Gotta Do

What cha gotta do.
We got out and beat on the warm water, the local stream is blown out to say the least but the fish need to come.

Just Add Water

To make things grow!

I had the pleasure of fishing with my wife and son on Saturday and I must say the two of them both grew in ways that Ill try to describe.

Dylan grew in his confidence as an angler all why waiting for his favorite spot.
While getting geared up at the truck he was in some kind of Hurry but forgot nothing.
He snatched up the first rig as it was ready and said he was heading for his spot!

As his mother and I hustled to catch up, we found him already fishing, but he wasn't in a great spot and I wasn't sure at that point just what "his spot" meant.
He quickly hooked up with a nice little cutthroat.
After releasing it he looked up at us and said "somebody beat me to my spot", I look up river and spot two guys, one rod, and one net with a long long handle. Looks like they are tied together with a 10 inch rope.

We got Summer set up on a fast water run while Dylan fished a crappy little hole for an hour and a half waiting for all that junk to get out of the water in "his spot"..
When the Siamese twins stumbled out of the water and in to the trees... Dylan was off and running and although two guys just got out of waist deep water, mid river, in the middle of the holding area... Dylan was on his knees practicing quiet... He hooked ten fish here, and netted them all...

He spent the whole first half day looking like this.



The guy even got a little cocky with this one... (I with it would have gotten off)

Everytime I turned around he had one of these...

Still making time to help others on the stream as he has been taught by his father.


I had plenty of shots to pull fish myself, not a whole lot of time to take pictures of them, well, I was watching grass grow I guess...

Summer took her share of fish in the morning but did her growing in the afternoon... The fish were playing games go we played games of our own.. She worked on her line handling skills and made motions until her arm was sore... She fished for about an hour with out a fish, made about 157 casts with out the flies passing behind her. Had no tangles and came to a milestone in the sport.. I will forever remember a 60 second period as will she, where things were so right!

Just add water and we all grow.

Gettin Dirty N Turnin Thirty

I fished my 30th birthday all day long.

Hooked all the trout my elbow could handle. Took the day and gave it to myself, myself then gave all, to the stream in search of fish... (my elbow freakin hurts)

I got started plenty early and waited for the sun to warm my back. As the sun began to shine trough the trees the fish became visible to the eye and began their daily routine of breathing food and guarding their lives..

While rigging up first thing I pulled out a new leader that was supposed to be a 7.5 5x. In the package marked 7.5ft 5x was a just short of 9 4x leader.. I got it to the length I wanted by removing the loop and some of the butt section... Go to pull off some feet of 6x and a little measly 6inch piece comes leaping off the spool... Oh no! Now I'm stuck with a leader that I cut a little too short and is about 7ft and no 6x and I wasn't planning on sacrificing numbers by running a tow chain of a rig. I pulled out the 7x from Flies and Lies fly shop that I got when I fished Cheesman canyon last year. I have kept it protected from the sun and most of the time I'm using it for my droppers that are anchored to 6x. This day I would be stuck fishing both flies and my shot on 7x that was a year old. Armed with a 10 ft nymph stick and A will to concur defeat, I went for it, and went for it hard.

I spent the first morning hour just trying to get a take, I could see fish but couldn't get it together. Actually I gave up and left a spot full of Juvenal youngsters that would chase the fly in the middle of a roll cast buy ignore it when it hit them in the eye.

Walking onward the sky began to grow dark, the sounds of thunder echo in the distance. From a skinny trail just above the river I spot a fish nestled between two rocks. I drop to a knee, un hang my fies and let the breeze take them away. Three yanks of line from the reel, and a single presentation is made. The fish eats my fly and forces me to an intense battle of will. I had to move and I had to stay with it. I climbed atop this creature and built a relationship. A relationship of tension through line while struggling to get what is desired. I found a zone with this fish and had a moment, a moment of doing as I have learned a moment of expectations... Every element of a "fight" was displayed with this fish.

I walked it down river to some calmer water, I entered the stream up to my knee. Net dragging by a string, I glance up to see how far my fly line is from the end of my rod (don't you hate that moment?) Then the fish takes off up river with vengeance and goes where it came from right between those two rocks and I am wrapped up but good! But I am in the zone of expectations and I pull twice out of the reel giving the fish slack line until I can get my rod tip directly above the rocks and untie the wraps... When I get there its tied up badly, and solid, I'm sure the fish is gone and begin to appreciate what a great fish it was. I get the 7x off the rocks which must have been made of swede leather, and the fish is still on, and we do it all again...




In came the storm which gave me a chance to test out the new hat my mother got me for my Birthday, she says "your ears see too much sun, son." The storm got real bad and the lightning was going off right above my 10, felt the static pops in the rod and that was the click in my finger that drove me to my truck, where I ate lunch and drove up river.. I fished the upper section from lunch until 6o'clock.

