27 in 27, Day Four: The Royal Humpy

Day Four was a challenge.  Four days into the 27 in 27 experiment, I've tried to answer the first part of Key Question #3.  I'm not sure if I managed, so I'll leave the ultimate answer up to you, the reader.  But I'm reasonably happy with it.

 
















Tying a good quality Royal Humpy isn't easy to begin with, and for a rookie like me, it's even harder on a size 20 hook.   I'll take it.

Hook:  Size 20
Tail:  Golden Pheasant Tippets
Body:  Red floss
Hackle:  Grizzly, with white Antron
Wing case:  Elk Hair

27 in 27, Day Three: GO2 Prince

I've read so much about this fly on the Poudre that I had to try and create something approximating Tak's GO2 Prince.  Here's the first effort.  I'll have to return to this one to refine it (my tying, that is - not the pattern)

Hook:  Size 16
Head:  Diamond bead
Body:  Peacock hearl, gold wire rib
Wing:  White antron
Tail:  Pheasant tail fibers

27 in 27, Day Two: Big Hairy Gold Stonefly Nymph

Day Two complete, inauspiciously and a day ahead of time!  OK, so it might be 28 in 27.  It's a gold stonefly nymph, sort of.  It's heavy on the peacock hearl. 

It's big and hairy and ugly, and I love it!  I'm also confident that the dumb cutthroats on the Poudre will see it as a delicacy, not to be passed over.  So there!   

Hook:  Size 16
Thorax:  Peacock hearl
Legs, wings (?), and tail:  Brown goose biots
Body:  Gold wire

27 in 27, Day One: Pheasant Tail Nymph

Day One completed.  Obviously a variation on Sawyer's original.  It's a fat one, I'll admit.  Hope it captures the essence, however. 

Hook:  Size 18
Thread:  Micro Olive
Thorax:  Blue/green peacock hearl
Tail/Body:  Pheasant Tail

An Amateur Tier's Holiday Experiment

27 flies in 27 days.  

I know, I know...it's nothing monumental.  Nothing in my life is right now.  But since I have a lot of hooks and way too much time, I'm conducting an experiment.  The experiment contains a couple of interesting variables and will hopefully answer a few key questions:

1)  Can The Flywriter truly master a few go-to flies that have served him well on the Poudre?
2)  Can The Flywriter branch out in new directions and tackle some midges and streamers?
3)  Can The Flywriter not only tie one professional-looking Royal Humpy, but can he tie more than one in a reasonable amount of time?
4)  Can The Flywriter create reasonable replicas, or at least reasonable variations, of patterns developed by the masters?
5)  Will anybody even notice?

The answer to question #5 will be interesting and entertaining.  The answer will largely depend on the readership of this blog, which has been up and running for well over a year now.  So far, by my count, I have one very loyal follower, a few master fly fishermen and tiers who occasionally send a word of encouragement, and somebody in Russia who occasionally pops in for a view.

Why 27 days?  The experiment ends on Christmas Eve, when I will wrap up a few holiday boxes I'm putting together for folks who are special to me and are perfectly willing to fish with flies that fall well short of perfection.  Then again, the price falls well short of expensive! 

The experiment will be hilarious to many of you.  It's modeled very loosely on a concept conceived by someone with far more talent than me.  All I have to do is tie a different fly every day for less than a month.  This guy creates works of art every day of the year, and they're really cool.  In any event, I hope to develop my tying skills and maybe even impress a few people, but I'll settle for a few good-natured laughs from the wisemen in flyfishing blogdom.

The fun starts today!  Come along for the ride.

Family Fun

Another rough day on the Poudre yesterday, despite the gorgeous weather and my declaration of war on the fish.  Another day, another skunking.  Starting to get a complex.

Our pre-Halloween festivities compensated for the lack of fishing productivity.  I decided to honor Halloween with a well-constructed scarecrow, and the rest of the clan put their artistic abilities into play during our annual jack-o-lantern contest.

Maybe he'll have better luck than I have lately.

Happy Halloween from the Flywriter.

What's That Smell???

Something stinks here at Flywriter Headquarters.

It's a slightly familiar stench - I swear I've smelled it before, but I can't quite put a finger on it.

Wait...could it be...?  Yeah, it's THAT stench!














