Wed, 30 Jan 2008
My nephew Chris works for Roland/Boss and also plays guitar for the band Hollowshell. While I was browsing around YouTube I found this video of them playing.
Chris is the one on the far side of the stage (Guitar, long pants, backup vocals)
Is this a good time to bring up memories of him at 2 years old sitting in my lap watching Fraggle Rock on TV together? Should I mention that at 2 years old his favorite MTV video was David Lee Roth’s version of “California Girls” which Chris use to call “I wish thay all could be California”?
Maybe not.
Rock On Chris!
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It seems that every year I’m surprised and excited when it snows up here. This year is no exception.
Unlike my wife, I didn’t grow up in the snow so it’s always a special time when the white stuff covers the earth. I just love it.
A couple of nights ago we had a major wind storm that blew down some trees and knocked out the power for a couple of hours. We just tossed a couple more logs on the fire and went to bed. I just bought another cord of wood and have a bunch of it stacked up on the porch so we’re pretty well set for the winter.
Thunder is not bothered in the least. He’s a snow dog.
The snowy woods on our property are just his personal playground.
It’s pure, white, and cold. I love it
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Wed, 12 Dec 2007
I mean, enough already. Isn’t it time that we, as human beings, put aside the beliefs of late bronze age authors and apply a little bit of rational thought to this sillyness called "religion"
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Wed, 31 Oct 2007
Sometimes, you just have to laugh
It’s been raining on and off for the past couple of weeks and the river was green and full of silt. At first I thought that this would be bad for fishing. In fact, I’ve fished the North Fork of the American river the past 2 weekends and I couldn’t prove that there were fish in that river at all. It was just too green and thick to see any fish and I couldn’t see anything rise.
But at the Bear everything came together. While I was hiking in I could see hundreds of bugs in the late afternoon sunlight. As I got closer to the river I could see that the bugs were small white flies.
"This must be those pale evening duns I keep reading about" I thought. So I selected a small yellow and white fly that was a close match to the color and just slightly bigger so the fish could see it in the green water.
The water level in the river was a good 8 to 12 inches higher than normal. I’m glad I had a wading staff because I couldn’t see my feet. They say "Slow water runs deep." Well now that the pool I fish at was nearly a foot deeper it was moving noticeably slower. The water flowed into the pool and just went dead. There was almost no drift at all. I’d cast out and the fly would just sit there.
After a few cast I got a strike but I missed setting the hook. Several more cast didn’t produce any reaction but at least I knew the fish were eating. I could see little circular ripples all around me as the nearly invisible bugs touched down on the water. The bugs were there and the fish were there so I decided to just shift my position and keep trying.
I moved up to one of my favorite spots that I call my "for sure" hole even though I’ve never caught a fish there. I’ve had several really strong strikes from that position, I’ve just never been able to set the hook and land the fish.
As I’m roll casting out to an eddy behind a rock I notice a splash in front of the rock. I just happen to have exactly the right amount of line out and the line just happened to have finished drifting downstream so I was in the perfect position to let the water load my backcast. I picked up the line and flipped it a few feet in front of the rock where I saw the splash. The fly drifted about 2 feet and the trout hit it.
He was a small 8 to 10 inch brown trout that fought a bit but I could feel that I could just haul him in by hand rather than use the reel. Also I needed to keep tension on the line so he wouldn’t throw the barbless hook.
It was amazing to catch a fish so easily. I only started fly fishing this season and I get skunked more often than not (way more often in fact), but this fish acted just like they’re suppose to and hit the fly that matched the hatch just like in the magazines.
I let him go and made some more cast in front and behind the same rock to see if there were any other fish there. Then I heard a splash to my left just 5 or 6 feet away.
I literally said out loud to myself: "No way. He couldn’t be feeding that close."
I must have been very quiet and motionless to have not spooked him. The silty water kept him from seeing me so he was feeding just a few feet away from where I was standing.
I didn’t even have to cast. I just lifted my rod to my left and le the fly land gently on the water. It drifted about a foot when the fish hit the fly.
