Let’s face it, fish are killing machines.  As beautiful and peaceful as they seem, they know how to eat!  In this episode of fish vs. other creatures, a baby duck finds out what the inside of a pike looks like.  (Thanks to Brett Prettyman for sharing this and the trout rattlesnake videos).  Enjoy it over and over again.  Also please excuse the curse words.

I love this video. Few things are funner than getting a trout to eat some kind of crazy fly.  In this case…a baby rattlesnake.  Love it!

I am a sucker for photos of the old west. This offers a great view of the amazing scenery in the mountains of Colorado. The mountains almost look like a movie set or something man-made. In fact it reminds me a bit of the Thunder Mountain Express ride at Disneyland. Cool photo.

Shorpy :: History in HD – High-Definition Historical Photos

via Cripple Creek Short Line: 1901.

This is a great fishing photo from 1900.

Shorpy :: History in HD – High-Definition Historical Photos
via The Gentle Art: 1900.

20" Snake River Finespot, the fish of the trip

It’s always hard to post the last day of a trip partly because of how busy life gets when you are back and partly because I think it is hard to admit that the trip is finished.  Well, this trip ended with a bang.  After 2 days of beating the water into a lather with not many fish to show for it, we headed to the Snake River for a shot at redemption…and we found it.  After picking up our licenses, we hit the river about 9:30 AM.  We decided that our best hope lay at the Wilson Bridge. There is a great shelf at the foot of the bridge that we fished for about an hour getting chases on streamers and landing a few smaller trout on a dry and dropper rig.

I set out up stream and immediately found some amazing water and saw that there was a healthy green drake hatch underway, so I switched to an olive wulff and a beadhead PT dropper.  The results were nearly instant.  I hooked and landed a nice 16″ cutthroat and then another about 12″ inches long.  I walked the bank and cast nearly straight upstream and found the fish within about 1-6′ from the bank. I next hooked a little whitefish on the dropper.  Another hundred yards upstream I got a HUGE trout to take my fly, but somehow my knot came undone and I broke him off.  What a bummer.  I kept on with a few more fish in the 10-12″ range.

Paul and I met up again and found another monster … Continue Reading

My good friend’s production company recently produced a video for the new Toshiba product called the Libretto (links here and here).  He wanted to put some fishing photos in part of the demo so he borrowed a few from my collection.  You’ll notice from :15-:20 a photo gallery with three fishing themed images. The images are the brown trout, me standing on a log in front of the Tetons, and a group of buddies I fished with recently, I don’t know who the bikini girl is, she certainly wasn’t fishing. I guess this 5 seconds will be deducted from my overall 15 minutes of fame budget.  Hopefully that leaves me enough time to still do something awesome.  Click for the full video:

ThisIsFlyDaily.com shares this nice looking video trailer for the fly fishing photography/videography blog fly-focus.com.  Check out the blog.  There are some really cool images posted that make me want to get out and go.

FLY-FOCUS Trailer from Marcus Sies on Vimeo.

Zion National Park vintage poster

A recent article in the Deseret News brought together two of my favorite things: vintage graphic art and Zion National Park. I really love seeing these old photos, especially of the one where the little kid is hanging on to the rope for dear life. I think the poster to the left is super cool and I always try, but never really succeed at making cool vintage designs.  Hard to be the actual images.  Thanks Deseret News for sharing.

In a rare move, Apple has actually offered up some interesting content as a free download in iTunes.  For this week only, you can download a full episode of the acclaimed BBC documentary series, Planet Earth.  Get yours today while it is still free.  Planet Earth – Planet Earth, Series 1 – From Pole to Pole

Journal of a Trapper by Osborne Russell

I really enjoy reading historical books and especially those about the Old West.  Journal of a Trapper is one of my favorite such books.  As the title suggests, this book is the journal of fur trapper Osborne Russell which documents the 9 years he spent in the Rocky Mountains trapping and hunting.  I am envious of those who got to see this region in it’s nearly pristine state and Russell does an excellent job describing the experience.  One amazing passage describes how he had to wait on the trail for a couple of hours while a massive herd of bison migrates in front of him.  Sadly towards the end of his writings he notes the absence of these great herds and how it is less and less common to even see a bison.  I also enjoyed his entries about winter in what is now Ogden, UT and how, when he needed me, he would just hike up to the foothills of the Wasatch mountains and shoot a big horn sheep.  It sounds that they were plentiful in his day and of course now, I doubt there are even any transplanted sheep in the hills above Ogden.  Interestingly, at the time I read this book, I happened to travel to Yellowstone and fished at the site of one of his encampments at the confluence of the Lewis Fork of the Snake River and the Snake River (it was full of whitefish by the way).  It was cool to be standing right where he did some 170 years earlier.

I marvel that hearty souls like Osborne Russel could make a living … Continue Reading