whim as much as it was I was excited by how these had turned out-- I'm officially a huge fan of Arizona synthetic. It's not my favorite stuff to get started on the thread, but dang it looks good on the hook:

I'm hoping these will be killer green
drake lead flies (they have tungsten beads)

This little guy produced a bunch of fish for me:

February Fishing

2010-03-01T09:17:00.000-08:00

I just realized a little while ago that I really didn't post anything about fishing for the whole month of february. Sad. Where did the month go?? Mostly I just didn't fish very much due to the sporadic weather, high flows and too much time in a desk chair. But I did make it out a few times and made quite a few quick stops to look at the water and to see what was happening bug-wise. Here's a quick synopsis of the month.

The beginning of February had some great BWO hatches with winter conditions still in effect and the slow water was producing BIG, healthy rainbows on small princes and bwo nymphs in gray in olive. Overcast days were epic-- these were the type of fish that could be expected regularly:

Sometime in the middle of the month I decided to get serious about this fishing thing.

No more fooling around:

By no more fooling around I mean tying up a bunch of articulated patterns with size 2 hooks (and a bunch of slumpbusters for droppers) and fishing them with a sink tip. But mostly it meant I got skunked a lot. I did catch one 20" cutthroat on a baitfish pattern but it was an ugly looking stocked fish that doesn't really count as a stream-born native being fooled into attacking my fly.

The end of February was hit and miss with the fishing. There were some serious bugs at times but finding the right conditions and fly to get at 'em was tough (at least I thought so). In fact the last day I fished the Truckee in February turned out to be an epically bad one. I started out fishing a new sculpin pattern I've been experimenting with in some water I rarely fish. I thought I got a few taps but maybe it was just the bottom... who knows. Then I met up with Justin and we hit a few spots around town. The water was muddy and nothing was rising and Justin caught one small whitefish. I slipped in the mud and fell on my fly rod. *snaapp* Damn.

But, as they say, a bad day of fishing is better than the best day in the office (or something like that) and it was cool to see some skwalas come off towards 3 or 4pm. I had to admit defeat at that point though and accept my losses. Justin stayed and caught a couple of fish (of course) on some skwala nymph patterns. However the significance of the big bugs turned out to be an important event for that guy-- the next day he stuck an absolute monster of a brown with a skwala dry fly. And it's all on video. Someday we may even figure out how to edit it. Until then you get a crappy screen capture that doesn't do the fish full justice.

News

2010-02-26T09:59:00.000-08:00

Well I've been a slacker here lately, simply posting random crap until I can get it together to write something about fishing that might (but probably won't) have some substance to it. But the real news is that I've been commandeered to create and contribute to a blog for the Reno Fly Shop! This is pretty exciting as this could end up being a great resource once the reno fly shop guides start putting up some content (I'm secretly... or not so secretly... hoping for fly tying competitions, giveaways, fly tying videos etc.).

So check it out, add it to your RSS feeds and tell me what you think!:

www.renoflyshop.blogspot.com

spew.

2010-02-23T10:18:00.000-08:00

This is the best thing I've seen all day. Thank you moldy.

Blog shout-out: The Jersey Angler

2010-02-17T14:06:00.000-08:00

I've been tying and fishing on a small scale but haven't taken the time to upload any pictures. I don't have any excuses, I'm just lazy-- but hey, you get what you pay for.

Anyways, I thought I'd give a shout out to The Jersey Angler who has been putting up some really cool fly patterns on his blog -- here's a quick sampling-- I especially like this first one and will probably tie some up for the spring:

All images taken from here: http://thejerseyangler.blogspot.com/

EW in winter

2010-02-10T12:00:00.000-08:00

I probably shouldn't give this river any publicity. I've been there twice in the summer months and it's been angler after angler after... you get the idea. But a river flowing at 20-something cfs in the middle of winter with action on dry flies? Awesome:

I haven't been there this winter but fly fishing cohort Justin (above) stuck some nice fish this past weekend. The game was a stealthy approach, casting from a crouch to visible rising trout. Sounds ok... I guess. :-)

Saving $$ - part I

2010-01-29T15:23:00.000-08:00

So I've wanted to blog about a certain subject for quite a while now -- money. Now don't get me wrong-- I love this sport-- but I'll be damned if the "rich white-guy's sport" stereotype doesn't hold a bit of water. Ok probably more than a bit -- I remember reading somewhere that the majority of fly fisherman are middle aged, male, white, and have college degrees (assuming from that we/they are career oriented folks). The demographics themselves don't bother me (I will fit them someday - though I think diversity is better) but in general the prices on fly fishing equipment reflect the target audience. And as someone who started fly fishing during college-- those price tags hurt.

So I'd like to start a series of posts (and hopefully receive suggestions) about how to save money in this sport. I will also mention where I think it's NOT worth it to skimp on the price tag. Here Goes.

PART I:
Shaving Money.

Beads, and hooks are expensive. Razorblades are cheap.

Every so often I go through all my flies and re-organize my fly boxes. Usually I come across dozens of poorly tied flies, odd experimental flies, and fish-chewed flies-- the likes of which I will probably never fish. I take these out and put them in a box labeled "cull." Then after the box has 50 or more flies I will get the razorblades out and shave off all the glue, lead, feathers etc to save any quality hook that is unbent and sharp and pretty much all the beads as they are almost never damaged. I salvaged these about a week ago:

This is where I mention something that isn't worth skimping on-- quality hooks (in respect to trout fishing).

This last go-round I used wire cutters and clipped the eyelets off of 20 or so hooks to save time removing the bead because the hooks were cheap. Time on the water is precious and if I'm going to invest the time and materials to tie a fly it's worth it to use a hook that won't let me down. My main nymph go-to's are the TMC 2457, the TMC 3769, and the TMC 2499spbl for a barbless hook. These are stout wired hooks with small barbs, sharp points and wide hook gaps. For streamers I generally use TMC or equivalent hooks-- anything that looks stout and feels "sticky" sharp. Confidence is a precious commodity-- you will catch more fish if you are confident in your fly-- so buy good hooks and if you mess up a tie-- shave it and get it right-- it's worth it. (The only reason I go back to my stash of cheap hooks is when I have a left-field fly idea I want to try.) Just remember that fingers are also a precious commodity when using a double sided razorblade-- notice the band aid? Yep, don't cut towards your own fingers.

Sunday Snowy Sunday

2010-01-27T12:42:00.000-08:00

I'll try to keep words to a minimum this time-- simply stated, I had a magnificent day of fishing last sunday. It was horrendously cold and my guides iced up numerous times. However there was an awesome hatch of #22 baetis underway due to overcast skies. It was very surreal to see a bunch of bugs swarming over the water amidst flurries of snow flakes. The most productive fly was still the prince nymph-- though my bwo nymph in gray and olive put a few fish on-- including the biggest fish of the day. I saw quite a few fish rise and I'm positive you could catch them with super small baetis dries. I covered a lot of water by hopping parking places in my truck and I caught nearly a dozen cutt-bows all in the 17"-20" range (gotta love winter), and one whitefish. Happy fishing all.

Fish of the day--
another fat, colorful 20" cuttbow:

BWO nymphs

2010-01-26T19:30:00.000-08:00

Last winter--- the first winter I really fished the truckee at all-- I had major success on a shabby looking fly which I had simply called the "gray winter midge fly." I now know that last winter was an amazing year for bwo's and in truth what I was imitating was almost exclusively bwo's. There are plenty of gray midge patterns out there and perhaps it may sometimes be taken as a midge but really it's not a good midge pattern. It has, however, evolved into a pattern that is my go-to fly for small mayflies (particularly baetis) and has performed well this winter on those overcast days when bwo's are hatching. It was also dynamite during late fall. I tie these in olive and gray and in sizes 16 to 20-- the gray has been the most effective for me with the olive occasionally being useful for matching the hatch. So here it is:

BJ's Gray BWO nymph:

MATERIALS:
thread: Danville gray 6/0 (or other)
hook: #16-20 tiemco 2457 or 2487
tail: natural duck flank fibers
body: gray thread
ribbing: black krystal flash
(coated with head cement after ribbing)
thorax: gray hare's ear with pheasant
tail pulled over the top - epoxied
legs: natural duck flan fibers

INSTRUCTIONS:
wrap a thread base and tie in 6-10 fibers of duck flank feather for a tail. Wrap the fibers all the way up to the eye of the hook to maintain a uniform body as well as the butts will be used for legs. Pinch and break the tail fibers to desired length (I like mine a little bit longer than the hook gap). Tie in the KF then wrap forward keeping the thread flat (spin the bobbin counterclockwise to flatten)-- build a slightly tapered body. Rib the body with the krystal flash, tie off, and then coat the body with head cement for durability. tie in a small chunk of pheasant tail to pull over the thorax -- I tie mine in dark side down so the dark/shiny side shows when I pull it over. Dub a thin thorax and pull back a couple of duck fibers for legs. Break or cut off excess duck flank and pull the pheasant tail over and tie off. Form a small thread head and whip finish. Epoxy the thorax and head using a needle and you're done!

Variation in olive:

I like turtles.

2010-01-25T18:02:00.000-08:00

January 23rd, 2010:

I'll admit that on this particular saturday I sat around on my fat arse building flies while I should have been ruining those flies in some trout maw -- but by noon I shook off my laziness and hit the water as I couldn't stop thinking of all the monster browns I've been seeing lately. It was honestly a bit of a strange day as I encountered interesting people along the way, caught a lot of deformed fish, and found someones pet turtle swimming around. In fact the biggest fish of the day ended up being one I caught with my hands. You see, I was slowly working my way along the river when I noticed a dark shape right near the banks. Turns out to be a fish-- I walked up close to it, half expecting it to spook, and dangled some flies in its face... no response. It was clearly alive but it didn't budge as I stepped into the water and proceeded to pick it up with my hands.

Sorry for the retarded sound track... my commentary was worse, I promise (plus the video makes me laugh this way...). As you can see, it ended up being a giant brown trout in the 25" range that woke up and swam away once I put it back in the water. Clearly it wasn't a healthy fish-- if only I could legitimately put a healthier brown like that onto a fly... anyways... after that, the fishing started out slow and I adjusted my rig four or five times before I finally got a subtle take wayyy downstream of me and I hauled in an arms length of line just to set the hook on a fairly heavy fish. It stayed deep and mostly just shook it's head-- could it be a brown trout? Indeed it was and I was overly excited to finally have another brown trout in hand-- it taped at 20" long although it was a bit on the skinny side. I didn't care.

The fish took a #18 bwo nymph (which I will post later) dropped below #14 hotwire prince nymph. After that I landed 4 or 5 cuttbows in the 16-18" range while some guy was trying to talk to me across the river. I was annoyed at first but he turned out to be a super nice guy that basically was using fishing to stay out of trouble with substance abuse (strangely, I met two guys this weekend with that strategy...). Most of the fish I caught had deformities of some sort (mostly goofy looking jaws) but all were fat and otherwise seemed pretty healthy.

After a while I decided to move on to less accessible water and on the way out I almost stepped on... a turtle?! I have no idea how this thing managed to stay alive in the icey waters of the truckee but the guy I was talking to said he used to keep them as pets-- I handed it to him and he let it go, as neither of us really wanted a pet turtle:

Moving on, I drove to a new spot and hiked through quite a bit of water until I found a nice big pool. I stumbled upon someone's camp under a bridge on the way--- always a bit disconcerting-- and this person had definitely been set up there for a while-- nice tent, campfire ring, clothes line and bathing pool in a little side-stream. I need to get out of town. Regardless, there was yet beauty to be found and the fishing was great. I landed 3 cuttbows that taped at 19" (three! no joke) and a couple of smaller fish. I also hooked and landed a feisty 20" cuttbow that was sort of the highlight for me as it fought like mad (it even jumped, despite the frigid water) and had beautiful colors and proportions. All these fish, save one, took the prince nymph. The other fish took the bwo nymph, with none taking the black aggravator nymph that was my lead fly. This river kicks ass. So does winter fishing.

