Some fishing on the eve of Christmas Eve

My wife and I had planned on spending the day together but her friend called and asked her to go to a movie and John called wanting to go fishing.

As my wife was leaving John showed up and we went to Holmes Creek Reservoir.  I got about three strike and John landed one trout.  It took us almost a 1/2 an hour to get to an area where there wasn’t any ice.  After that we drove over to Syracuse Pond.  I decided to use my purple Leechasaurus pattern and I landed a nice brook trout that was about 18 inches.  The brookie rose to strike indicator as soon as it hit the water.  I saw he was still there and stripped the leech in so he could see it and he struck it.  My first brook trout on the fly, and not only a fly that I tied but one I invented also.

John was diagnosed with strep throat yesterday so we called it quits and went home so he could rest.  I noticed that the trout were still rising to orange strike indicators on the surface of the lake.  When I tie on a dry fly they won’t strike at it.  I got some orange thread and feathers and I tied an orange royal coachman, I hope that works.

Cheers!

Few fish and a new pet

Today went fishing for about 4 hours I caught about seven trout, one of them was a brute, it was a rainbow trout about 20 inches long.  Fishing was very slow, it seemed the only things they were biting on was things that were orange.  Syracuse pond was fairly quiet but there was a small breeze it made it difficult to cast.

Utah DWR was there and for the second time in my life I had to show my fishing license, I saw one guy get a ticket, he was either poaching or didn't have his license.  It's funny because I've never been asked for my fishing license except for here in Utah.  It's nice to know that Utah takes their wildlife resources seriously.  I have seen the DWR write several tickets since I have been fishing here in Utah.  Most of the tickets that I have seen written have been for poaching fish.  I saw two guys have over 13 fish in their possession, at the pond they were fishing at the limit is two fish each.  They were nine fish over their limit, the only reason they stopped fishing was because they saw the DWR officer at the pond.  The funny thing was several of us had seen them poaching and someone had called the DWR poaching hotline.  Good for them!

Just in case you're curious about the four kittens that I caught a Glassman Pond, three of them are downstairs in my bedroom.  The little black kitten, my wife and I call her Shadow, is sitting beside me as I dictate this to Microsoft Writer.

Windows 7 has a really nice voice recognition feature built into it.  So far I have not had a touch my keyboard and I'm able to dictate this directly to my computer just by talking to it.  Which is kind of nice because it leaves both hands free for me to take care of Shadow.  Since we have tamed Shadow she is quite a rambunctious little kitten.  Right now she's purring very loudly and nibbling my fingers, I really have to watch those little claws.

Misty, Buddy, and Smokey are downstairs hiding.  Misty is still very afraid of me and hides when I walk in the room.  Smokey is a brave little kitten and leers at me from underneath the blanket.  Buddy is a different story, even though he is nervous of me he still lets me pet him and even pick him up.  When he does let me pick him up he goes limp and just lays in my arms.  So far he has not purred while I pet him.  I hope to find homes for all of them soon.

I had been looking at Holmes Creek Reservoir, I know that it is stocked by DWR but I don't think it's fished very much.  Holmes Creek not only has trout but it also has perch, walleye, bass, and bream.  I think I will try to go there soon and use wooly patterns.

Catching and Fishing at Glassman’s pond

Let me just say that I hate speech recognition.  I tried dictating this entire entry with Window’s 7 speech recognition program.  I was dictating how I finally caught Smokey today and also broke my reel.  It took me over an hour to dictate two whole paragraphs, and Microsoft wants us to believe that speech recognition is easier?

What makes it worse is that I was almost finished and I said the word “seat” and speech recognition deleted all of that work.

I hate speech recognition but I did catch Smokey and two fish!

Glassman’s Pond

     Not a bad place, I think I finally got the pond figured out. 

     There were four kittens dumped out at the pond so over the last week I have been trying to catch them.  I finally got a hold of a place that deals with cat rescue and they gave me food, a shelter, and medicine for the kittens.  Last Saturday I saw the ears of one of the kittens in the box.  So I quietly walked up behind the shelter and slapped a piece of wood over the doorway.  I caught three of them.  One of them, the black one, is sitting in a small cage next to me now, we haven’t decided what to call her yet but we have narrowed it down to Shadow or Domino.  Her name will probably be Domino because she has a white spot on her chest.  The other two cats, the grey tiger stripe and white one and the grey tiger stripe one just lay down together and refuse to acknowledge us.  Here are their portraits.

Here is Shadow before we caught her (my wife just informed me she is Shadow NOT Domino).  She is about 4 1/2 months old and very lovable.

This Misty, the wild one of the bunch, she is in my downstairs bedroom right now cuddled up against Buddy the grey tiger stripe.

