Chad Simcox
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Trout Streams of Southern Appalacia
Check TWRA’s info on trout stocking in the region. They used to distribute a great promotional map of all the waters. Also be aware that TN’s license cycle starts March 1st instead of January 1st like Colorado.
http://society6.com/grainfarmer Fly Fishing and Landscape open edition Photography prints.
http://grainfarmer.vsco.co/ iPhone photos
http://instagram.com/chad_simcox InstagramCumberland Transit is my favorite shop in Nashville. Grumpy is the best! He’ll give you some good insight on the local options.
TN has more species of freshwater fish than any other state so you’ve got tons of opportunities. The Caney Fork is the best option for trout near Nashville. Make sure you listen to the older podcast episode about the Caney. The TWRA implemented brown trout regulations to turn it into a trophy tailwater. Unfortunately this happened just after I moved away (to Colorado), so I don’t have any personal insight on how it’s doing but I’ve heard good things.
Mike listed some good rivers in E. TN, but don’t think you have to go there for trout. In addition to the Caney, you have the Elk below Tim’s Ford, the Duck River below Normandy, the tailwater below Dale Hollow Dam. Not to mention some of the streams near Fall Creek Falls SP that are stocked. In the winter, Stones River below Percy Priest and up stream near Smyrna are stocked with trout.
In addition to the Buffalo for small mouth, the Smith Fork (east of Nashville) is supposed to be good for them. Plus there’s great bass and stripe bass fishing on the reservoirs.If I still lived there, I’d definitely have a kayak to best hit many of the fishing opportunities in the region.
http://society6.com/grainfarmer Fly Fishing and Landscape open edition Photography prints.
http://grainfarmer.vsco.co/ iPhone photos
http://instagram.com/chad_simcox InstagramThanks for the heads up Tim and thanks Zach for the insight.
Not in this situation for this line, but out of curiosity, how well do the loop connectors go through the guides? Both casting or coming in when you’ve got a fish on. Do they catch or slow the momentum of the line?
http://society6.com/grainfarmer Fly Fishing and Landscape open edition Photography prints.
http://grainfarmer.vsco.co/ iPhone photos
http://instagram.com/chad_simcox InstagramHanging birds is pretty common, not sure about fish unless you’re trying to dry it.
Good article on hanging birds.
http://honest-food.net/2008/11/27/on-hanging-pheasants/http://society6.com/grainfarmer Fly Fishing and Landscape open edition Photography prints.
http://grainfarmer.vsco.co/ iPhone photos
http://instagram.com/chad_simcox InstagramI agree, check with The Spot. Gary Bulla will have good info for fishing the salt. A bit of a drive north could get you onto some of the small costal streams of Big Sur, but they are small!
The San Ynez is over the hill from SB, but to be honest you really don’t hear much about it. There are sections that are tailwaters, and with this being a very dry year, I doubt there’s much of a release going on. Otherwise you may look into the small streams of Sespe Creek and Piru Creek. They’re both a bit of a drive east from SB in Ventura, Co. Our summer kicks in Aug-Oct, so it may be warm. Just make sure you’re not fishing streams where the water is too warm. Don’t want to increase the chance of mortality on our local native rainbows.http://www.kernriverflyfishing.com/Kern River Fly Fishing has good info on the Kern and surrounding areas. You’d want to focus on the upper Kern, most likely in the 20mi section just above Lake Isabella. Just gotta watch out for tubers and rafts coming down the river.
Wherever you go, don’t leave any valuables in the car or give anyone a reason to break in, because they will.
http://society6.com/grainfarmer Fly Fishing and Landscape open edition Photography prints.
http://grainfarmer.vsco.co/ iPhone photos
http://instagram.com/chad_simcox InstagramFor spring through autumn fishing, I don’t think I could do better than fishing a size 16 black ant. Big or small water, tailwater or freestone, I seem to always catch fish on a black ant. Fish it dry if fish are looking up or let it sink if they’re feeding down the water column. Once in the midst of a Green Drake hatch in Colorado, I tied one on and had a huge trout come up and annihilate the ant pattern when I wouldn’t get a rise on any drake patterns I had.
http://society6.com/grainfarmer Fly Fishing and Landscape open edition Photography prints.
http://grainfarmer.vsco.co/ iPhone photos
http://instagram.com/chad_simcox InstagramIf you can head south a bit for an excursion down towards Monterey and the Big Sur area you can be rewarded with some native rainbow trout. Even if you don’t get to fish, you’ll get to check out some beautiful scenery. I’ll second the notion of contacting Leland Fly Shop. They may be able to point you in the direction of some more local costal streams. I’m not sure of the regulations up there (year round as well as seasonal closures for steelhead streams). I think most of the seasonal closures start up in October, so you should be fine. Just make sure you’re not fishing in streams that are running warm, as that will increase the mortality rate of the trout.
If you don’t get to go fishing but have some free time and want to get out of the city, head across the golden gate (awesome drive) and spend some time exploring Muir Woods and Muir Beach in Marin County.
http://society6.com/grainfarmer Fly Fishing and Landscape open edition Photography prints.
http://grainfarmer.vsco.co/ iPhone photos
http://instagram.com/chad_simcox InstagramI’ve shot with a GoPro Hero and Hero2 a number of times. A client of mine has an army of small POV cameras consisting of GoPro and RePlay camera models.
The GoPro with the “backpack” viewfinder is great because you can actually frame up your shot. You have the option between different field of views (very wide and super wide basically). You can easily take photos with it, do time lapse or shoot video. You can have multiple batteries to keep the camera running over the course of a day. The downside is, it is easy to switch modes, the menu navigation sucks, and sometimes the buttons don’t respond too well (inside and out of the waterproof case). The Hero2 has better image quality than its predecessor, but it will still struggle in less than perfect (i.e. bright) lighting conditions. The waterproof case is pretty tough, we sheared one off the side of a Suzuki GSX-R1000 on a racetrack and it held up. There was a deep gash but still sealed and was functional. Too bad the damn card had filled up before that happened, it would have made for some awesome footage!
The other POV camera system that I have experience with is the Replay XD1080. It’s a great camera, small, light and easy to use. It’s field of view isn’t as wide as the GoPro, and it doesn’t get that weird fish eye distortion. Overall it seems to produce a much higher image quality than the GoPro (you can hook it up to a computer and change the bitrate and other settings in a text file). The main downside is that I don’t think they are waterproof. Splash and Water Resistant yes, but I’m not sure if you can submerge it. Also, it runs on one internal battery, so once it’s dead, you have to recharge the camera. Oh and they don’t have a monitor option (yet). I believe both manufacturers are working on a blue tooth and wifi option to allow you to control record functions and monitor video from mobile devices and computers. I’ve got a feeling that’ll kill batteries pretty quickly.
http://society6.com/grainfarmer Fly Fishing and Landscape open edition Photography prints.
http://grainfarmer.vsco.co/ iPhone photos
http://instagram.com/chad_simcox InstagramI’ve used these a lot for video shoots. They’re great light sources, especially in low light scenes. Even the small bricks would be more than enough for the situation in the photo above. I don’t know how they would work for fill lights for daytime photo though, they don’t cast extremely far. I’d say go with a 1x size at least.
For daylight shoots, you may be better off with a flex fill or a flash with gel and diffusion.http://society6.com/grainfarmer Fly Fishing and Landscape open edition Photography prints.
http://grainfarmer.vsco.co/ iPhone photos
http://instagram.com/chad_simcox Instagrammy girlfriend and I were going to make a trip up to Alaska this summer. $300RT/ea. out of Long Beach, CA. We would just rent a car and stay with friends. Her old roommate’s husband is a guide, so between him and other friends, we weren’t going to have to bring or rent any gear either. Unfortunately we’re decided this year isn’t the best for us to go. Kinda bummed on that one.
http://society6.com/grainfarmer Fly Fishing and Landscape open edition Photography prints.
http://grainfarmer.vsco.co/ iPhone photos
http://instagram.com/chad_simcox InstagramCool video, keep it up. I agree with what other people say about building a story line. Have the fishermen you film tell the story about where they are, what it takes to get these fish and what it means to catch them. Remember the 5-Ws rule from school? Find a creative way to get that information in, visually or through use of audio. There is potential to make a nice short film here. The subject is interesting (small native, evolutionary unique trout in the south, in the oldest mountain range on earth, that are hard to get to and catch), play it up.
On a technical note, bump up the shutter speed on your camera to help eliminate the motion blur when you stabilize in post. I assume you’re at 1/48 or 1/60 sec right now. If you can get away with 1/125 or higher when you’re on the steady rig, go for it.
http://society6.com/grainfarmer Fly Fishing and Landscape open edition Photography prints.
http://grainfarmer.vsco.co/ iPhone photos
http://instagram.com/chad_simcox InstagramNice fish! Gotta love smallies on the fly. Which river were you on?
http://society6.com/grainfarmer Fly Fishing and Landscape open edition Photography prints.
http://grainfarmer.vsco.co/ iPhone photos
http://instagram.com/chad_simcox InstagramI remember seeing similar designs at General Quarters in LA. http://www.generalquartersstore.com/
They don’t have an online store, but maybe you could email them and ask. I’m not sure if they were done as an in house item or if it was from another company. CXXVI comes to mind as a brand that would produce these as well (but I couldn’t find them on their website)
http://society6.com/grainfarmer Fly Fishing and Landscape open edition Photography prints.
http://grainfarmer.vsco.co/ iPhone photos
http://instagram.com/chad_simcox InstagramLooks great, I like the navigation of the portfolios. The scrubability is nice and very user friendly. I hate having to click a lot on websites, so not having to click to go to the next photo is great. It would be nice if the keyboard arrows would scrub quicker. I prefer having the photos separated a little from each other. It seems to help make each photo stand out from the others. It’s doubtful that you would arrange a printed portfolio book in this manner, so I would emulate the formatting of a print book a little more. This also allows you to arrange diptychs if you ever present that way.
http://society6.com/grainfarmer Fly Fishing and Landscape open edition Photography prints.
http://grainfarmer.vsco.co/ iPhone photos
http://instagram.com/chad_simcox Instagramare you using biots for the split wing case?
http://society6.com/grainfarmer Fly Fishing and Landscape open edition Photography prints.
http://grainfarmer.vsco.co/ iPhone photos
http://instagram.com/chad_simcox InstagramI’ll also say that in addition to using a “fast” line like Sharkskin, I over lined my rod by 1 wt. That seemed to help as well with being able to make quick casts in tight quarters. My style of casting has a lot to do with the line choice. I tend to cast fast and usually side armed. I don’t make beautiful slow loops, but I do get my fly where in needs to be.
http://society6.com/grainfarmer Fly Fishing and Landscape open edition Photography prints.
http://grainfarmer.vsco.co/ iPhone photos
http://instagram.com/chad_simcox InstagramI originally bought a 7’6″ 4wt St. Croix for the Smokies and that continued to be my small stream rod when I moved west. A little over a year ago I got a TFO 8′ 2wt and I haven’t touched my 4wt since. I love the lighter weight rod. Last week I was throwing mini-buggers with it no problem. Great for dries too, and the 8′ gives a little bit better reach when nymphing. I’ll say one of the best things I did was put some Sharkskin line on it. The line is so fast, that I can keep my backcast in tight and do a double haul to get the fly out long distances when there isn’t much room to cast.
http://society6.com/grainfarmer Fly Fishing and Landscape open edition Photography prints.
http://grainfarmer.vsco.co/ iPhone photos
http://instagram.com/chad_simcox InstagramBeen shooting mostly B&W film lately. Gone with a film/digital hybrid system. Shoot, develop, scan, PS for burn/dodge etc. I’m loving it! I really don’t remember the last time I used my DSLR.
Fuji Acros 100 in D76 is great! Also I’m liking the look of Arista 100 for 35mm.
http://society6.com/grainfarmer Fly Fishing and Landscape open edition Photography prints.
http://grainfarmer.vsco.co/ iPhone photos
http://instagram.com/chad_simcox InstagramThe 4 lens kit sounds cool, but I couldn’t tell exactly what everything was from the pictures (I didn’t really read into it).
Considering I bought a holga and disassembled it but never got around to cutting everything out and gluing it all together, I’d say that the price on these is well worth not dealing with the hassle of doing a DIY versionhttp://society6.com/grainfarmer Fly Fishing and Landscape open edition Photography prints.
http://grainfarmer.vsco.co/ iPhone photos
http://instagram.com/chad_simcox Instagramthat first one is well done. Double exposures are very interesting when done nicely. Whats cool is that you can push the effect even further using masks when shooting the first exposure. I’d love to see this series expanded further, nice work.
http://society6.com/grainfarmer Fly Fishing and Landscape open edition Photography prints.
http://grainfarmer.vsco.co/ iPhone photos
http://instagram.com/chad_simcox Instagram