The days highlight:

January Truckee

2010-01-18T15:16:00.000-08:00

Earlier this month I managed to convince my wife to go fishing with me... well, ok I convinced her to ride in a separate car and snap a few pictures of some fish before she took off. The snow banks along the river have been incredible this year and it was VERY cool to have someone else there to snap some photos. Fortunately, the fishing was great and within an hour I had landed a 20" rainbow, a 16" rainbow (both shown below) and a handful of other fish in the 12"-15" range. My wife wasn't impressed.

In contrast however, I have been very much impressed with my wife's photo skills (for much better examples check out her flickr) and I really liked the following photos (all unedited). Even the over-used "football handoff" fish pose:

Prince Nymph Variations

2010-01-15T13:10:00.000-08:00

On the truckee a small prince nymph seems to work most of the winter when fishing the slow water. Here's a few variations that have been successful for me-- all tied on a #14 TMC 3769-- which is a short, heavy hook that makes for about a #16 sized fly. So far the hotwire prince is my favorite.

From L to R:
3x ice dub prince, 3x hotwire prince, 3x lightning prince

I also have a few "ultra princes" tied up but haven't given them a try yet.

This just in!: Wife forced to admit fly tying is useful.

2010-01-13T12:56:00.000-08:00

This last holiday season I spent a lot of time at my fly tying bench only I wasn't tying very many flies! The skills I've learned in tying flies have turned out to be useful for gift crafting this year for my wife and her friends. It's also great anytime I get a chance to give gifts to a fellow fly fisherman-- cheap plano boxes filled with a dozen or more carefully crafted flies is a gift that feels damn good to give away (especially when I'm positive they'll produce fish for a person). But beside the gift box you see above, earrings were the ticket for gifts this year, and a few trips to a craft store with a stop at the fly shop gave me the materials to design and craft these:

Ice Dub Stone

2010-01-12T09:18:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the long interval in blogging-- it's not that I haven't been tying or fishing-- just slacking on the blog. The good news is that I've graduated, passed the FE exam and just got new waders that don't have a leaky crotch-- an awesome b-day present from my family! Until I take the time to write about the fishing, I want to leave you with a pattern I tied up on a whim that has produced pretty well for me-- in fact for this winter this has become my go-to lead fly. I'm sure I ripped the design off from someone else but I don't know who... so I'll just call it the ice dub stone. I've also tied it in black/peacock but haven't fished it yet. Hope you like it:

Ice dub stone:

MATERIALS:
thread: Danville tan 6/0 (or other)
hook: #10 -12 tiemco 3769
beads: two 1/8" brass or tungsten beads
underbody: .015 in lead wire
tail, legs, antennae: brown goose biots
body: golden brown ice dub
ribbing: Wine or Brown med ultrawire

collar: golden brown ice dub

**Edit: Here's the untested version tied
with "peacock black" ice dub:

Snow place like home.

2009-12-15T12:24:00.000-08:00

Not only did I think it imprudent but I also thought it close to impossible. That was until fellow fly fishing cohort, Justin, posted a picture on facebook showing us that - not only was it possible - but that we are all a bunch of slipper-wearing-cocoa-sipping pansies:

So on Saturday it was clear to me that I needed to grow some cojones (and subsequently shrink them) and go fish the river. Because only real men see a puny trickle of water flowing out of ice and snow and think "I bet if I spent all day freezing my arse off I might catch something!"

I soon found out that a great amount of water is still not in liquid phase and my usual haunts were completely unfishable. I know I should explore more water anyways and, if I was any good at this sport, I should be able to catch fish regardless. So I found some open water and despite previous misgivings I felt confident as I tested the ice and snuck in for a cast:

That confidence slowly died out after many drift-ruining ice snags and countless clumsy casts in deceptively shallow water. So then I thrashed around a bit and said some cusswords-- but that didn't work either. I then switched strategies, telling myself I was foolish to expect this to be easy, and stood back and simply admired how beautiful the winter landscape was. My wife would say "it looks like Narnia!" The snow is pretty magical and fishing is never disappointing if you aren't expecting anything. I re-rigged my rod with a stonefly and a small prince nymph and worked any hole that looked deep and slow enough to hold fish, this time without much expectation. I tried to stay low and stealthy and didn't really have to wade given the 4" thick ice extending 10 ft out into the river. I lost a a few flies and still couldn't fool a fish so I decided to try one more deep hole I knew of and then go home.

I huffed and puffed through the deep snow and ignored the surprised glances of passerby and the ever present crown of bundled-up river-dwellers. I found the hole, snuck in on my knees and made a dozen casts before my indicator slowed to a halt with what I thought must be a snag. I made a slow, bumbling, frozen-fingered hook set and felt that wonderful pulse of a fish shaking its head. I smiled with that inexplicable feeling rushing in my veins and eventually netted a beautiful, fat 19" rainbow.

snow fish:

In the winter its pretty much a given that where you find one fish you'll find more. I tied on a #16 whitish-yellow egg fly I have been wanting to try and made a few more casts. Pretty soon I had another trout in my net fooled by the egg (first fish ever on an egg fly!). I kept this rig and ended up landing one more trout and having one big rainbow kick me arse and throw the fly. I fished a few more pools then deemed the day a success and called it quits. All in all it was awesome to get out there and face the tough conditions. And once again the prince nymph was the star of the show with the egg coming in a close second!:

egg to the face:

Last fish of the day - 19"bow:

Might be a hard to get a good drift....

2009-12-10T14:01:00.000-08:00

Last January:

Today, 12-10-09:

unbelievable.

It's a good time to tie flies.

2009-12-08T13:18:00.001-08:00

The airport is probably warmer spots in Washoe county:

There was one benefit though-- some slack (for a slacker):

Winter Dynamite.

2009-12-06T21:34:00.000-08:00

Hot Wire Prince Nymph:

MATERIALS:
thread: Danville black 6/0
hook: #14 tiemco 3769
(makes for about a #16 fly)
bead: 7/64" gold bead
underbody: .015 in lead wire
tail: brown goose biots
body: green & olive small ultrawire
thorax: peacock herl & white biots
legs: brown feather fibers (hen)

Put 'em on ice... as described with short non-sentences.

2009-12-05T18:09:00.000-08:00

Right now there's a storm dumping snow some of which melted and refroze to make some nasty roads. And before that it was amazingly cold and clear with the days warming into the 30's and 40's and the nights getting cold enough to make a whole bunch of ice in the river. But here I am procrastinating school work again, even though finishing it will mean I am done with engineering school. Forever.

Anyways... to more important things. Like fishing. I just talked to two guys who couldn't shake the stank yesterday-- I stayed home to do important things. Like nothing. However friday I hit the river and had an extremely epic day (relative to my previous experiences). I hit a hole that consistently produces in winter for me and stuck a bunch of fish using a #16 wired prince nymph and a #18 dark blue midge with silver rib and sparkly thorax. I dropped these under a stonefly nymph in hopes of moving some fish a little bit and to get the flies to the bottom. To even wade I brought a stick to break the ice near the bank in fear that I would cut my waders by pushing ice with my legs. It was an amazing day with 3 fish coming to hand that broke the 20" mark and 4 or 5 fish in the 16" to 19" range. I ran into two other anglers that day-- a guy slinging a rapala that claims he hooked a monster brown that morning and a fellow fly fisherman. We swapped some stories and some info and I'll be damned if I didn't run into him in sportsman's warehouse today (what can I say - I'm a sucker for the bargain bin). It was a good day to stay home and tie methinks.

It only took about 3 hours before my body temperature dropped to the point that my teeth chattered and it was hard to cast or even pay attention to my indicator. I'm such a pansy. A crotch leak in the waders didn't help.

the icy mother.

On the third cast my indicator savagely submerged
and I was pretty ecstatic to land a 16" spawned out brown:

a 22" football - on ice:

A beautifully colored 19" tagged rainbow
(am I supposed to report tagged fish? anybody?):

This might be my favorite fish of the day. A maniacal
fighting fish that turned out to be nearly spotless. I'm thinking
this fish is the closest thing to a cutthroat (of the non-stocked variety)
that I've seen on the truckee - it had a nice red throat (not pictured):

Last fish for the day - a healthy 20" cuttbow:

Well I think I'll stay out of the cold-@ss water until the weather is a little more manageable. But man I had a good time. Now the challenge is going to be finding a hole that's a little less well known. This one gets a steady stream of all types of anglers. And I can't imagine my posting here is going to help that. Until next time.

winter fitchin.

2009-11-17T23:12:00.000-08:00

I haven't made it out on the truckee much lately due to school, work, blah blah blah. (In fact I'm procrastinating in the computer lab as I type...) But essentially winter conditions are in place. The fish won't move much right now and I personally don't waste much time on water that doesn't look like prime stuff. I wouldn't say the fishing is spectacular (well thats a matter of perspective) but the few fish I've pulled in lately have been well worth it. These two fish are from my last two outings on the river and I keep forgetting the camera so I've resorted to the cell phone.

20" fatty taken on a #14 prince nymph--
with the awkward ninja turtle grip (I was trying to stand
the fish up to how how tall it was):

A feisty 18"er taken on a #12 red CJ--
despite the cold water this fish came airborne 3 or 4 times

Well hopefully before too long I'll be grajinated from school and then I'll be able to just fish and play my guitar for the rest of my life-- right?

back in the saddle... the low down.

2009-11-08T16:52:00.000-08:00

After a painful 3 week hiatus from fishing due to tests, homework, and work deadlines-- I made it back out and wet a line. And it was glorious.

The last touch of falls colors is beautiful and the river is cold and clear. It's also REALLY low-- I can't believe a river that peaked in spring at over 2,000 cfs valleyed (the opposite of peaked right?) at below 100 cfs:

Back on the river (11-6-09):
I had a few spare hours on friday afternoon and made it too the river and enjoyed the fall colors and even managed to land a few rainbows. I went to a somewhat familiar stretch of river but, as I have not seen the river this low before, it was like fishing a new river. It's like the river has given up some of it's secrets exposing holes and deep runs I didn't know existed. It was also very easy to get the flies down to the bottom to where the fish are:

Back into the fish (11-7-09):
Saturday brought an opportunity to spend almost a whole day on the water. And it ended up being one of the best days fishing I've ever had. There weren't a lot of people on the river despite the fact it was a warm, calm saturday, which didn't bother me a bit. The water is a bit frigid (and full of leaves) but that just means the fish are going to be in slow deep water, like this:

My rod was rigged from the previous day with a big size 2 black rabbit hair streamer. I carefully stepped into the water not wanting to spook any fish and thought "what the heck, I give it a few tosses." I lobbed the streamer upstream and erratically stripped it back to me and then then got ready to repeat this across the run. On the 4th or 5th cast I felt some resistance and set the hook hard. I saw the flash of a white belly and then a fat 20 inch rainbow came leaping out of the water and threw the hook. How that fish got rid of that #2 hook I'll never know, but I had a feeling it was going to be a good day. I then spent an hour or so fishing a stretch of water with that streamer with no more luck, so I re-rigged with some nymphs. I worked back through the run but I'm pretty sure I had spooked everything with my streamer. Moving on I worked some different water switching around my nymphs before settling on what turned out to be a killer combination: a #12 october caddis nymph with a #16 bh prince nymph dropper. I did some walking and settled on a nice deep hole and started searching carefully and systematically through the run. Pretty soon I had landed a couple of rainbows in the 14-16" range. Then, on a long drift right down the middle, my bobb... ..err, I mean indicator slowed and I set the hook on something heavy. The fish surged and made a lot of runs but stayed deep and gave some sporadic head shakes-- this has to be a brown trout, I thought-- I wasn't dissapointed:

The fished measured out at 21.5" or so but was a complete fatty. I didn't get the greatest photos but I got him back into the water promptly and he didn't even need much reviving. I smiled and considered it a job well done. So far the prince nymph (surprise surprise) had done all the damage and I was amazed at the strength of the davy wotton knot. I'll admit I was extremely distrustful of the simplicity of this knot at first-- but it held up fantastically even with a hard enough tug to widen my hook gape a bit:

After that fish my day would have been made, however I wasn't done yet! Over the next hour or so I landed one more brown trout at least 6 or 7 rainbows in the 17"-19" range and two over 20 inches-- here are the most notable:

20" cuttbow that didn't fight like a 20"er should:

A hard fighting fat-ass fish taped at 19":

14" brown trout that fought like a maniac:

19" cuttbow fatty:

I only got one picture before this fish flopped out of my net-- but this is actually the biggest fish of the day as well as the biggest cuttbow I've ever landed in the truckee-- a 22" rainbow that I did NOT think I would land due to his crazy antics:

After a while I figured I was just getting greedy and moved on fishing a few more slow pools without luck. I then decided to try some water I've only covered once before (without luck). It was a long walk to get there and I fished around for an hour or so before I found a few good channels in the moss that held fish. In the last 3 hours of fishing I landed a bunch more rainbows in the 16"-17" range and even landed another brown trout that has to be one of the hardest fighting fish I've landed, coming airborn numerous times and making some gnarly runs.

