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.