Rod Wrapper

    I finished my rod wrapper on Thursday evening and waited for the parts that were glued together to finish drying.  Its not bad, here’s the pic.

It cost me around $20 to make.  I can move the rod and thread holders around as I need to.  After wrapping a hook keeper on my existing rod and watching some videos of wrapping on Youtube I decided to add some more features.  I had trouble keeping my thread tight as I was wrapping the hook keeper so I think I need to add some eye hooks and springs to help with tension, I also want to add a thread guider.

     Here is a picture of the hook keeper that I wrapped on my rod.

This is a 4 weight 2 piece rod that I got with my first fly rod kit.  My first kit was one of those $50 specials that I got at the BX on Hill AFB.  I have already upgraded my reel but I am still using the same old rod.  I decided to try a two color wrap.  It took me about six tries before I got a wrap to hold but I was able to do both wraps in one pass.  Total time with all eight wraps was about 45 minutes.  After I finished the wraps I used some color sealer to protect the color of the thread.  Unfortunately, I used some 5 minute epoxy to seal the threads that I got from Wal mart.  Big mistake.  I don’t know if you can see it in the photo but the epoxy globbed up as I was putting it on the threads.  No biggie though, its only a $25 dollar rod and now I have a hook keeper on it so that I don’t damage my cork grip anymore.

Kaysville Ponds

 

     We finally made it out here.  I was at the truck still putting my fly rod together when Copper John called out.  He had hooked one of the brood stock they have been placing around the area.  I have to admit that I was surprised because the stocking reports by the UWR doesn’t show any brute stocking recently.  The trout was really colorful.  I caught two trout myself not any brutes but still some nice trout, at least I wasn’t skunked there. 

     Kaysville ponds is a collection of three ponds lined up North to south.  John and I fished the first and second ponds from the North.  I only had one hit on my wooly leech in the first pond and I landed him.  At the second pond I had some really big hits but I was more interested in watching the geese than I was fishing I guess.  I need to concentrate more, I wasn’t there to watch geese I was there to fish.  The edges of the ponds are really muddy.

    John was using a brown #6 pistol pete, with medium silver wire ribbing.  I was using a #14 green wooly leech with a silver bead head.

Huge trout at Meadow Creek Pond

   

     I was at Meadows Creek Pond stripping in some wooly leeches, didn’t do too bad.  I was curious if the wooly patterns would work as well there as they did at Syracuse Pond, they do.

    It looks like the UWR has been busy stocking the pond with some brutes.  I saw about eight of them at the inlet, here is a cool video of some of them.

Stocked Big Trout Swimming In Meadows Creek Pond

Pistol Petes, Wooly Buggers, and Wooly Leeches

 

     What a day!  It took us a couple of hours to figure out what they were biting on but the day at Syracuse Pond turned out great.  For some reason the trout were not biting on wooly patterns under a strike indicator but take off the strike indicator and strip the pattern in slowly with about one foot strips and they would take it.  Sometimes the trout would just barely bump the fly, sometimes they would hit it hard and really pull and other times it was like they were taking the fly in their mouths and try to swim away with it.

     At any rate the day belonged to Copper John with 17 trout over 16” and two smaller trout.  I ended up with seven trout over 16” and a whole host of smaller ones.  There was a pretty good mix of species: Brookies, Rainbow, Brown, Lake, and Splake were all caught today!

     Here are some pictures of some of the trout we got.

Oh, Just Fishing Around

     Today, I picked up Copper John and we hit the Odgen River.  I wore my new waders and wading boots.  Man, do waders rock.  I was able to get right down onto the trout in the river, too bad I didn’t catch any.  There is still plenty of brute planters on the Odgen but they didn’t want anything I tossed at them.  One cool note, I did get to see a ghost.  As Copper John and I were leaving we were showing another guy where the fish were when a big white flash streaked by in the water.  Everyone was saying it had to be an albino trout but I thought it might be a whitefish.  John said it was too yellow to be a whitefish.  I tried for about 15 minutes to catch it but got no bites.

     We left the Odgen and drove to Meadows Creek Pond.  I caught a ton of little rainbow trout on a brown pistol pete with gold beads and propeller.  John was getting lots of hits but caught nothing.  I asked him if he wanted to go to the pond in Syracuse.

     At Syracuse I caught a huge brown trout on that pistol pete without a strike indicator.  John put on a pistol pete with silver beads and propeller and started reeling them in, about 8 brutes in all, ranging from 16 to 24 inches.  He needed it to because he’s been stressed out.   

     I have been thinking about building my own rod for some time now.  I have done some research and think that I will build an entry level rod.  I plan on logging my progress.  I will also build my own tools to make the rod.  Angler’s Den here in Roy have everything to build the rod except for the blank.  I think I will buy a cheap one off eBay, it probably will be better than the one I have now.

     My wife is going to spend some time with a friend of hers for a couple of hours tomorrow.  John told me to tie some red egg patterns for the trip but won’t tell me where we are going.  He called it, “his secret spot.”  It sounds really cold.

Another Blog Started

     I have been posting the pictures of the flies I tie, and some videos of how I tie them to this blog.  I found that it was pretty difficult to find the pictures or videos when I needed them.  I decided that I needed a way to store the information I have gathered on the flies that work and how I’ve tied them.  Another blog seemed like a perfect way to do this.  You can find information on tying the flies at:  http://7ofclubsflytying.blogspot.com/