American River and Truckee River

This past Saturday I gave a nymph and swinging demo on the American River to about 10 people. My friend and co-worker Sebastian and I met everyone at Riverbend park at 8am. The river was really crowded, mostly guys swinging big treble hooks and sinkers trying to snag salmon.
The demo went pretty well. Everyone said they learned something but there aren't really any Steelhead in the river yet.
Around 1pm I got to do some fishing of my own. I went down river a ways and fished a favorite spot for some half pounders. I hooked one really nice one that got off after a nice fight. He was hooked swinging a #16 green birds nest. I hooked two more fish in the same run on the same fly.
There are a lot of salmon in the river. Most of them are dark and dying. It never ceases to amaze me how powerful those fish are. Sebastian hooked a couple swinging a big egg pattern and even in their depleted state they were difficult to land.

I drove up to Truckee late in the afternoon and met up with some friends. We fished Herschdale road the next day. I caught fish on a bunch of different patterns but was most successful with caddis soft hackles dead drifted. I'm sure any caddis or mayfly nymph would have worked but the key seemed to be moving around. The fish were found in pockets. I would fish 100 yards for nothing and then hook 2 or 3 in the same hole.
I also swung a streamer. I used a sculpin pattern from 9-about 1130 for only one grab and one small follower.
The weather was great. 75 degrees and sunny. No wind. I would post pics but my phone was wrecked when I fell head first into the chilly Truckee water. Complete submersion.

Fishing - October 17th-21st

Back in Kansas. I was pretty excited when my district manager asked if I wanted to go back to KC for the Grand Opening of the Orvis Leawood store. When I was there about a month ago I met some cool people and was looking forward to seeing them. 

Up early to try and find some carp

I also wanted to see some more of the fishing that the area had to offer, including some more carp spots. I called Nathan, the fishing manager and asked if he would be interested in fishing a spot he really likes called Taneycomo, which is in Southern MO, about a 3.5 hour drive from KC. He was raving about how big the browns are that come out of there and assured me that the fishing would be good.

Trail next to the carp stream

The weather left something to be desired for the first couple of days. I flew in on Wed and it was really windy and rainy until Friday. It didn't matter much though because all I did was work from sun up to sun down Wed, Thur, and Friday. I did get a couple hours on Friday during the middle of the day to get out and explore a carp spot but didn't see anything.

Saturday morning I went out with Joe and we had a shot at a couple big carp but failed.

The big day was Sunday. 

Nathan, his wife Sarah and baby Henry picked me up at my hotel at 5am. We stopped after about an hour and a half to drop the baby off at Nathan's parents place, and then drove the final couple hours to Branson MO, where Table Rock Lake is located. Taneycomo is the tail that drops out of that lake. If you've never been to Branson, it's basically the Wisconsin Dells with a shit load of Southern Babtist churches.

The drive was gorgeous, the leaves where turning and we were in the northern part of the Ozarks. I couldn't wait to get my line wet and try for one of the massive trout I had been hearing about. 

My excitement quickly abated once I saw the parking lot to the public fishing area. At first I was just mildly concerned, because Nathan and his wife didn't seem surprised at all at the 30 or so cars parked in the FIRST of two lots. I figured there would be enough room and fish for everyone. Well, I was correct about there being enough fish, but I was definitely wrong about there being enough room.

The first thing we did was look at the fish ladders to see if there were any trout headed up to the hatchery. I don't know why, but I thought that we would be fishing for wild fish, definitely not the case. Every single fish in the river comes from the hatchery and there are something like 16,000 fish or more per mile of this river.

When I finally looked over the staircase leading to the river it was like something out of a nightmare. The river was literally lined with "fly fisherman" and spin casters. We had to find a hole in the lineup and get in. We walked behind some dude and made sure he saw us, then I guess we weren't fast enough so he decided to brush us with a back cast. To make matters even worse, the water was only about 2 feet at its deepest point, it was like a goddamn trickle and you could see all the trout just swimming around everywhere. They had no fear at all of people and would just swim  up to your feet to eat the stuff kicked up from the bottom. I couldn't believe it. 

At this point I would have driven straight back to Kansas City and spent the rest of the day carp fishing, but Nathan and his wife had really gone out of their way to take me down here, and we did drive over 3 hours so I had to make the best of it. Luckily Nathan and his wife are happy, fun people and that kept my spirits high.

I caught a trout on a little Sculpin pattern after about an hour. The idea had been to strip streamers for the big browns, none were caught all day.

I put on a nymph rig for a while just to change it up a little and caught a couple of fish on a scud and a disco midge but didn't really get any satisfaction out of it. Most of the guys around me were hooking up from time to time and I'd bet 75% of the hookups were false hooks due to the low water level, and drifting flies over reds. The other popular spot was right where the water comes out of the hatchery. There were probably ten guys lined up as close as possible to the entry to the hatchery drifting nymphs under indicators. Fun?

I guess in summary I would say that it was a sad place to fish and I'm really grateful to have thousands of miles of awesome trout fishing here in CA, and back home in Wisconsin that I can always count on. If you're going to MO or Kansas to fish, just bring the Carp and Bass gear, or take a trip to the White River or Little Red river way down in Arkansas.

Musky, Carp, Steelhead, Marriage

Yep, I got married exactly two weeks ago today. I feel pretty much the same so let's move on to the fishing.
The week preceding my wedding I went to the Musky capitol of the world, HAYWARD Wisconsin to try and catch a musky, and I caught a goddamn Musky, in fact I caught two Muskellunge, and my brother Carson caught a couple of nice Pike.
My brother bought us a drift boat trip with the Hayward Fly Fishing Company. These are nice guys who knew where we had a shot at some good musky. We drifted the Namekagon river.

