Dean River Chinook
By Jeff Hickman
IT’S TIME FOR THE BIG BOYS.
With the rapidly increasing popularity of Spey fishing, targeting Chinook salmon has also recently become hot. These large powerful anadromous fish have always been attractive to fly fishers in areas with strong populations. But with modern spey rods and Skagit heads they have become much more accessible to fly anglers. The old myth that they don’t eat flies is far from the truth! These Kings of the river are as good as freshwater gamefish fish get. When they are fresh-from-the-salt and in the mood, they will attack flies every bit as aggressively as steelhead do!
I had heard the old timers’ stories of the good ol’ days when the Chinook were thick in west coast rivers and fly anglers could catch as many as they wanted. While at times we do still have some good Chinook fishing in Oregon, I wanted a full immersion to experience them. So years ago I got a job guiding fly fishing on the Kanektok River for Alaska West and I headed north to cut my teeth on Chinook fishing. I had heard in western Alaska, Chinook were plentiful and they were like Winter steelhead on steroids. It was true and it was there that I fell in love with these leviathans. I spent nine seasons on the Kanektok guiding and swinging flies for Chinook and I learned a lot about them in the process.
The recent scuttlebutt among Chinook anglers is over the emergency Chinook fishing closures in the last two years in Western Alaska. In western Alaska, King salmon stocks are experiencing a period of low productivity. Run forecasts have been too low for ADF&G to allow any commercial or sport Chinook fisheries in the entire Kuskokwim River drainage including all Kuskokwim Bay tributaries. Among the closures again this year are the Kanektok and Goodnews Rivers. Both are legendary rivers for having robust healthy runs of these amazing fish. This is very tough news for everybody that has a connection to this area and these fish. I hope that these robust runs are able to recover quickly to the sustainable fishable levels of the past.
But Alaska isn’t the only destination to catch Chinook on the fly consistently. I now spend the early part of my Summers chasing Chinook in British Columbia. When the two words
Read More »Sunday Classic / It’s The Little Things
“I know it when I see it!”
Kent and I were doing a presentation at a fly shop the other day and after showing a couple of hundred fishing photos, during the Q&A part of the program, a fellow raised his hand and asked “do you guys catch any small fish?”
I guess I’m as guilty as anyone for perpetuating the idea that size is all that matters in fishing. I sure don’t feel like that’s true but when you look through my photos you, sort of, start to get that feeling. It’s easy to go too far the other direction too and get all moist and sloppy about tiny wild fish. I really do love tiny wild fish but that’s not all there is to me either. I just want to catch a great fish.
I guess I’ll define a great fish this way. When asked how he would define pornography Sen. Jessie Helms replied, “I know it when I see it!” I guess that goes for fish porn too.
The average size fish in the stream where this little guy was caught is around eighteen inches and I caught plenty of those fish the day this photo was taken, but this beautiful little guy that my buddy Dan landed is the one I’m going to show you. In my opinion he was the fish of the day. Partially because he belongs there, as much as anything other than brook trout belong in Georgia. He’s a local anyway but mostly because he is the future. He is the sign that in spite of a great many factors working against her, Nature is still doing her job in one of my favorite little streams.
One day, if we are both very lucky
Read More »Saturday Shoutout / This Land Was Your Land
Matthew Copeland is fired up, and you should be too.
His piece, “This Land Was Your Land” on Stalking The Seam is the absolute best I’ve seen written on the subject of the impending public land grab.
“I was born in Charlottesville, Virginia USA and with my first squalling breath I inherited one million square miles of the most beautiful real estate on planet earth– boom, a geo-genetic jackpot winner just like every other natural-born American citizen. I can wander where I choose, hunt in the hills, fish in the rivers, lose myself in the mountains or find myself in the desert. Millions of naturalized immigrants earned these rare and precious privileges with the sweat of their brow. Millions more Americans have defended them with the blood in their veins. Now, regardless of our previous paths, we’re all facing the same question. Will our kids know these same freedoms or will they become disenfranchised visitors on someone else’s property?” Copeland writes.
You owe it to yourself to read this inspired bit of writing. Please, PLEASE, take the time to hear what Matt has to say. There is something you can do.
This Land Was Your Land
Read More »Easy Bug Sampling For Trout Fishermen Video
Ever have one of those days where you just can’t figure out what the trout are eating?
Selective trout can make you crazy but there is a way to figure out for sure what they’re keyed in on. Taking a stream sample is quick and easy and it really gives you a leg up on the fish. With a bug seine you can sample nymphs from the bottom, emergers from the film and spinners or adults from the surface. Match the size, color and profile of your fly to the insects you find and you’ll be into fish.
