Heaven is a Caddisfly

Messin’ about with George on Friday night, then returning with Schroeder last night to the same streamside locale, gave me a full weekend while certain company was making a familial visit out of state.
My hall pass was given to me freely, and I ran like the wind to Fink’s Creek with a strung-up rod and plenty of caddisflies. Bullwinkle decided to join us both nights and we graciously stepped past, behind and way out of his way. There is so much green vegetation right now it’s tough to pass up this alpine stream in June. The Green Drake hatch is going strong, and there are many Spinners (adult mayflies) out on the water. The fish go NUTS for these insects, and as my fishin’ mates would concur, it makes feeding time a spectacular event to behold.
I fished with my Dad on Tuesday night, and instead of the fish eating, we were literally consumed by billions of small caddisflies. We managed to hook up with a few nice browns and cutthroats, see some deer and have an amazing time on the river together. The fishing was tough, but it was rewarding for me to spend some time with Dad.
George is a good stick, indeed. Growing up in Victoria, George learned to fly fish about ten years ago. Tasmania is where he longs to fish the most, though he has spent time in his college years in Nottingham, England and Melbourne, Australia, where he currently lives. If you ever have the opportunity to spend time with an Aussie, I highly recommend it. The accent is wacky, but completely fascinating, and you will find most Aussies (New South Wales’ residents commonly excluded) are pretty laid back and have pleasant personalities.
The hatch that evening was quite heavy. There was a massive spinner fall of drakes, mixed in with a few small caddis. The competition was grueling: Who of us would catch the smallest trout? Loser buys dinner afterwards. “King’s to you George”, who landed what we estimated as a 3 inch cutthroat, yet brilliant with cantaloupe orange coloration and light cutt markings under his bill. We hit Desert Edge Pub & Brewery afterwards and threw down Turkey sandwiches, but he demanded he foot the bill. George is a class act.

This could be the best picture I have ever taken, and quite on accident. The brookie was wriggling about when I was trying to take a still pic, but his action and his swinging caudal tail really tell its own story: “Get this fly OUTTA my mouth!” Notice the red spots, surrounded by blue halos. This species is TRULY remarkable!

This is the prettiest fish I have caught in a week. I love the blue spot just northeast of his mouth, on the gill plate.

Fishing with Schroeder is always a fun time. He was stoked when he learned he would be fishing a new spot last night. I guaranteed him we would only catch brookies, cutts and cuttbows. You should see how animated his face is when he catches fish. And it’s refreshing to know that someone is perpetually jonesin’ all the time about fly fishing as much as I am...in fact, he may be even more! We fished Fink’s all night, and skipped my all-time favorite section when the sun was dropping and Bullwinkle came out to greet us. The moon was at half last night as the heavenly bodies of Jupiter, Venus, Saturn and the massive Class M Red Supergiant Antares guided us back to our car after wetting the line and sharing time with our salmonid and char brothers and sisters.
Spending the night during Caddis hatches are my favorite of all that fly fishing has to offer.

The Hatch Revisited

At the shop, we have a blog that we are supposed to occasionally write in, and therefore, spill all of our secrets about our days of fishing.
I have a blast while reading through my fellow employees tackling big fish, but I never want to divulge of my secret spots.
As a local flyfisherman, I have been blessed with many private water fishing opportunities. I constantly fish the Upper Provo, on the Diamond Bar Ranch, as my friend Phil has allowed me to be on his property for the last 5 years. I have pulled out 3 fish over 22 inches, all brown trout. Thanks Phil!
I have access to the Wright ranch on Tabiona, which I consider the “Montana of my youth” as has been stated by Norman McLean. In fact, I fished it today in the thickest Green Drake and Golden Stonefly hatch of my life.
I fished it with a high school buddy, Dave K. As we reminisced about “cruisin” in either the Chevette (don’t be jealous!) or the Scirocco, pickin up on ladies on State Street, playin hoops on Donner Hill, listening to Milli Vanilli and Led Zeppelin (I’m quite the contrastical individual when it comes to musical taste) and our favorite girls at that time, we politely rope-a-doped on brown and cutthroat trout, which happened to be gorging themselves on every fly thrown their way.
We fished Impearsonators, Half-down Goldens, Micro Mayfly emergers, and Platte River Spiders. We caught plenty of fish, and more than I can count on my fingers and toes…but really, I just wanted one.



This is a Green Drake adult. They are so beautiful. Yes, bugs need love too!



Bunyan Bug, Stonefly #2 ;)


Happy Fishing to All and to all a Big Cutt!