This is Smokey, one of the smartest cats I have ever seen.  I put a trap out today to catch him.  I found him sitting on top of the trap.  Several people fishing in Glassman’s Pond have told me they heard him crying, he probably misses the other kittens.  I hope to catch him tomorrow with some pork chop in the trap.

Here Buddy is hiding from me under a blanket.  All the other kittens are adopted out, as soon as I tame them, except for poor Buddy.  It’s a shame because he is so cute and his markings are awesome.  At this point Buddy will let me talk to him and even rub him sometimes but that’s it.

    Since I have been trying to catch Smokey I have been fishing quite a bit at Glassman’s.  Early on this afternoon I got some strikes on a brown wooly leech so I kept using it.  I went to one of the docks they have setup for fishing and had a trout follow my fly as I was stripping it in.  It was a 10” rainbow trout and you could tell that it was looking for my fly, it would jerk its head around and was swimming in circles.  I dropped my fly back in the water behind the trout, he jumped on it and I set the hook.  There was a guy walking on the path behind me and he came up to look at the trout.  The fish was a mess, color missing from it, its seen better days.  I guess living in Glassman’s can be rough.

     Turned out that guy had fished Glassman’s in his youth and showed me something cool.  Near the North entrance to the pond is a small inlet, a pipe about 3 inches in diameter.  Some fifteen feet from the opening of the pipe was several trout feeding on something flowing out of the pipe.  I would drop my fly by them and work the fly until they struck the fly.  I would set the hook and land it.  Sight fishing for trout is awesome.  I ended up catching six trout from sight fishing.

     And no I didn’t catch Smokey, at least not yet.  I am going to try again tomorrow.

Easy Egg Patterns

     John and I went down to Syracuse Pond to try some egg patterns that I tied up, they worked great.  John caught the majority of the big fish, I would like to say that he out fished me because I was busy with the camera so that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

     You can see some of the fish we caught on the egg patterns and get an easy really way to tie perfect eggs every time.

     The day started out cold and wet and then turned hot and humid and then turned cold and wet again.  I don’t think the trout cared.

     Towards the end of the day the trout quit hitting on the eggs so I switched to a dry fly topper and a sow bug dropper and I caught trout! I actually caught two on the dry fly.

Another Lake Trout

     More fishing at Meadows Creek Pond.  We started out on the Weber River.  The river has really dropped from the last time I was there, its more like a stream, shallow and not very wide across.  We saw no trout so we went to our old standby.

     I did manage to catch a fairly decent Lake Trout.  The trout was really fighting in my net and had a damaged gill so I took a picture of it thrashing in my net.  She finally stopped moving around long enough for me to take the hook out of her mouth and let her go.  She was a beauty about 19” or so, but it was hard to tell because of her fighting.

   I am starting to work on another YouTube video that I will use as a geocache.  I found a really neat and easy way to tie the dreaded egg pattern.  It’s not a hard fly to tie but difficult to master.  I saw a neat way to tie the egg patterns quickly with no waste.  I was able to tie over 70 different egg patterns in 90 minutes with the tool!

Glassmans Pond and Meadow’s Creek

     John and I went to Glassmans Pond in Ogden this afternoon and with the exception of a very small corridor the pond was frozen over so we went to our old standby, Meadows Creek.

     I tied some wooly leech, wooly buggers, and pistol petes for Glassmans but we ended up using them at Meadows.  Look what I caught!

     A pair of really nice lake trout and in a creek too, go figure.  The first fish was about 17” and the second was about 19” long.

    The day was cool and the weather cold.

Headaches and Fishing

     I woke up this morning with a pretty bad headache, bad enough that when I looked outside it made my eyes and teeth hurt.  I took some Ibuprofen and suffered a bit.  John called and we decided to go fishing.  I was hoping that some fresh air and activity would help and it did a little.  When you have headaches that bad every little bit helps.

     Anyway we started off the day at Syracuse Pond but a but of High Schoolers pulled up.  Some of the the kids were wearing waders and had nets.  They waded out and started churning up the water, some other kid was screaming, “Ducks, ducks, ducks,” and others were yelling something about pop tarts.  We weren’t the only anglers leaving the pond.  I believe in higher education but how about teaching some respect?

     We ended up going to Meadows Creek, it was not a mistake, tons of fish.  On of the things I had problems with was ice building up in the guides of my rod, I took a picture of it.

That ice impedes casting and setting the hook and it builds up pretty fast, especially in 10 degree temperatures.  I kept having to dip the tip of my rod in the lake to thaw it out.

I caught tons of 14 and 15 inch rainbow trout and two big ones.

This lake trout is about 17” and fought the hardest of any trout I have ever caught.  I named him Waldo and put him back in the Creek.

