We've Got Class

This post is pretty much a shameless plug, and I'm OK with that. If you are in the Twin Cities area, or anywhere in Minnesota, or anywhere in the Upper Midwest, or really anywhere in the good ol' U.S.A., and you want to learn how to tie flies, you should take one of my upcoming classes.

First up is my three-session-long beginning class that I call the "Joy of Fly Tying". It starts this coming Tuesday evening at the Community Center in St. Anthony, Minnesota, which is just north of both St. Paul and Minneapolis, and runs from 7-9 PM. Over the three Tuesday evenings we will cover the tying techniques that will allow you to be able to tie 95% of all the flies out there. I'm not saying that we will tie 95% of all the flies out there, but through the nine flies that we will tie, you will learn the techniques that will allow you to tie 95% of all the flies out there. OK, maybe it's 93%, whatever. We will have lots of fun, I will try to be clear in my explanations of fly tying terminology (like, what is a "bodkin", exactly?), I will furnish all the tools and materials for class, and it's relatively inexpensive. What could be better?

If you already know the basics of tying flies, but you are having some difficulty with the dry flies, you should contact Robert at Bob Mitchell's Fly Shop in St. Paul and sign up for my one night Dry Fly Techniques class that is happening there on Thursday, November 17th. We'll learn how to tie a Comparadun, a traditionally hackled dry fly, and a parachute dry fly. Three flies, one night, and hopefully all your dry fly tying consternation will disappear forever. If interested, check out bobmitchellsflyshop.com, or call the shop at 651-770-5854.

The Art of the L.D.R.

After doing a little math in my admittedly pea-sized brain, I figure I have probably caught around 3 or 4 billion fish in my lifetime. Or it might be more like several thousand - my pea-sized brain is not very good with numbers...Whatever the case, out of all those fish that I have caught, it's the ones that I LDR'd that stick in my brain the most.

Good ol' Webster. He has a definition for everything.

If you aren't as rabid of a fisherman as I am, you may not be familiar with the term "LDR", but you have probably performed a few yourself at some point. "LDR" stands for Long Distance Release. I believe Webster defines it as "the heartbreaking moment when a fish becomes unattached from your fly at any distance from you that is greater than the length of your arm.". LDRs can happen with any size fish, but it's the LDRs that occur when you have a monster on that can become etched in your memory. I have the uncanny ability of remembering big fish that I LDR'd more than 15 years ago, but I am not sure what I had for breakfast yesterday...LDRs can stay with you for a long time.

Take, for instance, the day I spent on one of our local rivers about 16 years ago. It was May, and the Mother's Day Caddis hatch was going gangbusters. It was better than I had ever seen before, or since. I was stationed on the right side of the stream, towards the bottom of a rather long riffly pool, and there were fish chasing caddis flies all over the place. I don't know how many trout I caught in that one pool that day, but I do know that I landed a 17" brown that was quickly followed by a 19" brown, that was quickly followed by a 20" brown, all while standing in pretty much the same spot in the river. But what haunts me is the much larger fish I fought for several minutes that made a bee-line for the far bank, and then calmly glided back and forth in a 20 foot swath until my Elk Hair Caddis became disconnected with his giant maw. I about cried...

Oh, and then there was that time when I was out in the Black Hills, fishing a stretch of water that I assumed was too skinny for anything to live in. I was really just making my way up to check out the next pool, but I had my size 18 beadhead nymph in the water, and sure enough, a giant rainbow engulfed it, and went shooting across the river in a series of acrobatic flips that would make Mary Lou Retton blush. The entire fight lasted mush less time than it took you to read that last sentence, yet it is a scene I will probably never forget.

Speaking of the Black Hills, I was above one of the big reservoirs out there, fishing in a section of a creek that looked to be devoid of all life. When that is the case, I often find myself day dreaming about other places I should go, which is what I was doing when yet another big fish, this time I assume it was a brown, snarfed up my Copper John and headed for the North Dakota border. That fight lasted a smidge longer than the one with the rainbow, but still probably only six seconds or so. Six seconds that will haunt me forever...

