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California's Trinity River is loaded with "half-pounders" (young steelhead) right now, whereas its neighbor, the Klamath, is suffering again. Everyone, on all sides of the issue, has a reason why the Klamath is mismanaged, but no one doubts the fact that there is not enough water. Tom Stienstra in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Campbell's Creek provides a little bit of paradise for both fly fishers and bears in the heart of Anchorage, Alaska. "Bears are ripping into salmon less than a quarter mile from the manicured trails of the Alaska Botanical Garden and the parking lot of the Benny Benson Secondary School. They thrive in woods a few minute's walk from suburban lawns." Doug O'Harra in the Anchorage Daily News.
"Having discarded the daily grind and sometime public relations nightmares of guiding, he has labored mightily on the ranch for two years, with his two hands and a backhoe, to virtually create an idyllic, trout-filled spring creek - one he can share, and rent by the day, to fly fishing customers." Steve Pollick reviews Jeff Hull's Pale Morning Done (The Lyons Press, 343 pages) in the Toledo (Ohio) Blade.
From now until September, anglers fly fishing in Alaska will focus on egg patterns, whether they be simple plastic beads or Glo-bugs, Iliamna Pinkies, and Babine Specials. "On the Kenai Peninsula, red salmon are now attracting big rainbows and Dolly Varden. In the Susitna Valley, kings are drawing trout, grayling and, in streams such as Clear Creek and the Talkeetna River, Dollies." Ken Marsh in the Anchorage Daily News.
A couple of weeks ago we mentioned a review of "Buzz Off" clothing, which uses a coating of Permethrin to repell insects. But apparently there are other non-DEET-containing and non-toxic repellants that work equally as well, such as nepetalactone. Bill Barker in the Corvallis (Oregon) Gazette.
"I'm no great shakes, but I like it." So says outgoing Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor about her fly fishing as she enjoys searching for midsummer rainbows on Montana's Boulder River. Lorna Thackeray in the Billings Gazette.
"A fine collection, indeed. Included are nine streams in California (where regular gasoline sells for more than $2.50 this week, according to Web indexes) and a chain of 36 rivers along the Appalachian Mountains in the East." Ed Dentry reviews this recent update of Trout Unlimited's stream guide Trout Unlimited's Guide to America's 100 Best Trout Streams
"The westslope cutthroat is an uncommon beauty, silver-green in the flanks and spotted like a cheetah, with its namesake slashes of red under its chin. Its name makes it sound ruthless, but in fact the fish is a mild-mannered soul, content to nibble on the larvae of water bugs and snatch the occasional mosquito from the air." On the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clarke expedition, Ben Long writes about the "discovery" of cutthroat trout and why special protections are needed for special fish. On Tidepool.org.
State-centric Game & Fish magazine regularly publishes helpful primers on the various waters in U.S. regions. Recently it covered the spectrum of trout rivers in Michigan, noting the Rogue, Pere Marquette, Manistee and Au Sable. "The fly-fishing-only reach [of the Au Sable] that starts a few miles downstream of Grayling is known as the 'Holy Water' and offers good fishing for browns along with the occasional brookie and rainbow. The East Branch of the Au Sable joins the mainstream in Grayling and has good fishing for browns along with brookies, especially farther upstream. This branch is lightly fished, with almost no canoe traffic, so it can be a good place to try on the weekends." Article by Jim Bedford.
"Benny Goodman's Paul Young rod is here; also Babe Ruth's Payne. And there's a Shakespeare glass rod that belonged to Ted Williams, who was as skilled and single-minded on a bonefish flat or salmon pool as he was on the baseball diamond. Williams, according his plaque, liked to tie flies after a game. 'It releases me,' he said, ' . . . Come in after a game, all taut and nervous, tie a few flies and, boom, right to sleep.'" Geoffrey Norman describes the restful charm of the American Museum of Fly Fishing in Manchester, Vermont. In the Wall Street Journal.
Ex-guide and Lyons, Colorado resident Todd Hosman is the author of Fly Fishing Rocky Mountain National Park
Here's a fine article by long-time Florida Keys angler Pat Ford on the his quest to find and fish a palolo worm hatch — something that remains challenging even for the better guides. Along the way Ford offers some excellent tips for gear and strategy and a nice summary of worm biology (though he does happen to mis-guess the type of hatch he sees with R.T. Trosset). "'Two blue eyes with little horns that stick up vertically and two smaller horns that stick out on the sides. Arrowhead-shaped tail. The aft end is the "motor." Small fins run along its length. The head has two stingers. Charming little creatures!'" In Shallow Water Angler magazine.
