Adventures on Playground Earth
Kent and I are back from our BF Goodrich, Playground Earth / Owyhee River adventure. After spending the weekend in a coma, more or less, I’m rubbing the sleep from my eyes and trying to make sense of the surreal events of the last two weeks.
It seems like a year ago, we were power sliding the Ford Raptor around hairpin turns at sixty-five mph and feeling a little awkward when the director referred to us as athletes. Looking around at the room full of world class competitors and then at our beer guts, we didn’t feel like athletes but everyone (cast and crew alike) treated us with such respect and warmth that we felt like we belonged.
We made new friends, learned new skills and I got to experience the awkward feeling of being in front of the camera rather than tucked safely behind it. Our week at Miller Motor Sports was a learning experience all around but it didn’t prepare us for what was ahead.
Kent and I are used to rolling up on a river we’ve never seen and figuring out the local fish. That is, after all, what we do and over the years we’ve gotten fairly good at it but it became clear early on that this trip was going to be different. We were
Read More »April Photo Caption Contest Winner
Big thank you to everyone who participated in the April photo caption contest gear giveaway last week. Great job on giving me crap about fly fishing in my boxers. Lord knows, I deserved it, but despite me looking like a total lunatic, it was a good way to deter other anglers from fishing our water. Many of you are probably wondering how I ended up in this situation. I was trying to untangle fly line in the prop during a massive cluster truck on the river when I got pulled off a boulder I was standing on as I tried to keep the boat from drifting downstream of me. I learned that a back up gear box is worthless if you leave it in the truck at the boat ramp.
Read More »Sunday Classic / High Point
Tim looks like he has swallowed his tongue. He’s pale, eyes dilated, the corners of his mouth twitching. He’s soaked in sea water, eyes burning and red. His fingers digging into his seat bottom, he squints and stiffens like a corpse preparing for the next wave which drops the little skiff hard. It sounds like a car crash and sends another five gallons of water into our faces. Nothing, it appears will stop the next navy blue, six foot wave from hurdling over the bow. It’s a fraction of an inch from doing just that when the bow lifts. The wave seems to ride the bow up, hovering literally an eight of an inch from crashing over into the cockpit for a few seconds. And then the whole thing starts again. Norman Rolle, our guide stands stoic in the back of the boat, a buff bearing the Rio logo pulled up over his face all the way to his Smith wraparound sunglasses. His right hand is on the back of Tim’s seat, his left gently twisting the throttle of the outboard, accelerating up the waves then coasting down, steering us carefully through the cross currents and surf crashing into, and back from the wall of jagged rock that the Bahamians call High Point. High Point is one of the most inhospitable places I’ve ever seen. It juts into the Atlantic like a knife blade for a quarter mile, huge rough hewn boulders guarding it’s coast. It separates the inhabited northeast coast of South Andros Island from the wild and isolated south. It can only be passed on a fairly calm day, and today is not so calm.
Tim leans over to me and says nervously, “Jesus, this is bad”. I’m suddenly aware that I’m grinning and quite possibly looking a bit out of my mind.
Read More »Saturday Shoutout / Tim Romano’s Argentina Cast and Blast
Tim Romano is back from a cast and blast trip to Argentina and he’s showing off the photos over at Fly Talk. Tim is one of the best photographers working in fly fishing and there are some amazing images in this slide show. Sit back, relax and enjoy!
Argentina Cast and Blast
Book Review, “The View From Coal Creek” by Erin Block
I HAVE TO CONFESS I HAVE A WRITER’S CRUSH ON ERIN BLOCK.
I started following her blog, Mysteries Internal, a couple of years ago and the sound of Erin’s voice in my head became as familiar as a favorite song. When she first started posting about taking on the challenge of making her first bamboo rod, my interest was peaked.
Her writing was so vivid and honest, it took me straight back to the days I first set a plane to bamboo. The smells, sounds and feelings all came rushing back. I was sincerely jealous. I was not writing when I learned to make rods. What an opportunity, to document that process. What genius to seize that opportunity.
“The View From Cole Creek,” Erin’s new book, is the result. A day by day account of the birth of a bamboo rod maker. And born they are, not made. Having been through the process, I can attest to the authenticity of Erin’s account. It took me
Read More »Weight is Great
Lot’s of days, more weight means more fish.
I’ve hesitated to write on this topic because it seems so elementary. Sort of a fly fishing truism but I’ve been encouraged lately after reminding several of my friends who are highly experienced anglers of this simple fact. If you’re fishing nymphs for trout and you’re not catching fish, the odds are very good that you aren’t using enough weight.
My split shot gets me laughed at. Fly fishermen have ideas about weight. I carry a box of the polite little split shot, made for fly fishermen, but I seldom use them. I go straight to the stuff made for the gear guys. I carry size B and BB but I also carry #7 (1/4 inch diameter) and I’m not afraid to use them. On several occasions lately I’ve been fishing with friends and come to deep runs where neither of us have been able to find fish. After we each fished the run thoroughly, I added one of those #7 shot to my rig and caught a fish on the first cast.
The fish are there in those deep runs but in the early spring with water temps still low, they’re hugging the bottom. They’ll eat a fly, they just won’t move for it. You have to put it right on their nose. It’s a changeling way to fish and dealing with heavy rigs requires making some adjustments to your casting but it gets results. I’ve always thought that the art of fly fishing is in showing the fish what he wants, not expecting him to eat what we want to fish. That often involves weight, lots of it.
The other day I found myself fishing a rig consisting of:
Read More »G&G April Photo Caption Contest and Giveaway
G&G APRIL PHOTO CAPTION CONTEST & GEAR GIVEAWAY
Yes, that’s me fly fishing in January for musky in my boxers. I know, I’m going to catch all kinds of hell for this one, but it’s a perfect photo for a caption contest and giveaway. Let the smack down begin and submit your best caption for a chance to win the following:
Read More »Sunday’s Classic / Why I Always Carry a Backup Gear Box
Have you ever made it to the river after a two hour drive and realized when you got there, you had forgot to pack one of your crucial pieces of fishing gear? I’ll be the first to admit I’ve been that unfortunate angler plenty of times, and it can ruin a day of fishing. A few years back I was forced to spend a day on Depuy’s Creek in MT wading around in a pair of my Justin cowboy boots. It was really ironic because I spent the morning packing all the gear for my virgin fly fishing buddies, and I was the one that ended up leaving my damn wading boots on the front porch. Those Justin boots were surprisingly comfortable wading around in, but they had zero traction and I looked like a moron. I’ve never forgot my wading boots on a fishing trip since.
Read More »Saturday Shoutout / FlyFishing Oldies but Goodies
This weeks Saturday shoutout I re-shed some light on a few fly fishing articles that are oldies but goodies. All of these were good reads the first time around and they’re still worthy of our time to re-visit and read a second time because of their valuable information and entertainment.
Read More »ISO
TODAY’S PHOTOGRAPHY TIP IS SIMPLE BUT IMPORTANT.
Formerly known as ASA, the ISO setting on your camera adjusts the sensor’s sensitivity to light. Some cameras are capable of adjusting their own ISO. If yours is not, you will get better results by adjusting this setting for the existing light conditions. If you are in bright sun, a low ISO setting like 100-200 will give you sharper images with less noise. If you are in low light like dusk, a higher ISO like 400-800 will give you faster shutter speeds and minimize camera shake. When you start using your ISO setting, it is important
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