19" brown trout

Due to a leak in my waders my teeth were chattering (it got a bit windy after 2pm or so) and I decided to call it quits on this epic day (for me anyways). On a side note I can't believe how much trash there is in the river. The low water has uncovered all sorts of treasures. Among the things I saw on saturday are a full sized recliner, two bike frames, a couple of tires, a bunch of blankets, shirts, pants, and a sleeping bag. And that's in addition to the ever present mix of plastic bags, bottles and flip flops.

Oh, and I found some cocaine:

At least thats what I'm guessing it was (I did consult some more "educated" folks for verification). The little bag was inside the bigger bag on the bank next to a little stash of clothes, blankets, trash and what not. I threw it deep into some thick bushes where nature will destroy out of the sight of mankind.

What a crazy day.

One fly tournament -- and post-event auction!

2009-10-20T18:03:00.000-07:00

So I was going to do a big post on the one fly tournament-- alas the retard responsible for bringing camera forgot to bring it.

Oh yeah, that would be me.

The river ended up being high and off-color and thus a lot of contestants opted for streamers. I debated, but figured my streamer skills weren't up to snuff, and tied on a nymph. I had also gone out the morning before and landed a fair number of fish on October caddis and prince nymphs. I went with the October caddis. I got about 15 casts in before I snagged on an incredibly sharp rock and broke my line while filling my waders with water. $%^&. The really painful part is that, though out of the competition, I still managed to catch a bunch of fish on that same nymph later in the day. In the end I just had a blast just hanging out with other anglers (I think there were around 20 that showed up) who were all super nice dudes and even got to hang out with Mikey Wier who ended up winning the competition with two 17.5" rainbows (tough day!). Upon winning first prize-- an orvis helios rod with an orvis large arbor reel-- Mikey decided to donate his winnings right back to the organization that put the event on. Without even blinking. Which is ultimately the reason for this hasty post! These items will be auctioned off to benefit the UNR student chapter of The Wildlife Society! So BID already-- You may end up with a deal!:

(On a side note Mikey also gave me two of his DVD's which I promptly watched later that day while I should have been studying... anyways...). So Uber-Kudos to Jason Barnes (super cool guy) who put on the event and to all the great volunteers. I certainly look forward to next year!

Lastly I have to say that there probably won't be many posts for the next couple of weeks. I'm super slammed at work and with school -- like, so busy that if you see me fishing or taking pictures on the river... punch me in dong and call me bad names. (yes it's that serious)

If you're out there wetting a line - let me know how she's a-fishin'.

cheers.

Whoah.

2009-10-20T09:33:00.000-07:00

Truckee River One Fly!

2009-10-12T11:31:00.000-07:00

I hope to make this if at all possible... Here's the flyer (click to enlarge)-- hope to see y'all there!:

Davy Wotton knot

2009-10-09T10:39:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of Chris over at creek addict I have a recommendation for a knot that looks spectacularly simple and is supposed to be superbly strong:

The Davy Wotton Knot (original image from field and stream - here):

Fall Truckee. The stuff of magazines.

2009-10-01T12:43:00.000-07:00

No, really! I'm not just being facetious...

I was quite surprised to see the truckee river featured on the front page of flyfisherman magazine this month. It turned to be a big article and a decent one at that, though of course it focused only on the california side of the river. But I'm very ok with that. Enough of the link spew-- it's time for:

Overdue Fish Stories:

I finally made it back out on the river on the last day of september to see if the reports (and the recent hype) are true. The reports are that the browns are getting active and streamers and nymphs are working well. I started out with the sun pretty high in the sky still but I thought that might be a good time since the nights have been downright cold and, in my experience, truckee trout like an upward gradient in water temperature. This is, of course, an assumption that turned out to be wrong due, I think, to the fact that the bugs are hatching in the evening. But I'll get to that-- first: If I have to cut down one more trot line I'm going to throw something at someone:

first catch of the day.

After untangling myself from the 20lb test trot line I got serious trying to catch fish. I threw an arsenal of nymphs at the fish and swung streamers for an hour or so before switching back to a black aggravator nymph with an october caddis (sparkle pupa) for a dropper. Finally around 5pm I stuck my first fish swinging the caddis nymph in a fast riffle in front of a big boulder. The fish felt heavy and dove deep with pulsing head shakes that told me it might be the brown trout I had hoped for. The fish made some quick strong runs but I followed downstream and put the side pressure on and netted exactly what I had hoped for:

20" fall truckee brown trout:

You have to love these colors:

I quickly got back to chucking flies and after landing a few rainbows I replaced the aggravator nymph with a #12 copper john with some split shot above it. I threw the first cast with this rig into some pocket water and as I was high sticking it in front of me my indicator made an obvious dive under the water. I set the hook hard downstream and felt a massive weight on the other end bobbing and flailing. Then it made a downstream run that kicked my arse and had me stumbling and falling down just to keep the fish from running into my backing. I immediately started getting visions of the glory I would recieve for landing this beast as it was a solid hook set and I was using 7lb flouro on both nymphs (not good for karma). I played the fish for a few minutes marveling at its strength and wondering how I would keep it out of the quarter mile of nasty whitewater below me. That's when I made the decision to horse this fish into slow water. I did it! But no, the fish darted back into the fast stuff making me sweat. Try it again? Yeah-- I did it! I saw a wide back and a full dorsal, a little bit of tail fin and.... *boink* my fly shot back over my head and I mentally punched myself in the face for being an idiot. Repeatedly. Next time I'll jump in if I have to-- this brown probably would have pushed the 8lb mark (just a guess relative to the 20"er I had just landed) and was the trophy I've been hunting for. Ah well-- these are the fish that hook fisherman and keep us hopelessly addicted.

Once the dissapointment faded a little the night ended spectacularly and I landed around a dozen or so cuttbows all in the 10"-17" range and one bigger fish that ran me downstream and promptly shook the hook. I even hooked one rainbow on a black rabbit strip streamer after the sun went down:

Fooled fish says, "this caddis has a sharp!"

The general size for the night:

This fish ate a size 4 streamer:

Note: As it's been getting cooler the fish have been moving from fast water to mid paced holes, pocket water and some pretty slow seam water. And soon, I suspect they may even begin to move towards the tail outs when the water temps are down. It's not exactly an easy time to fish this river-- I've had a few days recently where I've had to work for even just one fish but when the magic happens it's... well it's magic... just like they make it sound in the magazines.

go get 'em.

Flourocarbon Knots

2009-09-30T11:20:00.000-07:00

I've been slacking on this blog-- not by choice but by the inevitable face-kicking amount of energy that's needed for engineering classes. How I loathe them. Anyways... for an interim post to a half completed write up on the donner und blitzen-- some knots.

For the most part I've had excellent success with flourocarbon using a double surgeon's knot to build simple leaders and attach tippet and using a Uni-knot to tie on flies. However after a quick search for knots recommended for flourocarbon-- I think I will give the following two knots a try. The first is recommended by seaguar (my new choice brand for flourocarbon) and the second by frog hair (my previous favorite brand of flourocarbon). Both are recommended specifically as good knots for flouro (click to enlarge):

Mono to flouro:

flouro to fly:

Let me know if you currently employ these knots and how they work for you! cheers.

Got me a new camera....

2009-09-21T17:39:00.000-07:00

Now both my phone and my camera are waterproof. Bad. Ass.

Dead drift marabou 'dad

2009-09-19T13:13:00.000-07:00

Another fly that has put a lot of big fish in my net has been tim haddon's dead drift crayfish (full instructions: part1 and part2)-- however it started becoming a bit of a chore to sit down and kick out even just a half dozen of these puppies so I started experimenting with my own. I started tying something closer to a woolley bugger, not bothering with a pulled over carapace and then moved back towards a more defined claw structure. Anyways here's my version of a dead drift crawdad that worked wonders this season, and I think it's a pretty simple tie:

DEAD DRIFT 'BOU-'DAD

MATERIALS:

thread: Danville olive or brown 6/0
hook: #4-6 TMC 3761
eyes: small or med black bead chain
hotspot/feelers: orange rabbit w/ orange krystal flash
underbody: .015 in lead wire
dubbing: dark olive rabbit dubbing
pinchers/chelipeds: olive marabou (posted)
rib: small black ultra wire ("wiggled" through hackle)
legs/pereiopods: webby brown saddle hackle feather

FULL STEPS
(click read more)

1. mount hook, start thread at eye and wrap a base
back to about the barb-- tie in bead chain eyes at that point,
add a drop of cement to secure eyes

2. cut a tuft of orange rabbit (say, off a zonker strip)
and tie in over eyes

3. tie in a couple of pieces of orange crystal flash slightly
longer than the rabbit

4. dub over tie downs, making figure 8's around the eyes
(I like to scruff with a toothbrush at this point)

5. wrap lead over the remaining length of the body,
cover lead with thread and add some glue

6. tie in two tufts of marabou behind the eyes-- I like to
post the bases to splay the marabou more definitely

7. wet the marabou and PINCH off the marabou to a desired
length-- don't cut the marabou (it will look ugly)

8. tie in the black wire and a webby saddle hackle feather
by the base of the feather (tapers opposite of a woolly bugger)

9. dub a tapered body over the lead

10. palmer the hackle, tie off, and then wrap forward the
wire, working it back and forth to avoid trapping too much hackle
tie off and whip finish

11. scruff the legs up with a toothbrush (I like to arrange them so the
majority of the fibers splay to the sides) THEN add a drop of head cement

THE FINISHED FLY!
(not my cleanest tie but it's fishy enough)

The view from underwater:

I think this fly is a little more general than tim haddon's dead drift crayfish as, on the swing, the legs flatten out and pulse much like a standard woolly bugger! Give it a try during late summer when there is a noticible number of molting crawdads and let me know how it worked for you! Cheers.

Get out there and fish!

2009-09-15T17:12:00.000-07:00

The river is fishing well right now-- according to gilligan's (my new go-to site for fishing updates!) it's a good time to catch feisty browns-- adhere to the following method given on their site:

"Screw your chores tell the wife your going fishing."