Memoirs of the Savanna

My brother sent me amazing footage of a herd of Cape Buffalo, three Nile Crocodiles, and a pride of lions. After watching endless footage of animals attacking and hunting their prey, I am oft reminded of an experience in the Maasai Mara a few years ago. I bring this up only because it was a good reminder of how sheltered some people really are…
It was our second day on the Maasai Mara, Kenyan’s Nature Preserve that magically becomes the Serengeti once you cross the Tanazanian border, and we were watching hippos and large Nile crocs on the Mara River. A small Nile Monitor was making its way towards the bottom of the gulch, and a 6 foot immature croc was inching towards this large lizard in stealthy fashion. Within about 3 feet from the water’s edge, the crocodile is poised to make its move, where it will potentially snatch the lizard off the rock and have himself a fine dinner.
Enter “Lisa Zoobie” (the names have been changed to protect the innocent, stupid and otherwise entirely naïve), a BYU co-ed, who naturally loves watching movies like “What is Real?” “Our Heavenly Father’s Plan”, and “The Prodigal Son”, while sipping her Caffeine free Diet Coke and playing Pictionary while living at Helaman Halls or Deseret Towers on campus. No doubt, she has eaten countless amounts of steak, chicken and fish over the years, but she is yet to see a real life animal attack its prey in the name of starvation and hunger. Lisa perceives the lizard will be toast momentarily, so she throws a rock at the lizard to scare it away. No meal for the crocodile, no video opportunity for the rest of us. It was almost the last mistake Lisa would ever make in this lifetime…
Out of the bushes springs a Kenyan military officer, fully equipped with an automatic machine gun, and begins to rebuke the absolute hell out of Lisa. Rightfully so. I was secretly cheering him on, as he yelled at her and told her that while she was off painting her nails in her so-called protected life, that animals have been hunting each other for thousands of years and she had absolutely NO right to change the Circle of Life. I think she did it just to protect her virgin eyes from seeing one animal eat another. Poor Lisa. She heard it from all of the rest of us, after GI Joe went back to his job of protecting the animals of the sanctuary. It’s good to know an act like that warrants a shot to the head with a bullet the size of my middle finger. If only you could have heard her for the rest of the day, talking about how dangerous the soldier was, and if she had a right to call her lawyer and press charges for defamation of her character…we all wanted to strangle her. In all fairness, the soldier was entirely within his job description to do as he pleased. In Kenya, they shoot first, THEN ask questions. In Kenya, they don’t have much more than their wildlife viewing opportunities and their Big Game hunts to bring in any kind of income. The land is dry, but the wildlife is bounteous. In my time in East Africa, I have been pleased to see three lionesses bring down a Cape Buffalo (while chillin in a Matatu, in a rainstorm, listening to Enya); a cheetah running full speed and overtaking a Grant’s or Thomson’s Gazelle; and a leopard dining on an Impala, 20 feet up in a Sausage tree. Oh yeah, I almost peed on a Gabon Viper, not 20 yards from the Mara River.
I don’t know what ever happened to Lisa Zoobie, but I remember she got numerous wake-up calls into the steaming manure pit that is called life for most people in Kenya. Her perspectives of how life is tough to live when you scrap for food on a daily basis reminds me of my first visit to Kenya, and helped me realize that my everyday life is a blessing from on High. We should all remember the privileges we have to seek out scholastic advancements, pursue financial opportunities and do our best to make life joyful. But we should also remember that approximately 5/6 of the world has it tougher than us, and though all things are relative, we need not complain about our dire living situations.
You should have seen the dilation of Lisa’s eyes when that soldier bolted from the bushes straight at her…priceless.

"Who planted all these damn Russian Olives?"

The wind started promptly after I tied on my Letort #14, and I headed into the short microbursts that Ol’ Mama Nature occasionally gives us. The right bank, a mere 80 feet from where I stood, was my fly’s intended destination. I gave the hopper a light dusting of the fanny, and placed my left foot about half a meter ahead of my right foot, and commenced with the double-haul. Fishing a Boron IIx in the wind is truly excellent, especially with a 5-weight, even though it’s only an 8’6 rod. This green stick has just enough power to turn over large flies, even in the wind.

Within three false casts (I’m a minimalist when it comes to the threat of shoulder muscle fatigue) I had enough line and nine feet of leader to lay down Mr. Letort and try and tempt a fish to rise…

It has been just over a year from this time that I tied on what I classify to be the second most effective Caddis pattern on earth…the Palomino Caddis, tied by my friend, Cheech. With just enough material on the skybound side of the hook, this fine little artifical specimen has tricked many a wary trout in the last 365 days. It boasts a rusty cinnamon hue and a small tuft of feather that sits perfectly in the surface of the water and tempts even the cleverest brown trout. Yes, cleverest is indeed a word, for you ever-editing English nerds!

No fish this time around, leastways on this stretch of river. The Lower Ranch can be tricky, and can throw even a master angler off. And I do not consider myself a master, nor will I ever refer to myself in that light. There are far too many who have gone before, only to be outwitted by those pea-brained salmonids.
Save only the brutish Leven brown that Bobby scared up from the depths of the Mother Hole, and the ever sly trout that hit my Hemingway after a precise downstream cast just above the Forbidden Pool, our luck had run dry from the day. However, I do not remember a day that could compare in the sun’s rays, the balmy 68 degrees at 7300 ft, or the green foliage of budding Aspens and towering Ponderosas than that of yesterday, chasing trout on the South Slope.

