Somewhere on the South Slope

Since i came home from idaho last night instead of this morning i had a little more time to hit a particular river. last summer before i went to iraq i was fishing this section of river and kicked up half-dozen trout that i thought would be in the 20" mark. this surprised the shit out of me cause the river is not big or deep and i had been catching 13-14" fish the entire time i was there. i never could get them to take my fly and since that day i have been itching to head back there. even this nmorning as i was driving i was tossing around 3 different places to fish but finally decided on trying to conjure up one of these brutes if in fact they were still around. i arrived at 10am and as usual there was nobody in sight. i had recently bought my girlfriend a new echo rod and since she hadn't used it yet i decided i would give it a try. i started off with an orange and black stone on top with a bead head dropper. 5 casts into the day, right along a ledge in the run and the water exploded at my fly. water exploding at my fly became the theme for the day. a real nice cutt, my biggest there yet, came to hand. the whole time i was working my way upstream all i could think about was getting to the run where i saw those big fish last year. as i was wading up to the next good looking piece of water i noticed the river had taken a little different look. what used to be the main channel was now a trickle and the main channel had moved over a little bit. at the top of this run was a nice little hole that had a little depth to it. before i made another cast i went ahead and took off my dropper, cause i really only was hoping to catch them on top. i threw my first cast to the left seam of this little hole and a big fish took out my stone dry and he immediately came flying out of the water, i could see that this was by far bigger then anything i had seen in there. i worked him close to my feet and then he headed out into the current again. now my dumbass should've just let him slip down the current about 20 feet and then tried to get him back into slower water, but being the dumbass that i am i decided that i ddin't want to follow this fish down the current so i tried to horse him into the slack water that i was standing in. that did not work out to well for me as the hook came flying out and down the riffle this big brown went. that one haunted me for awhile. shit! i regrouped and a couple of cutties later i was at the run that i had been thinking about for the last year. as i was fishing the bottom of the run i spooked up a couple of smaller fish. there is a sharp bend in this run and all the current was slamming the water into this undercut bank. i made my cast and landed my fly about 2 feet from the bank. the fly moved a foot toward the bank and a big fish came up and hit my fly, ahhhhh......i missed. luckily for me he was feeling froggy and 3 casts later he devoured it. as soon as i set the hook the acrobats started and the fight was on. a short fight and a few snapshots later and this big brown was swimming away. that fish made my day and help me forget about the big one that i lost earlier. i fished my way up a total of 4 hours fishing before the fished just seemed to lose any interest in playing so i slowly fished my way back to the jeep with no other fish to hand. this was probably my best day this year. lots of nice cutts and a couple of sweet browns made for a killer day.

2 Days in Paradise

At the crack ass of dawn i loaded up my jeep and set out for driggs, idaho where a friend of mine (andy) is a guide on the s.f. snake and some other rivers/creeks. i arrived at his place at around 10am, he loaded up his gear and we headed for a sweet little stream called bitch creek. bitch creek is loaded with yellowstone and some snake river fine spotted cutts, some of which exceed the 20" mark. unfortunately we did not get into any of the really big tanks but managed to land some nice 14-15 inch fish. now the decent down to the creek was long and steep but the climb back up was flat out miserable, at least for a person as out of shape as myself. it killed me. we decided to go to alocal bar & grill and grab some dinner and a beer and then head over to the lodge that he works for and see what was happening on the teton river. good news for us, there were no guides on the teton, so we had it mostly to ourselves. the windy had really picked up which was not ideal for fishing. the teton in this area is like a spring creek, big and flat. we took on of the lodge boats and cruised upriver about a mile or so and since it was so windy we pulled into a little feeder creek and decided to wait and see if the wind would subside. 2 beers later and the wind was dying and we started to see fish rising. by this time it was getting late and we had to have the boat back to the lodge by dark so it only left us roughly an hour andhalf to fish. we slowly worked our way down the left bank and soon after i was into my first teton fish. it was a nice yellowstone cutt. we just rigged up one rod and switched up between fishing and steering the boat so andy took the rod and landed a big fat rainbow. we each lost one other fish. itwas almost dark so we headed back for the lodge. the plan for the next morning was to get some breakfast around 9, pick up a friend of andy's, who also is one the guides and is really good with sticks and drive to palisades dam on the south fork of the snake and float to the first pullout, which was a 6 mile float. since i have never rowed a drift boat i got to fish the entire time while andy and josh switched back and forth about every 3 fish. the weather was perfect, the fish were pretty cooperative and the beer was going down to damn good. andy took the biggest that day that was measured i believe at 21", nice fat rainbow. josh and i took a few nice fish as well. unfortunately for me i hooked what would've been my biggest of theday about 50 yards short of the take out and ended up losing him just below the take out. it was a great 2 days of fishing some killer water.