Me, a split second after performing a lovely LDR on a hawg...

I've only been musky fishing once in my life. I went with my cousin, who is a bona fide trout bum, like me, so neither of us really knew what we were doing. After several hours of flailing away spread over two days, I not only wasn't concentrating on the fishing that I was doing, I didn't even remember exactly what state we were in. And then it happened: I lobbed my giant fly over towards the weeds for what seemed like the 4 millionth time, and sure enough, a musky came out of nowhere and exploded on it. The river went from calm and peaceful to a warzone at the drop of a hat, I did everything wrong, my heart felt like it might burst, and I never even felt the fish on my line. I guess technically that wasn't a real LDR, since I never had him hooked, but I remember it like it was.

A lot of fishermen probably hate performing LDRs, and I used to be like that. But now I try not to let them bother me so much. After all, my LDRs have given me all these fun, and at the same time unpleasant, memories, and really, that's what fishing is all about, any way, am I right? Besides, I perform way more LDRs than I catch big fish, so I better learn to make the best of it. If you ever want to see an LDR done the right way, just follow me for a an hour or so some day. I'm sure you will get your fill.

Chasing Rainbows on the Last Day of the Season

As I wrote in my last post, I went trout fishing a couple of weeks ago on what I originally thought was the last day of the Wisconsin trout season, September 30th. The trout season in Wisconsin has ended on September 30th every year of my 42 years on earth, so you can understand how I could have forgotten that the wonderful Wisconsin DNR had switched the closing date to October 15th this year, for the first time ever. Assuming correctly that I probably wouldn't have another chance to go trout fishing before October 15th, I wrote then about my last trout fishing trip of the year. It was an awesome day with lots of trout.

So, yesterday was the actual last day of the trout season, and I caught exactly zero trout. Instead, I had a father-son date with the Boy, in which we did a lot of manly things like sweeping floors and eating chicken nuggets and playing with wooden trains and shoveling ice cream down our throats. It was awesome! We had a great time, and then when we were done the Wife and I did some things to get our yard ready for winter.

At the end of the day we all went over to my in-laws' house for dinner. They have the great fortune, at least as far as I am concerned, of living on one of the 10,000 or so lakes in Minnesota, so while the cooks were busy finishing up dinner, I snuck down to the lake to see if there were any fish still swimming around near shore. It had been a hot day for our part of country, so I was hoping the bass or bluegills might still think it was summer and be lazing around in the shallows. I only had about 15 minutes or so to fish, but that was OK. Things started out pretty slowly, even though fish seemed to be coming up and nudging my foam spider on every cast. Finally I managed to hook one, then another on the next cast, and another on the next cast. That last of the three was probably the biggest bluegill I have caught since June, but it was so unexpected I forgot to take a picture.

A few minutes later I caught a lovely little guy, and his bright yellow belly mirrored the leaves that were all around the lake. I looked around as my fishing was coming to an end, and up in the sky was a beautiful and completely unexpected rainbow arching over the lake. It was a wonderful way to end the trout season, even though there weren't any trout within 30 miles of me. What a fun day!

Gear used: I used my 7'6" 5/6wt vintage Cortland Pro-Crest fiberglass rod and my Cabelas WLX 4.5 reel, which is strung up with a no-name 6wt DT fly line. The Pro-Crest rods have a reputation of being fine casters despite being the color of baby poop. Mine lays out 50 feet of line with very little effort, so I don't care what color it is. Besides, I'm kind of used to baby poop by now...

Last Day of the Season

Technically speaking, it wasn't the actual last day of the trout season, because the state of Wisconsin extended the season to October 15th this year, for the first time ever. But, when I asked for the day off from work on September 30th, I had forgotten that fact, and still thought the last day of September was the closing date of the season. Since I probably won't take another day off to fish before October 15th, I'll just say that it was the last day of the season, even though it really wasn't. Did you follow all that? Because now I feel more confused than I usually do...

