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Snaggletooth:
Curious too. I don’t know anything about the DXRs but I have a couple of battenkill multipliers (5/6 and 7/8). The 7/8 would be capable of handling some of the larger species you mentioned. It has been a serviceable reel, and I suspect the DXR is quite good quality. On the Battenkill’s you do have to keep the gears cleaned and oiled, but they work smoothly if you do.
I saw one post where the later DXRs were made by Ross Reels, but I don’t know if that would have been true of the multipliers. Martin is the only one still making a multipier as far as I am aware as they have a serious steelheader following. Hardy continued for a while after Orvis stopped but they appear to have discontiued them now as well.
Would expect it to be an extremely heavy reel. Let me know if you get it and what you think of it. Or if you have had experiences with other multipliers. They are probably all going to be antiques before long.
Nice post, and I can attest to the effectiveness of the Shrimp! Â Mine is a bit simpler, but they really eat them up sometimes. Â The Mysis has been my go to under the majority of conditions in Erie for quite some time now. Â Here’s one that ate the shrimp the day before turkey day!
Mike: I heard Darrell Bowman say recently that the spawn on Norfork is usually not very good and that most of the successful brown trout spawn is below Bull Shoals dam. Old statistics I heard ten years ago said that G&F did not stock browns above White Hole on the White and that the brown trout spawning success ranged from 0-60% there in any given year depending on water conditions and weather.
That being said, the preceding trout biologist told me that he didn’t believe stocked browns would make it up over about 10-15 pounds and the reason was partly genetic but mainly conditioning. I suspect any fish that large or bigger is going to be traceable as as descendant back to that original stocking via eggs in the late 70s. There are probably at least 3-4 strains of browns in the river system. The ones Whitlock and NAFF put in the White were Bitterroot strain I think. It would be interesting to know the original locations of those Vibert boxes.
The biologists right now do not have a handle on the various strains of browns, rainbows, etc. But in the future, as it gets cheaper, I am sure they will start to do some DNA testing in their research, and once that happens they will definitely have some great tools to answer questions of origins and relationships of the strains of fish between the tailwaters.
Zach: Steve Wright’s book is out of print, but he is supposedly working on a new edition…but I’ve heard that now for several years. There are two used copies on Amazon at the moment available for $75 and $85!
Scuplin:
Pragmatically, I probably agree with you…it is easilier to draw more flies with honey than vinegar.
But you may want to rethink implying morality and ethics do not depend on common sense and critical thinking. If you read Walton’s quotation again, you will see there is quite a bit of common sense and good thinking in it. PRIMARY argument–He says it is against nature. Why? Because of the very thing you said…you kill not only the mother on the nest, but the entire next generation.
The secondary argument is what makes a lot of folks choke.
Mike wrote:
It’s nice to pretend we’re doing the right thing and letting the little Trouties spawn …
Steve wrote:
There is no moral high ground on this subject.
I actually believe there is a moral high ground on the subject. I just feel I cannot impose it on other anglers angling legally as you said Steve.
But Walton in Complete Angler was very clear and used biblical ethics to teach not fishing to trout on the redds. He says, “But, above all, the taking fish in spawning-time may be said to be against nature: it is like taking the dam on the nest when she hatches her young, a sin so against nature, that Almighty God hath in the Levitical law made a law against it.” See Deuteronomy 22:6. Ethics entered into much of his writing on fly fishing since it was the “contemplative man’s recreation.”
In answer to Mike’s last comment:
That is fine if that is your angling preference where you live and you can talk your G&F agency into protecting all those species. I’m speaking primarily of the tailwater system here in Arkansas because that is what I know best. Trout are the legally mitigated species now in the tailwater and what does best in the environment in the way of producing some trophy fishing potential. However,
1) Stocked trout don’t generally produce the truly large trophy fish. I’ve talked to a number of state agency biologists on this over the years. They seem to mostly agree that the wild fish are the ones you want in your rivers for trophy production and you can only produce them by and large in the river system. They don’t do well in hatcheries. Most of these wild fish are decendants from the stocking of browns via Vibert boxes back in the 70s.