Paint strainers make great bug seines. They’re cheap and easy to store in your pack or boat. Stretch one over your net and you’re in business. You can get yours HERE.
CHECK OUT THIS VIDEO AND LEARN TO SAMPLE BUGS ON YOUR WATER.
Read More »Spey Casting, The Sweep
Tired, lost, in a funk, something amiss about your spey cast?
When my fishing is dissolving into a casting malfunction and in frustration an early start to cocktail hour seems like a good idea; I just tell myself, lift, sweep, set, circle up and pull to the target. Repeating it to myself helps me to regain my focus and calm.
It’s a recipe that when put together in sequence creates a spey cast. Here is my attempt to follow Deneki’s blog post “The Lift” from February 12, 2015.
INTRODUCING THE SWEEP:
A good sweep is an intricate feature to a well performed cast. In the casting sequence it comes after the lift. As pointed out in Deneki’s post “The Lift”, it sets the ground work for an efficient sweep of the fly line, allowing the fly to set at the proper anchor point. The anchor adheres the front end of the fly line and leader to the water’s surface.
With the aide of the anchor the back loop is fully formed during the sweep to the Key position, the position prior to the forward cast. The back loop is formed 180 degrees from the intended target and parallel to the caster. In a spey cast, without an anchor we don’t have a back loop. A good sweep repositions the line from the top of the lift to the anchor. In all spey cast and styles we sweep to the anchor.
FUNDAMENTALS OF A SWEEP:
Start with the rod canted at a 35 degree angle
Read More »Elevate Yourself to Increase the Distance You Can High-Stick
Most of the time when your fly fishing for trout, the last thing you want to do is elevate yourself. In most scenarios, that will usually do more harm than good, by increasing the chances of trout spotting you and spooking. Notice I said “most scenarios”, every once in a while, an angler is forced to go against traditional principles to find success. The other day, I found myself trying to fish an eddy and slow water seam on the far bank. Making the cast wasn’t the problem, it was getting a long enough drag-free drift to get my fly to the fish. Even with my best high-sticking efforts, every cast the super fast water between me and my target water would grab my fly line and suck my flies out prematurely. After a couple minutes of struggling with my drifts and failing to get any bites, I decided to climb up on a boulder next to me. This elevated me three feet, and allowed me to keep 100% of my fly line off the water and get that long drag-free drift. I caught three trout after
Read More »Pothole Fish With John I Missed
By Dan Frasier
IN SOME WAYS IT WAS THE SECOND DAY OF MY FOUR-DAY TRIP TO THE COLUMBIA RIVER.
In a more meaningful way, this was early on day one. My first day in Portland was spent doing one of those things that seemed worthwhile at the time, but in hindsight was just a day of fishing that didn’t happen. You know how priorities seem different in hindsight? Yeah, one of those deals.
Anyway, John “Montana” Bartlett had displayed his renowned graciousness and now we were on the water. I was ready for big fish and plenty of them. I’ve been known to catch a carp or two and, despite John’s warnings, it seemed pretty obvious that the Big C was just another carp-laden body of water waiting to be conquered.
We hit the road from John’s house early. He had a vague plan that involved a lot of “if they aren’t there then we’ll move onto the XYZ spot”. To be honest, I’d quit trying to keep a mental map. John speaks about the Big C like you do with an old lover; using allusions to past events, pet names for places known only to him and broken references to memories that are more feeling than fact. It didn’t matter anyway. If I ever repeated the names of the spots we fished, John would have hunted me down like Seal Team 6 and people would be left to ask, “Hey, whatever happened to that Dan guy?”
My first bout of nerves started as we entered the water on the first flat. Things here were different, but in an eerily recognizable way. My brain immediately grasped that the water looked like a carp heaven. Like something I’d seen before and recognized. Good water, good clarity, obvious feeding areas. And yet it was wholly different than what I was used to. The bottom was more like a moonscape than the mud flats I fish; piles of cobble and sharp volcanic rock with divots and craters in between.
The water itself looked like those translucent aquamarine glass shower doors. You could see through it very well, but it wasn’t colorless. It was colored with an opacity that you had to consciously try to look through instead of at it. It was like the Columbia gave you enough to make the carp fishing reasonable but no more.
A few steps in and the nerves subsided. We were thigh deep in good-looking water with fly rods. For me it seems that the familiarity of the activity of fishing quickly overcomes the unfamiliarity of a new location. This time was no different. It was just fishing, albeit in a storied and strange location.
John and I walked this submerged moonscape with the confidence that is natural at the beginning of a long fishing trip. John new he could catch every fish he saw and I felt confident that I’d either get my share now or learn quickly enough and have plenty of time left in the trip to get it later. We saw a few fish, had shots at a couple (which John let me take) and landed none on that first pass. That was alright, lotta fishing left to do.
