Wool Lined Booties (report)

After a little over a year of my leaky patagonias sitting in storage waiting for me to stop procrastinating i finally sent them in for repair about 6 weeks ago. once they received my waders they gave me a call to notify me of their arrival. then they called me again a little later once they had determind that the booties needed replaced. they offered to either replace the booties for free or for $45 i could get patagonia's new wool lined booties which they now have in their newest waders. my feet do get cold pretty easy so i opted for the wool lined ones thinking that they would be pretty sweet. welp after 2 outings in them i have determined that they were a waste of $45. my feet were no warmer in them, in fact, today my toes froze. i guess i expected my feet to orgasm with each step with the upgrade. oh well it was worth a try.

Small River Feesh

After some running around this morning i made my way to a small river to get in a little casting. it was probably the coldest i've been all winter. i had to take an extended break to put my hands down my pants and cup my balls to warm my hands/fingers up. they never did fully warm up and i got tired of just standing around so i zipped up and proceeded with the casting. i did pick up a few smaller fish, including 1 decent sized worthless whitefish, on a stone no less.

Getting Warmer

With the temp's continuing to rise this week you'd think the fish would be a bit more active, well they weren't today. tried several different colors and patterns and finally towards the end i hit this fish who was lurking underneath a log in a deep hole.

Robinson's Munchable Minnow

Was farting around some more. this is my rendition of the robinson's munchable minnow.

tail/body-rabbit strip tied in to make tail then the rest wrapped forward 1/2 up the shank

flash-few strands of pearl flashabou

collar-brown schlappen

head-black/olive/sculpin olive laser dub, trimmed

eyes-adhesive eyes cemented with zap-a-gap

Steelhead Bunny Spey

Another pattern that i tied up for a previous steelhead swap.

body-black UV polar chenille

wing/tail-orange bunny tied in behind the head

collar-black marabou tip under a large orange guinea hackle

1/2 Day

Was gonna fish after i got austin to school but it was still freezing ass cold and windy. i gave it a couple of hours to see what the weather would do. the wind died down adn the temp's warmed up to the low 30's. good enough for me! hit some local waters and when i got to the river the flows were great with a slight stain to the water. loaded with a streamer i nailed a nice little cuttie right off the bat. as i fished upstream i hit a few more fish. i fished to the diversion and as i made a few casts i heard a weird noise and looked over at the diversion and watched the water coming out get cut off at least by 1/2. well that sucked! the fishing pretty much shut down from there. made the long walk back catching one small brown along the way.

1st of the Season.....

On a streamer that is. my day started off at work by 6am, then had my retirement luncheon at 11 and after that on the river by 1:30. the temp's were in the high 30's and the river was high and a bit off color. almost looked like spring flows. i packed light with just a few streamers in my pack and no intentions of nymphing. i wanted to stick with the streamers even if they did not move any fish. was off to a pretty good start. the second run i fished i hit a smaller fish and had him on for a short minute before losing him. then it was dead for most of the rest of the day. towards the end of my day as the temp's started to drop, i was stripping through a slower deep slot and only half paying attention, i visually picked up my streamer then right away a fish caught my eye. i didn't even feel the fish hit the fly, i just reacted with a hook set and was fortunate enough to have gotten lucky. he ended up with both hooks in his grill and my 1st streamered fish of the year was in the books. did not move anything else.