The guide wouldn't let us hold the fish. I don't know why but I just thought, fuck it, if that's how you do it than that's fine.

We fished the lake where our cabin was for a few hours over the next couple days and some guys saw some big musky but we didn't catch any more. Just a few small bass and a walleye or two.

When I got back to Madison I did some Carp fishing over by the UW hospital. I didn't catch any Carp but it was a lot of fun.
The picture above is the little inlet from Lake Mendota that i was fishing. There were a lot of carp but the water was really low and clear. I had a few carp turn on my flies but didn't take.

When I got back from the wedding I went with Sebastian up to fish the confluence of the Trinity and the Klamath rivers. The fishing sucked. Not much else to say. We should have gone to the Rogue where everyone is catching nice chrome. Fuck.

Catching up on Half Pounders and Carp

It's been a while since my last post, although I have been fishing a little. I was in Wisconsin for a wedding, no time to fish. Then I was in Kansas City opening our new Leawood, KS location for an entire week. In between all of this my fiance and I have been planning our own wedding.
I got out to the Lower American on Sept 2nd with a couple of friends to see if we could hook up with some of the half pounders that were said to be in the river. I landed one nice true half pounder (about 15 inches) on a green soft hackle. I hooked a few others that came off, and landed a bunch of smolts but not much else. One of my buddies, Rob, has since been back and said the fishing is steadily picking up. Small egg paterns and nymphs are working.  Also small dries like PMD's and Adams will work early in the morning and evenings if there is a hatch.

I didn't take time to research the fishing opportunities in Kansas City before I left because I knew we would be working long hours and I wouldn't have my own rental car any way.
I arrived on Sunday evening and we worked till about 5 on Monday. I decided to take a run but didn't really know where to go. I just planned on running around aimlessly for about 40 minutes or so. On my way out of the hotel the lady at the front desk asked if I wanted a map to a nice running trail. I took the map and was on my way. I was running for about 5 minutes when I realized I was running down hill to what looked like a small river or creek. Sure enough the running route she led me to was along a nice urban creek, the name of which I will keep a secret. (A promise I made to a new friend) Even though I only have 15 followers, and none of them in the KS area, a promise is a promise.
As soon as I started along the trail I saw a guy in waders releasing a fish! I couldn't believe it. I was kicking myself for not taking a rod. After taking a look at the water, I thought, "that must have been a carp" I didn't want to bother the guy so I went on my way and decided that on my way back if he was still there I would ask him what the deal is.
I checked a couple of spots and saw some nice carp along the way and then I stopped on my way back and spoke with the carp fisherman who's name I learned is Joe Ferber.

Joe was pumped about Orvis opening in town and offered to take me out the next evening. I borrowed an old 7'6" 4/5 from the store manager Mary and met Joe on Tuesday evening. He supplied me with his own pattern and we were off. I only casted to two fish before I landed my first carp, beginners luck. I didn't land the Carp on the 4/5. I got a snag and quickly took another rod in order to continue to cast to the fish without spooking it. I hooked it with an Orvis Frequent Flier, I'm not sure what weight it was, either a 6 or 7. That was fitting.

Supercharger

Not the prettiest fly but hopefully will be effective.

North Fork and Middle Fork Stanislaus

Last weekend Orvis gave a free clinic on dry fly fishing and Nymphing on the North Fork of the Stanislaus at Boards Crossing. I have to admit, I wasn't really looking forward to getting my ass up at 4am and driving 3 hours but I was getting paid to get out on the river so I knew I couldn't complain.
There was also the promise of getting in some personal fishing later in the day so I was looking forward to that since I've been so busy lately and will be busy through the middle of September.

 I met Steve and Nathan out in the east bay and we cruised up together. This was a relief because my car is really starting to be a piece of shit, and I was looking forward to chatting with Steve and Nathan for a while. We met Mark from San Jose in Arnold and all rolled in together around 8am. There were some fish rising to tiny black midges, size 28 or so. We got everyone geared up and I gave my tight line nymphing demo. I caught two fish while giving the demo. They were little 12 inch hatchery fish but I was excited because I knew that our students would get into some fish, and they did.
I was really enjoying teaching these guys some basics of nymphing. One guy caught his first fish ever and I could tell he was trying to be modest about it but he was so damn excited he couldn't hide it. That was by far the best part of the whole day. I could tell right away that he was gonna be a life time convert to the religion. Hell yeah!!

After we stopped for lunch, Steve, Nathan, myself and this dude from England from the class Phillip went down and fished Camp 9 Road on the Middle Fork. The water was raging which I think spread the fish out. Make short story shorter, we didn't do too well. We swung streamers and nymphed all the water and hooked 5 fish between all of us. I hooked one good fish and lost it in the current and landed one smaller rainbow and Mark landed 2 lost 1.
Mine was caught on the Shaggy wire caddis, green. I don't know what Mark was using.

A quick note on Fish Porn

I love looking at pictures of fish that have been caught and released to be caught another day. I don't care how big the fish is, I'm much more interested in how the fish was caught. What was the setting, what bugs where hatching, what time of day was it, why did you decide to fish that place on that particular day, etc...what is the STORY behind that fish?
When a true "Trophy" sized fish is caught I can appreciate someone's excitement and need to show others but for me, it's kind of like when a guy scores a touchdown and does a big victory dance. Act like you've been there before.
My friends are excluded in every way from this. The above only applies to strangers.