Apparently outgoing Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was fly fishing on Idaho's St. Joe River when President Bush made his choice for her replacement known. In the Seattle Times.
Maine fisheries biologist Bobby Van Riper offers an interesting observation about where in the water column trout will lie during the hottest days of summer. "'This is a very stressful time of year for fish. They get bunched up in a narrow sliver of water,' says Van Riper. That sliver, he says, is near bottom, but not too close, because the farther down you get in a pond, the less oxygen there is. Bacteria from decomposing organic matter eats up the oxygen, so even if the water temperature is ideal, the fish might not be able to survive." Dave Sherwood on MaineToday.com.
We all know that "predictably good weather" is an oxymoron. Here are several tips — offered for spring creek and tailwater anglers but applicable anywhere — to help you deal with the inevitable. New on MidCurrent.
Emilio Gino Segrè, who shared the Nobel Prize in 1959 with Owen Chamberlain for the discovery of the antiproton, was also with the Manhattan Project team in Los Alamos in 1944. There, his preference for taking Sundays off to fly fish puzzled his mentor, Enrico Fermi. "'Fermi asked Segre why,' Rosen said. Segre said he sometimes went fishing. Fermi asked him what was so satisfying about fishing that it took precedence over the extremely important problems they must solve at the lab. Segre replied with a detailed explanation of the technology required for fly fishing in order to outsmart the fish. Rosen said Fermi concluded, 'Finally, I understand and, it is a battle of wits.'" Carol Clark on LAMonitor.com.
Nelson Bryant discovers that a slight difference in the action of a fly makes all the difference in the world to Martha's Vineyard striped bass. "We dangled the flies in the water to see if they floated similarly. One of them rested level on the surface. The other - the one that was catching fish - hung head down with the tip of its tail barely awash." In the New York Times.
A favorite quote from this piece about one of Pennsylvania's most famous — and protected — waters: "Fly-fishing is to regular fishing what surfing a wave is to taking a bath." Cindy Loose in the Washington Post.
A sheep dip that replaced another dip because it was dangerous to humans is 1000 times more toxic to insect life and threatens to wipe out bug life in many British streams. "Buglife estimates that fly life in more than 1,000 miles of river in Britain has been wiped out in the past 18 months, damaging salmon, sea trout and trout habitats." Charles Clover in the London News Telegraph.
I can't tell you how many times this kind of thing happened to me while I was guiding. "Last summer I was poling a fly fisher and as is my habit, I glanced to the rear. There she was, a 20-pound striper, rummaging for an easy meal in the suspended puffs stirred up by the foot of my pushpole." Amanda Switzer writes about tuning up your skills for sight-casting to stripers in Shallow Water Angler magazine.
Joe Doggett summarizes the history of tarpon fishing along the Texas coast while giving a good look at the place you can go to find the largest concentrations: Galveston, Port O'Connor and South Padre Island. "'The big key is the weather. When we get long runs of light east or southeast wind, the schools are easier to locate and stay with day after day. When it's rough, or the wind goes south or southwest and turns the water sandy, it gets tough. I'm convinced the tarpon numbers off Galveston can be as good as those off Louisiana — we just get more wind, and that keeps it harder to pattern the schools.'" In the Houston Chronicle.
Thanks to the hotly debated removal of the Edwards Dam on Maine's Kennebec river in 1999, shad have returned to their historic spawning grounds. "Fishermen like Thibodeau have caught them on all kinds of odd lures -- from tiny caddis flies that hatch like mosquitos from the water's surface to lures that mimic crayfish or eels." Dave Sherwood on MaineToday.com.
"The very thought of a portly, surly bass slurping down a popping bug jitterbugging across the still surface of a lake levitates me right out of bed on summer mornings." Chester Allen relishes the anticipation of big largemouth taking a popper. In the Olympia, Washington Olympian.