Here’s a nice rainbow about 20”.  Funny thing about those huge rainbows, they don’t fight much until they see you then they fight hard but get tired pretty quickly. 

     I caught both of those big trout on a leechasaurus pattern.  John ended up with two huge lake trout and a 23” rainbow. 

Here’s something cool.  Not only do I like to fish but I also geocache quite a bit.  I decided to combine my hobbies and created a puzzle geocache that also shows how to tie different flies.  The first video is pretty freaking boring but at least I got it done.  When and if the cache is published I will put the link here, Here’s the video…

Tying and Fishing the Zebra Midge

Getting in some catching

     I dropped by Meadows Creek Pond with my wife yesterday afternoon and there was not a block of ice out there.  I figured that if Meadows Creek  was thawing then so was everything else.  I called John and we decided to drop by Syracuse Pond on tomorrow afternoon.

     Syracuse was about 3/4 frozen but there was a nice area near the east shore that was clear of ice.  I caught a 20 inch rainbow that was absolutely beautiful.  I had another guy on the shore use my camera to take a picture but I couldn’t find the pic on my camera, no problem there will be more fish to photograph.  I ended up catching about 20 rainbows and then we went off to Meadows Creek.

     At first I was using a rust brown wooly leech and I did pretty good at Syracuse but not so good at Meadows Creek.  We moved to the north side of the lake and that rust leech started to produce, it was great.  I tied on a purple leechasaurus and did even better, fish seemed to like the purple color.

     John ended up catching two big rainbow brutes and I caught one.  It was a very cold but I dressed for the weather so I was comfortable the whole time.  Dressing for this cold weather can make or break a trip.

Too much ice, and a lot of day left

     John called me up this morning and asked me if I wanted to go fishing, I said, “Yup.”  Meadows Creek was still locked up and Jensen’s was totally frozen over.  We decided to check out Maybey Pond in Clearfield hoping that maybe it wasn’t frozen, it was, frozen solid.

     We thought about Steed Pond, frozen.  Then we thought about Kaysville Pond and drove all the way there.  Kaysville had some spots with open water but there were people fishing in them.  So John dropped me off back at home and I stomped back into my house.

Happy Thanksgiving

     It was Thanksgiving and my wife was in the kitchen belting out food for all the guests that she invited over.  My wife is a “stay out of my kitchen” kinda woman so I went fishing, actually I went catching.

    Meadows Creek Pond was locked up tighter than a prison.  I guess when there is a little ice on the pond someone freaks out and locks it up.  I went to Jensen’s Pond in Syracuse.  Catching was good.

     When I got to Jensen’s about 3/4 of the lake was frozen over but I found a spot that pretty clear of ducks and seagulls and big enough to cast into.  When I looked at the water I could see some 20 trout swimming around, some were pretty good sized.

     A tried a black zebra midge, got a couple of strikes but didn’t land anything.  Same with a black marabou.  I tied on a #8 Pistol Pete and started getting strikes but like I’ve mentioned before, I’m not very skilled at setting the hook when I have to strip in a fly.  I could see and feel the trout striking the Pere but I couldn’t set the hook, I considered it good practice.

     Another fly fisher came over and we started talking, I paused while I we were discussing the trout swimming when I noticed my strike indicator moving.  I set the hook and ended up with one of the brood stock trout, pretty good sized but he got off the hook as I was bringing him in to the shore.  What’s cool is that it happened again.  Two big trout!

    It was a nice day, cold, but I dressed for it.  I went home and spent a nice Thanksgiving with my wife and a close friend.

    Happy Thanksgiving!

It’s alive!

     We have a blizzard coming in, according to the news we should get between four and eight inches and experience 60 mph wind.  As bad as the wind was blowing this morning I won’t be surprised if it gets to 60 mph. 

     I used the sexy chironomid first and caught some so I changed to a purple leechasaurus.  I tied another one this morning and added not only more weight but a black bead for the head.  At first, to my frustration, the leech pattern would not sink at all and just stayed on the surface.  I realized that the squirrel hair held onto hundreds of little air bubbles.  I put the leech under water and worked the air bubbles out with my hand and that did the trick.  I set my strike indicator some three feet above the leech and cast out.  I thought the Pistol Pete was heavy, the leechasaurus is heavy, I think that a rod and reel should be able to cast the leech pattern out without any worries.

     As with the Pete I was getting allot of strikes on the leech pattern but couldn’t set the hook.  My first stripping technique that I used was just to reel in the leech with no play, I got strikes.  There was one incident that was funny.

