Thursday, December 23, 2010

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.

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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!

Friday, December 17, 2010

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.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

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!

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

Monday, December 06, 2010

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.

Thursday, December 02, 2010

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.

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   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!

Wednesday, December 01, 2010

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!

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     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.