Category Archives: Fly Fishing

Crashing the party

Posted on by
Reply

I have been following the blogs of Jeff Kennedy and Jason Borger for about a year now.  They are both renowned artists, Jeff specializes in flies and I think Jason does lots of different things including writing.  Anyway, I know neither of them personally but saw that they are doing a thing together they call Drawing Flies 52, drawing one fly per week for the coming year.  Jeff has the rules posted here.  I wasn’t really invited to join in the fun, nor would I expect to be, but I thought it sounded cool so I thought I would ride along.  I don’t presume to be on the same level of skill as either of them, but enjoy doodling trout and flies so hopefully they won’t mind if I draw along.  Coincidentally, Jason’s dad Gary Borger, was one of my first fly fishing tutors, well he was a virtual tutor anyway.  I used to check out his fly fishing videos, Fly Fishing For Trout with Gary Borger and Nymphing from the library as often as I could talk mom into taking me there. So without further ado, here are my two entries so far:

Week 1: The Mickey Finn: Jeff,  Jason

Week 2: The Humpy: Jeff, Jason

We’ll see how long I can keep this up :)

Close encounter of the eagle kind

Posted on by
Reply

Last October I was on a float trip fishing the South Fork of the Snake River with my favorite guide Bart Taylor and my cousin.  We were fishing streamers all day and meeting with pretty good success.  Around lunch time, my cousin hooked up with a nice 16-17 inch rainbow trout.  Bart dropped anchor while we landed the fish and snapped a couple photos.  As we released the fish, it slipped from our hands prematurely and started to float on it side down stream. Bart immediately started to pull up anchor so we could retrieve it.  It was seconds after the fish hit the water and a mere 6-8 feet away from the boat, that an eagle swooped down and grabbed the fish from the surface and lighted on another tree to eat his prize catch.

Needless to say, this took us all by surprise.  I just missed accidentally capturing the moment on camera as I took a photo of the fish right as it was dropped (picture to the left).  Bart says he didn’t see what had happened, but knew something strange was happening because he could feel the gust of wind as the eagle pulled back just before hitting the fish.  He looked up just after the fish was taken.  We all looked at each other to make sure we hadn’t just hallucinated the whole thing after hours of slinging lead.  We looked up to see another eagle sitting in a bare cottonwood tree, presumably waiting for us to drop him another snack.  I think the first bird must have left his perch the moment that fish hit the water, if not a moment before.  It was a truly amazing encounter that I am grateful have witnessed.

Fun with wader repairs

Posted on by
Reply

My most recent fishing trip confirmed a suspicion I have had from my prior trips; my waders have a leak. And not just one leak, both legs have leaks in the knees, right on the edge of a taped seem.  I have some Orvis breathable waders with reinforced knees, but these leaks are from wearing on the inseam on each knee, I guess from rubbing while walking.  Basically about 2 inches of weakened fabric.  I filled them up in the shower to find the exact spot.  Thankfully the waders have a repair kit so I applied some heat tape on the inside of the weak area.  Hopefully that will do the trick.  Guess I’ll find out soon enough :) .  Thankfully, these were pretty small repairs.

Cold Day, Big Flies

Posted on by
1


I had a great outing today on the Lower Provo River in Provo Canyon, UT.  It started off rather sketchy as the day was really snowy and I wasn’t sure if my 20 year old Honda Accord was up to the task, but I figured if I just took it easy I could get there without any issue.  My usual 40 minute drive was more like 80 minutes, but once I got there I found I had the whole stretch to myself.  I went to Vivian Park and fished up from the bridge.  Given then weather I determined I would be nymphing.  It was about 18-20 degrees Fahrenheit and a constant snow was falling.  I had in mind to fish a fly I haven’t used in a while; a big, juicy cranefly larva pattern about size 6.  I trailed it with a size 14 red fox squirrel nymph.  For weight I used a BB size split shot and an 8 ft leader with 5x tippet.  On my fifth cast of the day, I took a nice brown trout about 15 in long.  It took to the air straight away after being hooked.  Once I landed it, I could see that he had eaten the cranefly larva.  Over the next 10 minutes minutes I landed two more fish both were mountain whitefish of decent size and both foul hooked.  I think they were taking the cranefly and I was hooking them with the RFSN.  The cranefly was big enough they couldn’t fit it in their tiny mouths.  I hooked 3 or 4 more browns ranging from 11-14 inches and all on the cranefly.  The fish of day had to be the 18 inch rainbow that was a healthy slab of a fish.  Rainbows aren’t common fare on the Provo River and this one as a great fish.  It took the RFSN.  The fish was a beautiful shade of steel blues and lavenders.  I had originally thought I was snagged when I hooked it but he eventually started moving and put up a pretty good fight.

By the time I hooked him I had run out of 5x tippet (I know, stupid) but had switched to 4x and it didn’t seem to be an issue and allowed me to play him a little harder.  I took a couple more browns from the same long run and then moved up several hundred yards.  The weather was getting colder so I called it a day.  Not a bad way to spend 3 hours.

Some additional notes from the trip.  I saw several american dippers, song sparrows, and a bald eagle flew over head through the snow.  I also observed at least 2 fish feeding up on the surface but didn’t make the switch to dries.  It was a fun trip.  Enjoy the slide show.

Wind River Trout

Posted on by
Reply

I am always on the lookout for big fish stories and found this great one from the Salt Lake Tribune. This woman caught an enormous lake trout on a fly in the Wind River mountains in Wyoming:
http://www.sltrib.com/outdoors/ci_14027915
I am always jealous of stories like this. I never seem to have issues catching fish but they never have much size to them…hopefully soon!