We hit the end of the flat and John was ready to move. The Big C has more fishable carp water than a person can cover in a lifetime so there is no point dallying at a spot that you’ve already walked. We hopped out of the water and up the riprap. This is the steep riprap of large sharp stones that indicate significant human modification to a river. Great chunks of granite rise from the water’s edge at a steep angle for twenty feet. It’s treacherous walking and difficult fishing. From that position an angler can get great visuals on a fish, but that’s about all he has going for him. Casting from riprap that steep means your line sags and moves the fly well farther in than you expect. The fish tend to be very attuned to any movement above them on the rocks and the angle makes hooksets VERY difficult. Elevated fishing is a strange and diabolical kind of torture. It lets you identify more targets that are nearly impossible to catch.
Hell isn’t fishing without finding fish. Hell is fishing and finding huge numbers of uncatchable fish.
Read More »The Orvis Helios 2 One Piece, Not What I Expected
The Helios 2 is one of my favorite rods of the last few years.
I fish the H-2 in a couple of different weights, for a couple of different types of fly fishing. The 9′ 4 weight has become my go-to dry fly rod and all-around small stream rod. The 9′ 9 weight, my red fish and permit rod and the 9′ 11 weight tackles all sorts of tough customers from tarpon to shark. Each one of these rods has won a place in the quiver and in my heart.
So I was pretty excited to get my hands on the new H-2 One Piece. I’ve fished a couple of one piece rods and really liked them but I’ve never owned one. How could I go wrong with a one piece version of a rod I know I love? More of a good thing, right? I chose a 9 weight.
After fishing the new H-2 One Piece a few times I took it out to the park with my 4 piece H-2, 9 weight for a comparison. When I cast the two rods, side by side with the same reel and line, I expected them to be very similar. I was actually shocked how different they were.
I understand the differences between one piece and four piece rods, but I guess I had thought of it as largely academic. It’s not. Though the two rods clearly share some DNA, the feel and performance are very different. Almost shockingly different.
What sets the H-2 One Piece apart
Read More »Sunday Classic / Redneck Driftboating
Yes, someone actually took the time to build this pathetic hybrid driftboat/soap box car. Louis and I found it snagged on a shallow riffle and abandoned on my home tailwater the other day. It was comprised of two ten gallon sealed water canisters at the bow and stern. The hull was built with a two-by-four frame and plywood deck, and bicycle tires were fastened at the corners. I’m guessing the redneck engineering idea was that the design would be much easier to roll over shallow shoals while drifting the extreme low water flows. Here’s the scary part, whoever captained this boat/car, actually made it two miles down stream before it fell apart. I only wish I would have been there to witness it’s maiden voyage, and then force them to burn it into a pile of ashes along the riverbank. I really can’t blame whoever built this thing though. My driftboat doesn’t do much better with the pathetic 120-150cfs of water the TVA blesses me with annually. Right now, 50% of the United States is in severe drought and many trout seasons on watersheds across the country will be cut short significantly this year. I feel sorry for all the fly fishing guides and fly shops that will suffer this year because of the drought. For all you out there that fall into this category, here’s something positive to be grateful for. Just be happy you’re not me. Drought conditions or not, I rarely have satisfactory water levels on my home tailwater. There’s very few days that offer easy floating with three people in a boat. For you westerners, at least you have a fighting chance things will turn around for the better next year, and if you’re lucky, you’ll find some stillwater to wet a line until conditions turn … Continue reading
Read More »Saturday Shoutout / Fly Fishing Argentina UFC 187
TO QUOTE MONTY PYTHON, NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.
Two seemingly unrelated topics, brought together by Gink and Gasoline. First enjoy this great video on Fly Fishing Argentina by Pablo Saracco. You’ll see some of the rivers that have made Argentine Patagonia a world famous fly fishing destination. There are even a few clips of Justin and me.
I’m currently putting together a trip to Patagonia for winter 2016. If you’d like to see this amazing fishery for yourself drop me a line at hookups@ginkandgasoline.com.
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.
Hold on to your hats, because I don’t think this has ever been attempted. Tonight on UFC 187, Mike Pyle is fighting for Gink and Gasoline! Yes, I know how crazy this sounds, but it’s true. G&G is proud to sponsor Ultimate Fighter, life long fly angler and friend of the site, Mike Pyle. Mike will be fighting with the G&G logo on his shorts so please tune in at 6:30 EST and support Mike and G&G!
MORE INFO ON UFC 187 HERE
Read More »