So, I went trout fishing on Friday. My original plan was to explore a new little creek that I had recently learned about, and if that didn't pan out, I was going to explore another new, bigger creek that I had recently learned about. I started on the little creek, which looked awesome and fishy, but after about a half hour of exploring with very little action, I came to the conclusion that I wasn't really in the mood to spend the last day of the season doing so much exploring and so little catching, so I packed up my stuff and drove to my favorite trout stream in the world, where I can usually catch at least a few fish, and no tedious exploration is required.

My favorite stream.

When I got to my favorite place, I noticed the water was still a tiny bit high and off-color from some recent rains we had gotten, so I tied on one of my Mushroom and Swiss Buggers, looking for some big hungry trout. Instead I found a handful of smallish, hungry trout, so after I worked my way downstream a fair way, I tied on the biggest nymph I had with me, a size 10 CDC-Enhanced Rubber Leg Prince Nymph, turned around and headed back upstream, to see what I could do.

Mushroom & Swiss Bugger

CDC-Enhanced Rubber Leg Prince Nymph

My first cast hooked a small brown, and my third cast hooked a slightly larger one. Seemed like I was on to something with my fly selection, which doesn't always seem to be the case. I proceeded to go up and down the river, hooking dozens of fish, and landing many of them. I was able to perform beautiful and yet completely disheartening LDRs (Long Distance Releases) on the three largest fish of the day, but I did manage to land one brown over 12 inches, plus about 4 dozen in the Under 12" category. The biggest one that I LDR'd swam around menacingly like a log with fins for a few seconds before the tippet snapped. What an excruciatingly wonderful way to end the 2016 season, wouldn't you say? Can't wait til next year!

Brown trout, ready to head back home.

Gear Used: I had recently gotten a new-to-me Garcia Americana Beaver Kill model 7-foot 5/6 wt fiberglass fly rod. It is one of the few vintage glass rods that Garcia made with a glass ferrule. Most of their glass rods had metal ferrules of one kind or another. I paired it with my Lamson Konic 1.5 reel with an S.A. 5wt WF line. The whole set-up performed flawlessly all day. what a sweet casting rod! At the end of the day I brought out my old Heddon Black Beauty 7.5' 6wt glass rod, pairing it with my Cabela's WLX 4.5 reel and some no-name 6WT DT line I have. This, too, worked very well. Love my old glass rods!

Washing the Vest

I don't know if you knew this, but it's kind of a well-known fact that you should never wash your fly fishing vest. Over the course of time vests absorb layer upon layer of good juju, which is an essential ingredient in catching fish. If you were to wash your vest, all that good juju would be lost, and then you would have to get by on your own cunning and guile, which most humans have very little of, in my estimation.

Proudly, I can say that I have never washed my fly fishing vests. I am on my second one, a wonderful Simms vest which I have now had for approximately 15 years, but I still have, and sometimes even use, my original Columbia vest, which I got 32 or so years ago. That first vest was quite large for a skinny 10-year-old like I was, but I eventually grew into it. Nowadays it doesn't fit as well as it did a few years ago, but I can only assume that is because all the fish slime has caused it to shrink, and not that my waistline continues to expand... Keep your rude comments to yourself, please.

My vest.

I keep both of my vests, along with my chest pack and waders and hip boots and other fishing paraphernalia, in the gentleman's closet in my fly tying room. If you are unaware of what a gentleman's closet is, like I used to be before I became a gentleman, I will describe it. It is a tall piece of furniture with four drawers in the bottom and a large open space with a closet rod in the top. You can use that large open space to store large things, or to hang up clothes. I use one side of it for the former, and one side for the latter. Or is it vice versa? The nice thing is that the gentleman's closet has two swinging doors on the front, so I can close them to keep everything out of sight, and to keep the aromas on the inside...

