Truckee Tribulations

Spent a few hours with Louise on The River this last weekend looking for some lonely red-sides to tangle with. Action was pretty slow with the water temps in the mid 40's and slowly rising as the day went on. Water was gin clear for the first couple hours and turned emerald green by about 2 o'clock. Air temps were low, but the wind stayed away which helped to avert the attention away from the fact that we weren't catching anything, "At least it's a beautiful day..."

There were midges coming off all day long with a few baetis here and there, but no fish heads until nearly sundown. We fished all types of flies and managed to pick up a fish here and there including another state record whitey.

Whitey likes the bling...

I know it's been awhile since my last pay day on The River, but I really felt like we paid some dues this last Sunday. Next trip... 20 fish day, guaranteed! I did manage one fish that was questionable. She was foul-hooked when she came to hand, but was clearly on the top fly for the fist couple of runs. I'm guessing that top fly came unbuttoned and the dropper had found its way into her side as she was running. It happens. Hot fish though, and with some beef in them fins.

When the sun got a little lower we started to see the baetis sailboats a little more often, which was promising. Louise looks over at me a says, "Wouldn't it be great if there was this awesome hatch right before we left?" And like god was listening, clouds of midges started popping everywhere. So thick that I could taste them as they flew into mouth and eyes. It made talking a little harder, but who needs to talk when fish are rising all around you?

First real dry fly action of the year, and it was well-worth the dues paid earlier that day. Next trip, we'll be sure not to forget the Glenlivet.

Sierra Trout Slam

Off the Hook Fly Shop in Placerville, CA presents local (and not local) anglers with a new but simple challenge, the Sierra Trout Slam: Catch five distinct species of trout within the Sierra Nevada mountain range. The fish don't have to be native to their waters, but they do have to be caught and released in the Sierras on a fly rod. The five fish can be any of the following nine species: brook, brown, rainbow, golden, lahontan cutthroat, tiger, lake trout, mounain whitefish ,and paiute cutthroat.

Complete the challenge with photographic evidence and applicants will receive a certificate similar to this:

With a picture of each of the submitted species of trout caught.


Now here's my little twist.......... try catching all five in the same lake/stream/river....... it's been done by at least one person I know.....

Ain't goin' out like that...

I'm not much of a hunter, and I'm definitely not into hunting just for trophy animals... but... I just had to share this one...

Possibly the gnarliest hunting video I've ever seen... If you don't like hunting, or seeing animals get shot, don't watch this video... however... if you want to see a grown man scream like a girl as a 150 lb cat tries to eat his heart out after it gets shot in the leg... watch it, cause it's pretty good!



Whoever said that a hunted animal is helpless is out of their mind.

Kailua pupule

Spent 8 days on the big island this last week with the fam. Weather was good, vog was thick, sand was soft, and the tsunami was a joke. There were 12 of us in all, half of which spent a day on the water with Captain Russell Nitta of the Lepika out of Honokohau harbor near Kailua-Kona. Captain Russell was a great guide and treated us all with great respect, not to mention the nearly 700 lbs of fish he put us on... but I'll get to that later.

Somehow we scored this huge house in Kona right across from the ocean (right in the meat of the tsunami evacuation zone) with a view of the ocean, a pool, a pool table, a big screen tv, outdoor showers, screened lannais (patios), 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms...... this place was stacked. I have no clue how my sister hooked it up... but she did. The big screen was rolling Olympic highlights every day... I should mention... watching the winter Olympics in board shorts and flip-flops was a new one for me... I'm not saying I couldn't get used to it, but it definitely felt a little weird watching the US-Canada hockey prelims in an open-air bar with 20 other people draining frosty mai tais 50 ft from the ocean. Again... not complaining... maybe just rubbing it in a little.

Back home while this winter continued to prove that central California may never have a good salmon and steelhead run ever again, I was hooking crazy reef fish from the volcanic shores of Pele's version of heaven. The reef was loaded with all sorts of fish mostly feeding on the reef, but every now and then the crazy Charlie I was tossing would piss one off bad enough to get a take.

Did I mention that the reef has some crazy fish in it?