Colorado River Cutthroat, Eastern Brookies and Browns “how do you know they’re German browns? Do they have little red swastikas?” (a joke I coined when I was 22 years old, fishin on the Logan with Dave) made the potential dinner menu, but as instructed by those wiser than us, we released all our fish, to live on and fight another day.

Perhaps I will give the Russian Olive Run another shot in a few weeks, when the stones and drakes come out to play. Until then, I can only visualize large trout bellies, bluebird skies, and enough Mountain Dew to make even a camel think twice about his next pit stop. My heart belongs to the slopes of the High Uintas, and perhaps, one day when I’m lucky, it will belong to someone very special.

Good Ol' Roy

One of my favorite lines from the cinematic world comes to full fruition when Roy Hobbs relaxes in a thoughtful pondering stare and calmly says, “I Love baseball.” The Natural is an all-time classic, and I think about the way Redford exclaims the joy of his life so solemnly.

This is the way I feel about flyfishing. I don’t believe I could ever leave the mountains, as I have stated before. Mountain streams, great rivers and just the presence of water send chills down my back. I still cannot believe my good fortune in landing a job at a fly shop. In just a short month, I have learned about how good rods are made, how a drag works on a reel, more knots than I care to mention, entomology, and the realization that there are others just like me who love fly fishing more than life itself!

I feel so free in knowing that I LOVE getting up every morning to go to work and feeling so passionate about my surroundings, confidence in my ability to communicate with customers, relive fishing experiences with others, hearing wild stories of both maddening frustration coupled with extreme joy, and working in a calm atmosphere. Here’s the great thing: It does NOT feel like work.

The habits I have created at work have crossed over into my living situation as well. I am constantly cleaning my bathroom, vacuuming my floor about twice a week, folding clothes perfectly, and tying flies for about two hours every night.

I also treasure my time to fish, and love having any opportunity I can get to cast new rods, test out new reels, and continue to educate myself about running a successful fly fishing business.

The Green Drakes will be poppin soon, as will the Golden Stoneflies. I will write again when these gorgeous mayflies make their presence known. Until then, Fish On!

Stimis & Hoppers & Hizzy Spizzies, O My!

Paul: Norm, what do you want to be when you grow up?
Norm: A minister, I guess. Or a professional boxer.

Paul: You think you could beat Jack Johnson?
I think you could.
I'd lay a bet on it.


Norm: What are you gonna be?
Paul: A professional fly-fisherman.

Norm: There's no such thing.

Paul: There isn't? I guess a boxer.

Norm: Not a minister?
Paul: Heh!




Thus is my new reality. While I wait for all to be good in the realm of massage therapy, I am filling my daytime hours with a job I can’t believe they pay me for down at Western Rivers Flyfisher.

Fly fishing has always been a heartfelt love, passion, obsession, or whatever you want to call it. I have thought about working down at the Shop for a long time, and just now, the timing seems absolutely perfect, and I have been given a full-time job in which I can learn about the industry, improve my skills as a fisherman, and also work as hard as I can to establish a good reputation for Western.
It’s pretty exciting that I am able to immerse myself in countless products of clothing, rods, reels, waders, fly tying material, and get to know so many wonderful people in the area who love to fly fish almost as much as me!
I basically have one day during the week that I get out and fish, and it is JUST what I need after talking all day to other people who get to fish. Yes, I realize I was in their shoes just two weeks ago, but I love the education I am getting from working in the shop and learning all about our products and

I wanna go fast...

There is just something about a fast car that is amazing to me.
Just yesterday as T-roy and I were driving home from the ranch, we saw the Aston Martin Vanquish, the dynasty coupe from James Bond lore. This car was SO beautiful, and when I tried to get a close up picture with my camera phone, the driver sped off and left me in the dust. Ironic? I was already doing 80 mph just to catch up to him. And VROOOM! Off in a hurry he went. I never did get my photo. 

Someone sent me an article about the fastest car in the world. Right now, the fastest car in the world is called a 2007 Bugatti Veyron, and it sports 1001 hp, and can go 407 km/h, or 253 mph. That’s faster than most Cessna one prop airplane can fly. And it’s certainly faster than any other car. Daytona, Formula 1, even my old Scirocco.

Here is the video in its entirety. They have set it up to the cinematic score of Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace. It is hard to get an idea of how fast this car is going…until you can see the trees in the background vanishing into nothingness.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x157l2_bugatti-veyron-at-top-speed

It may take a while for it to load, but I believe it is certainly worth your wait. Just listen to a lot of the specs on the car, such as: This car has 10 radiators, meanwhile most cars only have ONE. Have fun.