The animal pictured above is symbolic, of course, and really doesn't deserve such an unfair, slanderous commentary on my part.  He's really just the namesake for the most offensive, embarrassing, and dreaded catch phrase a fisherman can hear:  the "skunking."

Unfortunately, I received one today, the first in many, many days on the water in 2010.  Today's skunking was so incredibly thorough that I began to wonder if I really know anything about what I'm doing when it comes to fly fishing.  Not only did I not catch a single trout, I'm fairly certain that not a single fish so much as sniffed one of my budget-conscious flies.  While I could come up with a litany of excuses - the water was too high (it wasn't); the water was too murky (just slightly); the sun was too bright; the barometric pressure was radically different; the river gets too much fishing pressure - none of them would be plausible to even the most naive among us.  More likely "operator error," as they say.  I was fishing lazy and shaking off rust from two weeks on dry land.  

It's like anything else, this obsession of mine.  Use it or lose it.  Practice makes perfect.  Blah, blah, blah.  


I'll stop short of bathing in tomato juice, but tomorrow it's game on.  I'm declaring jihad on the Poudre's trout.

Fall on the Poudre, 10/10/10

All too often, I tend to lose sight of the blessings that God has granted me in life.  I'm prone to bouts with self-absorption, and quick to whine to myself when life just doesn't go according to my wishes.  It's one of my many imperfections.  So, I'm fortunate to attend a church where service to others is not only something that's preached from the pulpit, but something that's supposed to be put into practice.  Today, the congregation broke into small groups and embarked on a series of efforts to live those principles.  Among other things, some visited nursing homes, others prepared packages for the homeless, and still others wrote letters to soldiers and missionaries.  It's something I should do a heck of a lot more of.  It keeps me out of my own head and puts me in a position to practice humility while reminding me that my challenges in life aren't quite so dramatic as I sometimes make them out to be.

Fat Poudre 'bow

It was a fitting lesson for today.  My afternoon on the river with Doc was one that might have normally caused me some minor annoyance.  We arrived to find the wind blowing steadily; hardly the ideal weather condition for fly fishing.  Right from the get go, things were challenging.  I lost three flies to the trees across the bank.  I dropped a full container of split shot into swift current, hopeless to retrieve it.  Somewhere along the way, I lost a pair of forceps, so I had to be extra careful removing flies from the fish I managed to land.  All this within the first hour.  Through it all, we managed to land a few small trout.

My pretty brown

The wind briefly stopped, and a few fish started rising to the surface.  No sooner had I replaced a double-nymph rig with a dry fly when the wind picked up again and the skies opened, unleashing a deluge of rain and small hail.  So much for dry fly casting.  As I sat drenched in the passenger seat of Doc's pickup, it occurred to me what a great fall day it was.  The air was crisp, temperatures nice and cool - very "Octoberish."  The great outdoors always feels a little more wild when the wind blows.  How could I possibly complain about that?

As it turns out, we managed to do OK on the fishing as well.  All it took was a little patience and some serious trial and error with the bugs.

Doc bends the rod again...

...and a quick catch and release

I can't speak for Doc, but I had the most success with a size 16 gold stone fly nymph, with a bead head providing enough weight to get down to where the fish were feeding.  I also had a good run with a size 16 pheasant tail, as close to the original PT as I have been able to tie.

BWOs, RS2s, and H2O (or, Something Other than Caddis)

Every now and then I get lucky.  It's rare in my fly fishing world that the weather, water levels, and bug choices mesh perfectly into a nicely executed two-and-a-half hours of trout stalking.  Today was one of those days.  A nice taste of early Colorado fall put a positive spin on a day that had previously been painfully monotonous and mind numbing.

 

It's been a long, hot, dry summer here in FOCO, NOCO (that's Fort Collins, Northern Colorado).  The fishing this summer has been fantastic, and progressed through a familiar seasonal routine.  After a spectacular opening to the season back in April, when tiny blue-winged olives netted me a number of 20+ inch rainbows, the Poudre settled into early summer nymphing, with fish hitting largely on small nymphs - pheasant tails and princes in particular.  Caddis hatches have dominated late August and September to this point - at times, it seemed like the trout in the lower Poudre wouldn't dine on anything else.