I am telling you all of this to set up the rest of my story. My friend Bryon and I went fishing a couple of weeks ago. It was a strange day, weather-wise, as it went from hot and sunny to cool and windy and back and forth, and some rain drops even fell every once in a while. During the hot times, we both got super sweaty in our hip boots. We eventually just took them off and fished in our shorts. Taking off my hot rubber hip boots helped a great deal, yet I still was very sweaty and stinky for much of the day. Then I realized, "Hey, I might very well be stinky, but I sure don't smell as bad as my vest does!!!" It was at that moment that I realized that I am not superstitious in the least bit, and that juju is over-rated when it comes to catching fish. Cunning and guile is where it's at! Oh, and a nice, clean, fresh-smelling vest doesn't hurt, either!

Sage Glass

It had been quite a while since I had gotten out trout fishing. It had been quite a while since my buddy, Bryon, had gotten out trout fishing, as well. So, when he suggested we go trout fishing, we both thought it was a swell idea!

We decided to go to our favorite western Wisconsin trout stream last Monday afternoon. The weather was strange that day, in that it would cloud over and sprinkle on us for 10 minutes or so, then the sun would come out and we would instantly get hot and sweaty, then it would cool off and the breeze would come up, and then it would do it all over again. It never rained hard enough to be annoying, and the wind was never so strong that it affected our casting, but it did get hot enough that we both decided to take our hip boots off and fish in our shorts. The area we were fishing requires very little, to no, wading, so the hip boots weren't necessary any way. We were both quite relieved when we took them off.

The fishing was good all day, no matter what the weather was doing. This river is not well known for
its insect hatches, but there were caddisflies fluttering around all day, so Bryon fished almost exclusively with an elk hair caddis, and slayed them. I tried about a dozen different flies, as I am known to do, and caught fish on most of them. At first I fished with my Poor Man's CDC-Enhanced Copper John in red, then I switched to an olive/brown mottled wooly bugger until a big fish broke it off, then I tried a small Madame X, and so on and so on. The caddis hatch had become quite epic right at dusk, so finally I got it in my thick head to put an elk hair caddis on, and I slayed them, as well. It was a great day!

A selfie of Bryon and one of his many trouts. You get to guess if it was Bryon or the trout that took the pic.

As far as equipment goes, I fished two rods that day. First was my Cortland Pro-Crest 7.5' 5/6 weight glass rod. This is a very smooth casting rod, and easily handled all the weighted streamers and nymphs I was using. Next I broke out my Sage SFL 476, which is a 7.5' 4wt glass rod I got a few months ago. I had never had it on the water, so I thought it was about time. Let me tell you, that is about the nicest dry fly rod I have ever cast. It is smooth yet powerful; it handled big and small flies with ease. When I switched to the elk hair caddis to finish off the day, the Sage put my fly wherever I looked, which doesn't happen often when I am casting. If you can get your hands on one of these classic old Sage glass rods, I suggest you do. They are awesome!

My first trout on my newest Sage glass rod.

First Fish On A Fly

My brother-in-law is a great guy. He loves the outdoors. He loves science. He loves learning about new things. But up until a couple of weeks ago, he didn't seem all that interested in learning how to fly fish. But then we were sitting around the house after the Boy's birthday party, and I just happened to mention that I had a fly rod and reel and a couple of flies in the back of the van in case anyone wanted to learn how to cast. He jumped at the chance, so we went down to the lake and had a quick lesson.

He was surprisingly adept at casting - surprising,  not because he is uncoordinated, but because, in my estimation, 99% of beginners take a while to get the hang of it. I am not saying he was a perfect caster, but he was able to get 25-30 feet of line out most of the time, and the wind knots that he did get were not so snarly that they were impossible to untangle. He was doing great!

And, he seemed to be having fun, but it soon became obvious that he would be having more fun if he were to actually catch a fish. He got a few bites with the foam spider he had on the end of his leader, but he was not able to hook up with any of them. Still, he remained intense in his casting and in his searching for fish.

Finally, after a couple of hours or so of casting, he connected with his first fish on a fly: a respectable largemouth bass. He even proved to be a natural at holding it out as far as he could so that it looked bigger for the camera. What a pro! I don't know if he is hooked on fly fishing, but it was fun to help him have a successful first trip. Congrats Boyd!

Look, it's almost as big as his head! Wait a minute, so is his hand...