Life of a trout bum
I used to wonder why I never caught any fish and then I found the broken fly below in a bag I used years ago. Hmm, I wonder why I didn’t catch anything. An easy give away should have been the piece of nylon braided rope to attach your fly. Ok, ok, it isn’t that bad but it does feel like 20lb test line. Oh well live and learn. I still thought it was funny though.
I have to get out and catch a good size trout. I try to bide my time through winter by tying flies, but now that the weather is getting spring like out the itch is getting bad. I may even run out to a lake this weekend and see what I can find.
I have been tying some great flies though. The most recent are a stock up of Parachute Adams in 14-18 with a great goose biot body that makes them super light and the biot will not hold as much water as a fully dubbed fly. I will try to get up the recipe and instructions for tying as soon as I can.
I started tying flies at the start of 2009 and by Christmas was feeling like I had gotten pretty good so I figured I would whip some up for my dad for Christmas. I ended up tying him:
24 – Brassies (beadhead and mercury versions)
16 – Quick Descent Trico Spinner (they have quick descent dubbing on the thorax to get right into the film)
12 – Amy’s Ant size 6 and 8 in olive (there the big ones on the left)
and a few RS2 thrown in for good measure.
I hope he enjoys them and catches lots of fish. Now I have to start busting out some flies for myself—March is just around the corner and I have to be ready come spring.
I finally got a new rotary vise! What a great Birthday gift, huh. Its a Renzetti Traveler 2200 with a material clip on the vise arm. Thats a small size 20 parachute BWO with a goose biot wrapped on the tail.
Since I had the new vise and was in Colorado I went to Charlie Cravens Fly Box and WOW! I have never seen such an impressive collection of fly tying gear. All quality products—I didn’t have to dig through dozens of bags of deer hair to find a good bunch. To top it off Charlie Craven himself was helping me and just from the information he was telling me while I was gathering supplies I feel like I had a lesson on fly tying. The goose biot BWO that is in the picture up above is from his large collection of online fly tying recipes. Switch out the BWO colors for adams grey and you have an impressive parachute adams. Also, the biot on the parachute fly makes the parachute fly really light and super waterproof as compared to the dubbing down the whole body (wait until you see the these Alex. We are going to have a blast with ‘em).
This is one heck of a indestructible pattern for a fly. It’s a little confusing to tie in the beginning but once you get a used to the shuttle weave (also known as polish weave) they come off the vise pretty quick. I was using two strands of brassie size wire on each braid but medium wire would have worked better. This seems like a solid alternative to the harder versions of caddis flies that I have been tying. Those were the OH MY GOD! I LOST ONE! S**T! type of flies and when you are nymphing hard for trout and loose several flies in a day that is probably not the best type of flies to be tying. I am going to tie some of these in larger sizes to use as stoneflies also—maybe a nice golden stone, hmmmm. Just need to run to the fly shop for larger wire first.
It photographs terrible but in real life it look great. The Mylar tinsel under the wire really makes it shimmer. You could also under coat the body with Ice Dub and that could be really cool.
Shuttle Weave Nymph
Hook: Daichi 1150 size 6-18
Bead: Gold (sized to hook)
Thread: Uni 6/0 (use one of the body colors, I used olive for this fly)
Body: Two contrasting strands of Ultra Wire
Under body: Mylar Tinsel, Large and a few wraps of Lead Wire
Thorax: Dubbing (I used Ice Dub)
There is a good photo tutorial here and a video here:
I just got six free 1/4 ” Unibobbers from Caddis Fly Shop so that I could enter a fly pattern for their contest. If anyone out there has an idea for a fly that is in dire need of a small bobber being attached to it for extra float drop me a line or leave a comment.
By the way, Hareline (maker of the unibobber), you really should market these as a UniFloats. I think lots of fly fisherman are just turned off of them because they have bobber in the name. Just like fly fishers don’t want to use a San Juan Worm because it has the name worm in it.
I found this image from a few months back that I thought I had lost. I was tying flies with my daughter and my wife snapped this quick photo of us. The whole time I was tying with her I had Teach Your Children by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in my head, not that I understand the lyrics of the song, the title just seemed to fit and I filled in the rest with some humming. She is now a few months older and would never sit still enough to let me tie a whole fly with her. Maybe she will grow up to have a mean hand whip finish like her dad.
Sigghhh…
Trout season is starting to slow. In all fairness it is November first so it is time, right. Soon I will have to hunker down and get started on my winter fly tying extravaganza to get my boxes replenished for spring. I try to go after steelhead and salmon in the winter but I just can’t muster as much excitement for them as I do for trout. I am sure most of it is that I understand trout more and that I like catching more then one fish every 1,000 casts.
