Wonderful stuff of course - your continuing reports and fine photos are an especially fine contribution to this web site - thanks so much for being a part of FAOL!
Wonderful stuff of course - your continuing reports and fine photos are an especially fine contribution to this web site - thanks so much for being a part of FAOL!
I don't think of it as educating them Rich...I am getting them warmed up for you.Originally Posted by crook33
Way start the ball rolling for 2011 Ben!!. Even if it does resemble a snowball.
Try not to educate EVERY fish in that crick please. I'm not that good and fall is a long way off.
Rich
Thanks Beaver. I have a little tripod that fits on my camera that I set up near where I am fishing with the timer set. Catch a fish, keep him safely in the water in the net, push the button, wait a couple seconds, then lift, click, back in the water.
Thanks a lot for the kind words and I appreciate this site and everything you do!
Awesome man!
I love winter fishing! On a much smaller scale it is exactly what it is like fishing the Pecos this time of year. Of course along with the size of the river being smaller so are the fish...
The sport is so royal that there is neither gentle nor villein, if it knew of it and loved it well, who would not be more honoured for that reason by all who understand it.
My old handle "KeatonsDad" is not working for me so here I am posting under an alias...although not a very creative one.
I did make it out once this week and as you will see by the picture the weather has been a bit warmer. The snow is almost gone, the ice shelfs are quickly receding but the feeder creeks are dumping mud like you wouldn't believe into the river. So I had to fish at one of my favorite spots close to the dam and once again things went pretty well for a short outing. Plenty of fish eating midges up in a nice stretch of river but the wind was blowing causing some pretty good size waves making spotting fish and keeping an eye on your fly that much more difficult. I managed though and pulled in a couple decent fish in a short half hour outing.
It's sunny!
Ben, you continue to be my hero. Thanks for getting out there and making it happen.
Kelly.
Tight Lines,
Kelly.
"There will be days when the fishing is better than one's most optimistic forecast, others when it is far worse. Either is a gain over just staying home."
Roderick Haig-Brown, "Fisherman's Spring"
Buttery Browns and Skwala Nymphs
It's been busy lately so my apologize for the sparse reports.
I got out last week once and it was a pretty standard outing for this winter. Fish up in the usual spots in the heat (30 degrees) of the day snacking on midges. I managed to stick a couple in the lip including this buttery little Brown.
Then this week I made a single trip up to the river but for the first time I have made that trek this winter I saw absolutely no surface activity. It was a quiet river and I didn't feel like rigging up with nymphs for the short amount of time I would have had to fish so I spent a few minutes taking an informal census of the Skwala nymphs in some of my favorite runs. The returns were promising as nearly every rock I turned over had at least one of these guys clinging to the bottom of it.
Last year my first fish on a Skwala dry fly pattern came on February 17th. If I had to guess I would think it will be a little later this year but none the less the time is nearing!
Once again, great thread, and AWESOME PICTURES, Ben!
David Merical
St. Louis, MO
Wow I finally got out again today and the fish sort of kicked my rear. They were rising to midges but they were on the move in the slower water so anticipating where the next feed would come from became the challenge. I fished hard for an hour and a half, missed a couple strikes but other than that had been having no luck getting things timed up right. The transitional midge I was using drew the interest of a couple fish but with so many bugs on the water I finally switched things up and tied on a big old parachute adams with a white post that was easy to see and dropped a zebra midge about 18 inches off the back of it. When the going gets tough I always can fall back on the old Zebra midge. Sure enough a few casts later it was fish on. Despite a tough day I can't complain when a fish like this comes to the net.
Another approach to matching that hatch ...
... Benji, would be to strip a baitfish style streamer through the middle of it.
I first used the tactic about five years ago while fishing the South Fork and coming across a good number of fish rising to a hatch in a spot that I could not reach with a dry fly and maintain a decent drift. Put on a Thunder Creek Minnow on a full sinking line and it just lit the place up. Subsequently, I learned that this is a tactic that not many folks are familiar with, but it has been used by some people for a long time with really good results. Some time in the '70's, Art Lee, I believe it was, wrote an article in one of the then popular fishing magazines on this subject.
I've used the tactic a dozen or so times with very good results, on quite a variety of water for quite a variety of trouts - browns and cutts on the South Fork of the Snake during baetis and PMD hatches, rainbows and brookies on the Big Lost tailwater during mixed baetis and midge hatches, and cutthroat on Big Elk Creek during the Western Green Drake hatch are the times that come quickly to mind.
My fly of choice for this situation has been my PSC. Fish it high in the water column.
John
P.S. With all those big meat eating browns in that crick you're fishing, the PSC would undoubtably be successful whether there was any kind of hatch on or not. Quite a departure from the approaches you've been taking, but if you can stand the jolt of a big brown taking a stripped streamer ......
The fish are always right.
Good suggestion John. I can get in a bit of a rut at times and get a little narrow in my focus. That is something that honestly did not cross my mind but it sure would have been worth a try. I will have to keep that thought in my back pocket the next time the situation arises.
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