Hey, they said it-- not me! But, I'd have to concur... so put a line in the water since, at my expense, I've verified the report. Ok actually I had a hell of a good time landing big rainbows yesterday and had one monster brown (that would have trumped my last) that shook the hook just prior to netting. Anyways-- I wanted to post the flies that were champs yesterday (the lead fly and the dropper):

Andy Burk's Aggravator nymph:
This is my version with red holo tinsel and a 2499spbl hook-- also I don't put
any turkey in for a thorax but rather just dub a big bushy collar and brush it back

MATERIALS:
thread: Danville black 6/0
bead: 1/8" gold bead
hook: #8 TMC 2499spbl (or #10 200R)
underbody: .015 in lead wire
tail: black marabou
rib: red holo tinsel with small red wire
wrapped over the top to reinforce
dubbing: Black rabbit (or other black dubbing)
legs: black sili legs or other rubber legs
collar: loose spun dubbing to push
legs back a little

Red tinsel nymph
This is a fairly generic nymph-- it's exactly how I tie my lightning
bug nymphs which simply have different colored tinsel and wire.
Essentially this is my "lazy-man's copper john"

MATERIALS:
thread: Danville black 6/0
bead: 3/32" gold bead
hook: #14-16 TMC 2499spbl (or 2487)
underbody: .010 in lead wire
body: red holo tinsel
rib: small red wire
thorax: arizona synthetic peacock

Golden Stonefly Nymph

2009-09-10T11:37:00.000-07:00

*Edit 3-17-2010: This picture is a better representation of the current incarnation of the stonefly nymph I tie-- the recipe below is still pretty close to how it's tied though. The only differences are that I do away with the turkey and use thin skin instead of scud back (scud back isn't wide enough IMO), and I wrap the d-rib flat side out:

So when I started this blog I really wanted to share fly patterns-- if and when I stumbled upon something that was dynamite. And at the end of this summer there are two patterns that really stick out in my mind-- a golden stonefly nymph and a crawdad fly. First, partially at the request of the trout-sticking WFF, I will post the stonefly nymph. This nymph has been absolutely killer during July & August (and will probably work well all fall/winter) and has become one of my favorite lead flies to sink caddis and mayfly nymphs. This is a great fly for big pools, dead drifting it in seams and slow, mid & fast paced water-- I've even taken fish on the swing with it. Drop a prince nymph off this guy and you have a very decent searching rig when not much is happening bug-wise.

Essentially this fly is Bob Jacklin's western march brown fly tied on a big scud hook and epoxied at the end (and with biots). Tie it in hare's ear, black, green, brown and golden!

GOLDEN STONEFLY:

MATERIALS:

thread: Danville 6/0 to match dubbing
hook: #6-8 TMC 2487 or 2499spbl
underbody: .02 in lead wire wrapped in danville 3/0
thread and smashed flat with pliers
tail/antennae: brown goose biots
rib: brown medium vinyl d-rib
dubbing: Kaufman's stonefly blends
legs: Brown hen saddle feather
thorax: turkey (or p.t.) and brown body flex
(or scud back) pulled over and epoxied
head: brown body flex (or scud back)
pulled over and epoxied

FULL STEPS:

for full steps for this fly click on the "read more" button-- it's a new feature I'm trying out to keep things clean!

1. start 3/0 thread, cover hook and wrap a
section with 0.02 lead wire

2. coat lead with thread, tie off (whip finish or half hitch)
and flatten the underbody with pliers
(you can also tie in lead along the sides to
make even wider)

3. coat body in glue and start 6/0 thread
to match dubbing

4. tie in small ball of dubbing (to keep biots spread)
and tie in two brown goose biots

5. tie in brown medium vinyl d-rib along
side of fly (to widen it)

6. dub a somewhat generous body (not too loose
though) up to about the half way mark

7. Rib the fly (either side of the vinyl rib works)

8. tie in brown body flex (or scud back) and
some turkey or pheasant tail (this is just to help
spread the legs in a later step

9. select two feathers for legs and prepare as shown,
measuring off the hook-- note: a variety of feathers works
for this step, I just like metz hen saddle feathers

10. tie in the feathers, concave up, and give
everything a shot of glue for good luck

11. dub a somewhat generous body
(you can pick it out later if you want)

12. pull over the leg feathers and tie off,
then pull the turkey over and tie off--
clip the excess

13. Before pulling over body flex,
tie in two biots for antennae

14. pull over the body flex and wrap over a
small section up to the eye of the hook
for a small head

15. Dub a small head-- try not to crowd the
eye of the hook! (like I sort of did here)

16. pull the body flex back over the dubbed head,
secure it with a couple of wraps and
whip finish -- trim off excess

17. Give the finished body a once over with
the pliers and flatten everything back
down again-- the fly is fishable at this point!

18. this is optional but I think it helps to grab
that little bit of extra attention from trout--
epoxy the thorax and head

And the finished fly!-- let me know how she works for you!

downtown between the hatches...

2009-09-09T11:56:00.000-07:00

I'm coming to realize that many of the fishing reports I read do not always apply to the downtown reno area that I fish. I'm also finding out that if you're willing to wade into some not so nice places around reno, you can find areas that are fly-fished almost as rarely as those pristine hike-in spots up in the mountains. Just... you know, watch out for people hanging out in the bushes... and don't ask what they're doing. You don't want to know. (I regularly see condoms, booze bottles, syringes and ripped out pages of porn mags on the banks of the river). It's also good to whistle a lot-- loudly. Why? --because people are nicer when they don't think you've snuck up on them (crackheads! so paranoid...). I've had in mind to notify the police a few times about people who have been living in one spot for a long time, but haven't yet-- best not to make enemies at this point I figure. Anyways...

The point is that I've had the most sporadic/difficult fishing these last two weeks prior to labor day weekend (more on that to come). But the flows are steady, there are a few bugs about and the weather has been consistently hot during the day and chilly at night. And all the reports say fishing is good! There's definitely a high probability that it's my sub par fishing skills, but my theory is that we're sort of in between major hatches right now. There was an awesome period a few weeks ago when crawdads and stoneflies would put a guy into a bunch of big fish. But now I see only a few crawdads and get no response on the stonefly. The only bugs that are hatching with any regularity (downtown anyway) are some PUNY effing mayflies (baetis) and, of course, a few midges. So I think the fishing may be a bit slow until the baetis really start hatching or the october caddis come out (this may be happening now, I haven't checked for 4 or 5 of days). I can't wait for the october caddis-- last year was big rainbow mayhem.
But for now here's what's been happening recently:

8-22-09:
I caught the last of the major "crawdad hatch" (again, that's per my estimation of the downtown area) on saturday the 22nd and spent an awesome day with a crawdad/stonefly rig that basically acted as a big fish filter-- it kept most of the little ones off :). I landed numerous fish in the 17"-20" range and was broken off by several hogs that always seemed to find an obstacle to wrap my line around. But what a day! I stuck to fast pocket water and at the head of almost every pocket I found a nice fish (also I'm awaiting a waterproof camera I ordered but I had to use my cell phone-- sorry). Here are the highlights:

After losing two big fish right off the bat, I chased

this one downstream through fast water that almost took me down,

It was probably pretty hilarious to watch:

After hooking an absolute

beast that ran up some whitewater and charged under a rock

snapping me off, I moved to the next hole for this beautifully

colored, 19" consolation prize:

I pushed my way through some serious

brush to fish a hole that has never produced a fish for me--

reaching to the far side and awkwardly high sticking a drift

under some overhanging willows produced this:

8/24/09 - 8/29/09:

Having had such a great day on the 22nd I found myself down at the river a little more than usual the following week. I fished three consecutive days (in between classes and after work) and got the fat goose egg each time (that's a big zero if you've never heard the term). And each time the conditions were pretty much the same-- tiny baetis coming off sporadically and a few other bugs and almost nothing nymphal hanging around for me to see except a few of the baetis. I nearly tried every nymph in my boxes before, on saturday the 29th I decided to get some streamer practice. I should have done this a long time ago. I need to pursue versatility in this sport, and I know it, just like a lot of us know it-- but we have a hard time deviating from the tried and true, don't we? Anyways, I tied on a big black conehead bugger and was admiring how it pulsed in the water. I decided to cast upstream in some shallow riffles and stripped downstream, hoping to get a look at what kind of action the conehead would produce. Two strips into this I snagged a rock. But this rock pulled back hard leaving me with snapped 7lb flourocarbon. WHAT?! Turns out what I thought to be a rock was actually a BIG fish sitting in maybe 12 inches of riffly water. I immediately tied another streamer on and spent the rest of the day getting numerous taps, follows and strikes. I lost a lot of big fish with botched hook sets but I managed two fish in the next hour. Amazing action for streamers in my opinion-- an experienced streamer guy would have landed a decent number of big fish-- in the end this was my best fish, caught in a shallow seam off some pretty fast riffles (I didn't realize my lense was foggy until later):

streamers are such a blast...

Well, sorry for the recent slackage-- school has started and I've been busy having fun on the river and at the vice--e watching for some fly tutorials soon! And also be watching for a labor day update on one of greatest desert streams I know! Cheers.

Blog slacker. link spew.

2009-09-02T11:23:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of posts as of late. I've got more than a few half written posts with pictures waiting to be edited. But I've been busy at work... well, and busy reading two new b.a. issues from the two best online magazines:

Catch magazine issue #7

This is fly issue #19

Also I thought this looked like at awesome minnow pattern-- I think I would tie it with a pearl belly, barred olive zonker strip and some red and maybe olive in the gills:

What a day

2009-08-15T20:35:00.000-07:00

~~The day started like any other~~

So I finally made it to the truckee to do some fishing! You see, my usual trips to the river--- frantically throwing down some food on the way, throwing on waders as fast as possible and keeping the rod rigged with basic attractors-- they're getting old. Aside from causing slackage at work and the crossed-arms-raised-eyebrows look from the wife, I've come to this point where I want to savor the moment more than a lunch break can provide. I like to turn over some rocks and find some bugs, rig my gear up proper and retie all my knots, and I like to find the fish and then tune in to what they're eating. All that takes more than 45 minutes. Almost everything is more fun when it's open ended too-- like, I could go do something else if the fishing is bad, or I can keep fishing for a few more hours if its on fire. That sort of open endedness. And "endedness" isn't even a word, that's how awesome it is.

So I got up early yesterday morning with high spirits knowing there wasn't anything I had to do-- there were things I wanted to get done, but I didn't really have a said time limit. It was actually quite chilly and I was mentally kicking myself for not having bought a new pair of wading boots and patching my waders. I had swim trunks and cheap river shoes I found at the thrift store for wading gear and had a handful of flies I tied the night before (lightning bugs, hare's ears, and psycho princes). I blasted the heater on my white ass legs trying to heat them up before dunking them and was happy not to see many cars parked at my usual haunt. There was a nice saturn which was some cause of concern (you know that another fly fisherman had beat me to the spot) as this place usually has derelict vans and little cars with tinted windows and huge subwoofers. I parked and walked to the river looking up and down-- not a fisherman in sight.

I geared up and picked a section of mid paced water with pockets of slow water that I thought might be fishy due to the lower temps the night before. I stepped in, sucking air through my teeth (like a weeny little girl) at the cold water. Then I stood there and looked at the water still imagining the day of fishing it could be, if all went right-- something akin to a fighter flexing his muscles before a fight, imagining the glory of a knockout... though perhaps something a little more subtle.

I made a few casts with a stonefly and a hare's ear nymph (a quality searching rig for a lot of waters) then stopped and turned over a few rocks. There wasn't much in the way of nymphs and there was only a few small midges and some tiny mayflies flying about. Accordingly, I switched the hare's ear nymph out with a micro mayfly and got down to business. The fishing was initially very slow, and i only caught one small rainbow until the sunlight started hitting the water. This has generally been my experience on this river and it wasn't until I could feel the water warming before the fish really started biting. In the next hour and a half I progressively fished slow to fast water (as the temps rose) and caught three fish that measured out at 17 inches and one nice fat 18 incher, among a handful of smaller fish. The winning fly was, again, the golden stonefly nymph which is now my go to fly for periods of little to no hatch:

Now the real reason that I chose to fish a spot I know, instead of exploring new water (which is ridiculously fun), was that last time I fished a lunch break there I hooked a larg brown trout which jumped and spit the hook. I haven't caught a brown trout in the truckee since last summer and I really wanted a piece of that fish. I watched as a guy moved in downstream of me and decided to fish the head of a pool and get out of there. I dropped a #16 lightning bug nymph (actually it's more like a disco midge-- no tail, legs, and no flash in the thorax) below the stonefly nymph on some 5lb flouro and adjusted my indicator to dredge the deepest part of the river. When I wasn't in the channel my fly would drag on the rocks and I would come up with nothing but rock-moss. But when the drift was just right, I could high-stick a perfect drift near some overhanging rocks. On about the 10th cast my indicator jerked under, quite obviously, and I set the hook hard downstream. I felt a few hard head shakes and then a fish took me for a ride across the river. I knew it was a big fish by it's strong runs straight up into the whitewater and during one of his runs across the river he turned up and wrapped me around a rock. I thought it was over but kept the line tight and cautiously pulled downstream-- I felt the line pop and was relieved when I felt the fish start shaking his head again. It ran downstream peeling off line like mad and then, fortunately, turned upstream and ran towards me. I stripped line maniacly arms over head and had just got the line back on the reel when he jumped. This is when I first saw I was dealing with a beast-- a huge brown cleared the water by a LOT and then did it again and again-- FIVE times in all. I couldn't believe it and looked around thinking "anyone else see this!!??" Of course not. As soon as I saw what I was dealing with, I got shaky in the knees and prayed "pleeease let me land this guy, pleeeasss." (oh the blasphemy!) More than a few tense minutes later (he was the kind of fish that would freak out every time he saw you) I slapped the net on this guy. I folded him in tail first and cried "woohoo!" I was hoping for a nice brown trout-- but this fish far exceeded my expectations for the day:

My spanish is lousy-- but not so bad that I couldn't ask
a guy to snap a few shots for me-- thanks man!