I went to the McKenzie on October 31 and had a fun day with my wife and daughter. It is really great to take my wife along as she likes to take photos so I come back with more then just me holding the fish out and trying to take a fast photo so I can get it back in the water (see almost all photos in my other posts). She took this one of me tying on a new fly:
Speaking of flies, the fish were SUPER picky. I saw larger mayflies on the water and the fish were hitting them hard but I could not figure out what the fish wanted to see. I tried all the usual suspects with no luck. So I waded out to the top of my waders and waited for one of the mayflies to float near me and grabbed it off the water. It looked like a BWO but darker so I matched as close to the size as I could but unfortunately I didn’t have the right darkness of fly but, hey, that is why I carry a black sharpie in my vest. I got the parachute BWO nice and dark and threw it out and found this nice 15″:
I love the color of wild McKenzie trout. The last fish of the day was on a #12 BH flashback pheasant tail and as soon as the fish starts to move in the water you can just tell they are not wild by there lack of fighting and there colors. Compare this hatchery fish (that I took home to eat) to the wild above:
BTW: Oregonflyfishingblog.com has a great list of what you can do to help out wild fish in the McKenzie. Check it out here.
After the day of fishing we swung by Ike’s and I got my favorite Trout Special pizza (mushrooms and sausage) and my wife got broasted chicken. If you find yourself on McKenzie Highway near Vida, OR I recommend both, especially after a day fishing. As we sat there eating all the power went out suddenly and the eerie glow of the battery powered jack o’ lanterns near by illuminated our table. We packed up in the dark and headed towards home just to find the highway closed five miles down from a car that had hit a power pole and brought the lines down on the road. The emergency workers told us it would be hours before the road was open but seeing as we were low on gas we got in the queue and waited our turn after 15 to 30 minuets of waiting we were on our way. The delay from the accident put us back home after 11 so we missed all the trick or treaters. To bad we weren’t giving out candy this year or we would have had a nice stash.
To close, one more great photo from my wife (thanks for the camera mom and dad):
I had a great three day weekend this past weekend. Since the wife and kid are out of town I headed out on Friday afternoon with my fishing buddy Alex to see if we could find some fresh salmon moving up with the rain. We headed over to the North Fork of the Nehalem near the hatchery and fished about about a mile or so down river but found nothing. When we got back near the hatchery we saw some dark salmon moving up over the riffles and a few bait fisherman who were not having any luck so we decided to move on. We headed an hour north to Big Creek where we found lots of way to far salmon running around. My friend got a rock of all things stuck in his tire and he had a huge leak so we put on a spare and headed back to my house to regroup.
The next morning we headed down to the McKenzie and what a day. After explaining the in and outs of my favorite section of river to a fellow fly fisherman I headed on down and threw on my go to parachute adams and nothing happened. No fish. Ok, ok I can figure this one out. I looked around and saw no mayflies yet. Alright, how about a stimulator?
Alright! After an hour or so of fish eating the same stimulator it lost all ability to float. As I was switching flies I noticed it had gotten a bit later in the day then I thought it had and I looked up river and saw the larger fish rising in the riffles. I headed up to them and put on my parachute adams and was rewarded with this beauty:
I know, three photos of the same fish is a bit excessive but it was a really pretty fish.
After that beauty we caught a few more but the day was slowing. I like the light glistening of the fish in this photo.
We headed south to the Willamette that afternoon and the next morning we went below Dexter dam and did some spey casting for Steelhead. While, Alex did spey casting for Steelhead and I did an interesting blend of single and souble hand casting as I had forgotten my spey reel. Alex snapped this great photo of me:
We found no steelhead so we opted to head up river and find some fun trout. We stopped up above the Black Canyon campground at a place that looked promising. We walked down to the river and I started working my way up river trying out my Ice Dub Prince / Mercury Pheasant Tail combo that had worked so well on the McKenzie. I was fishing a beautiful deep side pool and as I let my nymph swing it stopped. It seemed like such an abrupt stop that I figured it was a rock so I gave a little yank. Then the rock started to move out of the pool towards the whitewater which was moving super fast. I fought the fish for five minuets and getting him out of the twenty foot or so seep pool was really fun. My first large fish on the Willamette. I will definitely have to go back soon and see if he has friends in the pool:
On the way back through Eugene we stopped at the Caddis Fly Shop and I picked up a new #2 Microbarb Saddle in brown to replace the one that I have stripped of every usable feather. Now to get down to business and tie some lovely dry flies. Hmmm, which to do first?