They all eat the same size stuff. Isn't that neat!

Last good fish of the day was worn out work horse!

Then I headed home for cake and Ice cream.

Gear Review Coleman CPX 4.5

I was lucky enough to win Package #1 in the Coleman/Gerber contest on OBN.

Reviewing three way cool items became quite a chore, and I'll need to run these things for about a year before I know exactly how they will perform in all conditions. "The CPX 4.5 Compatible" Means that the power sources all work with each other.

Coleman LED flashlight-

You want to talk about bright. 126 lumen's that shoots 157m, all coming out of a quarter sized lens! You don't want to look down the barrel of this flashlight, it will fry your retina! It has Life time LED bulbs. It came with batteries that last 7 hours but works with rechargeable batteries as well as the CPX 4.5 battery pack. Cased in aerospace grade aluminum housing with the roll proof design (so it stays on the picnic table.) The best part probably is that the thing is Water and Impact resistant. I've already dropped it on concrete and it bounced right back up to my hand, working fine.

Coleman Portable Electronics Charger-
Finally, a portable power source that isn't so bulky, that runs on rechargeable or 3 regular AAA batteries. It has a usb port in it and charges up your cell phone, Ipod, or any other one of the bazillion electronic gizmo's out there that charge with a usb port. This too supports the CPX 4.5 compatible criteria. Means you can charge the flashlight with it. It's perfect for those times when your in a spotty service area and your phone wants to grow legs, then goes looking for towers... Comes back all down and out, with one bar but you swear, that it last 3 days or better, on one charge at home.

Coleman 4.5 volt Rechargeable Power Cartridge- This is a battery pack that works in the flashlight and all other CPX 4.5 compatible products. Basically it is the rechargeable battery that fits in to a whole list of Colman CPX products. It comes with a 12 volt adapter for your car as well as standard 120 volt power that you find in your home.

Thanks To: OBN for hosting this contest and big thanks to Coleman for supplying them with the stuff to hook me up!

Penrose Staircase

How do you see it? oh its fishing related alright

The illusion takes its name from a father and son duo of mathematicians, Lionel and Roger Penrose, who introduced the impossible object in a 1958 paper. The Staircase cannot be constructed in three dimensional reality due to its property that the steps forever carry the traveler upward in a loop. The same steps are traversed, but, impossibly, after the first time around (or second, or third…) one ends up back at the beginning, and the whole journey starts again. One can turn around on the stairs and descend, as well, with the same effect—continually treading the same ground, over and over.

I find similarity's in the staircase and fly fishing... Let me tell you why...
While impossible to build either of them in our real world, The both of them can be depicted as an illusion.
An illusion is a distortion of the senses, revealing how the brain normally organizes and interprets sensory stimulation. While illusions distort reality, they are generally shared by most people. Illusions may occur with more of the human senses than vision alone.

The most famous example is by a Dutch artist M.C. Escher’s "Ascending and Descending" which shows numerous monks, laboriously climbing up and down the same steps over and over.
As in the life of a fly fisherman, we too, laboriously climb our way up and down the same steps.
By way of perspective in the two dimensional illustration, and by way of perspective in three dimensional life-like fishing situations, the impossibility of the Staircase is removed, as is the impossibility of a fish or a tough drift. At first sight, in both cases, it takes the viewer a little time to realize What they are seeing. The stairs may seem as a waste of time for the eyes. Senses come to play and speak fraud... After a longer look... The possibilities begin to form, the mind begins to believe.... The the stairs are real.

Not to be walked on by man, but to be laboriously explored by those unafraid.

Fly fishing and life are never ending staircases that we can not climb. Illusions of of our universe, explored through our bodies, guided by our thoughts.

This is the flow chart that pulled this morning... Sparked the whole thing..

Curtain Climer Returns with Souvenirs

Camp was good says the fly.

They held me, they petted me, they talked good things about me and took some glamour shots.

They made me feel important for a day and for once I thought I was more than a fly.

The mail man messed my hairdo up pretty badly but when it was all said and done... I felt like a new minnow. I was pleasantly surprised to open a normal, little brown box. Inside, a gift, a souvenir of sorts brought on by the Curtain Climber streamer...

1st- A double sided, fully water proof, slotted foam fly box with clear lids and hell for strong latches.

Then- a super stout, mega sharp pair of nippers that look fishy!
MFC hooked me up good for entering a contest with a decorated hook.

Thanks again to MFC and OBN.

Also I won a package from OBN containing some Colman goodies... I'm running the snot out of these things and planning an honest review of the gear.

