Project Update

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Goat Head Gear Logo

Goat Head Gear Logo

Howdy everyone. It’s been a while since my last post. I have had my nose to the grindstone for the last 11 months as a self-employed consultant and working on a couple of other businesses to boot. The one I am most excited about called Goat Head Gear is getting closer to reality. My business partner and I have been working hard on our first product, a small shoe screw for trail running and wading, called Sole Spikes™.  You can apply the screw into the lug of any running shoe, hiking boot, or wading shoe, generally about 10 screws per shoe.  They provide AMAZING traction in winter/trail running and provide some real bite when wading, particularly with the newer rubber soled boots.  We started this process over a year ago and have been refining our design and working with engineers to get a killer product at a great price.  We are working on the first real prototype to be completed in the next 2-3 weeks.  If that is successful we will start the process of officially launching our product.  The cool news is that we are introducing our product as a project on Kickstarter.com where we will be using “crowd funding” to help pay for our initial costs.  We have some nice thank you gifts for those who are kind enough to donate.  We hope to have that live in the next couple of weeks.  Please stay tuned for updates and of course it would be great to have your support on the campaign.  Check it out today.  Enjoy!

Shared: Watercolor Wings

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Watercolor plate from home made field journal

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.

Is this a Nashville Warbler?

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What warbler is this?

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.

More otters released on Middle Provo River

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The Utah DWR has released 3 more river otters on the middle section of the Provo River, with the stated goal of establishing a population of 25-30 otters on the section. Also recently, the DWR said that overpopulation of trout is stunting the growth of the the trout population on that stretch of the river (KSL 5 TV).  Perhaps this is an attempt to reduce the trout population.  Interestingly, the DWR reported the same stunting of growth on the Green River which already has a steady population of otters, so perhaps they may not be the answer, or at least not the complete answer. I don’t really have anything against otters and have spent time enjoying watching them in the past on the Green River.  In fact one time I was guiding my cousin on the Green and we had stopped to land a fish.  I mentioned to him as we sat that there were otters on the river and maybe we would see them. I stood up to pull my anchor and to my surprise a whole family of otters were standing on a rock near the boat watching us.  Pretty funny.

The Snake River rules!

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20" Snake River Finespot, the fish of the trip

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 shelf that we worked for the next 2 hours.  I caught 4 fish in the 15-plus inch class including the beauty pictured above, a 20″ Snake River Finespot cutthroat.  I was throwing my bugs up about 5 feet above the shelf and let the flies drift over the edge.  These fish rose from the depths and deliberately took my hoppers without hesitation.  Combined I think we caught about 10 fish from this run.  It was amazing.

We moved on to another  run where there were dozens of fish feeding voraciously on the surface.  These guys were a little smaller and were avoiding our hoppers as they were keyed in on smaller bugs.  I thought, “what the heck” and tied on a classic standby, a #14 renegade and fished it dry.  This got them to rise and we landed several fish from this run.

This was an epic Snake River day and a reminder of why I LOVE that river.  The water is crystal clear, weed free, and full of healthy, willing trout.  There is something about seeing these large fish rise up from about 6-8 feet deep to take your fly.  Definitely a day that won’t soon be forgotten as I get back to work!  Check out the rest of the photos below.

7th Annual OOF Day 3

On the Madison Again

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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

Live from the Madison River (almost)

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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

Looks like I hit the blog snooze button

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Goat Head GearWell almost two months ago I had hoped to awaken from my blog slumber, but looks more like I hit the snooze and rolled over and went back to sleep. I may have hit the snooze button, but haven’t been sleeping, that’s for sure. I have since quit my job and moved into the brave new world of self-employment, which has been a dream of mine for a long time. Actually, I am starting 3 new businesses at the present time.

Firstly, I started a one-man web services consulting firm (not sure if a team of one counts as a firm), Web Exponent and am currently busy on a huge project at a local company in need of some web strategy help. I made my first bonehead move by putting the wrong phone number on my business which I swear I double checked. Doh!

Secondly, I am working on an outdoor product company with a friend. The company is called Goat Head Gear and we are hopefully about 8-10 weeks away from launching our product. There will definitely be more to come on this subject.

Lastly, I just started working on a new project with my neighbor that will also have a web sales component but we are early in figuring things out at this point.

Add to all of this, I am also helping one my longtime friends with a web software company he is starting. So somewhere in all of this I need to spend sometime with my family, exercise, and fulfill my responsibilities at church. Sadly blogging has fallen by the wayside a bit. I am hoping to start sharing more about Goat Head Gear on this blog as I think it suits the subject matter and it is really exciting.