     I’ve never set my strike indicator so far above a fly before, usually I set it about 18 inches above the fly.  As I was reeling in leech parallel to the bank I noticed something bid in the water.  I stopped reeling in my fly and whatever it was sank out of sight so I started reeling in again and I saw it again.  I realized that what I was seeing was my leech pattern.  As my leech came up out of the gloom of the water I could see that a small trout was following it.  I’ve seen this before.  I’ve seen trout follow my fly to the shore before only to lose interest and swim away.  I’ve learned that when this happens if you jig your fly, add a little action to its movement, you can induce a strike and catch the fish.  Unfortunately, the leech was too close to the shore for me to try this and the fish swam away.

     So instead of just reeling in the fly I started striping it in.  I used three quick tugs followed by a smooth pull and then another tug or two.  I would break up the strip by occasionally stopping the strip altogether and just letting the leech settle.  It worked great I got lots more strikes and even caught a few trout.  I can’t wait to experiment more with the leechasaurus and the Pistol Pete.

     On a side note the blizzard was a bust.  Here in Roy it just snowed really hard and the wind blew but not 60 mph, more like 20.  We only got a little over an inch, not impressed with my first blizzard.  Tomorrow I will shovel the sidewalk, driveway, RV pad and then go fishing and freeze while I’m at it.

Waving hello

     Even though it was freezing this morning I decided I wanted to do some fishing.  It was cold, not just cold but bone chilling cold.  There’s something about 15 mph wind coming off a body of water that seems colder.  I’ve never been a fair weather anything so I went fishing.

     Last night I picked up a Pistol Pete and tied a couple.  People in that last couple of days have been using them successfully.  I did some research and found out the Pistol Pete is both a stillwater and stream pattern.  I tied a few and added them to my fly box.  The bad news is that they are very heavy, even though there was a stiff wind I was able to cast into it with the Pete.  Before I used the Pete though I decided to try the sexy chironomid.

     I noticed the waves on the lake were about six inches high.  Since I use a strike indicator above my fly I figured that the waves would move the chironomid up and down and make it appear more lifelike.  I wasn’t wrong on the waves, I was getting strikes left and right and even managed to land some 14 and 15 inch trout.

     Back to the Pistol Pete.  Good news is that it works great, I had tons of strikes on it.  More bad news is that you have to strip the Pete in and I am not very good at setting the hook when I strip in a fly.

     I also tried to use a new fly I call the Leechasaurus.  Basically it just a very big leech pattern that uses squirrel zonker strips.  I tied it this morning before I left.  I wanted the fly to sink but it didn’t, I need to add lots more weight to it.  I will try again tomorrow.

Lots of fishing and a new fly

     I have been fishing a couple of hours a day, its pretty good exercise because I like to walk around the lake as I fish just to see what’s biting.  I have almost been using size 10 sexy chironomids exclusively, and catching some really big fish.  Most of the trout are in the 12 inch range with only one or two less than 10 inches. 

     I’ve seen some really big trout pulled out of Meadows Creek and, unfortunately, some poaching.  The limit is two fish per person, two days ago two adults and a young boy got caught with 13 of them, what a waste.

     On the 16th I saw the DNR stock lots of lake trout.  I wanted to catch a lake trout on the fly so I tied a spoon fly.  It works great.  I am getting tons of strikes with it but I haven’t set the hook on a single fish yet.  I still need more practice with stripping and setting the hook.

     Here’s something fun that happened to me this morning.  I saw a 15 inch brook trout just floating near the surface less than a foot from the shore.  I could have just netted him.  I took my fly and dangled it in front of his mouth and he bit it.  After I set the hook I lifted him onto the bank and let him go.  There wasn’t much of a fight but I guess he thought that if a piece of food drifted by he was going to eat it.

     The wind was really blowing today as a cold front moved in.    But I still managed to land and release 10 good sized trout.

Later

I gotta get a bigger net!

     WOW, what a day!   This was one of those fishing days where you could relive it all over again.  Yesterday I saw the DNR stock Meadows Creek Pond with tons of huge trout; brookies and rainbows were in the mix.  If you look at the previous post there is a video showing how the fish are stocked. 

    The same evening I decided I wanted to catch one of these huge trout and did some research on the Internet.  What I found is that if you want to catch some huge trout you have to use some huge flies.  I tied a size 10 sexy chironomid which is much bigger than what I normally tie.

     As soon as I got to Meadows Creek Pond I tied on the huge chironomid.  While I was tying it on my tippet John caught a fairly large brute rainbow.  It was probably about 15 inches long, a nice one. Here’s a picture of it.  You can click on it to get a better look.