2) Wild fish have a genetic advantage and plus they are conditioned to avoid coming to a commotion to feed unlike stocked trout. The one time that their “guard is let down” is
3) during the spawn. As Phil pointed out, Arkansas Game and Fish Commission closed the spawning area below Bull Shoals dam because anglers were catching these spawning trophies again and again and many of them turned up dead in spring of 1996 because of major fungus infections. If anglers can’t regulate and discipline themselves, then we need regulations to protect these fish when they are most vulnerable.I’ve never been able to understand what is so much fun or sporting about trying to catch fish that are busy about trying to reproduce and have let down their natural defenses to the point that they are ridiculously easy to catch in numbers. That’s not really my argument though. Why put in jeopardy the best fish in the river system and any natural offspring that they might otherwise produce? I would think we would want our rivers crawling with the most number of wild trophy fish a river system could sustain. I think we could manage the White at least for better trophy fishing by some angler education to not fish to these brutes when they congregate in the shoals.
When these fish move back down the river system, there are not as many of them per mile as you might think. Most of these fish head upriver during the spawn. AGFC at one time estimated the brown trout population in the catch and release area at Bull Shoals dam increases 500% during November through January. And these fish can easily move 25 miles upstream in two days given favorable water conditions.
Let’s say for the sake of argument, there are 100 browns over 20″ in the upper 8 miles of Bull Shoals tailwater normally. During the spawn that increases to 500 concentrated mostly in the upper mile. After the spawn when they move back downstream, even if you distributed all those fish evenly over 92 miles of tailwater, that’s only less than 5.5 fish per mile (browns over 20″). All I am saying is when the fish concentrate and are easy to catch, the impact on those wild fish from angling pressure can be enormous, and in fact was detrimental here in the mid 90s.
If this was Alaska, it would be a different story where you had a record 6 million sockeye coming up the Kenai summer before last and they all die after the event.
But don’t think there is no impact from catching the browns during the spawn because you can simply restock. Most of the small stocked browns probably wind up in poaching angler’s creels, heron bellys or in the truly big brown trout.
I don’t know your river Mike, but do you have wild fish stocks that have developed over the years? Those are the fish I would really want to protect.
Forgive me if I’m rambling, as you know I think this is an important conservation issue. If I am missing the point(s) of the posts, I’d be happy to curtail my part of the discussion on it. I just think trout get the short shrift on southern tailwaters, because “they ain’t natural!” But perhaps some of my comments apply to other trout waters where the spawn is fished.
This is what happens when it too cold to be out fishing :-).
ScottPS Zach. If we have situation like on the Little Red where there is a bottleneck of 16-17 wild browns, then by all means allow harvesting some, but that is not the situation on most of the White River tailwaters with browns. I am interested in seeing some data on the browns in the White if the biologists ever get that info collected over a large representative sampling and over a longer timeframe than some of their previous data. I am afraid they are too swamped to be doing the data collection that needs done. I don’t think anyone really has a handle on fish per mile and species and sizes. Again about 1996 or so, the data I was told was 94% of the stocked trout were caught out within about 1-2 weeks on Bull Shoals tailwater. I think some of the more recent tagging studies pretty much has confirmed that again in some areas of the river.
Thanks for the recommendation. I don’t have any Prosek books, but I have his Trout of North America poster on my office wall. He’s truely gifted.
Just another thought…you know if you look at the “evolutionary” development of trout in our own north American drainages, all kinds of fish species as well as trout species have turned up in new drainages where they did not exist before.
I was just recently reading something on how before the last period of glaciation in North Dakota, all the rivers there ran northeast into the Hudson Bay drainage. After the glaciers left, the rivers ran into the newly cutt and present day Missouri River drainage. I am sure that messed with some fish species. Furthermore, a lot of the cutthroats in the western US drainages periodically wound up in some surprising places, like California, because of upheaval events.
