Its a State of Mind

This past weekend I had plans to hit the coast for more saltwater action but gale warnings kept me closer to home.  With a wide variety of options and too much sun I decided to go trout fishing.  Had the weather been cloudy there were other options I would have explored but when life gives you lemons one makes lemonade. While I love so many different species trout fishing always feels like coming home especially in the fall. 

 pseudo's were out and small fish were on them.  

 Even some larger fish were on the pseudo's

 Well looky here

 A closer look

Beautiful bows put me in a joyous state of mind

Downpours and Redemption

Typically I have my fishing game pretty tight for the fishing I mostly engage in, trout and carp.  That doesn't mean I have off days but this year I have two off months.  On the water I've been sloppy and inaccurate with my casts, either too fast or slow with my hook sets and generally out of sync with the demands needed to connect with fish.  Generally it's been an ugly funk whenever I've been on the water. 

Given the warm temps, carp was on the menu and the opportunity to tighten up my game presented itself.  On the water I focused on moving slowly and quietly, moving into position carefully and crucially making the first cast the right cast .  I found that too much fly movement spooked the carp so little or no fly movement was the key.  What unfolded was a magical two hours of only messing up two fish, one to lining and one to hooking a stick near the fish.  All the others were spot on presentations and hook sets.  In my journey on water I saw tons of Killdeer, a water snake hunting in the shallows, three or so dozen Cedar Waxwings working the bugs over a riffle, an Osprey, an immature Bald Eagle, a Red Tailed Hawk, plus Eastern Kingbirds, Crows and the typical assortment of resident birds.  Then came the thunderstorms and bad light that ended the magical afternoon of redemption. 

Summer has Arrived

Every year my family go and spend some time by the shore.  It's been a great tradition for a good number of years.  


 Got to see, fish from the bow and pole my friend Mark's new skiff.  Success was had for both of us.  I blew my fair share of opportunities, but did land my first sight fished striper, such a fun way to fish.  I'll take one of those over 10 blind casted. 


 Open vistas, the smell of salt and constant wind are a few of the things that come to mind when I think of the coast.

 Out for an evening stroll and saw this.  Couldn't quiet pass the marshmallow sky up. 

Bacon

 A dozen eggs, 2 pounds of bacon an 4 hungry anglers does a streamside brunch make.  Bacon cooked to perfection streamside, well my linguistic skills fail to adequately describe that. The fishing was tough but enough fish were had to make it a stellar day. 

The arsenal

 
 Oh yeah! Photo courtesy of Mike at the Rusty Spinner Blog.  Check out his excellent writing.

 

 Working the wood

 Found a brookie!

Just a little deep

 

Need more bacon

Getting Ready

Sitting around the house due to the frigid weather and came across these pictures from this past summer.  They all involve some aspect of getting ready for some fishing.  I am of the same mindset. 

Getting ready to swing

 Getting ready to eat

 Getting ready to cast

 

It's Called Fishing for a Reason

My last two outings have been unusual in that it has been more fishing than catching, a lot more.  While fishing is much more than about catching, I for one love to photograph the the beautiful creatures that I'm after.  Lately, things haven't worked out in that regard, but it has provided other opportunities.  Here are a few of those opportunities from my last two outings.

 

 A good D loop

 Ready to launch

 

 Gaining wisdom from an elder

 Fish on but no pics, it broke the leader before we could get a picture

 Technically it's a fish, but not what I was after.

Tiger Time

Two years ago, my bud Matt and I did two days of muskie fishing.  For each of us it was our first attempt at Esox masquinongy aka Muskie.  Well we were hoping for a return trip to the salt this past weekend, but high winds and seas negated that as an option. While we were in search of an outing we decided to try to fish for Tiger Muskie aka norlungel, a sterile cross between a Muskie and a northern pike that inhabits several bodies of water in upstate NY.  Research was done flies were tied and many casts were made.  Our novice butts managed to each land one tiger and we had several other follows including one that was the size of my leg, a true knee knocker.

                                            Gearing up before launching the boat.

 Early in the game Matt hooked this beast of a largemouth, the biggest one I've ever seen.

                                                 My little tiger, with great colors

                                                                       The release

   Matt admiring his tiger.  He was ready to pack it in, until he had a follow that had him make a few more casts.  He was rewarded for his efforts.  They are some cool looking fish, I wish they lived a little closer to home. Now they live in my dreams.