I cast my chironomid into the lake and started getting hits but couldn’t seem to set the hook.  I finally had a strike but it wasn’t like the strikes I normally get.  A normal strike causes the strike indicator to sharply drop under the water and then just as quickly surfaces.  One this hit, my strike indicator just slowly sank out of sight, it was kind of like my fly got stuck on a submerged log in a fast current.  I set the hook and felt a fish squirming.  I pulled the trout in and got almost no resistance at all, it was like I was pulling in a mass of algae or something.  When the fish surfaced we could see it was one of the huge trout that was stocked the previous day.  When the fish got his head above water and he saw me standing on the shore he really started fighting, and fighting hard!  John unhooked the net off of my belt and tried to scoop up the fighting trout.  The net, being made for trout 20 inches or less, was way too small.  After several tries John finally got the rainbow into the net and on shore.  Without John I would never have landed that trout, thanks John you are the man!  Here’s the hero photo, big huh?

     What’s cool is that on my next cast I hooked another big one, even bigger than the first.   There was another guy that I meet at the lake occasionally named Mike.  Mike looked over at the fish I was fighting and said, “Another one?”  Unfortunately this fish got off my hook and I never saw him again.

     Wouldn’t you know it, I cast that big fly out in the exact same place where I hooked the first two brutes and had another slow strike.  I set the hook and, with John’s help again, landed yet a second monster, even bigger than the first.  Here he is, screaming at me to let him back in the lake.

     He was a pretty feisty fish.  It was fun fighting him in, just to let you know John and I released all of those fish back into the lake.

     Here’s what was extremely cool, I hooked a fourth fish.  I got him to the bank several times but John couldn’t net him.   He broke my line and took my only huge sexy chironomid with him.  Later that day John and I dropped by my house and I tied six more chironomids but I didn’t catch any huge ones but I did land tons of 12, 13, 14 and 15 inch trout.

     Its true, when you want to catch some huge trout, you got to use some huge flies. 

     Here is a couple more pictures.

     As you can see from the last picture, I need a bigger net.

    See you on the bank.

Stocking Meadows Creek Pond

     OK, I got it figured out.  I used several software programs to get this video out and it took me several hours to edit it all.  I cropped all the less interesting parts out and removed the background cussing.  There were rainbows and brook trout in the mix.  You can see the size of the trout in the video.  Hopefully, this is a nice video of DNR stocking Meadows Creek Pond.

Cheers

New Record for Trout in One Day

      What an incredible day today!  My last day at work was yesterday so I am retired again.  I told my wife that I was going to fish all day long.

     When I got to Meadows Creek Pond in Roy, Utah I was told the fishing was slow.  At first I tied on a grey zebra midge and caught a few.  I tied on a black zebra midge and caught a few, then I tied on an olive fuzzy leech…and caught a few.  I have been working on a new pattern that I call the sexy chironomid.

     When I was TDY in Oman I found out that some of the Arabs there really like girls with bright red lipstick.  They used to ask me how it felt to work with such, “sexy girls.”    Normally, the chironomid pattern is tied with a rust brown body and silver tinsel for the body segments.  The fly tied with the rust brown body works, as a matter of fact, it works great.  If you have seen chironomid pupae in the water they are rust brown.  The only problem is that it’s good for four trout at best.  The tinsel and the body just come apart to the abuse of trout striking the fly, sometimes the trout strike really hard and it tears up the fly.  The sexy chironomid is tied with cherry red holographic tinsel for the body and silver wire for the segments.  I also glue the red tinsel down.  The silver wire helps hold the fly together if the trout are striking hard.  I glue down the tinsel because if the tinsel gets cut in half by a trout tooth and it’s not glued down the tinsel unravels and the trout won’t strike it anymore.  With the tinsel glued down the fly never unravels.  Today, I caught over 50 trout on ONE sexy chironomid.  As a matter of fact, I caught a total of 72 trout for the day.  A new one day record for me!

     There are some factors that helped me catch those 72 trout. 

     1)  I read the water.  While I was sitting on a rock wondering what fly to use next I noticed that it looked like it was raining on the water.  The rocks I was sitting next to weren’t wet and I wasn’t wet.  I also noticed that in the middle of every drop of what I thought were raindrops on the water was a bubble.  I got close to the water and saw bugs flying out of the bubbles and it dawned on me what was happening.  When aquatic insects begin to hatch out of the water their bodies fill with gasses.  The gasses help the pupae float to the top of the water and now I suspect the gasses also help the new fly propel out of the pupae case.  That’s when I realized there was a hatch in progress and decided to try the new sexy chironomid.

     2)  I played the chironomid.  When I say I played the chironomid I mean I pulled on my fly line to make the chironomid flop under the water.  When chironomid are hatching they squirm as they float to the surface, I added some movement to the fly.

     3)  I kept my fly line tight so that it was easier to set the hook.  Playing the chironomid does two things: helps me keep my line tight and flops the fly.