The "large" measure net
toothy

Of the fatsoid strain:

I'd like to arrogantly title this one
"breaching whale hump"

In the end I had a 23.5" brown trout in my hands, fooled by a #16 lightning bug (I'm now in love with tiemco SPBL hooks)-- I thought he would be longer but he's the fattest trout I've ever caught by far-- including the 27.5 inch brown I caught last year. Awesome colors too. Anyways, sorry for the lengthy entry, but I'm proud of this one-- it's probably the most memorable fish I've ever landed. And he still swims alive and free!

Here's to besting this fish-- I hope you all do!

Bridgeport: couldn't shake it.

2009-08-10T15:08:00.000-07:00

Well, so here's the story with my trip to Bridgeport: the fishing sucked. My camera broke, my waders leaked, my wading shoes fell apart, and I had fun. It was a really good time camping with an old friend, getting up and cooking breakfast and fishing our asses off every day, despite some of the toughest fishing conditions I've experienced in a while. And this guy picked up fly fishing QUICK with scrounged up equipment:

Ben and I got there late Thursday night, spent too long finding a camp site and then settled for RV city, complete with a table and a fire ring on a concrete pad. Really the bad part was that, with so many people, you couldn't pee in the bushes without someone spying your junk. But walking to the restroom wasn't too bad and the neighbors turned out to be pretty cool. Especially one pine-cone mauling golden retriever... think "squirrel!" The next morning we cooked breakfast and I got the camera to start documenting the trip-- the lense came out, the screen went blank and then ... nothing. That's all she wrote. And Ben didn't bring a camera either... I was down to a cell-phone with some battery left and no charger to bring it up to speed. So I only have a few fish pictures-- all terrible quality-- sorry.

Now, I've always thought that one of the best ways to catch a fish of a lifetime is to leave the camera at home so that nobody will believe you. This turned out to be very not true. We fished like maniacs and had very little to show for it. In all, over the course of 3 full days, we fished Green creek, Robinson Creek, The East Walker river, The little walker river, Lower twin lake, Upper virginia lake and Bridgeport reservoir.

Green Creek: The first day we fished here and I killed 'em for two hours, drifting various caddis and attractor nymphs-- but the winning fly ended up being a black woolley bugger dead drifted under a tiny indicator. It was really amazing-- we caught some 14" and 15" trout (stocked and wild rainbows and brown trout) amongst a bunch of 10"ers -- and this stream is TINY. I'm talking a bushwacking sort of creek where you don't cast-- just dap your line out there and then untangle yourself time after time from the overhanging bushes. Then all of a sudden someone turned off the fish switch and we could catch a thing, so after a sunburn and some mosquito bites we decided to leave.

East Walker River: Shortly after leaving Green creek it hailed for about an hour (it was in the hight 80's... then it hailed !!??). Then, having heard overcast days are good for big browns, we fished the east walker for a while. It was surprisingly empty and I hooked and lost a tiny brown on a prince nymph and got a few follows on a JJ's special. We eventually left after feeling a bit poached from some other anglers.

Lower Twin Lake: We decided to fish close to our camping spot until dark and threw more than a few casts into a lake devoid of any life-- I didn't see any bugs, and the water is crystal clear with nothing to indicate a great amount of biomass-- just granite, granite and more granite. I'm guessing this is a trolling boat lake like tahoe.

Robinson creek: There is, however, a beautiful creek flowing out of the aforementioned lake and we decided to fish it. Immediately I nailed 5 or 6 fish on my last psycho prince (in caddis green) so I thought we were going to kill 'em. After I moved from that productive spot we fished some GREAT looking pools and riffles-- nothin. Right as it got dark I did land two stockers on a swung tan caddis nymph-- sight casting to a big school of nice trout, hitting them in the face with everything in my fly box. The beer tasted good that night.

Upper Virginia Lake: This is a beautiful glacial lake with high rocky mountains jutting up around it-- and it's clear and deep. It felt great sitting in a float tube but we fished and fished and fished and other than a few lazy follows on some lures we only caught two small stockers on bait. Yes, I fished bait. We were meat catchin' anyways. We left and tried out green creek again. The bite was still turned off and I only landed one fish-- using 3.5lb fluorocarbon, a size 18 HBI nymph and crouching in the mud casting to a POD of fish.

Bridgeport Reservoir: In one last shot at catching a fish we headed to the Reservoir and fished, for the first time, in an area with very few anglers. It was a beautiful sunset with a smokey haze from wildfires rolling in, a circling bald eagle close above us and MONSTER trout coming clean out of the water for bugs, making that awesome meat-hits-water sound when they landed. I think they were feeding on miniscule midges and mosquitos and I threw the book at them fishing streamers, lures and midge patterns. No luck. We went into town and ate some awesome pizza at a placed called Rhino's-- pepperoni, jalapenos, crushed garlic and lots of cheese. It balanced the cold sierra nevada pale ale perfectly.

Little Walker River: We slept late (partially due to being woken up by the sound of bears chewing on ice chests) and packed up camp after breakfast. On the way out we fished an awesome freestone river/creek called the Little walker. In a previous trip I absolutely hammered the fish and was hopeful. Alas, we couldn't shake the stank and spent the last day skunked. So we went home. I peed in a casino bathroom in carson. Beds are nice. It hailed at home too.

Back home-- a Truckee Update: Like I said I had fun but was ready to be home and about a week later I hit the truckee and hooked into some big, feisty rainbows and even lost a 20 inch brown trout--- Stonefly nymphs and a #14 lightning bug nymph dominated. But don't forget the Hoppers and Crawfish.

Here's some bad pictures from Green creek:

awesome native:

fish of the day... er, trip:

The brown trout were small n' feisty:

Summer Truckee

2009-07-28T10:57:00.000-07:00

So lately all I've been doing fish-wise is gearing up for a trip to Bridgeport CA this weekend for a fishing trip with my long time friend, Ben, who I met in Winnemucca in 1989. Which mostly means I've been sitting in the basement tying up stillwater flies-- bugger, bugger, bugger, Carey Special, bugger, damsel, bugger, midge etc. But last night, having tied so many new flies and having a virgin rod/reel combination I just rigged up, I had to get out on the river.

I got the green light from my understanding wife (you're the most beautiful in the whole land!... and I'm a ~~kiss-ass~~ great husband) and threw on my swim trunks and my fishing vest and hit a couple of spots on the west end of town. Bad idea. I forgot about the tuber hatch. I hit two spots I had in mind and in both places there were large pods of beer-swilling tubers covering the water... I was dissapointed but not overly offended as, given the 98 degree weather, it didn't sound like a bad idea. So back to my usual haunt-- a stretch of water between 3 or 4 decrepit parks containing more goose-dung, trash and homeless people than tubers or fisherman.

I got to the river, grabbed my rod and climbed right in the refreshing water, thankful for some relief from the stagnant heat. I flipped over a few rocks and found a smattering of various sized mayflies and a few green cased caddis worms. I rigged up a stonefly nymph for weight and dropped a pmd ice nymph off the bend of the hook. I chose the pmd nymph because I had just seen Juan Ramirez's tutorial on his blog, the hopper juan, and had tied two up that very day (with some umm, let's say improvised materials)-- I was excited to see if it would work as well for me as it does for him!

The fishing started out quite slow-- I'm guessing due to the heat-- and I covered a fair amount of pocket water and fished up a long run to the fast water at the head of a pool, changing my dropper out a few times-- mercers psycho prince, z-wing caddis nymph, then I went to 3 flies and dropped the pmd ice emerger off the caddis nymph. I got a few noncommittal taps when swinging the pmd and then at the head of the pool, as I was about to move on, my indicator darted sideways. I (finally) made a decent downstream hookset to the bank and hooked into a feisty 16" rainbow. Being the cheap bastard I am, I've been using mustad nymph hooks but have finally grown to hate them after losing many a fish. However I've found an alternative for tying cheap nymphs-- mustad dry fly hooks. I chased the fish downstream not wanting to straighten the fine wired dry fly hook-- and after several awesome runs I had my first fish of the day:

nice n' healthy:

pmd ice emerger-- a hasty and ugly tie on my part--and I didn't
have any of the prescribed materials-- but a winner nonetheless!:

I then decided it might be worth the effort to work the hole a little more and put some split shot on trying to get the fly down in the fast deep water-- which turned out well. I soon was hooked into another nice rainbow on the swing--this time on the golden stonefly nymph. This one didn't seem to fight as well but when I got it close I realized it was a much bigger fish than the first. I landed the fish after a few weak runs and a lot of head shaking and it taped out at a solid 19" -- and had a really messed up lower jaw.

I think this fish was really distressed from the heat and after about 10 minutes trying to revive this guy he just twitched spasmodically, and the second half of his tail felt like rigor mortis had already set in. I glanced around checking for any tweed-and-dry-fly-only-guys and did him in -- I'd rather have a nice fillet than send a fish off to slowly die at the bottom of the truckee.

I moved up to some really nice looking water for caddis and went back to a two-fly rig with the stonefly and an olive caddis dropper. I worked the water over quite completely before giving up. I moved back to some deeper water and put a cast right in the seam behind a big rock and was soon into another fish. The drift was sweet, the take was obvious, my hook set was solid. I knew this guy was mine. Feeling confident I chased this fish downstream as he made a blistering run across the stream and then UP into the white water. This was a brute. This fish kicked my ass. I was feeling confident that this fish was going to come in eventually and he made run after run peeling off WAY too much line every time-- but everytime I chased him down and put side pressure on, moving him back towards my side of the river. Then one more run across the river into water so shallow I saw a fin making a wake and then... nothing. Slack line. I flung my line in loops saying "no, no, no!!" In that stupid whispery-but-loud voice we use when we lose hours of work to a computer crash or some other great dissapointment. I investigated my flies to determine the reason for failure-- the cause? The fish had widened the gape of my #14 TMC 2487 considerably:

"Well, I guess he earned that one," I finally conceded and bent the hook back to its original (kind of) shape and switched the stonefly with an experimental crawdad fly I tied a couple of days ago:

I had high hopes for this fly but after about 20 fishless casts my confidence broke and I put the stonefly back on. Good decision. As the sun was setting I put the hurt on numerous fish, all in the 14-16" range all along the pool-- all taking the stonefly nymph. I tried all sorts of droppers and took a few small fish on a golden nugget nymph and a psycho prince but the stonefly nymph was HOT:

This is my version of Bob Jacklin's western march brown tied on
a #8 TMC 2487 for a lot of curvature and a wide hook gape...
and, eureka, it's all chewed up!:

Right as it was about to get dark I decided I had to try the streamer game again. I tied on a big #6 conehead woolly bugger which I had tied extra furry, extra webby and with a flashy collar (taken from a fly that's been dynamite for WFF). I made a few swings with a quick strip or two in there for good measure and, on the third cast, my fly stopped. Yeah, I didn't even feel a bite, it just felt like my fly stopped-- I set the hook and the water exploded as a nice rainbow flopped across the water. He then made an upstream run and went air born-- who doesn't love the meaty flop of a large trout hitting the water? This fish fought an incredible battle and was the fish of the day in terms of how well it fought. It took 4 or 5 long runs but I had 6lb flourocarbon on and I knew it would hold this fish. I muscled it in after it looked like it was done making runs and netted a beautifully colored, healthy proportioned 18" cutt-bow just as it got dark-- another great end to an awesome evening on the water:

I can't wait to go to bridgeport.

more media spewage

2009-07-24T17:05:00.000-07:00

I feel lazy posting other peoples' media, but I found a link to this on the big pull and thought it too great to not post it-- check this video out.