I have no clue what this fish was, but it changed color when I put it back in the water. It turned white when I tossed it back.

This is a trumpet fish. This fish could swim backwards like a mutha'. When I was pulling it out of the water it tail walked backwards like flipper for about 10 ft. If you skated your fly across the surface, two-hand stripping as fast as you could, ten of these trumpet fish would chase the fly like tiger sharks. All of a sudden there would be like 10 fins chasing the fly.

These were just appetizers for our blue water trip the next day.

Like I said, Capt. Russell was the man. Although we didn't fly fish much, he did try to get us tight-lined at an off-shore fish habitat buoy. However, by the time we got there a bunch of rough-toothed dolphins had beat us there, and they were chowing down on freshly hooked fish on the ends of people's lines. Before we had got 5 casts off Capt. Russell pulled bait and we rolled out. On the way out we saw two guys reel in nothing but fish heads. It was a bummer but Tony made up for it with a 300 lb blue marlin on the way there.

On the way back we found another pile of dolphins (I guess these are the "good" dolphins) and started trolling though the pile with hootchies (we left the women at home). Before Capt. Russell had the last bait in the water, an Ahi came up and train-wrecked one of the plugs. This was my fight, and it was a good one. Good for 137 lbs.

Sashimi anyone?

After my fish, Capt. Russell set up this crazy jumping squid rig that I can't even try to describe. It looked so ridiculous, but the captain said it'd work, so I believed him. It was basically as close to dry fly fishing for 150 lb tuna as you can get. Capt. Russell said to watch the baits close cause the takes would be pretty good, and he wasn't lying.

First pass, Sam was in the chair and one of the squids went down, but the Captain kept yelling, "Not yet! Not yet!" And then right before Sam started reeling, a second squid went down. You know that feeling you get when you get a double hook-up on a dry dropped rig... well multiply that by about 40 lbs. Sam was in hog heaven...

Two 20 lb skip jack tuna that we took home to eat.

But we weren't done just yet. After several more passes through the dolphins with the crazy jumping squid rig, there was on more take on one of the dancing squids. This time is was a monster Ahi that came flying out of the water at one of the squids like a caddis-eating rainbow on the E. Carson, except it was a 188 lb flying tuna!

No good trip happens without a little drama... as Gregg's fish was being hauled-in through the back gate, about 300 gallons of water comes into the stern of the boat, and Capt. Russell goes, "Oh, that's not good..." and everybody on the boat was quiet. The bilge pump in the stern had gone out and the entire rear hull was filled with water.......

After a quick scramble we were able to bail the water with an auxiliary livewell pump but not until after a quick flash of my life before my eyes....

Good times....

Delta Blues

My wife's uncle and his family came to town from Minneapolis last week for a little family visit, so it was only right for us to get in some grade A California fishing while he was here. He's a big walleye and muskey guy from the Midwest, and when we were out there this last summer he put me on a huge walleye, so it seemed only right to take him out to the Delta for a little striper action... but that was just it... very LITTLE striper action...

I'll admit, I have no clue how to fish the Delta, let alone how to navigate it. I know how to fish for stripers, but it's a whole different ball game down there. I've been told that the formula for success in the delta goes something like this: The water temp needs to be about right, the bait fish need to be plentiful, the water clarity needs to be reasonable, the tides need to be right, and you just need to know where the fish hold... ya.... we didn't have any of that stuff working for us. The water looked like chocolate milk, the water temps were in the upper 40's, and we didn't mark a single fish on the finder all day.

We launched at Wimpy's around 7 am and motored down to Beaver Slough where we pricked one schoolie right away, but that was it for the entire day. That "right-off-the-bat" fish is always a bad sign... You catch a fish right away thinking that, "Today is gonna' be a good day!...." wrong....

At least we didn't get skunked. I would've rather had my guest catch that fish, but that's just how it happens sometimes. We fished several other sloughs looking for warmer water trying to find the bait fish... We found some warmer water, but not a single bait ball all day... SSSLLLLLOOOOOOWWW.... but that's what everyone was telling me before we even launched, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised...