Bob Riggins
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I have only fished that area a few times. I have fished public water in Smith Creek inside of the park and on some private water on the Soque. Basically I caught little fish on Smith Creek and big fish on the Soque. I am heading up to Helen the first part of April, so if you have any suggestions on public water, I would be very interested. I may hire a guide for a half day but I’m not sure at this point. On Smith Creek I fished eqq (pellet) patterns and copper johns with equal success. On the Soque we were fishing a dry with a dropper in various patterns. Almost everything was caught on the dropper.
Nice read Zach. It is very similar to our winter dock fishing here in the Tampa area for snook and redfish. The only real difference I see is the attire. We just wear shorts and a shirt.
I use the Loon product when I want to put a heavy layer of clear finish on something like a saltwater ultra shrimp. It works great for this application. I’m not so sure it is great for small midges or nymphs where you are using thin coats, unless you want to tie the fly and immediately use it. Given the cost, I would just a soon use Sally Hanson’s HAN.
I am certainly not an expert on the area, but have fished there. First of all, forget the Merced River within the park. It is way to crowded. It gets better just outside the park but access can be tricky. If I was fishing Yosemite, I would head to Tuolumne Meadows and fish the Dana Fork and Lyell Fork, upstream from the meadows. You will get away from the crowds. The area is not a dramatic as the valley, but the scenery is nice and the hike along the Lyell is beautiful. Both are relatively small streams and hold smallish brown trout. I had good luck there and was glad to get away from the madness below.
Just an aside, I have a bear picture that is going to be published in a book about Yosemite.
Just got around to looking at the video. Very nice work. I assume you shot it with a drone. Did you use a stabilization program or was it that steady when you shot it? I just finished an Africa video and had a lot of trouble with camera shake (using a tripod was not an option).
I also watched your natural light high speed touchup on your web page. Do you really work that fast?
I use Corel Paintshop Pro X5 and Corel Aftershot Pro 2. I don’t really have anything to compare them too but both got good reviews. Actually, I didn’t really choose them. When I upgraded WordPerfect and Quatro at work, I got Paintshop Pro as a free bundled add on and when I registered it I got a very good price on Aftershot Pro 2 for RAW processing.
I also got Corel VideoStudio 6x as a free add on and it works great for videos. I did an hour and a half video for our Africa trip for Brenda’s class that incorporated videos, still pictures and music from an African group CD. It was easy to use. I ended up getting all 3 programs for about $30.
Paintshop Pro and Aftershot Pro are much less expensive than Photoshop and Lightroom and work fine for me. I think you can get Paintshop Pro for about $65 and Aftershot Pro for about $55. That is buying the license outright, not a subscription. You can also download them free and try them before you buy.
You’re a good man Mike. How many people would go to that much trouble to return a rod? Just look at the string of possession, borrowed without permission, stolen from a truck, found hanging from a tree, returned to the owner with much effort. That’s a 33.3% honesty ratio. Pretty sad.
Thanks for the extensive post. A lot of information in there. I’ve been working with it a little more and figured out a little bit how to process RAW in After Shot 2 (which is similar to Lightroom). Still trying to learn how much to adjust the images. I think I am overdoing the saturation thing, but getting better at exposure and lighting. So far, my best results have been to do some processing of the RAW in After Shot 2, export to a TIFF file and put the finishing touches on in Paint Shop Pro 5X. Then, once I get it where I want it, export the final product to a JPEG file.
I’ve got some pretty interesting shots that I am relatively happy with. Most are wildlife and landscapes. No fishing pictures yet. I’ll post some when I get time.
I also live in Florida and mostly fly fish in saltwater, so mending is not one of my strong suits. When fishing mountain streams, I mend line mainly to account for differing current speeds. For example, it I have a fast current in front of me and I’m casting into a slower current on the other side, I will do an upstream mend to throw some slack into the line in the fast current, so the line doesn’t drag the fly though the slow current. I rarely encounter this in saltwater since the currents tend to be consistent over the casting range unless you are in a narrow channel.
Again, I’m not a mending expert by any means, but to my knowledge, the purpose of a mend is to put a belly in your fly line, not to take one out. If I am dead drifting by a dock, the drift is usually fairly short, so I just let some line feed out as it drifts. This avoids the belly you would get with an upcurrent mend.
The one place I do use a mend is when I want to get a fly deep without the fly dragging toward me as it sinks. For example, if I want to get a fly deep next to a seawall or dock, I will use something similar to a pile (or parachute) cast to pile up some slack over the fly so that it drops straight down rather than dragging back toward me as it sinks. If it is really windy and a pile cast is not working, I may use a rolling mend straight toward the fly to accomplish the same thing.
I’ve never seen a video on saltwater line mending, but Orvis has a nice little video on mending line in its How to section. It is not really hard to learn, you are basically just flipping some slack in the line in a particular direction (upstream, downstream or directly toward the fly).