Colorado, Day 7......Grape Creek

Thursday morning bright and early had to take my daughter to her first day of school. after i dropped her off i came back to the house and took my son to golf practice. 11am jake is done with practice and we are on the road to fish a semi-local hush hush creek that the locals say they don't like to publisize. 12:30ish we are on the rigged up with hoppers and on the river. it was suggested that we hike up about 3-4 miles to get into some bigger fish but we didn't have the time to do so so we just fished our way up from where we parked. walking and fishing along the river i have never seen so many hoppers, it was insane. the first 1/2 dozen fish or so that we hooked into were in the 10-12" range, nice little brownies, but as we worked our way further up we started getting into some bigger browns. we fished for about 5 hours throwing different traditional hoppers and some attractor type hoppers and all in all it was a fun day with my son on the creek. this was jake's first time throwing dries, i think he's hooked.

Colorado, Day 2......Copper Ponds

got out of bed nice and early to get on the road down to my kids's house. on the way i stopped by the copper ponds, which are full of brookies and browns. again i threw streamers and dries. didn't get any interest with the dries but managed a couple of small fish on a red bead headed wooley bugger. i wanted to get a pic of the brook i caught cause it's belly was so red and overall just a killer looking fish. with the fish still flopping around at my feet and me trying to grab my camera the hook came out and off he went. all the fish i was seeing were in the 6-12" range then out of the blue a really nice, colored up, big shouldered brook came cruising along the shallows, i'm guessing 16". that was definately a fish i would have loved to have caught and would've easily been my largest brook trout. only spent about an hour and a half there, then continued to see my kids

Colorado, Day 1.....Yampa River

to go visit my kids in colorado for a week. my kids weren't expecting me till saturday so chose not to disappoint them and left the house on friday so i could get in some fishing on the yampa river, colorado. got up at 0 dark 30 and actually made a couple of quick stops along the weber to throw a mouse pattern to see if i could rope anything. i got no love on the weber. continued the long boring drive along hwy 40 into colorado and towards steamboat springs. in between some town and steamboat the river ran along the hwy for a short bit but the water that was there sure looked inviting, so i pulled off the hwy and rigged up. there were some pools that were deep and a little on the slow side so i rigged up with a sink tip anda small purple egg sucking leech. worked my way up the river making cast after cast to no avail. once i got to a point i decided to fish my way back down. i didn't fish to long and didn't get out of view of my jeep since i had it full of shit and was parked on the side of the road. i started throwing my leech threw a tailout and strip strip wham, fish on. to my surprise, cause i was expecting trout, it was a bass that was supplying the tug. released the fish, next cast another bass but this one was a bit smaller. worked my way down a little below where i parked to a nice riffle that smoothed out to a slow pool. along the edge of the riffle my fly was smacked and felt like a strong fish. once again i was surprised but this time it was a pike of about 18" and my first pike at that. the next 20 minutes resulted in no hook-ups so back to the jeep and here i am in steamboat springs in a motel getting ready to head out for some hopefully fantastic trout fishing. more to come. alright just got back from fishing the second 1/2 of the day. i fished around town (steamboat) throwing streamers and dries. i started with the same set-up that got the bass and pike. i only ended up catching a couple small cutt-bows but did lose a real nice fish that was on for a couple of shakes then gone. the last couple of hours were spent fishing the up river part of town with dries. missed a couple but landed a nice little cutt on a midge dry and a nice brown on a lime trude. the end. i'm starting to doze off now so i'm out.

Fishing the Backyard

I recently got back from 2 weeks in las vegas doing military shit and have been chomping at the bit to get out and into some fish. i decided to get my ass out of bed this morning around 6am so that i could get in a good 1/2 day before heading to work. i also recently added a new rod to the arsenal so i decided to take it today and chuck some streamers in some really nice water. the first 3 hours was really slow, lost one fish that was almost ready for the camera and saw a couple other fish follow my streamer almost to me. i changed up to many different color combos and sizes of streamers and it wasn't till i switched to a size 8 purple egg sucking leech that i landed my first fish, a nice stout brown that pushed 19". at that point i had fished up river far enough and it was time to start working my way back downstream. an hour and a half later, a couple small cutties and some more missed fish and i was headed back to the house to get ready for work.