Well, who is to say dams and manmade structures are not part of the evolution of our waters and fish species. Because trout want to survive, who knows what changes they may develop to adapt to dam breaks and catastrophes over the years? Who knows what adaptations yellowstone cutts may evolve because they are threatened?
Of course, these arguments work both ways, so it comes down to value judgments by anglers on what they want and what G&F can deliver. But once we’ve got it, let’s make it work as naturally as possible. Trout are trout, and they seek to survive, thrive and reproduce. Let’s let ’em.
Very true Carter. Good point. And I think I probably have misread Zach’s comments as I know he is not supporting abandoning the brown trout fisheries we have. Sorry Zach if I implied that.
Trying to get at the underlying philosophy of why we think importing a species called salmo trutta into a non-native area was and is a good thing. Should we do it in areas inhabited by threatened native trout like Yellowstone? Probably not. Should we do it if trout can coexist with a native northern hog sucker and chilled out smallmouth. By all means  :). And if you do, then protect them. Let them be fruitful and multiply.
Much of out attitudes are very culturally oriented. I have friends in England that just cannot understand why we have an open fishing season during the trout spawns. The are so engrained with Walton ethics that it is incomprehensible to them that we even want to fish to trout during the spawn.
The local attitude here that says trout are not native to Arkansas waters, and therefore they should be treated merely as a meat market opportunity, needs to be better informed.
Sincerely and respectfully,
Scottand (2) Brown Trout are not native to the United States….I’m very glad to have them, and I’ll work to improve their environments and encourage catch and release, but ultimately if every last one of them were thrown onto the bank, genetically we’d just be back where we started.
Zach:
Respectfully, I think your opinion ignores two things:
1) We have “forever” altered the environment below the dams to a cold water one. Native fish simply will not thrive in it any longer unless you knock down a lot of concrete. That’s why we have a legally (not just socially) mitigated trout fishery. The protection of our trout fisheries is a legal responsibility.
2) Trout in general and browns in particular have an intrinsic value to many anglers. As a sport fish for instance, like Lee Wulff has said. However, I personally don’t catch and release because it is a managment philosophy. I catch and release because it is a philosophy of appreciation. I love trout. They try to live and reproduce and survive like any other species and are a wonderful species to fish for.
Therefore, since they are here to stay in the long foreseeable future, have “legal status as citizens” Â ::), have proved they can survive and grow as large as in their native ranges (perhaps larger), and have value as a sport fish, it only makes the most sense to protect them, their habitat and give them the ability to naturally reproduce and sustain themselves as smallmouth once did.
I tire of the argument that since they are not native, we can fish ’em out and it wouldn’t make any difference in the long run.
Thinking about the can o’worms I’ve opened.
Hey Zach.
Have you checked out B&H Photo out of NY City?http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=getpage.jsp&A=getpage&Q=SuperStore.jsp
I have bought a number of Canon lenses, filters etc. They have a great selection of Nikons as well.
Over the years, my experiences with this company have been good.
Just a thought.
Good luck.
JPquote author=ZachMatthews ]Hey guys –
I am going to purchase a D200 body in the next three weeks, hopefully used. Â My editor has decided its cheaper to throw me a bone and give me enough to buy this camera so he can quit paying other people for the backdrop images to my stories (the D70 won’t go two pages). Â My next photo-heavy feature will run in the next issue, from my trip to Brazil, and as you’ll see, we had to use an image of less than two pages and add black space, which isn’t ideal.
So, I am in the market. Â Can anyone point me to a good deal on a used or refurbished D200 body or sell me one they aren’t using?
Thanks,
Zach[/quote]This is what I have in mind. Any guess as to what material feather is used in the fly? Apparently, this is Great Lakes pattern.
Thanks,
Scott