D'Arcy Egan reports that Ex Officio's "Buzz Off" line of clothing really works. "We did not spray on a DEET repellent and kept our fingers crossed we wouldn't be carried away at dusk by marauding mosquitoes. We couldn't smell the Permethrin and the light slacks and shirts had an SPF 30 to keep us from getting a sunburn. It worked. No bug bites after three days." In the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
James R. Babb ruminates on the need to produce results that burdens the hunter more than the angler. "Sometimes I imagine I might learn to focus my scattered mind enough to lift off from this mossy gneiss divan of mine, to hover briefly and then glide upstream into the mist, the antigravitational offspring of Saint Izaak of Walton and a magic-carpeted Buddha, floating along, smiling at the little brook and its cache of familiar trout." In Gray's Sporting Journal.
In this piece about small trout water fishing in Michigan, Eric Sharp astutely points out that one of the best ways to find out what kind of bugs are coming off is to lean over a bridge rail and look the spider webs. "This time the spider webs held small caddis flies with dark bodies and tan wings (No. 18) and midges that ranged from about a No. 20 to almost microscopic. I could see a couple of fish rising languidly upstream, so for fun I extended the leader to a 7X tippet and tied on a No. 24 Tricorythodes pattern, the smallest fly in my vest." In the Detroit Free Press.
This tailwater in northern New Mexico is one of the best places to catch the Rio Grande cutthroat. "Caddis, mayflies, stoneflies and more inhabit the rich environment of this Sangre de Cristo Mountain stream, giving fly-fishing anglers a good selection of aquatic insects from which to choose. Grassy banks line the Rio Costilla, which are loaded with grasshoppers, ants and other terrestrials that also become prey to the trout, furthering the artificial-fly selection." Thomas Pena on FreeNewMexican.com.
According to recently released results of the annual study conducted by the Outdoor Industry Association, the only category of outdoor enthusiasts to show considerable growth over the past 6 years is fly fishing.
So why does it seem to many manufacturers that the market is shrinking? Perhaps a deeper look at the results is needed: "People who recreate the most are described as 'enthusiasts,' who, in 2004, were more likely to be white, male, younger than the median participant population (36) and moderately affluent." Is the marketing for major fly fishing products manufacturers targeting this younger set? Do they visit fly shops as often as those of us who are "outside the profile" do? Are they as susceptible to "nostalgia marketing?" I wonder.
Sarah Toland in the Boulder, Colorado Daily Camera.
No, we're not talking about the recent spate of gorings in Pamplona. We're talking fly fishing for bull and blacktip sharks off the coast of southwest Florida, where you can easily run into a 200-pounder. "First, I’d call Scott Carrol at Scientific Anglers and get him to run some tensile strength tests on their new tarpon lines. Then I’d fill my reels with heavy backing. I’m talking about 130-pound test gelspun stuff. And rather than tying up a class tippet, I’d add a 5-foot butt section of 125-pound mono with a double surgeon’s knot. That would be the tippet. Then I’d attach fly and tippet to a piece of No. 9 leader wire and throw in a bottle of ibuprofen for good measure." Bob Huttenmeyer in Florida Sportsman.
If like many of us you are pondering the thought of working until you are 98 years old in order to pay for your kids' college educations, we offer this advice: Bite the bullet, accept that they will be fishing guides, and send them to the University of Maine at Farmington. "The Farmington college sits at the gateway of the Rangeley Lakes region where Carrie Stevens first tied the Grey Ghost streamer fly and then immediately preceded to haul in a 6 lb. 13 oz. brook trout. It's also where Fly Rod Crosby, the Annie Oakley of fly fishing, cast out her line and penned pages upon pages about the sporting life in the area - writing that attracted thousands to Maine." On MaineToday.com.
"Nutshelling what you get with most kayaks designed expressly for fishing, you have kayak performance traded against fishing utility. There are no free lunches when it comes to kayak design (like anything else) and any boat manufacturer that claims to do everything as well as any other boat does doesn't have their teeth in straight." Rob Lyons does an extensive review of the latest kayaks designed for fishing on WetDawg.com.
"Then I remembered that someone told me that fish have a potent sense of smell. The mosquitoes were bad that day, and I'd covered myself in an insect repellent that was 40 percent Deet. I'd also put on generous amounts of sunscreen." Nothing speaks more to crucial but small factors than fishing in a crowd. Ron Wilmot talks about red salmon, king salmon and rainbows and the minor changes that mean caught fish. In the Anchorage Daily News.
The big green drakes (hexagenia) are starting their annual "flocking" in Maine. "As of last mid-week, they were just beginning to show in large enough number for lots of folks to notice each evening. Normally, the emergence starts just before dark and continues into the darkness." Ken Allen on MaineToday.com.