"You got to be kidding me! It can’t be that easy."
I didn’t even have to reel him in. I just lifted the rod to bring him to me and within seconds I had another 10" brown trout in hand.
As I removed the hook and let him swim away I couldn’t stop laughing. After months of trying to be stealthy not spook the fish I have one that jumps almost within arm’s reach. I just had to show him a fly and think "OK, eat this then" and he did.
So much of fly fishing feels like you’re doing battle with an adversary that doesn’t want to fight back that it’s a shock when I can catch a fish that easily. But I wouldn’t mind if it happened a little more often. Maybe as I become a better fly fisherman it will.
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Sun, 02 Sep 2007
I know, "what are the odds?"I just got back from a quick evening trip to the Bear. I walked a bit further down the river than I normally do because there’s another large pool that I haven’t tried. It’s been really hot lately and the fish have not been rising so I tried a prince nymph on a 4 foot tippet with a strike indicator to see if I could get any reaction.
I call this kind of fishing "prospecting".
It was a pretty evening. I had one spot about thigh deep where I could cast to a wide swath of river from upstream, just below some riffles, to a downstream calm pool. After about 30 minutes of prospecting and not a single strike or rise I decided to move back upstream a bit.
On my way up I noticed a little pool between two large riffles. The water was moving pretty fast, but there were a couple of eddies where fish could hide.
On the past few trips I noticed that the mayflies weren’t around any more. The only bugs I saw were black gnats and water spiders. But if I fish with those I can’t see the fly on the water. So this morning I tied a couple of black water spiders with a small parachute of white Antron yarn so I could see it. The one I picked wasn’t hackled enough and it sank after only a few drifts so I had to keep drying it out.
Just about the time I’m ready to move on I saw a splash. Sure enough he was in that eddy. The water was moving fast enough that if I placed the fly at the top of that eddy the rest of the river would pull the fly line down and I’d get drag. It really taught me how to mend my line and set up for a tight little drift. 2 feet of drift was about normal, if I could get 4 feet before the water grabbed my line I was doing well.
I had the smallest hit and lost him. But I just kept drifting my fly as well as I could over that spot. The drifts were so short I was casting 4 or 5 times a minute. I just kept presenting the fly as perfectly as I could knowing that in this quick moving water the fish would have to make a quick decision or he’s miss his chance at some food. Sure enough, he hit it and I set the hook.
I could tell from the fight that he was tiny. I didn’t want to loose him off of the barbless hook so I just pulled the line in by hand. When I saw him I had to laugh at how small he was. He was MAYBE 6" long but he fought and splashed all the way in. I was able to get him unhooked and back in the water before he knew what had caught him.
As the little brook trout swam off to his pool I just stood there laughing. I had tied a special fly to match the hatch and worked that particular eddy perfectly while mending my line to produce a drag free float in difficult conditions and it all came together and worked as planned. I caught another one. And then he turns out to be smaller than my hand.
Oh well, Go on and grow up little one. Maybe we’ll see each other again someday.
I moved up the river and tried a couple of other spots but the fish weren’t rising at all. I think it’s just been too hot. I saw some slow rises up river so I moved further upstream where I could quietly drift a fly down to them. After a few dozen cast the sun was well below the mountain tops and the bats were out. It was getting too dark to see the fly even with the Antron parachute. I told myself "Ok, Last cast and then we go home." I roll the line out and let the fly drift down. Out of nowhere my entire line shakes and pulls. As I set the hook I realize what happened. One of the bats grabbed my fly, flew for a few feet and then dropped it.
OK, that’s a good sign that I’m done for the evening. It’s time to go home and have dinner and a beer. As I hike out in the dark I had to smile at how things came together tonight. I tied a fly that I knew they would hit and I prospected a spot where the fish should be. I worked a difficult drift in swift waters and everything I’ve been learning for the past 5 months came together to catch another fish.
If I’m not careful I might start thinking I know what I’m doing out there.
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