Today, we finally got some overcast weather with a brief period of light rain.  On my bike ride home from work, I noticed a significant amount of surface feeding, with subtle little rings of water suggesting the fish were feeding just beneath the surface.  No dramatic, splash-creating rises, just little kisses at the surface.  My mind kicked into high gear - a rare occurrence on most days - and I started formulating a plan for some evening trout catching.  In the last few minutes of my ride, I decided on a mid-size caddis as a lead fly with an RS2 trailing behind.

An hour later, I stepped into the Poudre in the middle of a very slight drizzle - actually more of a mist - and a full feeding frenzy.  The combination of the overcast sky and the light rain seemed to be the dinner bell for the fish, and within ten minutes I'd taken three nice little fish.  The caddis was simply window dressing at this point, serving no other purpose than functioning as a strike indicator.  The fish were sucking the RS2 out of the film just the way I thought they would.  Unfortunately, I'd only managed to tie one RS2 before leaving.  I'm at a loss as to why my box isn't filled with them; with the exception of the split tail, they're an easy tie, and all the wisemen in fly fishing Blogdom (here, here, and here, for instance) consistently sing the pattern's praises.

After three fish, my lone RS2 had taken too much of a beating.  The light rain stopped, but the feeding continued and the fish got more aggressive and began rolling over flies on the surface.  Noting that none had bothered to hit the caddis yet, I decided that a small BWO might be a nice substitute for the RS2.  After tying one on behind the caddis and immediately nailing a few more fish, I stuck with the caddis/BWO combination the rest of the night.  During the second hour, the fish alternately hit both flies in almost equal proportions, although I'd give the BWO the edge.  All told, I netted somewhere between 15-20 trout, all in the 10-12 inch range, with the exception of one really nice cutthroat that was probably around 14 inches.  The Poudre slam eluded me once again - the picky browns apparently didn't like the bugs I was serving up.

 

So there you have it.  No nymphs were harmed in the making of this blog post, but a number of dry flies and one emerger sure had the hell beaten out of 'em.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:  It's a beautiful thing, this obsession of mine.  I'm pretty sure there was nowhere I'd have rather been between 5:00 - 7:30!

Old-School Dry Flyin'

Like a lot of things, fly fishing has gotten gadget-happy, with all sorts of toys and accessories ranging from the ornamental to the useful.  I'll admit to having spent my share of dough on some bells and whistles over the years, but I've tried to make sure that I keep the hobby itself in perspective.  I fish with a pretty cheap rod, a small bag to hold a flybox, and a lanyard around my neck for quick access to tippet and various small tools (nail clippers, forceps, etc).  The frame on my net is aluminum; while I prefer the classy look of the wooden frame net, my wallet prefers the aluminum.  When the water cooperates, I go without waders, which always seem to spring a leak anyway. I did, for obvious reasons, recently splurge on a new pair of boots - the old ones were becoming a safety issue!

When you get right down to brass tacks, fly fishing doesn't really need to be all that complicated.  My most enjoyable days on the water have been those that required the least amount of planning and the fewest number of logistical challenges.  So Doc and I went old-school yesterday afternoon - pretty much on a whim, thanks to the Poudre's proximity.

The river is lower than I've seen it in months, and the nightly caddis hatches have been ridiculous lately.  When you combine those two variables, you've got an ideal equation for some good, old-fashioned dry fly fishing.  Grab your 5-wt, tie on a big ol' stinkin caddis with plenty of hackle, grease it up with some Gink, and cast to the rises.  Old-school.  No frills.  The way you did it when you learned as a kid.

Turned out pretty well.  The Poudre continues to fish great.  Numbers-wise, I had a solid double figure day, and Doc did the same, only he nailed a couple with some serious girth.  I toyed briefly with a Prince nymph when the surface action seemed to slow up a bit, only to abandon that idea as Doc tied into a big rainbow.

Doc puts a bend on the rod.

Fat Poudre rainbow

By 8:00 p.m., we were looking for any excuse to keep fishing.  The flies were impossible to follow, but we rationalized that if we could simply follow the flyline downstream, it stood to reason that the fly would be floating somewhere in the near vicinity.  Just before the last bit of light, Doc saw a fish rise not too far from the end of the fly line and instinctively set the hook, landing one final chunky rainbow to end the day on.

