Red Barn Up

i had to bail on corey for tommorrow cause i forgot about a previous engagement already made. michelle said she would like to go today so as soon as she got off work i was there to pick her up. other then throwing some buggers on lakes she has never thrown a true streamer and certainly not on a river. her casting still needs work and her stripping was a bit slow at times but i felt she was slowly getting it somewhat down. the river is really low right now and most of the good holes in this section are frog water. we did not move afish until the sun started to go down and then the fish seemed a little more active. i was excited for michelle to catch her first streamered river fish and she had her chances but it didn't happen. she had one fish follow her fly to about 3 feet from her and then explode on the water which startled the hell out of her. when it was dark and at our last hole she had two fish on and because she is still not clear on what to do when a fish is hooked, she left the rod tip down and pointed directly at the fish and the fish was jumping around. i have tried to tell her but it's a work in progress. she was throwing a T&A rainbow and i feel that because it was skimming acrossed the surface that the fish figured it was a mouse or a from. after losing two right away in that same hole i did manage to finally land one. not a big brown but a decent fish none the less. i think michelle is looking forward to doing that again.

T&A Rainbow

It's tough to beat the action of this fly in the water. not only does it have killer action it just looks to damn good swimming around. one of my favorite streamers.

T&A Brown

I got a peek at one of these that Patty Murphy tied up and i was diggin 'em. i don't remember all the details of his but i'm sure his looked better. i did tie and fish one the other night with 1 1/2 fish caught. i have tied a few of these up now and thrown them in my box. looking forward to posting a pic of the state record brown with this fly dangling out of it's mouth. thanks for the pattern pat.

Backyard Bliss

coreys moused brown - photo by corey

nice fly but didn't produce shit tonight

21" hen

cutthroat courtesy of corey

T&A rainbow = big fish....photo by corey kruitbosch

photo by corey kruitbosch

In the land of streamers it was another slow day for as much water as me and corey covered. we met at the usual spot after work and the fishing was slow enough that it almost seemed like someone had pounded it before us. maybe matt showed up earlier and caught all the fish or maybe it was because they, being whoever, dropped the river so damn low compared to what it's been. i have to blame it on something right? pat showed me a T&A brown pattern that he had tied up a couple of weeks ago that looked pretty sweet so i tied one up and the only fish that i touched happened to be on that T&A brown and a T&A rainbow. the rainbow pattern did produce a solid 21" hen. that hen hit harder then any other fish i've ever had hit a streamer, startled the shit out of me. corey got frustrated with only 1 cutt on a streamer so he switched to a small mouse pattern and did take a nice little brown on that. that seemed to make everything all right for him. got to try out my new wading pants, they were pretty sweet and my korkers torrents soles started to fall apart on me. i'm beginning to rethink my liking that wading shoe.

Two's Company......Fives a Crowd

refelction....glare? i don't know but i like it

love cutthroat spots

taking a break....corey working that bottle






kalvins release



incognito

bryans fish



sorry ass simms boots-corey with a blowout





black & yellow jj bugger (photo by matt)

scenery

Bryan, corey and kalvin had planned on making the long trek between intersections and if i didn't have to work i was going to play as well. as luck would have it i didn't have to work so i was in. matt, someone bryan knows, was gonna be fishing some of the same water so he was invited along as well. it was a large group but it was rather enjoyeable. the weather was hot as hell, the company was good and it was a very relaxing pace/day. i would've thought that between 5 experienced fisherman that we would have certainly taken more fish but it just wasn't happening. it could've been cause most of our fishing happened to be in the middle of the day or cause the flows were adjusted or maybe it was just one of those days. there were some nice fish stuck and some really nice fish lost and a fair amount of cussing going on. when you continue to miss fish there are going to be some words said. one odd thing was that we came acrossed probably 20-30 dead suckers along the river. that was very odd to see so many dead ones and it was only the suckers that were dead. it took us 8 hours to work our way up this section and really it seemed like more walking then fishing. when you are trying to leap frog 4 other people you walk a lot. by the end of the day my shopulders were sore from carrying my backpack, my feet hurt and i was just plain exhausted from all the sun. it was supposed to be 102 degrees today. don't know if it made it but it was hot.

