Monday, September 13, 2010

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.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

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.

Thursday, September 09, 2010

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.

Tuesday, September 07, 2010

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.

Monday, September 06, 2010

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...