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.