Bass, Bastards and Bratwurst

  
April 17, 2011  

Bass Were caught
(and pictures were taken with a cell phone) 

Bastards Harassed us  

Bratwurst Were thoroughly enjoyed

What a beautiful day to be on the water Sunday was. I caught a ride with a fishing buddy and met up with some other guys at the access, took a couple rigs down to our take out and hit the water. Fishing started slow for everyone but picked up as the day went on. The weather was perfect, the river was perfect, the food was delicious and there was even excitement. An over zealous land owner and his buddy with a gun. The landowner liked us so much he visited us twice at two different spots and brought a couple of sheriffs deputies with him the second time.

It is good to note that we were doing nothing illegal and the land owner was just there to harass, scare and intimidate us off of "his property" and the deputies wrote no citations.

 

 

My First North Fork of the White River brown - not big, but wild

Last Saturday morning I found myself headed South again. Back to the North Fork of the White River. My favorite river to fish. It was a wonderful day to be on the river with perfect weather. If anything it was a little hot but I am not complaining. It was warm enough that I wasn't bothered that I had turned my breathable waders into a model with water based foot cooling. Luckily the leak isn't bad enough to fill the waders completely up, but it looks like it is time to research wader repair.

The day on the river started off great. I had hooked four and brought to hand three small rainbows in the first twenty minutes right in front of the campground at Sunburst Ranch. After that things really cooled off. The first four hook ups came on a gray hare's ear nymph but as soon as Brian Wise rolled through with a couple of clients in his boat and another two in a drift boat piloted by Kyle Kosovich the fish shut down and wouldn't touch my hare's ear. I might also add that only a matter of two minutes or less after I pulled a decent sized bow out of a little tail out pool and started working my way up the island that one of Brian's clients had a take in the very same pool I had just disturbed. Really, I am no where near good enough to do that, that's why I moved on up along the side of the island. Obviously that's why he is a guide and I am not!

I did manage to bring to hand nine more trout through the rest of the day though. nothing too note or picture worthy though aside from the little brown pictured above. I am 100% convinced that it is a true stream born wild trout. Sure it isn't big but who else can say that their first NFoW brown trout was a wild one? It was the icing on my cake that's for sure. And although it wasn't THE Happy Ending (although maybe his offspring) it was my own happy ending. The brown, along with a couple others came on the green circus caddis pictured. The rest of my fish (including a abnormally large number of rough fish that were caught) came on a copper john hot spot.

After a great day on the water the patriarch of Sunburst Ranch gave a VIP of the yet to open Dead Drift Fly Shop and fixed me up with a couple of stickers, which I was glad they had due to their awesome logo. To purchase a sticker or two is enough of a reason to visit but ss Justin phrased it the Dead Drift Fly Shop "will have everything an angler needs to fish". I also laid eyes on some very quality flies that were tied by locales that are proven patterns that are river specific and even some homebrew patterns that knock 'em dead on the NFoW.  And, on top of that the shop sits a half hearted toss of a stone from the water! Everyone should pay a visit to the Dead Drift Fly Shop, you will be glad you did.

Best Trip In Quite Some Time (and a Christmas in April teaser)

I have stayed pretty busy recently, mostly with family things and have only been able to squeak in a couple of quick trips to Taneycomo. The trip I am writing about today was another quick trip, only two hours, that took place on April 2nd, my Mother's birthday. Even though it is one of my best fishing trips in recent memory it wasn't on some far away stream like we dream of throughout the work day in Colorado or Montana. It wasn't even a trip to a freestone stream here in Missouri. Heck, it wasn't even to a tailwater or a trout park. I wasn't even chasing trout for that matter. It was a trip to a muddy little cow pond full of stunted sunfish. but this is what made it so great:

 

After dinner and birthday cake with my mom; her, my wife, son and myself loaded up and went a fishin'. Preston caught a couple fish on a worm under a bobber and then caught his first fish on the fly! On a dry fly none the less!

After rigging my wife, son and mothers (it was her birthday and I probably still owe her a few hundred thousand from when I was a tyke anyway) for bobber n' night crawler fishing I finally started rigging my fly rod. Chelsea, my wife, had caught (and I had released) two small fish. (If you keeping score: Wife: 2, Grand Son,  Grandmother and Son: 0). So I finally make my first cast with a Clouser to search the muddy water for bass. WHAM! Big 'gill of the day. Hand sized! Before I had it landed, which didn't take long on my 4wt, Chelsea had another fish. I managed a few more casts that yielded nothing with the Clouser in between releasing fish and rebaiting hooks. Preston finally made connection with his first of the day and he was tickled! It was at that time that Chelsea realized that a couple of the smaller fish that had taken the hook into their gullet were now floating by her feet. This made her sad and she bowed out to sit in the Jeep and finish a book she had brought a long. Not long after that I switched to a elk hair caddis and white shammy worm dropper. This combination evoked a strike a cast from the small blue gill. The only problem was the little buggers could not hit the ehc even when I left it still. I managed very few hook ups, but the constant action was enough for Preston to decide he would give daddy's fly rod a try after all. He has cast a few feet of line in the yard an a couple different occasions but when I asked him upon arrival at the pond he wanted to fish the same way as Grandma and I did not pressure him to try it out. I had since switched to a tandem dry fly rig but removed the second fly in an attempt to keep it simple. I helped Preston with the casting since there was about 20' of line out, but then gave him complete control of the rod and instructions to set the hook when the fished jumped up and hit the fly. And that was exactly what he did! It wasn't by any means a first cast first strike hook up - he worked hard and was rewarded for his efforts.

Final Score:
Grandma: 0 (with three assists after switching rods with Preston at the first sign of a nibble)
Grandson: 4
Wife: 5 (and only fishing for half the time as everyone else)
Me: 6 (but it felt like I did a lot more work than catching 6 fish for some reason)

It is also noteworthy that this was Chelsea's first fish that can recall ever catching and boy was it big:

I think that it is safe to say that Chelsea and Preston are both one step closer to coming along on fly fishing trips with me.



Christmas In April:

What's in it and who's it from you ask?

Stay tuned and you will see!