So my buddy Screamin' Scott went to Placencia, Belize last week for a little vacation with the wife. He fished one day with a guide, his first saltwater day ever.
He ended up with the grand slam photos below, in addition to one more permit and two more tarpon. I've never heard anything like this. Unreal... I told him to buy a lotto ticket.
There is nothing like summer in America. Warm weather, baseball, barbecues, ice cold lemon aid and top water Largemouth fishing!
There is something about chucking a popper tight against a gnarled snag, among lily pads or near a weed line. You remember it. The smell of summer grass and pond muck mingle in your nostrils. You cautiously approach a likely looking spot that should hold a worthy adversary.
You uncork your popper from the hook-keep and begin measuring your back cast options. A cast unfurls not with the grace and poetry of a trout cast, but more of a measured chuck followed by an abrupt stop and an audible plop. The rod tip drops to the water so as to have a straight line to your fur feather or cork water puppet. With a stecatto rhythm you impart life as it were to this hapless floating train wreck suspended before you. The blurp and slurp emitting from your seemingly wounded offering leaves a trail of bubbles over dark oily water. Suddenly from the murky caffeinated depths the predatory instinct awakens.
With ferocious malice the water surrounding the prey erupts in all directions seemingly at once. This startles you and contacts directly into your peripheral nervous system with the effectiveness of a cattle prod. In an instant your hapless fly disappears along with at least a gallon of water...give or take a little.
You react with a clutch of line and your own retaliatory strike. The rod bends a smile across the face but only after several tense aerial moments followed by valiant attempts to wreck havoc on monfilament.
With a lunge and a well aimed thumb on sandpaper lips you hoist the first one, the first of summer!
MC
This video is from Catch Magazine. Brian O'Keefe and his crew put together one of our favorite fly fishing publications. Here is a link to it https://www.catchmagazine.net/Magazine/cmjun2012 This video came out a while back, but we just cant get enough! Enjoy!
Recently we fished a great group of guys from VIP Wealth Management of Southern California. They enjoyed two days of fly fishing on Lower Sacramento up in Redding. Two day drifts were the bookends on a great wine maker’s dinner on Saturday night. Fun fishing was had along with Lots of good laughs and stories told over great food and superb wines. This was definitely a trip to remember. The group at The Fly Shop in Redding: Group shot!
Most of the guys had never fly fished before, although as life-long conventional anglers they would pick fly fishing up very quickly.
Spey casting class with the incomparable Jeff Putham
Casters, I have one space left for this weekends Spey Casting Camp. Its a 2-Day, spey filled school taught on the American River that will allow you to immerse yourself in "everything spey", both double handed and single handed rods. We'll even cover fishing and maybe even catch a shad or two. Cost is only $350 for both days including lunch and gear if needed. Check the following link for more info (or call me at 916-366-7554 for the last reservation): http://www.jpflyfishing.com/groupclasses/onthewaterclasses/speycastingca...
Fly fishing with Off the Hook and guide Hogan Brown: fly fishing photo from the Lower Sacramento River
With June 3 weeks away summer is nearly officially and un-officially here. Many rivers are coming into shape as run off subsides but with reservoirs feet from being filled I imagine there maybe a second wave of run off when we get some consistent HOT weather and the night time temps stay hot as well. Here is what is happening and what is coming up.
Lower Yuba has dropped into shape and is stable at 2337 cfs with good clarity. Fishing has been good. Hatches should pick up over the next few weeks as the river settles into the new flow. We are entering prime time on the Lower Yuba for spring/early summer hatches. The weeks following run off see PMD, caddis, stoneflies, and all sorts of mixed hatches kicking into gear. Fish will be on the grab coming off high and off color flows and fishing will only get better as we move through June and July.
Nice Lower Sac Bow
Lower Sacramento River is still fishing consistent for trout up through redding but I have began to turn my attention to the lower river looking for shad, stripers, bass, and carp. Shad fishing is picking up as people are starting to catch a few here and a few there down around Princeton up through chico. Flows have been hovering around 10,000cfs coming out of Keswick but drop down to around 7000cfs around Ord Bend as we are in the middle of Rice Irrigation season. Once that is over here shortly the river down by Chico/Ord Bend should jump up moving fish up the river. This will also help move the migratory stripers up river and give the resident fish a bit more water making them a bit more comfortable. Smallies and Big mouth bass are waking up in the sloughs and I have seen a few fish up on beds and cruising the shallows. It is going to be getting really good really soon out there.
Remember in elementary school when you had to do book reports? Man those were awful. "My book report is on Superfudge by Judy Blume." Looking back though we realize the value of learning to critically read, write and analyze. At least some of us do.
Hence my post today about a book I just finished but should've read seven or eight years ago, David Mongomery's King of Fish: The Thousand Year Run of Salmon. For all fly fisermen, gear fishermen and anyone interested in conservation this is required reading. But really this book is almost more important for those not familiar with salmon and rivers and the fact we are both directly and indirectly trying to extinguish them from the planet. Plainly written, you do not need to be a salmon scholar or scientist to understand this work. Montgomery beautifully and logically lays out the history of salmon, human interaction and the disastrous consequences that resulted.
From Atlantic salmon in Europe in medieval times to the East Coast in colonial and modern time up to the present on the West Coast and the salmon crisis we are currently in he deftly shows the entirely human caused destruction of salmon everywhere. It shows the big picture. Montgomery identifies the key factors in the decline of salmon and even lays out a simple (yet in our pathetic political system a plan that seems almost an impossibility) for salmon recovery. It's a startling book even for those, like myself, that have been involved in and understand the environmental and political salmon wars in the Northwest. One of the most amazing this to me was as far back as medieval England people realized the importance of healthy salmon runs, laws were passed for their protection and laws continued to be passed in the New World as well yet they were simply ignored in large part and salmon runs continued to dwindle. The vast scale of wonton overfishing (or netting as it's really called) described in this book served only to reinforce my own view of the shame of buying commercially caught (or grown) salmon and supporting the maximum sustainable harvest mentality that has utterly failed.
Read this book and you will understand the fall of salmon. But you will also understand the actions needed to begin the return and rise of the salmon and maybe with enough people and grassroots action we can reverse the current status quo and bring salmon back to sustainable levels. People and salmon can coexist, Montgomery shows us how, but we have to be willing to make sacrifices now for our benefit in the future.
Yo yo, check out the latest issue of The Drake, Spring '12. It just hit your local fly shop this week. Editor Tom Bie and friends put out the best fly fishing magazine in the business. Hands down.
I even have a short piece in this one involving vampires and steelhead.
