Urban Fishery

There's nothing more unappealing then fishing around populated areas of water, but i found a new piece on a familiar body of water so me and jake gave it a go. after a long walk thru tall frosted grass i was given the go ahead from jake to give the first hole a work over. 1 cast and jake netted my first fish of the day. already this stretch was feeling electric. unfortunately i have always felt that a fish on the first cast was a bad omen. after a few more fish in that area, including jakes 21" brown, i was having second thoughts about that bad omen. we landed a few fish right away and then, of course, things really cooled down for us. it wasn't until our last hole that shit got scorching hot. about 2 hours of rotating out with each other we figured we took probably close 2 a couple dozen fish out of this spot. the water looked fishy but certainly not that fishy. at about that point houses started to come into view so we called it a day and made the long walk back to the jeep. pretty damn good day with great weather to boot.

Some More Tinkering

Baitfish pattern that needs a little something different, maybe some cayenne.

12 Months of the Year

January Brown

February Brown
March Brown
April Brown
May Rainbow
June Pike
July Brown
August Cutt
September Bull
October musky
November Rainbow
December Brown

Beings that it's the end of the year i figured i would browse thru one of my on line galleries and pic out what i feel were my best fish of each month. not just the biggest but my best for various reasons.

A Curtis Fry Attempt

I had asked curtis about some ties that incorporated midge diamond braid and he linked me to one of his tying videos on you tube. maybe i should have watched the video again before i tied these but i did what i could with the materials i have so mine are a little different but the concept is the same. here is the link for those that are interested.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gtH7yAwitw i actually just watched it again and realize that mine don't quite look right but hey, i'm not perfect

40 Degrees my Ass.....

The river had dropped a whole 50cfs and the weather channel said 40 degrees, should be a killer day was my mindset when i went to bed last night. jerry allowed me a little sleep in time since he didn't want to meet until 8am unlike the usual 6:30 meet times that myself and the others have. i still managed to be a little late. a little betos and we were on the road. the best sight when approaching the river is the absence of others cars/people. although there were no other cars there when we arrived i was 1/2 expecting someone to show up as we were gearing up so we rushed as fast as we could and made the trek to the water. the morning was brisk and i apparently had left my gloves at home so i was in no hurry to start casting any time soon. the morning started off very slow, it wasn't until about lunch time that i was into our first hook up. right away the fish came hurling out of the water and it was easy to see that it was the best fish i had hook there in quite sometime. jerry fumbled with the net job, but finally got the job done. a still pretty beat up fish from the spawn with lots of color measured at a cool 22". a few pics and it was on it's merry way. we pounded that hole for a long minute with nothing more then jerry losing his first opportunity. in the next 2hrs i caught one more while jerry was shooting blanks. once jerry did land one though it was smooth sailing from there. we were almost done when one hole welcomed us with open arms and practically starting throwing fish at us. between us it seemed it was one fish after another. that one hole definitely turned our day around. really the only pisser on the day was the temp's. we don't think it reached above 30 degrees and we spent all day constantly de-icing our guides.

Tying and Tinkering

I've been re-stocking my nymph box all week so i've been tying a lot of smaller stuff. i have already posted a purple boogie but i made some camera adjustments and propped it up so the camera was out of my hands and wouldn't be shaking for the macro pic. i was able to get the whole fly in focus so that's cool. the other fly looks like a basic pheasant tail, but it's not a pheasant tail. the body is olive dub with the pheasant as a shellback, with a red wire rib.

Where's the Beef?

I picked up scott at o' dark thirty and after a quick pit stop for some grub we descended upon our destination. the morning was extremely chilled, which made getting out of the jeep to gear up a real chore. as we were gearing up a truck pulled up along side of us and i feared it was other fishermen, luckily it was just duck hunters. they crossed the fence and within 5 minutes several shots were fired and they were walking back to their truck with duck in hand. that was a quick hunt, and off they drove. we fished our way up about 1/2 of this section with scott getting the only fish, so instead of continuing up we chose to walk back to the jeep and try a different piece of liquid ice. even though we arrived at the new section at noonish there was not another vehicle in sight. a rare phenomena indeed. we had the river to ourselves. it might have been fished in the morning but we were still optimistic that the fish would be active. my luck certainly made a positive change. i was able to wrangle a handful of solid fish, while scott did mot fair so well. for some reason i have noticed that the last couple times of fishing there that it seems the fish aren't as big as normal. i'd say a couple inches on average actually. although the fish are as spunky as ever, i'd like to know where all the bigger boys and girls have gone.