Tough way to spend a Friday afternoon.  Somebody has to do it, and it might as well be me.

No moral victories here...

You won't see any photos in this post.  That's because I blew it - twice - with two of the nicest browns I've tied into in quite sometime.

For over a month, I've been seeing signs of big fish in a certain holding lie along the far bank of one of my favorite stretches of water.  The don't show themselves very often.  Normally, I'll hear a big splash and then turn my head to see evidence on the water of a large trout taking a bug off the surface.  They hang out under some overhanging tree branches, and they're difficult to cast to because the water in front of them tends to run pretty swiftly on most days, making the drift of the fly difficult to control without sinking it.

Tonight, the water level was just perfect and the caddis hatch was in full force.  When the sun set in the west, the trout started their characteristic evening feeding.  After landing a few normal (10-12 inch) rainbows and chatting with a couple other anglers, I noticed some aggressive feeding starting to happen.  I tied on the biggest caddis fly I had and started casting directly to the spot.  After a few drifts, I saw a large, golden flash on the fly and set the hook.  Too gently, I'm afraid.  Just as the angler downstream was remarking that the fish looked considerably bigger than the others I'd landed, the fish thrashed once and spit the caddis back at me with disdain.  I'm embarrassed to say that an expletive escaped from my lips, hopefully not loud enough for the kids upstream to hear. 

By 8:00 p.m., I was having difficulty seeing the fly, and was growing frustrated that fish continued to rise somewhere in the vicinity of a fly I couldn't see.  On the final drift, I tried to imagine where the fly was on the water and decided to set the hook at any rise that could have conceivably been directed at my fly.  I'll be darned if I didn't briefly hook up with another one, who promptly threw the fly back in my face. 

Fun respite from the world at large.  I now have a keen sense of what other anglers mean when they refer to fish that are destined to be caught on another day.  I'm just serving notice right now that I'm going back for one of those two.  I'll post the picture when it happens.

Sanctuaries

Forgive me for digressing from the topic of fly fishing for just a moment.  I know, it's unnatural for me too, but given my experience on the river yesterday, it seems to be an appropriate jumping off point to wax just a little poetic, or philosophical...or something.

I make it a point to stay relatively uninformed about the happenings in places like New York City or Washington, DC these days.  There's only so much room left in my brain, and for better or worse, I prefer to reserve that slowly declining vacant gray matter for things that bring me happiness and warm fuzziness.  I'll pick up the local paper and occasionally check out the Washington Post online, but it's usually only to check in and see how my former home team is doing (apparently not too well at the moment).  My smarter, more liberal friends would undoubtedly shudder to know that I occasionally tune into the O'Reilly Factor on - gasp - Fox News.  If nothing else, I enjoy the froth-at-the-mouth banter between the host and his guests.  It entertains me.  That's about the extent of my news consumption.

With that in mind, I had to take a crash course in civic awareness when I started reading tidbits about a proposed mosque that, depending upon whom you ask, might or might not be built on a site that might or might not be at Ground Zero in New York.  In typical fashion, I tried to fathom what all the hullabaloo was about.

I quickly learned that the construction of a place of worship in a free country is suddenly cause for an apparent long-term news-a-thon.  I started to hear all kinds of ugly things again.  People who support the mosque are "insensitive," never mind the fact that what happened at Ground Zero killed Muslims.  People who oppose the mosque are "bigots," never mind the fact that at least some Muslims oppose it as well.  Marginal, retrograde churches hold "Quran burnings" while marginal and even more retrograde terrorists are likely still trying to kill us.  Virtually as soon as I had lifted it, my self-imposed moratorium on news, particularly of the politico-religious variety, fell rapidly back in place.

While mosques and churches figure out whether they should be built, I'll savor my own sanctuary here at the edge of the foothills in northern Colorado.

The sun usually shines.  Deer, ducks, foxes, racoons, snakes, skunks, rabbits, and an occasional tomcat all feel welcome here.  There are a lot of bugs - mosquitos, caddis flies, grasshoppers, and slimy larvae - and they all worship here too.

Some of my favorite congregants showed up for services yesterday morning:

No bigotry or insensitivity here.  Just a tip for all visitors:  bring your Bible or Quran if you must, but don't leave home without a box full of size 18 elk hair caddis flies.  The trout are going crazy on them right now.