Pine Forest Complex. 7/2/09 - 7/5/09

2009-07-21T18:00:00.000-07:00

The plans to camp and fish at Blue Lakes and Onion Valley Reservoir -- in the Pine Forest complex -- were a complete success with much of the Lord's beauty being observed and loads of fish being left with sore mouths. The story as condensed by my waning memory:

Gearing up:
Being that I don't really have any stillwater experience with the fly rod I sat down and did a little bit of tying. I ended up tying a smattering of flies, including a bunch for the truckee, but new names like "sheep creek special," "damsel nymph," and "Stayner Ducktail" are now a part of my arsenal:

Yeah it's a bit ugly I know... but it worked!:

Having read in Dave Stanley's "Fly Fishing Nevada" that foam body zonkers make for a great night pattern--along with the fact that there are tiger trout in all 3 bodies of water up there-- I thought it would be a good time to try and tie the skate rat. I didn't follow the pattern but instead just spun on a bunch of deer hair and trimmed it-- turns out spinning deer hair isn't as scary as I thought... though it does make a helluva mess of your tying bench. The finished product (I figured two would be plenty):

I also broke down and bought into the uv curing epoxy trend.... which, it turns out is near impossible to take a decent picture of. The night before we left I discovered that I'm missing an entire box of flies that I tied for pyramid lake-- greatly reducing my stock. I stayed up until the butt-crack-o'-dawn tying leeches, damsels, buggers, scuds, blob flies, and midges. I also bought a sink tip and figured I was as ready as I was ever going to be.

The Journey:
I can tell you it's a helluva drive up there and most of the time you have a hard time believing you're anywhere near a high-mountain glacial trout lake. You pass through my home town, Winnemucca, drive towards Oregon and take a left. That's when you're presented with a view of a road as endless as the sky (as modeled marvelously by my gorgeous wife):

Not to worry-- after just a little while the road will soon make a right hand turn. And then it will look the same.

Pretty soon you're seeing mirages in the heat waves and the three people that pass you give you stolid looks that say "what are you doing here" which is what you are thinking as well. Then you stop a half dozen times and make a mess of your map until you realize your turn is marked well by a road sign, if you had just held out for it. Then begins an arduous trek through the mountains and after you're sure your truck can't handle any more abuse, the desert starts dwindling into wonderful groves of aspen, wildflowers and small, seasonal streams that almost convince you you're the first person to discover these oases. By this point you're thinking "this lake has got to be around the next bend," but after every bend you see this:

Assuring you that you're not even close.

In the end we finally made it to onion valley reservoir-- a welcome sight indeed! Then there was just one last short trek up a road to the blue lakes trail head-- it turned out to be a bit rough in some areas and I even had to get out and scout out a particularly difficult spot. Even after mentally marking out a planned route through the ruts and boulders, my tire ended up falling off the steep side of a rock and "Wham!" we slammed down with that not-so-good-feeling of steel on rock. After picking my teeth up off the floor I investigated the damage and found I had slammed down hard on the frame behind the tire (luckily) and then skipped off the rock before I was high centered. I certainly left a bit of hardened steel on the rock... but no worries-- onward ho! We found a camp site and a surprising number of vehicles at the trail head and were soon happily settled in and made an evening hike into the lake.

Blue Lakes:
Despite the surprising number of people camping on the lake (surprising since you have to pack everything in about 1/2 a mile) I was stunned by the beauty of the place and felt my blood start to pump when I noticed the surface of the lake was spotted with rings made by rising trout. It was time to give it a shot before dark settled in:

I got the spinning rod set up with a lure for Andrea and gave it a few casts for her ("hold on dear, just one more...") -- each cast was rewarded with little taps and following trout. We fished an hour or so and caught maybe 7 or 8 fish on spinners and I missed take after take after take on an indicator-midge setup. As it turns out, our camera had limited life left at this point (a malfunctioning battery and a dust-infected display) and I didn't stop to take any pictures of the little 10" rainbows that we were catching.

Eventually Andrea drug me off of the lake and we hiked back to camp with high spirits-- we were finally out of the car and camping! The sunset was a grand display silhouetting the juniper and aspen reminding Andrea and I both, oddly enough, of the hazy sunsets we've seen in west Africa. We chowed some grub and then turned in, with high hopes for the next day.

Alas those hopes were shortlived, as we awoke around midnight to the loud roar of a diesel running up and down the road spinning circles and peeling out and generally just making a lot of noise. Then they stopped in the driveway to our little camp in the trees--not 20 feet away-- and started unloading. WTF?! They were clearly completely drunk and proceeded to build a bonfire and rip off tree branches loudly, talking about girls, beer, guns, and killing peoples' annoying pets. So I sat in bed and fumed knowing I'd be a fool to confront a bunch of armed, drunk rednecks this far out of cell range... needless to say it was probably around 4 am before they quieted down and Andrea and I fell asleep with visions of vigilante justice dancing around in our heads. Now, don't get me wrong, I've participated in my fair share of redneck idiocy and had a lot of fun doing it-- but when you are driving drunk on dangerous roads and being that inconsiderate towards other people-- you deserve to be called an ignorant douchebag.

Anyways... enough ranting -- the point is that we didn't get up early and get to the lake for a full day of swimming and fishing. Instead we slept until our tent turned into a 2-man-person-cooker and then investigated our options. As it turns out there were plenty of open campsites, which are apparently only visible to the non-drunk sort of campers. Instead of a foolish confrontation we packed up camp, drove down the road, and unpacked camp again. We were soon happily set up in a beautiful spot and on our way to the lake to catch the midday bite (that's a joke).

camp-- numero dos (and looking the other way below):

We spent the day on the lake reeling in fish after fish -- mostly in the 7"-12" range. The water was crystal clear and though we were only catching the small ones you could see an occasional bruiser swim by. Frustratingly you could get these big guys to occasionally chase a streamer or nymph only to have them stop at the last second and turn around-- A conundrum I never solved over the whole trip. Regardless I was mostly happy to reel in little rainbows, brookies, and tiger trout and after many hours I finally got the hang of catching them with the fly rod. The key seemed to be a hard, short strip-- then a long pause-- a couple more strips-- repeat. The hard part was the hook set with the feisty quick hits taking place on the pause so a close attention to the line/leader junction was a must and a quick strip or rod set would do the job. A variety of flies seemed to do the job just fine-- the retrieve seemed more crucial than anything-- but the winning flies in my book were brown and black woolly buggers, sheep creek specials, marabou-tailed damsel nymphs and an olive beadhead bird's nest.

As I said earlier the camera was on the fritz so once a few photos were snapped we put the camera away and simply enjoyed the stupid trout with their feisty takes and ridiculous acrobatics. And speaking of fritz-- I even managed to fool a few with a sparkly purple blob fly:

first tiger trout for the books! Quite beautiful:

Once again the day ended with a beautiful sunset and my brother, his girlfriend and my parents ended up meeting us up there. And apparently my Mom was the only one with the guts to go talk to those guys I had problems with earlier-- as it turns out my were setting up their camp and were annoyed by the constant revving of a diesel engine and loud music-- I hadn't even shared my story of bad luck with them yet! Surprisingly they quieted down and we had a great time eating bratwursts, corn and a bunch of other camping junk food.

The next morning my Dad wanted to see blue lake so we returned and continued the small-fish trout-fest. However, my brother Randy ended up actually landing some nice fish (fortunately I didn't place any bets) landing a 17"er, 18"er and a bigger fish probably in the 20" range-- all caught on a lure with a spinning rig-- keeping me humble on the fly rod. The 'rents headed home in the early afternoon along with my brother and his lady and-- after a bath and a refreshing swim in blue lake-- we headed down to Onion reservoir with more bratwursts and a small grill.

Onion Valley Reservoir:
The beauty of onion reservoir was getting to park right on the water-- we set up camp chairs and Andrea started cooking while I threw some half-hearted casts in some shallow warm water. There didn't seem to be a single fish rising so after dinner Andrea and I hiked around the lake taking in the scenery and even managing some photos while the sun got lower and lower in the sky (turn camera on, take one picture, camera dies, open and close battery compartment-- repeat for each shot). The aspen and wildflowers were amazing (all photos taken by Brian & Andrea Johnson):

On the way back I waded through a small inlet stream and was amazed at how cold the water was. I immediately started thinking that there might be a cold current attracting some trout to the inlet-- despite it's shallowness-- and made a quick cast with a spinning rod before we left. Whammo! On the first cast I landed a 12" rainbow-- so I made another cast -- Whammo! Another fish! This time a nice 16" rainbow jumped out of the water and threw the hook-- I promptly got in the water with my fly rod and started nailing fish with a black woolly bugger. In fact, the woolly bugger worked so well that I didn't waste any time trying too many different flies. It turned out to be a spectacular evening of fishing with my poor wife, who didn't feel like fishing, reading in the car while I was sort of freaking out at how awesome the fishing was. There wasn't a soul in sight around the reservoir and here I was standing in knee deep water stripping a bugger as fast as I could -- almost as if I was bassin'-- and catching more 12"-16" rainbows than I could keep track of. I was fishing just under the surface with a 7ft leader and floating line, stripping the unweighted bugger immediately after the cast landed and some of these fish would make a visible wake on the water in the waning light before taking my fly.

It was mad action until it got dark and then it just slowed a little bit-- the moon was full and these werefish were still a bitin'. Then I finally changed flies-- caught a few more on cutter's goblin fly and then decided it was time to try the skate rat. There was nothing but grass around me and I was casting like a fool making some of the longest casts of my life with that nice light skate rat and stripping it with all sorts of retrieves. No dice. I'll be sure to try mouse-flies again for night trout-- but the darkness finally got to me and all sorts of strange creatures were making noises in the grass and water, including some water snakes making unmistakable s-shaped wakes on the calm surface of the water. Did I mention I was wet wading? I packed up and headed out, giddy because of the great fishing and we returned to camp tired-- a great end to a great trip.

On Home:

On the last day I had hoped to get in some early morning fishing before we had to leave, but I couldn't drag myself out of bed and Andrea and I enjoyed a lazy morning before we threw our gear back in the truck and started driving. Next time I definitely want to fish Knott Creek reservoir but we were out of time this trip. On the way home we got to see some antelope and some wild burros and stopped in the puny town of Denio for a "Denio-Burger"-- hands down the best damn burger of your life, if you ever get the chance.

All in all this is one of the coolest spots I've been to-- so don't abuse it if you go there! And sorry for the late update-- I wanted to do the update some justice but I'll actually be quite impressed if anyone makes it this far through my hasty ramblings! I'm definitely in the stillwater game now however and I'll be gearing up for a trip to Bridgeport CA at the end of the month for another epic fishing trip.

Cheers.

Mr. Wier explains it.

2009-07-20T17:06:00.000-07:00

With deft moves and a whole lotta truthfulness: http://burlfish.blogspot.com/

Love these fish.

2009-07-17T11:15:00.000-07:00

I finally stopped by the river yesterday and threw a few casts-- I tried a few different flies before settling on a golden stonefly nymph with an HBI nymph dropper. The stonefly nymph was the basic stonefly pattern I've been using except that it's a #10 stonefly tied on a #8 tmc scud hook, giving it a much more curled appearance. I figured the HBI nymph would work on the swing and I used tmc's spbl hook which is the best hook I've found for piercing fish mouths with ease. Needless to say I was confident. The river was low and the weather was pushing a murderous 100 degrees (people in the arizona area are rolling their eyes at me I'm sure).