A few hours on the weber

inhaled a zoo cougar. caught by kalvin

my attempt at coreys streamer

kalvins nice brown

I ended up hitting the weber after work and meeting up with this guy that corey knows, but i had never met. kalvin is a pretty cool dude and a good guy to fish with. the fishing was slow with only 3 fish taken but who cares. it was good to get out again. other then that i don't have much to say.

Cicada Pattern

This particular pattern has been fishing pretty damn well for me lately, well actually the one in thepic has a modification or two compared to the one i've been fishing. it's certainly fishing better then the other cicadas that i have tucked away in my fly box. maybe that's because i haven't ever thrown any other cicada pattern then this one. in either case it has been sticking it to 'em. i found this pattern several years ago on-line when i first moved to utah. i don't remember what it is called and on this particular i made a couple of small adjustments. the legs, body and orange foam are done a little different then the original. i doubled over the orange foam to try and thicken the body a bit. here are the steps:

1. cut a long strip of orange foam and fold it over. tie it in at the front of the hook and wrap back almost to the bend. wrap the thread back and forth several times to make sure that the foam is good and secured.

2. tie in a long piece of black foam near the bend where you tie off the orange foam.

3. tie in a strand of orange floss, yarn or equivilant (i use yarn) just in front of the black foam.

4. i made another change with the body. the original was just taking a black marker and blackening the visible orange foam after it was tied down to the shank. i chose to make a dubbing body for a little more thickness and chose ice dub just to see if a little flash would make any difference in fish numbers. dub the body almost to the eye of the hook leaving a little space for later.

5. take the orange yarn that was tied in and rib the body and tie off.

6. pull the black piece of foam forward and over the body and tie off leaving the left over extending past the eye until later.

7. tie in a small clump of black krystal flash as an under wing

8. tie in a small clump of orange dyed bucktail and make an over wing. theunder and over should be about the same length.

9. tie in a small clump of white yarn or equivilant and cut short. this is just to aid in seeing the pattern on the water. it definately stands out to me when fishing it.

10. the legs are a little different in the pic as well. the pattern i've been fishing has the flat, stretchy, rubbery orange speckled legs. i ran out of that so i used round orange rubber legs and took a black marker and speckled them myself. 2 legs per side tied in on the sides of where the wings were tied in.

11. now take the black foam that should still be extending past the eye of the hook and pull it back and tie it off where the wings and legs were tied in. tied it off with either a 1/2 hitch of whip finish and cut the remaining black foam right above where you tied it off.

......i haven't fished this pattern with the minor adjustments but will in the next week or two hopefully with just as good if not better results then the original. the original is actually in the post below. if the ass is to orange for you, just take the black marker and blotch it up a little.