Peace,
The Flywriter

Cutts on a Caddis

Wow.  I certainly wasn't expecting the last two hours of sunlight yesterday to go the way they did.

I stood knee deep in comfortably cool water yesterday evening.  Dried house primer and paint splatters blended with spare tire soot had seemingly seeped into my skin, leaving me looking like some sort of alien.  Prior to 6 p.m., my day had consisted of a flat tire, hours of waiting for it to be fixed, priming some siding on my sister's house, waiting for it to dry, painting over the primer, and helping Mom get ready for a BBQ.  It doesn't sound like much, but it had eaten up most of the day.

Which brings me back to 6 p.m. on the Poudre.  Finally able to take a breath, I settled into a familiar, comfortable routine.  The first five minutes were frustrating as I tried to keep track of the size 16 caddis on the surface of the water.  The sun was in just the right spot to cast a severe glare on the water.  I could see upstream, and I could see downstream, but there was a window of about 20 yards of river where the fly would disappear. 

Mercifully, the sun dropped below the horizon and the water became completely visible.  Seemingly at that very moment, I heard a small splash and quickly looked upstream, making note of a ring of rippling water in a calm slick, a clear indication of a rising fish.

As if on cue, fish started popping up all over the river, feverishly devouring the fruits of what was by now a significant caddis hatch underway.  Much to my surprise, they started going after my artificial imitation as though it were the prime morsel on the water.

By 8 p.m., I'd taken somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 trout, a great many of them cutthroats between 10-15 inches.  I'm not sure where they came from; cutthroats aren't uncommon on the Poudre, but the majority of the fish I take out of the river are rainbows accompanied by an occasional brown. It was certainly unlike anything I'd ever seen on this stretch of water.  My eyes strained to watch the caddis on the end of the line - the 3rd one I'd tied on by this point.  The fish just wouldn't stop feeding.  Finally, unable to see the fly any longer, I turned and started making my way out of the river, the fly dragging downstream behind me as I waded out.  As I started to step onto dry land, I felt the rod tighten and heard  a splash in the water.  I turned to see another fish on the line.  It had taken the fly and run with it.

Unbelievable finish.

Chillin' in Boiling Water (or Stoneflies Safe for now)

The heat is back on, and it didn't help the fishing today.

I got back on the water this afternoon with high hopes.  The Poudre looked great on arrival - low flows and fairly clear.  Lots of bugs flying around.  Hot, though, with bright sun and no cloud cover.  I got a little excited when I spotted this huge stone fly casing on a rock near the water.

Thinking back to the last time I pondered the validity of "signs," I decided that maybe this time it would work out.  With casings on the rocks, surely I'd be best suited by tying on a stone fly.  So, an elk-hair caddis took its place as the lead fly with a gold stone fly trailer.  Off into the water I stomped with a purpose.

I soon found, however, that the key variable in the whole equation - the fish - weren't about to cooperate today.  I don't take a terribly scientific approach to my fly fishing so I don't carry a thermometer, but I'd venture to guess that the water temperature was higher than normal.  I was quite comfortable wading in my shorts, and didn't feel even the slightest initial shock of cold that normally hits me for the first few seconds in.  For freshwater trout, I imagine the water felt like a hot tub today.  Save for an infrequent rise, I saw almost no evidence that fish were anywhere in the river.

After exhausting both the caddis and the gold stone, I tried everything else I could think of - BWO, double nymph rig, hoppers - with no results on anything.

Guess the trout were just chillin' in the warm water today.  It happens.  The stone flies are safe for today.

Caddis Time!

Had a blast this morning on the Poudre, just a stone's throw from home.

I can only describe this morning's conditions as perfect.  In addition to a bright blue sky that one can only find in Colorado, the Poudre has dropped to an ideal level and the water is running crystal clear.  To top it all off, we've finally gotten a break from the searing heat in the past couple of days, and it was cool enough this morning for a light sweatshirt (the green and gold of the Rams, of course).

A virtual swarm of grasshoppers have been mechanically gnawing away at my vegetable garden for the past week, and as I reached to retrieve my fishing net from it's hook in the garage, I noticed a grasshopper lounging carefree on the handle.  I'm not generally one for "signs," but the proverbial light bulb flashed in my small brain, a clear signal to try a hopper/dropper set up for the morning.