I made numerous casts to fast water with no luck. I decided to work the seams and even let a few casts drift in some slow water -- it was during one of these drifts when my indicator went slowly under. I figured I was scraping the bottom but, as always, I set the hook anyways and I felt it-- the fisherman drug that keeps us habitually waving a fishing stick on the water: the surging tug of a fish on the end of my line. I saw the fish right away and knew I needed to reel in some line and let the drag handle this one. Predictably, chaos ensued and I chased this one around with difficulty since I wasn't wading-- I promptly fell on my arse and soaked my shoes and pant legs. #%^&$. In the end I had a football shaped fatty in my net taping out at a glorious 19" that took the stonefly. It may not seem like a trophy but I haven't caught a fish over 16" since well before the 4th of July so... in context it seemed like a monster to me, plus I think I'm infatuated with girthy fish:

Unfortunately the digital camera is on the fritz (I blame blue lakes dust) so I will have to resort to the cell phone for a while. But you get the idea.

After this fish I made a few more casts, botched two hook sets and then had to go home, and change my wet clothes. After the at&t tech came by to look at our intarwebs I went out again, but for some reason I chose to go out east and get frustrated with some of the craziest deep water on the truckee which is near impossible to nymph. I tried a sink-tip with a streamer for a little while, but after a carp swam by I figured my chances of catching a trout were slim. I stripped off my gear and enjoyed the refreshing water. What a day!

Blimey.

2009-07-15T09:53:00.000-07:00

Sitting here wondering if any movie is worth a midnight showing... thought I'd update.

The story is that I have quite a few pictures from the 4 day camping/fishing adventure I had way up high in the pine forest complex and am still working on the writeup. This is my excuse for the lack of updates here! I've hit the truckee maybe once or twice since then and have only come up with a few fish and, being that my camera is broken, I don't even have pictures of those to post.

Mostly I've just been taking a breather after the awesome time fishing over the 4th and gearing up for another big fishing trip at the end of this month. The new word on the street is streamers. Well, that and wasted cash:

Normally I support buying local... but for 40 bucks (!!!!!) and considering the unfished rod sitting in the basement... and considering scheel's is still asking $100 for it... I couldn't resist. Anyways....

pics of the pine forest complex coming soon.

First fish on a streamer!

2009-07-01T15:13:00.000-07:00

This post is brought to you by the RTE bed-sheet shark:
these waters are not safe

Last night I couldn't hold out any longer-- I had to redeem my fish-less self and hit the river. Of course it's been ridiculously cloudless and nice-- but the day I decide to fish it threatens rain. Uncharacteristic of this area it remained hot despite the overcast sky and I ended up wading a somewhat trashy section of river (towards the east end of town) in hot muggy weather. Despite the litter, everything was lush and green and this, combined with the humidity (a foreign thing here) I felt as though I had been transported to somewhere very far from Reno.

There were only a few caddis flies about and a smattering of various midges and pmds so I tied on some attractors-- on a #12 prince, and a #14 psycho prince in caddis green. After a while without any fish I also added a tiny #18 zebra midge to the train. This proved to be the key and I was soon into a big fish that put it's head down and dove deep-- In my head I was sure I'd have a big brown in my hand soon-- that was right before the hook came out :-) The very next cast my train of flies became a train wreck and I ended up cutting everything off and starting from scratch. Pissed but undeterred I tied on a big #10 cinnamon-brown stonefly, a #12 tan caddis nymph and another zebra midge and started covering some water. As it turns out this was a game of big and small-- I caught several fish on the tiny zebra midge (nothing of size) and a nice 18"er on the big stonefly nymph:

At this point the camera died (damn battery) and I landed a few more small fish in various mid-paced riffles before the light started getting low. I decided to try and break out of my nymph-only mold and tied on a big bead-headed goblin streamer with lots of underbody lead and went a-swingin'. A few casts into this game I made an across and upstream cast into the bankside, let the fly sink and then mended to get a slow swing into the middle current-- I froze when I felt several violent tugs and then leaned back on the rod when one more wrenching hit came--fish on!. I let the fish peel off quite a bit of line in the fast current before going downstream after him and soon I had another nice 18" trout in hand-- what an evening!

Other than that I will be taking a trip to Blue Lakes (and possibly onion reservoir and knott creek reservoir) over the next couple of days-- I hope to have some good content from there! That said, I have little to no experience fishing still-waters-- and adventure it will be.

Shut up and tie this.

2009-06-30T08:58:00.001-07:00

The other day some wire caught my eye-- "copper brown" it said. In my head some possibilities started rolling around. When I finally took it out of the car and sat it next to some feathers and dubbing-- specifically Andy Burk's HBI dubbing-- the idea blossomed.

*drumroll*

I now present to you a variation of the HBI nymph that, although untested, will certainly piss some fish off:

The HBI John
(or maybe wired HBI?)

Hook: #14-#18 TMC 2457, 2487 or
2499SP-BL (or other scud hook)
Thread: Danville #7 orange 6/0 prewaxed
Tail/legs: natural or lemon wood duck
Body: copper brown ultrawire - small
Thorax: HBI dubbing (base of rusty brown rabbit
with hot orange and olive rabbit mixed in)
Back: brown turkey w/ a couple strands
of crystal flash - epoxy optional
Legs: copper brown ultrawire - small

noobery.

2009-06-26T11:17:00.000-07:00

I've only gone out fishing two or three times in the last two weeks-- and both times were some of the toughest times I've ever had catching fish. Granted, I only fished a couple of hours on several occasions but I tried everything in my fly boxes, including throwing streamers, with little to show for it (numerous noncommittal little taps is all I get, with an occasional planter taking the hook). Meanwhile every spinner slinging caster is slamming fish after fish and calling his friends on his cell phone shouting "dude, get out here man, you won't believe the fishing!" I've definitely been tempted to get my spinning rod out (I'm not against it and do enjoy it) but the frustration of not being able to "crack the code" of what the fish are actually eating right now is driving me too insane to admit defeat.

Specifically, I remember one evening where, right before dark, there were swarms of egg-laying caddis and yellow crane flies, an occasional green drake, numerous PMD's, midges, and a fair amount of little yellow stoneflies. And not a single rising fish. No sips, splashes, flashes, or blips on the radar. Nothing. I tied on every nymphal, pupal, emergent, schlemergent pattern I own and only hooked one fish-- that essential monster-that-gets-away-making-sure-you-can't-stay-off-the-stream-for-more-than-a-day-sunnuvabatch fish-- the kind that makes other fisherman roll their eyes when you tell 'em about it.

It's times like these when I realize I'm still a noob.

well here's the only non-planter fish over 12 inches I've landed in two weeks (If you're looking for an update I haven't been out lately so check out renoflyshop.com).

Other than that I've mostly been spending time at the vise getting ready for a 4th of july camping trip up in the desert mountains of northern nevada. I can't wait. More to come on that...
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.
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Caddis Nymph

2009-06-18T16:09:00.000-07:00

Stumbled on this guy via the daily fly paper blog-- thought it looked really great, and what a great idea for dubbing a fly!:

eat your vegetables.

2009-06-18T15:58:00.000-07:00

This update brought

to you by the RTE food pyramid:
eat your vegetables, bishes.

The Flies:

Lately my main go to flies have been prince nymphs, green drake nymphs, and a couple different caddis nymphs. I've been using the prince nymphs or the green drakes as lead flies (also it's a good idea to try stonefly nymphs to get the attention of big trout) and then dropping the caddis nymphs underneath which has performed spectacularly. (Note: don't forget little yellow stonefly nymphs when fishing by overhanging brush). Here's some of the patterns I've been using.

Simple caddis:
(I don't have a name- and it's not particularly original)

Bead: 1/8" black bead
Hook: #12 TMC 2457, 2487 or
2499SP-BL (or other scud hook)
Rib: Copper, Gold or Silver small wire
Body: light hare's ear blend I blend some
sparkly stuff in there (how to blend link)
Thorax: Peacock ice dub (or similar blend)
tied in faux dubbing loop
(see this post or this youtube video)

Improved green
drake nymph:
(again I don't have a name- and it's not exactly original either)

Hook: #12-14 TMC 100 (or other)
Tail: 3 emu feather fibers (or pheasant tail fibers)
Rib: small olive ultrawire (or gold)
Body: a bundle of olive marabou wrapped around hook
with a few fibers of pheasant tail pulled over the top
Gills: olive marabou tufts tied behind thorax
Legs: Brown or olive hen fibers
Thorax: Olive dubbing with dark mottled
turkey tail pulled over the top and epoxied

Mercer's psycho prince
(in caddis green)

Bead: 1/8" gold bead
Hook: #12-14 TMC 100 (or other)
Tail: Brown goose biots
Rib: small gold ultrawire
Body: Caddis green ice dubbing with a few
fibers of pheasant tail pulled over the top
Wing bud: Electric Banana angel hair
Legs: White goose biots
Collar: peacock black ice dub
(or just peacock herl)

The Fishing:

I met up with my brother in law, Jesse, on Monday around noon and was really hoping to get him into some fish. I rigged him up with a prince nymph and a caddis nymph dropper and took him to some water that has really been producing some fish for me lately. Alas wind and clouds rolled in right away, putting a stop to most of the fish activity and he didn't get into any fish. I myself only had one quick strike on the swing though I was trying not to fish as much and get Jesse into some fish. Besides the slow fishing Jesse was really getting the hang of the somewhat chaotic nature of fishing fast sinking multiple nymph rigs. I showed him my usual retarded casting style and before I knew it he was water loading his rod and getting some great looking lob casts into fishy looking water and was even getting the hang of stack mending:

Bummed that Jesse and I didn't stick any fishies I went out on tuesday by myself and explored some new water that is close to where I work (check out this old photo showing the river just upstream of where I was fishing-- or even better check this out!). Out on the usual lunch-foray I started at a prime looking hole and started fishing across the river from a guy throwing spinners. I felt kinda bad so I asked "Is it alright for me to fish here?" He sort of just nodded and kept doing his thing but his little son yelled at me and held up a full stringer of big beautiful trout-- holy heck! My excitement soon wore off as cast after cast proved to be more futile than the last despite my frequent fly changes. The guy throwing spinners pulled out fish after fish keeping most and chucking the little ones back. After about 20 minutes he gave me a salute and gave me the hole only to have two more lure guys fall right in (were they really waiting in line?). That's no problem had they just fished accordingly but after a few minutes of lures plopping down right next to me I decided to move downstream to some shallow, fast riffles that looked like caddis country (we can't stop here, this is bat country!). I picked up some rocks along the way and found mostly green rockworms and cased caddis (also green) so I pulled out a fly box looking for the small #16 chartruese caddis I had tied a couple of weeks ago. Opening the wrong fly box I spied a sparkly-green psycho prince and thought "what the heck, why not?" and rigged it up under a brownish stonefly nymph.

Eureka. I got into fish right away and before I knew it I had landed half a dozen fish. I even switched out the psycho prince with some more natural looking caddis nymphs with no luck-- I promptly put Mike Mercer's pattern back on and felt good about it. Most of the fish were on the small size (say, 10-14"ers) but I did hook into a nicer fish that shook the hook and I managed to land a fish arount 16.5 inches.

The Fish:

The fish ran me all over in shallow water as I slipped and stumbled all over the mossy rocks before putting a net on this pretty stream-born cuttbow:

The guys that poached my spot earlier must have noticed and after getting a fine congrats from a jogger I went back to find them getting ready to put some lures through some nearby water (extremely nearby... ok, offensively nearby water) -- Really?!-- Ah no worries, it was time for me to go soon anyways. I got a few more casts in while the guys above me had to dis-entangle themselves from someone elses leftover line (I'll admit I was a bit smug... but I've been there so...) and while only half paying attention my indicator went under. It was fast shallow pocket water and a bit unlikely in my mind but I made a sloppy hook-set on a beast of a trout that probably would have been around 20 inches... and, of course, he quickly shook the hook. It's just some sort of rule that this sort of thing has to happen on a frequent basis. Otherwise we might not come back.

