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 came across this great handmade bird field guide from a blog that I follow called, A Field Journal, written by Olivia Kanaley.  She has some really creative photo sets that find appealing, but of course, a hand painted bird field guide is something that I can’t pass up sharing.  Enjoy other images on the link below.

via Watercolor Wings.

What warbler is this?

On a recent trip to the Snake River in Wyoming, I spotted this cute little yellow bird, which I had guessed to be a yellow warbler, but looking closer I think it might be a Nashville Warbler.  The pictures aren’t the greatest, but hopefully someone out there can weigh in with an opinion. Comment below. Thanks. Other views: Jumping to a branch, eating a worm, and not very focused.

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

Today was another SLOW fishing day with a lot of walking and casting.  We started out on the Henry’s Fork in Box Canyon.  I hooked into a pretty big trout that unfortunately I didn’t land.  I landed a couple of little fish.  One big drawback was that the water was milky and made it tough to see what was going on.  On the plus side there was a tremendous hatch of mahogany duns, blue winged olives, and caddis, but it didn’t really seem to get the fish looking up.  We had fun watching an osprey fishing and saw some other cool birds.

We decided to move to the Madison and see if we could do any better. The water there was really nice and I was able to land a nice brown trout on a little bead head pheasant tail I was dropping behind an elk hair caddis.  Paul hooked and flung way may be the smallest trout ever taken on a fly.  It was smaller than my index finger (see the web album link.” Thankfully the scenery and company makes up for the very slow fishing.

7th Annual OOF Day 2

Today we floated the Madison River from Palisades down to some other place I can’t remember the name of.  On our way to the river from West Yellowstone we stopped at an old favorite fishing spot, but my new mecca, the fly shop at Slide Inn.  The streamer selection there was unbelievable.  You have to love a shop that has more streamers than any other flies.  We picked up some crazy articulated flies and started out the day with high hopes.  Fishing was very slow going. It took us a while to get into some fish.  I ended up catching two nice rainbows on a black conehead sculpin.  Otherwise we hooked only a few more fish for the entire 11 miles of floating.  We worked hard and landed a brown trout, a big whitefish, and a bunch of small rainbows.  In all the day was nice, but the fish were few and far between.  Now, where to fish tomorrow?!

7th Annual OOF Day 1

Great horned owl

I went for a walk through the neighborhood tonight with our youngest son and our dog, Mr Beau Jangles.  We came across a great horned owl pair calling to each other from across the street.  At first we heard just one and it was right above us in the tree although it was too dark to actually see it.  A few minutes later we heard another across the way answering the call. I can still hear them now from the bedroom window.  Pretty cool.

Lazuli bunting (via utahbirds.org)

I recently “celebrated” my 5 year anniversary of employment at my current job.  They were kind enough to let me select a gift from a little online catalog.  I ordered some binoculars which have turned out to be pretty nice.  It is hard to imagine that I enjoy watching birds and prior to this haven’t owned a decent pair of field glasses (it is bad enough that I don’t have a decent camera for close ups). Today I noticed some birds that looked slightly different in size and behavior from any birds I have seen recently at the feeder.  To my surprise they turned out to be lazuli buntings (and this from utahbirds.org) and there were about 7-8 of them both males and females. They are strikingly beautiful birds.  Hard to imagine this is my first sighting of these little flying gems. Now I just wish I had a nice camera to capture them.

Eurasian Collared-Dove (via utahbirds.org)

I consider myself a pretty perceptive guy.  I am usually the first person to see a deer in the hills or a trout swimming but I will admit I think have been a little slow on the pick up in this case.  There are a bunch of doves that frequent my feeders and are pretty much there all day, even when I am out there.  I had always assumed that they were all mourning doves, but recently I had noticed that some of them have a black half circle on the back of their necks.  It finally occurred to me that I should look and see what was up with that.  Turns out I have new birds in my yard (for who knows how long).  They are Eurasian Collared-Doves.  Turns out they haven’t been in our country for very long.  They were introduced in the Bahamas in the mid-1970′s and have spread across the entire country.  Interestingly, they really only live in populated areas and don’t live out in the wild areas inhabited by mourning doves.  I have never been a very  big fan of introduced species (although I seem to make convenient allowances for certain non-native trout).

Eurasian Collared-Dove (via The Cornell Lab of Ornithology)

Eurasian Collared-Dove (via utahbirds.org)

NePo Suet Logo

I just wanted to thank NePo Suet for sending me a big box of cakes in the mail yesterday.  The cakes are part of a popular suet cakes for logos exchange program that I am starting.  No, actually I felt the creative urge a few weekends ago and whipped up a logo for them and they were kind enough send me a box full of cakes as a token of their appreciation.  It sounds like things are getting busy for them.  Please be sure to check them out and order a few cakes for your self.

I am in the mood to pay it forward so I will send 1 cake to each of the first 3 people to comment on this blog post (US only, sorry).  Leave a love note below and I will contact you to get your address.  Thanks!