In retrospect, I think it was the right idea, poorly executed.  I don't fish a whole lot with hoppers, and as a result I have very few to choose from in my fly box.  Negligence on my part, for certain, but I just don't fish them very often.  I located a generic-looking hopper pattern - basically some foam and rubber legs - and tied it on with a size 18 pheasant tail nymph as the dropper.  

The action started quickly, with two rainbows taking the pheasant tail on the first three drifts.  I wasn't terribly surprised, as the PT has been a hot fly for me lately.

After an hour or so, I noticed that fish were starting to rise and hit bugs on the surface, none of which were hoppers/terrestrials. Then, out of nowhere, a fish went after the hopper.  Too slow on the uptake.  I drifted it again, and through the clear water was able to see a small trout giving chase to the hopper.  He darted toward the bug, and then turned away at the last split second.  For the next 20 minutes, the scene replayed itself with several fish rising to the hopper only to turn their noses at it at the last second.

Time for a change in strategy.  Fish were still surfacing, and I considered that maybe the idea was right, but the choice of the hopper as the lead fly was wrong.  I decided to replace the hopper with an elk-hair caddis.  It was a better match for the surface flies, and quite a bit smaller.  I shortly found that the caddis was going dominate for the rest of the day.  Time and again, trout in the 10-12 inch range nailed the caddis, some quite dramatically.  I landed one 12-inch rainbow that had a serious chip on his shoulder about something, because he fought as though he were a 30-inch lunker.  He completely consumed the caddis, and went aerial a good three times in addition to stripping line like a champion.

After about a dozen fish, I pretty much forgot about the nymph, which was problematic because I became so focused on the caddis on the surface that I'm pretty sure I missed a couple of strikes on the nymph.  

The remainder of the morning was all dry fly action.  I've gotta say that I've had my fill of nymphing this summer, and it was really fun to get into some steady dry fly work.  With the water running significantly lower, my feeling is that the fish are now starting to congregate a lot more in certain areas, which makes for a lot of fun and a little less stalking.

At about 1:00, the tubers started rolling through, and I called it a morning after losing the PT on a back-cast into the trees behind.  All in all, I think the caddis/PT combination might be pretty productive on this part of the river.

I'm also embarassed to say I haven't ventured up the canyon yet this season, other than a quick overnighter on the South Fork.  Never seem to have the time to venture up there, and don't enjoy the "combat fishing" on weekends.  From what I've been reading, however, it's probably high time I got in the old Ford and made that trip.  Some folks have been reporting staggering numbers up there. 

Overall, a great morning.  The river is fishing great, and the water is ideal.  Hope to find a big one here or there sometime soon.

A Little Fun

I thought something didn't feel quite right.  I'm surprised I didn't break out in hives.

I've been going through the motions for the past couple of weeks, and suddenly realized I hadn't actually been on the water for over a week.  Between increased hours at work, a weekend soccer tournament, and other distractions, I simply didn't get around to it.  Doc and I had a frustrating day on the Poudre just over a week ago on a stretch of water that is normally killer.  I notched one really nice brown out of the day, but otherwise it was small stockers. 

Snuck out today after work and it was more of the same.  The numbers were a little better, at least on a per hour basis.  Generally small fish, but I did land a couple of nice, fat little browns.

On an encouraging note, despite catching all of today's trout on variations of pheasant tail nymphs, I did notice - for the first time in a long time - some significant surface action, particularly as the sun started to go down.  Looking forward some good dry fly action in the near future.

In the meantime, the pheasant tails are still doing the trick, and I feel like I'm improving on the ties.  The top is simply a classic pheasant tail, and the bottom, and I added a bead head and a flashback to the other.

 

One to Remember: Lower Poudre, 7/17/10

I woke up yesterday morning feeling groggy, having slept a mere four hours.  I'd stayed awake into the wee hours of the morning, eagerly and impatiently awaiting the start of another day on the river.  This time there were no distractions to worry about.  No suffering through another day of work-related annoyances.  No errands to run.  No bills to pay for a few weeks.  I was entirely consumed and completely prepared.  At around 2 a.m., I decided that it wouldn't hurt to have a few more flies in my arsenal, so I hopped out of bed and tied some pheasant tail nymphs.  Something led me to a pattern with red wire ribbing.  I'll never know why, but it would be a fateful choice.

