CrowMountain.net

Flows were low and temps fairly mild so I decided to look for a few trouts instead of making the trek to the big river for steelhead  ( = too lazy to wake up early).  One hookup but no fish to hand, probably because I’m the worlds worst nymph fisherman.  Used my Burkheimer 389 with a Rio Gold 4WF which was plenty for the smallish stonefly nymph.  The slightly heavy head was great for single hand spey casts when backed up to the bushes.  This spot has great dry fly water but I never visit it in season as it’s close to a park and gets pounded.  Pretty spot though…

Out early on Saturday for a skunking day of scouting on a one of the “S-Rivers”.  A recent post by a fishing acquaintance on Washington Fly Fishing noted his current ‘funk’ or motivation crisis when it came to steelhead fishing.  I have been going through a bit of the same thing which has manifest as a a desire to buy new trout rods and tie small flies since I’m pretty sure that trout actually exist and aren’t some river-borne form of unicorn.

Still, I managed to roust myself at dark-thirty for the drive north.  Water & weather were near perfect and I was actually casting half decent for a change.  One pull from a small fish (bull?) but steel or large bulls to hand.  It was a great day exploring and swinging some new water but we do need to catch a damn fish every now and then to avoid the ‘funk’…

Scouting…

…that’s usually what I call it when I don’t catch anything. Haven’t fished much over the last couple weeks given life and weather but I have been out a few times scouting in prep for Summer dry fly fishing. I did do a little bobbercating to make it interesting but mainly I was looking for nice lies to minimize searching time on Summer evenings after work. I’m pretty sure there will be a fat cutthroat hiding under that log right on the edge of the current tongue.

I was hoping to start the year on a good note with some saltwater action so I headed down to a South Sound beach. I saw two cars head down the road to my #1 choice so I diverted to #2 for a little more solitude. Upon arrival, I found that I had somehow read the tide wrong and was completely banked out by a high tide. Otherwise, conditions looked perfect: overcast, favorable wind, light chop on the water. Only one problem…

…no sign of fish anywhere. By rolling the line down the beach then hitting a double-spey I was still able to get my fly out a decent distance despite being backed up against the trees since I was using my 11′ Meiser 4/5 switch rod. Given the lack of fish-sign, I figured that I was in for a skunking but that I’d at least get in same casting practice. Cast, strip, step down the beach & repeat for about 45min when I snag something on the bottom as my mind wandered. Whoops, whatever I snagged was pulling back! Soon I brought a friendly little sea-run cutthroat to hand, took a quick photo of my first 2010 fish and let him slip back into the depths. It must have been pre-spawn as it had some very large sea-lice and saltwater coloration. Fished a bit longer then headed home to tie some flies…

Fishing resolutions for 2010:

1. Take the kids fly fishing more and coach their casting less
2. Get some return out of my 2009 investment in a cataraft
3. Fish at least 52 days in 2010
4. Fish in Oregon, Idaho, Montana & BC
5. Camping trip to headwaters of the Elwah
6. Keep an accurate fishing log (should be helpful for #3)
7. Take someone who has never fly fished before to a river and help them catch a trout
8. Spend less money and time on gear and more on actually fishing than in 2009
9. Attend a spey casting lesson and break my bad self-taught habits
10. Take my ’serious’ camera fishing and actually use it for a change

Xmas present from my daughter – Oncorhyncus clarki clarki, Coast Cutthroat trout in the fluvial (stream resident) form, my favorite fish to target in local mountain streams.  These little guys live such a hard life in the infertile streams subject to runoff spate, etc. that they become hyper-aggressive in order to survive.  Fantastic fish for Summer dry fly adventures while roaming small stream in the Cascade foothills.  I also talked her into doing a couple small paintings of flies to frame together with the trout.

She used the Tomelleri drawing in Trout and Salmon of North America (Behnke) as the source.  Must have book for people interested in our Salmonids.

New Year’s Day seemed a fitting time to kill my old, out of date photoblog and put up something more relevant to my current interests.  Also a good time to blow up the old Movable Type install and shift to WordPress.  The change has been surprisingly simple, even for a technophobe like me.

The new site will still be heavy on photos and hopefully some decent video.