Yeahhh, right.

Let's just put those worries to rest....

2009-06-16T17:09:00.001-07:00

A fair number of people have expressed concern about my brother's face due to the recent casting debacle with a large possie bugger (see the may 19th post).

And, well, because I care about the readers of this blog ever so dearly I'd like to report on the status of Randy's face-- the wound is healing well and everything is pretty much back to normal! Sleep well, friends:

How can I not love this river?

2009-06-12T11:29:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling kinda lazy and have had these pictures I've been itching to post-- so I'll spare you the riveting stories I usually tell....

6-9-09:

Started off my lunch break hour by getting tangled in this mess

I was hoping I wouldn't find a body with the pole and t-shirt

(you see enough drunk-as-hell rafters and you think these things)

Right away I stuck this guy in some unlikely pocket water and had to run

all over the place to keep him out of fast water and tangles

(I'm not sure what got to this fish but I didn't wound him)

Despite rainy skies I still stuck a few more fish

seems the big ones quit feeding though

6-10-09:

The best way to have an insane day: don't bring your camera (just cell phone)

I caught probably 10 fish an hour for 1.5 hours and lost some big ones

first cast:

me dropping a fish-- dumb@ss.

caught this big 18.5" beauty on a #12 anderson's bird of prey

I've said too much already-- here's a few thousand words:

2009-06-11T10:01:00.000-07:00

Fishing has been out of this world lately with 10 fish per hour not being uncommon on my lunch breaks. I haven't landed any monsters but I've had a few on-- in fact, a fish broke me off yesterday, which hasn't happened in quite a while (nymphing with fluorocarbon usually results in bent hooks, not broken tippet!) . However I've been landing fish between 16" and 18" quite regularly -- big fat ones that fight like you wouldn't imagine usually making me stumble after them usually resulting in bruises and wet clothes. Tan caddis nymphs have been key and green drakes or march browns will work too-- but 9 out of 10 fish have been hammering my caddis nymph in fast, rocky ripples.

6-9-09:

I'm still proud of being able to tie these for myself now!
(a #12 andy burk's hunchback march brown)

The kind of fish you're liable to catch right now:

The above fish took the below fly:
(a sort of green-drake invention-- not great but it works)

Oh heck yes:

This riffle produced about 6 fish in 20 or so casts--
fat rainbows sitting in two feet or less of fast water looking to pounce on caddis

The puddin-proof:

This was an experiment-- and although the fly satisfies my sense of aesthetic,
I haven't actually caught a fish on it:

S'morpics:

And more to come suckas.

Off and on

2009-06-04T09:11:00.000-07:00

This post is sponsored by a possible new source of fly tying material that is now running around the house we just moved into:

we've dubbed him 'Brimley'. (pun intended)

The last couple o' weeks:

The fishing has been off and on lately with afternoon thundershowers raining on my fly fishing parade. I have had a couple beautiful mornings at nearby parks and have been catching plenty of smaller fish and every now and then hooking into some bigger fish. Unfortunately I have some serious ineptitude when it comes to hooking and landing fish on the swing (any pointers?) -- and I've had a lot of the big guys taking caddis pupa and andy burk's hunchback march brown on the swing-- in deep, fast water.

Regardless, I've really had to work for my fish when fishing through town (up until a couple of days ago that is) and have had to get used to the massively weighted nymph rigs needed to get to the fish in those fast, deep slots.

As for bugs there are worms, march browns, green drakes, little yellow stones, caddis, and mayflies galore:

6-8-09 - NOW it's heatin' up!:

This day was probably one of the coolest days I've had fishing in a while-- the flows were down to about 480 cfs and the water was nice and clear. Alas, I had to work but I took off on my lunch break and, upon arrival at a nearby park, I frantically threw on my waders and my vest. Being the overenthusiastic amateur I am I didn't even stop to look for bugs-- I hopped in that water and tried a cast with the rig I had on last time. It happened to be a #14 hunchback lightning bug nymph (the greenish one). On the first cast and my indicator darted sideways-- It caught me off guard and, knowing I missed it, I let the drift continue-- seconds later my indicator shoots under and I made a solid bankside set-- fish on! That feisty little fish must have followed that nymph downstream and the moment I set the hook, a small cuttbow exploded out of the water jumping over and over and over again! That little fish was pissed-- I was doing that clumsy, stupid little 'reach-for-the-sky-and-turn' dance-- the one we all do when a fish charges us and threatens entanglement with line and limb-- when the lil' bastard decided to jump again and I felt several meaty fish slaps against my ribs as he jumped right into me, my line going slack then tight then slack then tight-- you get the idea. Surprisingly the #12 tiemco 2487 stayed put and, laughing, I put the net on this fish, not wanting a hook in my hand:

After releasing the fish and untangling my rig from my net, I made a few more casts and decided to rig up proper. There were numerous little orangey-tan caddisflies hatching and as many good sized yellowish mayflies (anyone know what these are? PMD's?) coming off the water so I rigged up with a bead head prince and dropped a caddis pattern off of that-- the prince has been an amazing attractor fly lately and an unproductive nymph will become productive when I drop it off of the prince nymph. A few casts later my indicator slowed to a stop and I set the hook. I saw a monster flash and then I was letting line out jerkingly as a torpedo took my line downstream. I pulled a little too hard trying to keep the fish under control while reeling line in and my fly pulled out leaving me shaky in the knees with nothing to show for it but a little piece of fish tissue (fissue?) on the end of my hook.

It was shaping up to be a fine day and I got right back into flinging flies when a guy stopped by and asked, "mind if I snap a few photos of you fishing?" A little strange but he looked legit so I said "sure"--- now, usually there's no better way to remain fishless than to have a guy with a camera watching you-- but not today. The guy must have only been a few clicks into it when I nailed a big fish all the way across the river and I went stumbling down after it, determined not to let this one get away. I knew it wasn't a small fish and after a good long fight with lots of head-shaking runs I had a beautiful, healthy looking cutt-bow that measured out at around 18". Not the monster I was hoping it would be but its the biggest fish I've caught in a while. I held the fish up for the guy, and was glad it wasn't me fumbling around with the camera this time. The guy turned out to be a super nice guy and was simply a hobbiest photographer-- he agreed to e-mail the pictures which I haven't seen-- guess I should've snapped a few of my own!

I got a few more casts in before it was time to go back to work-- but I got a great reminder of what summer fishing on the truckee can be!

I, of course, went out again after work. I showed up with the same rig I was using at lunchtime and got into the water with dark looming clouds threatening to send me home:

I'm not sure what effect the barometer has on fishing but it was definitely not the same great fishing I experienced at lunch but I did get a few grabs on the swing and landed a little rainbow in some slow, deep water.

After that I waded across the river and hiked down to a big pool that I've been wanting to fish for a while-- It was probably 15 or 20 fruitless casts later when the rain started. And boy did it rain-- I barely had time to wade to the trees before I was soaked through-- this was flash flood sort of rain (when it occurs in the mountains) with sheeting rain that comes in huge droplets and then dwindles down to almost nothing in a matter of a minute or so. It did end up raining for quite a while but for a few minutes it was sheer madness-- I documented the madness before I packed it in and went home. You can even see the spike in cfs on the gauge during the time I was there!

Anyways-- I've got plenty more reports to come but here's the bottom line-- the fishing is now AWESOME-- get out there with green drake nymphs and caddis nymphs and don't be afraid to fish the fast stuff!

Crap

2009-06-02T17:50:00.000-07:00

Ok this is just completely stupid but... There was a post by Mr. Stansberry on the caddisfly blog a while ago that provided me the inspiration to waste time on this:

funny pictures

Someday I might even make a real post here.... meh, we'll see...

Felt Soul Media... media regurgitation

2009-05-29T16:11:00.000-07:00

Because my last post was nothing but text and bugs-- I'm posting some multimedia trailers from felt soul media... even though I'm sure most of you have seen this amazingness.

Buy me this shite.

It's sad how many times I've watched this:

Eastern Rises | teaser from felt soul on Vimeo.

Awesome:

Red Gold | trailer from felt soul on Vimeo.

A quick truckee update

2009-05-29T10:10:00.000-07:00

I'm becoming painfully aware that most truckee river reports are mostly concerned with areas outside of downtown reno-- usually upstream up into california. However these reports can be helpful but I'm think that, usually, the hatches being talked about don't happen on the exact time frame-- I think often bugs hatch in the warmer reno area before they really get going up in the mountains (but not always). Regardless, fishing has been a little tricky lately and I really haven't been catching fish like I thought I would with the current conditions. The water is in the mid 500's (cfs) range and it's fairly clear with lots of bugs hatching. Here's what I've observed:

Green drakes are fairly abundant though not quite as happening as the march browns and other dark colored clinger nymphs (Heptagenia?). BWO nymphs are still around Green cased caddis are under every rock as well as some net builders and free living rockworms. Shake out the bushes and you'll find all sorts of little yellow stones (the nymphs are around too) and adult caddis. Midges are always around and some other stonefly and mayfly nymphs are about-- and I've heard but haven't seen that ants are being taken. Another thing that really surprised me is that under almost every rock I have found a WORM-- they are about the color of an earthworm but, of course, a lot smaller and a bit flatter-- I'm definitely going to tie on a tannish s.j.w. next time I'm out.

In summary I would suggest trying Green drake nymphs, march brown nymphs, and caddis colored bottom rollers. And, as always, a stonefly or prince nymph is a good bet.

I will try to get pictures of some of these bugs soon-- especially some of the ones I can't identify!

Things are shaping up!!

2009-05-22T14:38:00.000-07:00

I'm really chomping at the bit waiting for the river to really shape up-- On days I tell myself not to go fishing, I find myself there anyways, even knowing the fishing is bad! However conditions are starting to really fall into place as of today-- the river is down to a happy 650 cfs range, the weather is hot, bugs are hatching and the water is clearing a little bit. I got up early this morning, checked the flows and drove up into the mountains a little ways to try and find some clearer water. I found a decent looking spot and switched up my flies every ten casts or so and before too long I was into a beautiful 16" rainbow (took a march brown nymph)-- a fat, colorful, and healthy contrast to those stocked fish I've been catching:

The rig I ended up feeling good about was a #10 dark hare's ear stonefly nymph followed by a #12 prince nymph with a #14 hunchback march brown dropped off of that. I bagged one more fish before it was time to go to work-- a big 19.5" golden-yellow colored whitefish (also took the march brown nymph):

The release:

I think I'm gaining an appreciation for these fish. After catching all those stocked cutthroats over the last couple of days I feel a bit cheap-- regardless that I was gentle and let them all go to grow into bigger fish with more natural feeding habits. It reminds me of a time I hunted pheasant at a club where they let loose farm-raised pheasants and then gave you a section of gridded land to hunt them. Some of those birds would let you walk right up to them and wouldn't fly unless you set the dog on them. I vowed never to do that again. That's how I feel about those stocked fish-- like it wasn't sporting... or maybe like I had cheated and didn't earn them fairly (though, I'm sure I'll do it again due to the fact I can release them, unlike a shotgunned pheasant). Anyways, after catching those little guys, a big healthy native whitefish is quite refreshing. I've even learned to land them without getting myself hooked or tangled and without harming the fish itself.

With such a great morning under my belt I checked the flows at lunch and tried my luck at a spot near work (brodhead park-- next to the new reno aces stadium!). The water seemed a little clearer than it has been and I was thinking there might be a chance of getting into them when I got a solid take, my indicator darting under and to the side. It was one of those perfect upstream takes when you can really slam the hook into the side of the fishes mouth by setting downstream-- I wasn't losing this guy-- I ran him downstream into some slower water and ended up landing this nice fat 18" rainbow:

What a great day-- I can't wait til things are to-the-wall happenin' on this river! I've got a bajillion people who I've told, "yeah we'll have to go fishing sometime!" If you're one of those people, hang in there, when the fishing gets hot-- we'll be there.