At 6:30, I hastily jump into some clothes.  I use the word "clothes" loosely here; an old pair of comfortable swim trunks and the lightest t-shirt I could find, my feet adorned by nothing but a cheap pair of Walmart-issue flip flops.  The hum of the old man's Dodge diesel notified me that the river was ready, simply waiting for us to arrive.

At 7:00, we're armed and ready, and we arrive at the stream just minutes before another fisherman with trout-hunting on his mind.  He looks somewhat put-off that we would have the temerity to beat him to the put-in spot, makes a brief, hopeful inquiry that we're not actually going to fish at this particular spot, then drives on downstream in a subdued huff.  Doc smiles.  That was close.

The first hour goes slowly.  Most of the river is waking slowly.  I cast and drift patiently, wondering whether the nymph will produce.  Caught off guard, I react slowly as the line stops its drift and bends back upstream.  I lift on the rod.  Too slow.  Wash, rinse, repeat.

Two minutes later, I'm alert.  The strike indicator sinks, and I respond forcefully this time.  Hook up.  The sensation is familiar, yet surprisingly new and fresh.  Like a kid, I look around for Dad's approval.  He's busy upstream, so I start the battle.  A hefty brown trout wanders back and forth along the bottom of the stream, my pheasant tail nymph secured in his lip.  He instinctively runs for deep water...and then sits.  The steady pull feels heavy, like trying to retrieve a concrete block.  I  follow his run, wading through waist-deep current.  Finally, he surfaces, and finds his way into my net.

Swift, heavy slicks await us further upstream, and surely more trout.  The entry point is fast whitewater, but runs smoothly and gradually into a quarter mile of perfect water.  Trees overhang the river every 20 yards, forming a series of shady, concealed holding lies.  I cast upstream and drift the nymph into the first.  There's nothing subtle about the strike.  A strong, river-seasoned rainbow consumes the nymph and runs.  I make a feeble effort at setting the hook, which has already been sufficiently set.  And I hang on for dear life as the trout begins to thrash.  Unlike the brown who simply sat and tugged, this rainbow zigs, zags, runs upstream, runs downstream, and leaps.  It's a heavy fish that isn't going to come in quietly.  The bend in the rod is dramatic, but the sight of the trout in the net is one that will lodge itself in my memory, stored alongside images of others in my mind.

Under the next set of trees, the story repeats itself.  The character is different, but the result is the same.  Another rainbow.  This one takes the hook a bit more cautiously.  The indicator seems to stop, and then the line bends back upstream.  My mind is now focused, attuned to react.  A quick raise on the rod, and the fish is hooked.  Not as large, but compensates with beauty.

Another set of trees, another rainbow.  I play this one quickly, and he tosses the fly before I can snap his photo.  It's just as well, because the final act in this drama is about to play.

Under the last bunch of trees, I drift a new nymph close to the far bank.  I'm pleased at how the nymphs are holding up.  The first was durable enough to survive two large trout through long, hard battles.  The second survives another two trout, but takes quite a beating.  They're patterns I've tied myself, and while they aren't as pretty as the store-bought variety, they're clearly working.  A fresh fly on the line won't hurt at this point.

After several drifts, I finally get it right.  The indicator is flowing downstream perfectly, neither racing ahead nor dragging behind the line.  Suddenly it disappears, taking a nose dive for the bottom of the stream.  I set the hook securely and listen as line immediately begins to zip out of the reel.  I see a huge flash of silver take off on a dead sprint, and then turn back upstream.  The monster goes aerial three times in rapid succession, each leap out of the water punctuated by mid-air thrashing.  The big fish tries everything it can think of to shake the fly loose.  Doc is watching this one, and drops everything to handle net duty.  Marvelous, marvelous fish.

We break for lunch and respite from the searing mid-summer heat,  then return to the same stretch.  It's been so good to me throughout the morning that we decide to refish the stretch during late afternoon, this time with Doc leading the downstream progression and me playing cleanup behind.  At the first set of trees, the scene is familiar.  Doc sees the indicator drop and sets the hook.  A brief battle ensues and Doc nets the fish.