     4)  I stayed and fished.  The weather was frightful.  You could see a cold front moving into the warm front that was over us.  Its started hailing, raining, snowing and sleeting.  My fishing buddy John said, “Let’s go sit in the car.”  I told him I was there to fish, not sit in a car.  John and I had the lake to ourselves for several hours and the fishing was hot!

    Utah Department of Natural Resources (DNR) stocked the lake again while I was there.  I got some really kewl video of it too, really kewl.  As soon as I figure out how to edit out the cussing I will post it to my youtube.com account.  Anyone know how to beep out the cuss words?  Oh, and it wasn’t me cussing, I don’t cuss, it was the people around me staring, and cussing, in disbelief at the size of the trout that was being put into the lake.

     Here’s a few pics of some of the trout that I caught.

    One last thing, I don’t think John would forgive me unless I put in the pictures of the lake trout that he caught.  It was a really nice trout that he caught on a black spinner.

Stocking Stuffer

I had an appointment at the hospital this morning, part of the test requires me to fast for 14 hours. I don't do good fasting not to mention getting three shots, I don't feel very good right now. After my appointment I went home and slept about an hour and then decided to relax and go fishing at Meadows Creek Pond.
Chronomids were not working well so I switched to a fuzzy leech and started getting tons of strikes. I hope it was because I wasn't feeling well but I couldn't set the hook to save my life. I ended up landing a total of 14 rainbow trout, not too shabby for a sick boy in three hours of fishing.
I got to see one really cool thing though. As I was landing one trout I could hear people yelling, "Did you bring any big ones?" and a bunch of other things. I looked over and a white square truck was pulling up to the pond. It was the stocking truck full of feisty new rainbow trout! They opened up the pipes; you should have seen the trout falling into that lake. Some of the trout must have knew they were going out the tunnel and gathered some speed because they flew up and out of the water stream and gracefully nose dived into the lake. It was quite a sight to see.
Before I left to go to the lake I picked up my video camera but set it back down because I didn't think I would need it. Note to self: Don't forget the video camera.

New Record 31 Trout!

On the 27th my wife had a TDY in MS for a couple of days. I dropped her off at the airport and went fishing. My first stop was the community lake in West Bountiful. I ended up catching 15 trout on a chironomid and olive wooly leech.
I finished the day at Meadows Creek with a total of 31 trout, one was 18". Nice day but I missed my wife.

21 trout at Meadows Creek Pond

It was raining pretty heavy in Roy this afternoon when I got off work. I know that when it was raining in Arkansas the fish were biting. For the first hour I only got two strikes and didn't land any. I walked around the lake and found a couple of ladys that caught three. At the time I had changed from a chironomid to a wooly leech but I didn't get a single strike off the leech. I changed to a royal wulff with a chironomid dropper. The dropper was only about a foot and a half from the wulff. At first I couldn't set the hook but I got into it and started landing them. I think I probably set the hook on about 30% of the strikes I get. When I don't use a strike indicator it goes down to about 5%.
At any rate chironomids work great around the northern Utah in the fall.

Chironimids!

I went out to Meadows Creek Pond this morning, I got a late start but managed two hours of fishing. I set a new record, 15 trout! The very first trout I caught was on a olive green wooly leech, the rest on #20 chironimids. Last night I found a web site: http://www.flyfishersrepublic.com/tactics/fishing/chironomid-tactics/ that wrote about the chironimid life cycle and how to fish with them, and they worked great!
I will be fishing this evening with my Webelos, gonna be fun.

More lessons learned today

You might be wondering why I fish so much at Meadows Creek Pond. Two reasons: nothing enhances desire like success and its good practice. Today I caught 11 fish one was at least 20 inches. A new record for fishing there.
Here's what I learned:
1) If you use a dry fly as an indicator and miss a strike you must cast your line again to get your dry fly above water. You don't have to recast if you use a thingamabobber. Sometimes I use the smallest thingamabobber I can.
2) I need to learn stripping techniques. Several times today I was reeling in my line to move to another area and ended up catching a trout. When I tried to hand strip I caught nothing. When I tried to replicate the movements of reeling in my fly with hand stripping I got some strikes. I really need to practice on setting the hook on hand stripping.
3) When you set the hook on a trout you need to keep the pressure on the fish. 8 times today my fly fell out of the fishes mouth while he was in my net, made getting the hook out easier but it sure shows that if I didn't keep the pressure on the fish he would have gotten off.
4) Trout are where I expect them to be and where I don't expect them to be. I found an area where I didn't think any trout would be. I gently lowered a wooly leech into the water. At least five trout rose up to strike at the leech, it looked like a school of piranhas.
5) Show a sense of urgency when I fish, i.e., get ready to set the hook no matter what. When I had those five trout attacking my fly if I had been prepared I would have hooked one.
All in all a fun couple of hours today.