Mother's of More

Happy Mother's Day to these individuals... and nobody else.
The Mothers of Fisherman, and mother's of those, to the mother's of trout and the mothers of those. Add in a Happy Mommas day to the mother below!

Tuggs

Wednesday was eventful!


The lower river had taken a turn for the better midweek. The water was clear enough to fish and the weather was good.

The lower river can hold some trophy small stream trout. We went for it.

We had a slow start...

Slow enough for a 10 year old to fish for an hour with nothing, find three empty shotgun shells and throw them in the river only to chase them down with the net time and time again.

You could call it, "busy kid, Ol man gets busy too".

I worked the water as hard as I could with both of our rigs set up differently. I was rewarded three takes.. First was a decent brown, the second was a miss, and the third was a big ol rainbow...

Before we left I was sure to charge the camera battery and load it in the truck... I wasn't sure to load it in my pack and wound up hauling a dead cellphone around instead. It managed to get two quick shots of the brown but that was it.

Opted to take the huge net to practice for the mutated ones...

Man VS Fish with Video Footage

At the end of a very long day of fly fishing, I hooked and battled with what may have been the largest Trout of my life.

The Battle was created by me, by means of materialistic items. Man and nature, faced off in the most intense manor imaginable.

A trout, weary of man fells a grumble in it's gut and comes to the table for nourishment. An angler weary of the unknown is also hungry for Adrenalin in the form of control. They both have a goal in mind.

Silence is the loudest thing heard by the two and both of their ears begin to ring. An hour passes as the creatures live their separate lives.

The fish, eating its dinner while watching its back, closely inspects each insect, it is a connoisseur of the stream. The water is clear and the fish sees all. The fish knows that someone is watching, but the angler knows that the fish is eating.

Like a stranger in the room whom you would like to meet, the differences remain the same and the chance to meet, may or may not come.

As they work the seam in their own way they begin to communicate with each other in ways that can not be put in to words...

The angler has a need here, as does the fish. They both have a want. Deep in the spirit the both of them share a will. A will to survive by their own definitions of the word.

Watch the video as we both get what we want.

Thanks to Ron and Eva over at Fishing the Rockies blog and ColoradoAngler for getting this on film.

Lunch Bend

Not lunch break... Lunch bend.

A sandwich in one hand and a fly rod in the other. I fished my lunch break, which stretched just past an hour.

Some pretty wild things happened.

First I thought I'd chuck a streamer because the water was pretty high and off color. I fished for the first half hour with the streamer and had every trout in the river on edge. I then switched to a double nymph rig and things began to happen.... I hooked up with two decent rainbows...
All I had was my cell phone... But you can still see the ornament in the corner of the mouth.

Netted three browns in a row and then, the dessert was a pure bread, wild, stream born, cutthroat trout... About 10 years ago I was fishing right about here in the same spot, Hooked and landed a purebred wild cutt on a streamer with a silver cone and pink flash in the tail. It measured... I don't know, we weighed them back then and the little scale read, 6.82 lb... Haven't seen one since...

Finished the afternoon working in wet work boots and none other than blue jeans.

Pheasant Face Nymph

We all love Pheasant tails, either as the tail of the fly its self, the body of the fly, the wing case, or any combination of the three.

Maybe its the tiny tiny hair fibers lining the shaft of a single strand, perhaps the way that the thread causes the pheasant fibers to splay as you sink the second wrap. Maybe its the way that the color changes as you get half way through the abdomen. Or is it just an easy one to tie?

Most of us will or should fish a pt frequently to fool a fish in to eating a bottom crawling critter.

I play with pheasant tails at the bench more than needed but in doing so I will often find a method or technique that will do one or more of these things... The obvious is to fool a fish with .008% of a bird.. Next, as the year goes on, our favorite places will usually see more anglers, in that the fish are going to see and eat more naturals but also see more flies. I'm a firm believer that half of the magic of any fly is, the one that looks real while in the drift, and the one that the fish hasn't seen in its memory span.

I'm calling this pattern Pheasant Face for obvious reasons.. The reason for the tie its self is even more obvious... Google has a better way of explaining it via Wikipedia so just click on... ARTHROPOD.

-Hook- Size 18 scud hook, loaded with a copper bead.
-Ribbing- Copper wire.
-Legs- Those are Ostrich legs. Yep, you read that right... those little legs are ostrich legs.
-Antennae- Pheasant tail fibers.
-Tail- Pheasant tail fibers.
-Abdomen- Pheasant tail fibers.
-Wing case- Pheasant tail fibers if your lazy and need to post a fly. other wise, my goodness, use something else like thin skin, a biot or something... The dang fly may.... fly away if its all bird.

Just add a little aqua and fish with confidence.