As I start downstream to capture the fish on film, I see it give one thrash and disappear.  It's out of Doc's hands and gone.  Doc looks at me with an "uh-oh" expression, and mentions something about me having to "cut it loose."  I have no idea that he's referring to the pheasant tail nymph stuck in his finger.  I arrive on the scene and find this grisly carnage:

Doc finds it somewhat odd that I want to take a picture.  He shoots me a look somewhere between perplexed and perturbed.  "All part of the Flywriter's mentality," I say.  He shakes his head and holds out his hand before asking, non-verbally, "can we get to the damn doctor now?"

Our afternoon ends.  The physician at the clinic compliments Doc on his wherewithal to shove the barb through the skin, making it easier for him to clip through the hook and pull the remainder out.

Fun day.  Looking forward to the next one...  

Rod tips matter after all

I'll start with the good news, which has been been infrequent in most respects lately.  The Poudre continues to produce nice fish, like this little brown.

A few just like him entertained me on the lower Poudre yesterday.  Great fun.

The bad news?  Remember when I previously uttered this idiotic statement in Monday's post? 

After calming myself following a brief period of hyperventilating, I reached for my other fly rod.  You all know the one.  I wrote about it previously, I think.  It used to be nine feet, but it's now only about eight and a half, thanks to a broken rod tip.  How big a difference could a tip make, right?

As it turns out, quite a difference!

I knew it was coming.  A day after discovering that the top half of my one fly rod is MIA, the top half of my second rod...already tipless...suddenly got a lot shorter.  I hooked into a fish that put quite a bend in the rod, and sure enough, without the flexibility of the tip, the remainder snapped in two, like a brittle old bone. 

I'm officially flyrodless, and in my life, that is quite a catastrophe.

The hits just keep on coming.

Lower Poudre, 7/12/10

Today was almost a day full of losses.  But not quite.

I had a rough day at work.  That qualifies as a loss, as in hours of lost living that I'll never get back.  I lost patience.  I lost fully functioning and productive brain cells.  I lost enthusiasm.  Nearly lost my mind entirely.

That's all completely unimportant, however.  After all, it's only work.  The real losses started to pile up later.  As the sun began it's gradual descent, I couldn't shake the euphoria from the weekend's successful brook trout excursion and a newfound technique that I'm sure is old hat to many, but quite unique for me.  I've never really spent too much time fishing two-fly rigs before, save for some double-nymphing that I played around with earlier in the spring.  It's normally enough for me to focus on one dry fly.  The double dry rig from the weekend, however, got me thinking that it's probably a good thing for me to keep mastering.  A lot of the blogs I follow seem to treat the technique as second-nature.  Like any good student, I learn by observation and emulation.  So I kept after it today.

Which brings me back to the first loss.  I opened up the case to my eight-foot five weight and found exactly one half of a fly rod.  One half.  I think there was supposed to be a second half in there too, but it's gone.  No idea where.  Searched high and low.  Lost temper.

After calming myself following a brief period of hyperventilating, I reached for my other fly rod.  You all know the one.  I wrote about it previously, I think.  It used to be nine feet, but it's now only about eight and a half, thanks to a broken rod tip.  How big a difference could a tip make, right?

I got to the river and prepared to make the best of an increasingly frustrating chain of events.  I reached in the fly box and pulled out a para-caddis pattern that doubles as a dry fly and an indicator.  I promptly hooked myself in the thumb, frantically pulled it out, and summarily dropped it in the river.  Lost about a half hour's worth of time spent at the tying table (hey, it's a hard pattern for me).  Nearly lost mind.

After all these losses, I probably should have simply cut them and gone home.  Nah.  One last try.

A few chunky little rainbows kept the day from being a total loss, and kept me from feeling like a total loser.  Thank God for this beautiful hobby of mine.

The flies of the day were the para-caddis on the surface and smallish (#18) pheasant tail nymphs trailing below, for those of you interested in that sort of intel.  Fish took both of them consistently.  The water clarity is good and the flow is manageable in most spots, although the far bank is still running awfully heavy.

Also, I'll be looking for a decent, budget-conscious fly rod.  Recommendations will be greatly appreciated.