Right place right time take two

For 6-10 weeks most falls, False Albacore visit the coast from Cape Cod to NJ and beyond.  Some years and as well as days are better than others.  That being said,  the last couple of falls have not coincided with lots of hard tails being hooked in my boat.  However, a recent trip to the coast reversed this trend as we managed to pick away most of the day and ended up with a solid number of fish being landed.  many of the takes took place close to the boat which made for some great visual images that were captured by my brain, but not my camera.  I find it so hard to put down the rod when there are fish nearby.  Here are some pics when I managed to put the rod down.

 

There's Gold in them thar hills.

Old Water, New Water

Many years ago when I lived in Massachusetts my buddy and I fished this gem of a small fishery every Wednesday after work.  He moved away and life took me away from this drainage.  Now years later a group of fishing friends invited me for a little fishing on this river and I had a blast learning some new water along with some old water. Here are some of the pics.

The Spey Tribe-My Introduction

I have to say that I entered this tribe kicking and screaming the entire way.

The first time I'd ever seen a Spey rod in action was on the Deschutes River in in the late 80's. For those of you who don't know the Deschutes, it is a huge river especially by eastern standards.

 
                                           The big water of the Deschutes


I went steelhead fishing for the first time in my life with two brothers, one of whom I'd met at a Kaufman's Streamborn fly shop outside of Seattle.  His brother had guided in Alaska with the same group of guys that I guided with a year or two prior to my time up north.  We hit it off pretty well and they invited me to fish with them for three days in October.  One of the brothers fished a spey rod.  I'd heard of spey rods, but I have to admit that at the time I thought it was ridiculous to use such a rod when I could double haul an 8 wt. all day long for three days and not have my arm fall off.  Let's just say that youth brings with it lots of flexibility physically, but not necessarily intellectual flexibility, at least in my case.

                                           The first Spey rod I ever saw in action.

In order to reach all the productive water they had this small rubber dingy.  The three of us crammed into it crossing this huge river.  When I looked down I could see 20 or so feet deep into the river.  If we had tipped over, all of us would have drowned.  This mode of transportation freaked me out a few times. 
 
I got this shot because I wasn't crossing the river with them this time.  I fished on the unproductive side instead and didn't have a coronary crossing the river.
 
We didn't always have a ton of backcast room but we fired long casts all day with our single handers.  We sure worked hard for our casts. 

We fished hard for three days with nary a bite.  I had a lot to learn about swinging flies for anadromous fish.  After this outing my confidence in this method was just a tad weak.  After guiding in Alaska all summer one was supposed to catch fish lots of fish, not three days of casting practice. Oh well it was time to go to New Zealand and I didn't think about swinging flies for two more years. 


My next opportunity to swing flies was in Nova Scotia.  My buddy Steve and I headed north at the end of September for a week of fishing. We brought tents, rods, tying gear and clothes.  Mind you only single hand rods, as that was all that we had.  We ended up fishing the Margaree River, which is beautiful, easily waded little river.  There was no need for two handed rods.  In this neck of the woods the only acceptable manner with which to fish is to swing flies.   If someone is in the run you want to fish, just wait in line at the head and jump in when it's open.  Everyone works their way down a step at a time.  Just leave enough space between you and the person below so your line doesn't get near them and life is good.  It is a great way to fish and one can feel very relaxed about access as everyone gets a turn. 

There is a salmon museum on the banks of the river.  When we went there, I saw a fly that reminded me of a pattern we used in Alaska for silvers.  That pattern was like crack to the silvers.  The Alaskan flies were weighted which was a big no no in Nova Scotia so we tied up some unweighted versions and hit the river.  Low and behold we started catching fish on the swing.  We didn't really know what we were doing so we tried everything, casting slightly upriver, casting down river, mending, not mending.  Beginners mind can be a beautiful thing.  One of the things that I learned on this trip was to believe that a fish is going to hit my fly.  Having a positive attitude is more than half the battle when swinging flies for migratory fish, at least that what I came to believe.  We had a blast and the salmon were not shy about letting you know they wanted the flies as they hammered them.  One fish broke me off on the take and I was using 15 lb. maxima!  

One can see the fly stuck firmly in the nose with the hook point coming out above the fly and the thick brown maxima.  

This one was hooked perfectly in the corner of the mouth.

                                                      My best Salmon at 36 inches.

                                    Those males with the big kypes are stunning fish.

                                                    Putting the wood to one.

After two falls of fishing up there opportunities to swing flies didn't happen anymore.  My buddy Steve moved to Montana, I entered graduate school and life took me in a different direction. For a number of years fishing took a back seat and the fishing I did do was all local in western Massachusetts.  Up next my Spey awakening.