Thanks Brett. Being in Florida, there is a lot of subject matter. All of these photos were taken at Honeymoon Island State Park, about 10 minutes from the house. I also got a lot of other osprey shots and some shots of baby bald eagles in the nest with a parent, but these were too far away and didn’t turn out.
I plan on eventually using Paintshop Pro, which I actually got as an add on to Wordperfect and Quatro Pro I use at work. I am focusing on how to use the camera to take the pictures right now rather than post production and I’m taking everything in JPEG. I’ve used Picasa with my point and shoots for a long time, but with the new camera, it is just not up to snuff. I noticed that the end product comes out sort of flat. For example, in the last tortoise picture, the real interesting part was the gleam in the tortoise’s eye, which all but disappeared in the finished photo. In the owl pictures (other than the bad lighting situation) I think the autofocus was focusing on the front of the nest, so the owls themselves were at the back end of the depth of field.
Anyway, Brenda just booked the Africa trip for later in the summer, so I’ve got a lot of learning to do.
Here are some more that turned out pretty good (at least for me). More of the gopher tortoises and one of an osprey drying out after a swim. All of the birds were taken at close to maximum zoom. The tortoises were taken closer in. All were cropped anywhere from 40% to 50% and reduced in Picassa. I noticed that I lost a lot of clarity in the process. I have Paintshop Pro X5, but don’t know how to use it. I also noticed that when uploading the osprey, the bottom third of the picture was cut off, thus ruining the overall composition.
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I’m not a big fan of the bootie style. They don’t provide the ankle support and little protection from sting rays. You only need wading shoes if you are wading soft bottoms, which are common in Florida and Texas. For years I used a pair of Hodgman lug sole canvas wading boots (sort of Chuck Taylors for wading). They worked fine until if finally blew them out completely. I don’t think Hodgman makes them any more, but I’ve seen similar ones around for about $20. For hard sandy bottoms, I use Keen H2 sandals and shuffle my feet a lot (known as the stingray shuffle).
I use Simms Flats Sneakers. They give good support and protection from oysters and sting rays. I had a pair of the first generation Patagonia Marlwalkers and they were heavy and uncomfortable, but I think the newer models are much better. With either one you will need to wear socks. Cabelas used to have a decent knockoff of the Simms Flats Sneakers, but I think they discontinued them.
OK, after listening to Mike the Maven videos trying to learn how to use the camera, I finally got out for some practice. These were taken in JPEG and reduced in Picassa, so I’ve lost a little detail, but I am really happy with the quality of the images (at least the ones I didn’t screw up). I understand that real photographers shoot in the RAW, but I was afraid I would get arrested.
The white egret is the very first picture I took with the camera. We went to a seaside park to take some pics and I was able to get this one. There was construction going on so most of the park was closed. We had to go to another lakefront park, where I got the gator. I really had problems here due to a low sun and strong backlight on the water. Most of my shots were trash, but I learned some lessons.
The other two shots were taken at a lake close to home. I generally got the lighting better overall, but I still had trouble with depth of field. Anyway, with the help of Mike the Maven and playing with the camera, I am getting more comfortable.
Just wanted to thank everyone for the input. I was about to pull the trigger on the Canon T5i, but after some more research I shifted gears and bought the Nikon D5200 with an 18mm-55mm DX lens and a 55-300 DX lens (this was hard because I have always been a Canon guy). I know the lenses aren’t great, but again, I’m not shooting for National Geographic. From all the reviews I read, the Canon seemed more user friendly, but the D5200 consistently scored higher in image quality. Since I mostly shoot landscapes and wildlife, image quality was the key consideration.
Nice interview Zach. I picked up on one comment you made relative to the future of websites like IA. I’ve noticed traffic on all of the website forums I frequent has been down. A lot of the decline has been attributed to Facebook and, more recently, twitter. I’m not on either one, so I’m probably missing out on a lot. Do Facebook and twitter have more limited groups? Brenda is on Facebook, but it seems she has to wade through about ten tons of BS to find anything of interest. How do you think this is going to affect the future of forums like yours?
Thanks guys. As you can see, I’m no photo bug and have no aspirations in that direction. I haven’t owned an SLR since my film days. Most of my pictures are for my own use and I rarely print over 8″ X 10″. I actually started out looking at the Canon T3i a while back, but when the possibility of the Africa trip came up, I started looking at super zoom bridge cameras like the Canon SX50 with a 50X zoom. That’s when I got tripped up on sensor size. The super zoom cameras are able to get that amount of zoom by using a small sensor (1/2.3). After deciding to look at larger sensors, I came up with the Panasonic FZ1000, with 16X. In the mean time, I discovered that the 50X and 16X didn’t really mean what I thought it did.
So, while I like the simplicity of a point and shoot, I decided that for the money I could get the T5i with a decent zoom. I really like the idea of renting a longer zoom for the trip. I can rent a zoom up to 400mm, which would give be about 640mm on the APS-C, so that is probably the direction I want to go.
Now the only question is whether I want an Image Stabilization lens and 250mm or non IS at 300mm. (Oh no, my head is starting to hurt again)