Lessons learned

I went fishing at Meadows Creek Pond again, 10 fish, one was a 3 foot rainbow, he was huge. I caught fish on dry flies and wet flies. Chironmids, scuds, elk hair caddis, and royal coachman. I had a very fun time. here is what I learned today.
1. Nothing can beat using a dry fly as an indicator, nothing. I have been using thingamabobbers and I have suspected that I have been missing some very light strikes. I have seen trout strike my wet fly and the bobber not even move, I saw it today several times. The wet fly as an indicator is extremely sensitive and even caught a very little chub. I don't think I will be using a thingamabobber again.
2. Its fun to experiment. I ran out of wooly leeches and just started using whatever I had in my fly box and started caught some trout on them too.
3. I loose allot of flies by experimenting.
4. Fish everywhere. Just because I don't think trout are there doesn't mean the trout aren't there.

7ofclubs

Fishing Success

No posts for a while. I made a trip back home to visit my Grandmom and a host of other members of my family. It was great to be back home for a bit.
This evening my wife and I went to Meadows Creek Pond in Roy. WOW, did I have a good time. I like to fish because it gets me out of the house and into some fresh air. I usually don't care if I catch a fish or not but this evening was incredible! The most fish I have ever caught at Meadows is two. I have had tons of strikes but haven't been able to land very many. I think I know why.
In the past several weeks I read an article about the importance of fishing with a straight leader and I didn't give it much thought. Several days ago I kept running into an advertisement on KSL.com classifieds about hand furled leaders and why they are superior. One of the things the ad brought up was that the furled leader doesn't need to be straightened. I did some further research and found a web page on how to make your own furled leaders (http://www.flatslander.com/leaderarticle.html).
To make a long story short I made one of these leaders and even went as far as to make sure my tippet was straightened before I started fishing. As I wrote earlier my previous record at Meadows was two rainbow trout, this evening I caught eight trout, more than four times my record. It should have been 11 but I lost three as I was pulling them in. I also missed about a dozen or so more strikes because of not paying attention or just couldn't set the hook.
I think the straight leader and straight tippet are why I caught so many fish. When a tippet or leader is rolled up on the spool of the reel they stayed curled when you cast the line on the water. The curled line acts like a spring and absorbs the shock when you try to set the hook. With a straightened line I was able to set the hook more effectively.
I suggest you check out that web site on the handmade furled leader, it worked great.
I am off most of next week and my wife mentioned that I should do some fishing. :)

On a side note when you get successful boy do people start crowding you out where you are fishing. I probably had about 6 kids fishing right on top of me, at one point I even locked hooks with a kid who was fishing less than five feet away from me.

Trout Pump?

I found an article titled, "That Sinking Feeling" at
http://www.bcadventure.com/adventure/angling/protalk/rowley/sinking.phtml. In the article the author talks about how he caught a trout and then used his
trout pump to pump the stomache contents out so he could see what the trout were eating. I guess the idea is to see what the trout are eating and then use flies similar. I have heard of gutting the first fish you catch and then looking in the stomache but this takes the cake. Pump the trout's stomache so you can release it? I thought the whole idea of catch and release was to do no harm to the fish so they can get bigger or make more fish.
I have heard and read articles about using a small net or seine to poke around under rocks to see what aquatic insects there are, but I find it hard to believe that someone is willing to pump a trout's stomache to catch more fish. To me, that's crazy.

More Fishing at Roy Pond

I went to practice my roll casting and do some fishing. It just so happened that I setup next to a guy named Dale who is a fly fishing instructor on Hill AFB. He gave me some pointers and I ended up catching two 10" rainbow trout. He had several observations for me:
1) I need to set the hook more gently. I had about 20 strikes but I'm a long time bass fisherman, I really set the hook.
2) My roll casting technique is fine. Dale seems to think that its probably my rod.
3) I need to fish more. :)
The fly I was using was a simple green leech pattern on a #10 hook beneath a thingamabobber. The fly was set between 18 inches and 2 feet deep. I just cast it out and let it set when the bobber went under you set the hook.
Dale's setup was different than mine. He had a very short leader, maybe a total of 3 feet that he makes himself. To the leader he attaches a single brass swivel and to that the tippet. Worked great, I can't wait to try it at Camp Kiesel.
I was also invited to teach Plant and Animal identification at Camp Aspen Ridge in Idaho on the 8th and 9th of October. There is a huge lake on the Camp that is full of brown trout, sounds like a good time.