Pat M Makes an Apperance

that's the one

the one on the rigth is an imposter

some sort of mayfly



playing with the macro




didn't come out clear at all

can't go wrong with the hummer stone





cuttie courtisy of pat
pats pig




fat cuttie

Pat said he hadn't fished since about april so we discussed on where to fish today. pat made a few suggestionsbut i was anxious to hit this little gem and since pat had never fished it it taken take much arm twisting on my part. we are always up for hitting new water. we both chose to stay top side today and it was good to see pat hook up in the first drift but unfortunately it came unbuttoned. it was a good sign that the fish were hitting on top right off the bat and it was still morning. we fished up maybe 2 miles worth of river if i had to guess and between the 2 of us we each caught a few really nice browns and cutts. i will have to say that the cutts on average are a lot bigger this year then they were last. the highlight of the day was a 20"+ brown that pat caught with a cicada pattern. an occurence happened today that i had never seen before. it's funny cause i was reading one of my fly fishing mag's the other day and i was reading an article on the one fly competition that jack dennis hosts and in the article the author was talking about how while fishing with jack dennis they were discussing interesting things that had happened during prior events and he was saying that one guy had hooked into a really big fish but busted off his fly so the guy figured he was done since he lost his fly. jack told him to wait a minute cause sometimes when a fly is busted off in a fishes mouth that the fish will spit it out. sure enough shortly after he lost his fly it came rising to the surface and he was able to continued in the tourney. sooooooooooooooo, pat is re-rigging so i start to throw my cicada in this run and a really nice fish sucks it down and during the fight my fly busts off and i see where the fish retreats to. i tie on another of the same pattern and start to make casts when sure as shit, right where i saw that fish retreat to, my fly pops up to the surface. i jumped in the river and got my fly back, crazy shit. anywaywe had a great day leap froggingfrom hole to hole picking up fish here and there.

Mark The Fish Fluffer

tough hole but produced a nice brown



my biggest cutt for the day

one of many



sweetness!

solid brown



i don't know why



the pig of the day



mark's best cuttie

this is an ant



the only fish on a hopper



1st fish of the day

So me and mark had arranged to fish together today up by where he lives. in his neck of the woods there was 3 options for moving water and we chose option 'p' because he had gotten permission to access the river through some private property and mark had some good success back there the other day. this time of year i always expect to be throwing hoppers or some other big dry and mark had the same idea. mark said a hopper/dropper was killing them the other day so he rigged up with that and i started with the fat albert again. as luck would have it neither one of those set-ups was working worth a shit but maybe it was just because it was still pre-noon and the sun was obscured by clouds, who knows? i gave the top water all of about an hour before i decided, due to some streamerly looking water, to throw on a tungsten coned wooley bugger. i needed the tungsten cone cause all i brought was my floating line so i needed to get the fly down some. it only took a couple of casts when i saw this good looking fish come hauling ass out of some submerged roots in hot pursuit of my fly. he swiped 2x but did not feel the hook. a couple of more casts to the same spot and he did feel the hook and he was off to the races. mark was my net boy and what a fiasco that was. the river bottom was slippery as hell and mark who was wet wading fell 2 times trying to chase after this fish. mark got a workout cause when he finally did scoop it up he was hunkered over trying to catch his breath. a solid 17" and a good start to the day. i decided i was going to stick with the streamer until mark proved that a hopper set-up was going to produce. mark did take his first fish on a hopper but nothing touched it after that and i kept asking mark, after lots more streamer action, if he was sure he didn't just want to chuck streamers. he was stubborn and kept with the hopper/dropper. it was funny cause if mark hit a hole first with no success i would usually get something on my streamer so mark would claim that he buttered up the holes for me and continued to refer to himself as the 'fish fluffer' since he was getting the holes ready for me. at one point, we came to a really nice run that had some faster water and on the other side of it was a big fallen tree that created some slack water around it. the run had some depth and some great cover for the fish. seeing this run i said there is no way we don't at least get some chases out of here. mark offered it to me first as he had to re-rig. i landed 3 fish before mark could even get his hopper tied back on. of course he would stop what he was doing to net my fish. the water was fast and he had the only net after all. mark finally started to have achange of heart about his set-up and since he didn't want me taking all the fish from that hole he asked if he could throw my set-up a few times. i gave him my rod and went to go tie on his hopper. as soon as i got his hopper tied on he hooked into a tank of a fish and when it jumped i thought it was a big cutt cause of all the red on it's side, thougth maybe it was in spawning colors. it turned out to be a big 'bow' and proved to be, at least in my opinion, the fish of the day. mark eventually got rid of the hopper and threw on a streamer and we proceeded to either get chases, hits, lose fish and catch fish the rest of the day. it was probably the best streamer day i have ever had.