Though heavily stocked, the Ken Lockwood Gorge on New Jersey's Raritan river is both a tribute to a reknowned environmentalist and one of New Jersey's best examples of a well-managed trout fishery. "The Gorge, as it is referred to, is what the state considers a year-round trout conservation area. This distinction is well deserved since it produces quality catches of brook, brown and rainbow trout time and time again." Chris Lido in the Asbury Park Press.
This revealing profile of competition caster Mike Bostwick gives us a look at what it takes to be among the best. "Bostwick warms up with some straight casts — the foul shot of the sport — with about three or four hundred throws to start. Next he works on curve-line casts. Then it's on to double hauls and slack lines and reach casts. By the time he's done for the day, he's put in another three or four hours of practice (more on weekends) and has another thousand or so casts under his belt." Eric Dexheimer on Denver, Colorado's Westword.com.
Northern Wyoming doesn't share most of the big-bug hatches that lure anglers to the Yellowstone and other Montana rivers this time of year, and that's just fine with folks who enjoy the relative solitude of the Big Horn Mountains. "When we arrived at the stream there was a lot of cotton wafting in the air from nearby cottonwood trees. I remarked to Alex and John about the high amount of cotton in the air. They pointed out that the "cotton" was managing to go against the breeze. I had misdiagnosed a mega hatch of brown stoneflies." Bob Krumm in the Billings Gazette.
Martin Joergensen is probably as hard on wading boots as anyone. At least he's found a way to wear out and wear through many pairs over the years. Thankfully he took the time to record the disintegrations event by event. Manufacturers are advised to take notes. On GlobalFlyFisher.com.
If you've ever spent a few hours casting to redfish in southwest Florida's Pine Island Sound, you know that — perhaps due to local bait-fishers' habits and "relaxed" boating techniques — these fish can be as astute and discerning as Islamorada bonefish. "Mike McComas of Lee Island Outfitters/Orvis in Fort Myers, ranks Pine Island reds among the most challenging quarry anywhere. 'These fish are every bit as wary and as smart as bonefish in the Keys,' says McComas, who fished for 17 years in the Ten Thousand Islands before switching to the Sound." Norm Zeigler suggests methods for catching these difficult fish in Florida Sportsman.
A time-honored but often overlooked technique is getting more and more attention these days: swinging wet flies. "This swing will occur until the line reaches a position directly below the angler. At this point it is a good idea to pause for a second or two and then gently lift the rod tip and the line. Raising the line like this will bring the fly up from the depths, simulating an emerger rising off of the bottom to the surface." Bob Salerno in Connecticut's New Britain Herald.
Bill Barker notes that fish behavior and bug inspection are always the first clues to fly choice. "OK. You just watched a bug get swallowed by a trout you'd love to hook. You've managed to observe that bug closely — at least the finger-mangled remains, rearranged into what you think it looked like before your hand closed. It really doesn't matter if you don't know the scientific label for this critter, what counts are: Size, color, and shape of this fish food." In the Corvallis (Oregon) Gazette-Times.
Tom Stienstra notes that this year's improved water flows promise easy fishing and plenty of it for northern California trout anglers. "The boomerang effect of cold, high-water conditions in May and June is that spring-like conditions are available in July. In addition, August prospects will be the best in many years. It's a time when most anglers spend their evenings bow-wowin' at the moon over the dog days of summer. Not this year."
At a recent seminar in Tampa, Florida, reknowned tarpon angler Billy Pate suggested that foreign markets for tarpon "caviar" have had a huge impact on tarpon stocks. "'I'm not going to say which country because they've been pretty good to me, but I was asking one guy where the big tarpon were and he got out a map. He pointed to some small towns and looked in a ledger. He told me one town had a slow year and only got 450 big tarpon but another town got over 2,000 – all in the same country. When I asked what they did with them I was told that they can sell the eggs, tarpon caviar, for as high as $16 a pound.'" G.B. Knowles in the Boca Grande Boca Beacon.
Ok, I admit I wish I was there with these two, who used their mountain bikes to rise above the madness on the Russian. "Stash and Fenty biked over the groomed trail to the cabin in less than 30 minutes, and by noon the two stood with their fly rods on a sandbar overlooking a glass-clear pool. At least a dozen rainbows and Dolly Varden held near the bottom, tails waving in the current." Ken Marsh in the Anchorage Daily News.