Roy Pond

Yesterday I went to Jensen's pond in Syracuse. There is a walking path around the pond so I didn't want to backcast. When I tried to roll cast it just wouldn't happen. I could get my line out to about 20 feet but my leader would just roll up and and in a ball. It's really frustrating because I was able to backcast out to 60 feet the other day without any problem. At this point I am larger inconsistent with my fly fishing. I went to Angler's Den in Roy and had the guy show me how to roll cast.
In the evening I went to Roy Pond to practice roll casting. My wife was there and helped out allot. I was finally able to roll cast consistenly. There was a another guy fishing down from me using tackle. He caught four trout while I he was talking to another guy. I didn't catch anything but I did get two good strikes. As I was leaving I asked the kid who was standing next to the successful fisherman if he knew what the other guy was using. Turns out the guy was using a very white rubber fish that looked allot like a marabou. When I got home I tied four white marabous and a white scud.

A couple of flies tied

This evening I was able to tie 7 flies in about 2 1/2 hours. Keep in mind that I was watching TV while I was doing this. I usually tied when the TV got boring. At any rate, I am not a production tier.
I tied 3 zub bugs in sizes 10, 14, and 16. I used #70 black thread, peacock swords for the tails and peacock herl for the body. I wrapped the bodies in silver tinsel. I used brown hackle for the legs and a single trimmed duck chest feather for the wing case. They all had 3/32" brass beads for the heads and weight.
I also tied 4 Chironomid midges in sizes 12 x 2, 14, and 16. One of the size 12 midges was tied with silver tinsel instead of wire, I want to see if that makes a difference to the fish. I used #70 black thread, for the tail I used olive marabou feathers, bronze tinsel for the body and silver wire for the ribbing. I used brass beads for the heads, white yarn for the gills, and just a touch of peacock herl behind the bead for stability.
I plan on fishing them very slowing from the bottom with a hand twist retrieve.
Pictures to follow.

Mastering the Basics

I found an article posted by David Archer on 3 May 2007 at http://www.fishingtips101.com/2007/05/mastering_the_basics_of_stillwater_fly_fishing.html The article is about the differences between stillwater and stream flies and is very enlightening.
The article starts out by talking about the water's PH, the anatomy of the lake, cover, targeted waters, etc. All pretty neat info and interesting but I am interested in fishing not being a biologist.
In the next couple of days I am going to tie:
Chironomid midge
Denny's Seal Bugger
Denny's Stillwater Nymph
Denny's All Purpose (AP) Emerger, and finally
Gold-Ribbed Hare's Ear
Zug Bug
Sparkle Shrimp
Pearl Shrimp.

There is also a community pond near my house called Jensen's Nature
Pond. The pond is routinely stocked with rainbows, I can practice my
casting and retrieval techniques there.

Camp Kiesel Lake

Camp Kiesel's lake is fairly small but holds hundreds of brown trout. Several weeks ago I was at Kiesel for training and walked down to the lake, when the sun came up over the mountains and shined down in the lake I saw the trout, hundreds of them. Some of them were easily in the 24" range. Camp Kiesel's lake can be seen on Google Earth at N 41° 18.898 W 111° 34.632.


Location: Camp Kiesel Lake
Fish Caught: 14" Brown Trout, SE bank of lake about 2' from shore
Fly Used: #10 Brass bead head, black marabou tail with flash,
black/green flash body, weighted, black hackle, used an SI.
Time: 1030
Notes: Fish hit the fly so hard he set the hook. I was retrieving the
the fly intending to move to another location and was not intently
using any retrieval technique, quite a surprise.

Fish Caught: 12" Brown Trout, SE bank of lake about 5' from shore
Fly Used: #10 Brass bead head, black marabou tail with flash,
black/green flash body, weighted, black hackle. No SI.
Time: 1100
Notes: Casting into a school of about 10 trout of different sizes. The
fish was following the fly and was about an inch away from the fly
when I started stripping the line slowly, when I jerked the line
the fish struck. First time I have ever seen a fish strike
anything that I was fishing with, awesome experience.


Unsuccessful flies: #10 green scud with clear shell and olive floss. Green
flash antennas and tail.
#10 hopper.


Flies to try: Nymphs.

The reason for this blog

I recently started fly fishing and had what I consider my very first successful fly fishing trip. I have been struggling to fish the various rivers in Northern Utah with extremely small success. Today, 06Sep10, Tom Williams and I went to a small lake next to Causey Resevoir. The small lake has no name but sits on a Boy Scout camp called Camp Kiesel. I caught two brown trout, 14" and 12" respectively on a black wooly bugger with a brass bead head. After I got home and did some Internet searching I found out that lake fly fishing is very different from fly fishing for trout in a stream or river.
I need a place to log my successses and failures with fishing in both stillwater and moving water. I originally intended to log in a notebook but realized that Internet blogging was easier to keep up with and search when I need too. Anyway, here we go...