Mike Cline
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Lou-Dan or Dan-Lou
Contact Walter Wiess or Richard Parks at Parks Fly Shop in Gardiner, MT http://parksflyshop.com. If anyone know how to get you to the Sough Creek 3rd Meadow in Sept, Walter or Richard will.
2) The four factors affecting how many salmon successfully return to sea each year in the lower 48 are (1) commercial fishing takes, (2) habitat degradation, including the building of dams, preventing access to spawning water, (3) recreational fishing takes, and (4) natural mortality.
3) The most major of the four factors in terms of fish prevented from reaching the ocean (or ever being born) is the presence of hydroelectric dams blocking access to spawning water in significant numbers. However, offshore commercial fishing, particularly by non-American fishermen in international waters, is a large factor preventing rebound.
Zach
Zach, for fear of being politically incorrect, I think you left out “Subsistence Fishing” by native American tribes as a major factor. They take a huge toll of salmon and steelhead every year. No one wants to deny them their historical rights, and many groups don’t really care about the future. They TAKE what they can get with nets, and nets, and nets. Having seen tons of Steelhead turned into Fertilizer by Indians on the Pullayup river in the 1970’s and witnessed subsistence fishing in Alaska, these folks take alot of fish out the system and they want their’s first before any other group can lay claim to them.
Additionally, the Eating Wild Salmon idea might be a good idea to develop a constitutancy, but the inclusion of statements like:
3. Free-flowing rivers – That wild salmon and steelhead have access to and from spawning and rearing habitat, and that dams and other barriers be modified or removed to allow fish access.
8. Water conservation. – That state water laws and municipal, industrial, and agricultural water-users conserve water so that salmon and steelhead streams flow year-round.
with no regard to the economic impact, dooms the Bill of Rights for me. For many, dams are such evil things, but the following statement about some Alabama Power Dams built in the 1920s portends otherwise.
Prior to 1912 only seventy-two Alabama communities had electricity, but by 1928, when Jordan Dam went into operation, Alabama Power served four hundred twentry-one communities in sixty-one of Alabama’s sixty-seven counties. The company also provided power for coal and iron mines, cotton mills, cement plants, quarries, steel plants and rolling mills, foundries, pipe plants and machine shops, ice plants public utilities, and electric furnance installations, industries that put thousands of [Alabama] citizens to work. – Jackson, Harvey H. III, Putting Loafing Streams To Work, University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, page 187, 1997.
Although some dams may have served their useful life, most haven’t. I have no desire to go back to living in a 1920s world with food shortages, gas lamps and no air conditioning. Most of those who talk about tearing down dams wouldn’t either.
My two cents
Slapout Mike
Check out: http://www.maineflyfishing.com/flyvideos/devilbug.htm
Looks like a legless, conflicted double humpy to me!
Slapout Mike
Mike,
You fishing the Beaverhead? If you didnt have that planned, put it on your list.
Tim,
Most likely.
Got to read A WISP ON THE WIND: IN SEARCH OF BULL TROUT, BAMBOO AND BEYOND by Jerry Kustich on the plane rides last week. Great insight into Bamboo and the Winston Bamboo Rod factory in Twin Bridges, MT. Jerry has worked and lived there for over 20 years. Makes you want to go out an buy a Winston.
Slapout Mike
How big do your brookies get up there?
ZachMy experience up there is really limited to 3 trips, 2 last year. There are native populations of Brook Trout in most waters, but the natives rarely get beyond 12″ from what I have learned. Most waters are stocked to some extent with Brook, Brown and Rainbows but the holdover is good and I’ve caught 14″ fish on every trip. Most of the guides believe the Browns are reproducing in both the Connecticutt an Androscroggin rivers.
The brook trout below was caught last year on the Androscroggin in early June and was most likely a holdover stocker from the previous year. I’ve seen pictures of Browns up to 18″ and heard of many up to ten pounds caught by the bait soakers.
The big draw up in the Connecticut Lakes region is the Landlocked Salmon. When they make their early spring and late fall runs, I guess the fly fishing for 18-20″ salmon is really pretty awesone.
Slapout Mike
Most of the writers we read grew up in a different era and have a many more miles on their odometers. All of us are comfortable with the Geirach style of storytelling….largely because we grew up in the places and with the people in the stories….but also because they don’t push any boundaries.
So Poaching and Fishing without a license is OK!
Slapout Mike
I stopped reading Prosek after Fly Fishing the 41st because he boasted so much about his ability to poach trout in Southern Europe (ie, not buy a license, get permission, etc.).
I wish there was a way to really target them.
There is – but the main challenge is keeping a turd on the hook during the back cast. 🙂
bd
Never tried to cast a turd! I’ve yet to master the artifical chicken liver fly. I actually tried to soak some bucktail clousers in putrid chicken livers once, but using them was a bit distasteful. Have you ever been downwind of a commerical cat fisherman’s skiff?–absolutely disgusting.
Nice Channel Cat Cameron. Had to be a treat on the glass rod. Cats are always a surprise when fly fishing. I wish there was a way to really target them. Each year I catch 2 or 3 (Channels or Flathead) when fishing clousers around trees in the local rivers and lakes. Always seems like a big bass or stripe until they start rolling. Then you know its a Cat. Have never caught a Blue on a fly. Anyone ever caught a Blue cat on a fly?
Hands down the best line to leader knot I’ve ever used.
Pretty much looks like a Sheetbend which has been a traditional connection between line of different diameters for centuries. http://www.42brghtn.mistral.co.uk/knots/42ktshtb.html
Tim,
I had the opportunity to fish for Northerns for about ten years straight in the in 1990’s in Northern Minnesota on Lake Kabatogama, Lake Namakan and many of the smaller inland lakes in Voyguer’s National Park as well as the Rainy River in International Falls. The big lakes were deep, rocky, cold, oligotrophic lakes with lots of weedy bays where the big Pike would hang out in 5-25ft of water off the rocky points adjacent to the weedy bays. Fly fishing for them was pretty good and after a couple of seasons, I settled on basically one fly with only color variations. The fly was a modified Deciever which could be made weedless with a mono weed guard if desired. I built this fly for durability, but more so because is always worked and was easy to cast. I wish I had a photo handy but don’t. It is constructed like this:
Hook: 5/0 Gamagatsu Straight Shank Worm Hook (The kind bass fisherman use for plastic worms). This hook is light, strong and has a large gap and big hook eye.
Body:
Step 1: Build this first. I used a section of EZ Tube Woven body material large enough to contain a mini-rattle. I tried different colors, but settled on clear. With the rattle inside the tube and on the hook shank, lash both ends of the tube with kevlar thread to create about a 1/8″ long thread base at both ends. The tube fillaments can extend a bit from the rear, but should be flush at the front to allow a clean head wrap.
Step 2: Soak the body with any type of clear epoxy. I used rod building epoxy, but any epoxy will work. Ensure you maintain smooth thread bases front and back. A rotating dryer works well here.
Hackles: Standard Deciever here. I used two white and two red saddles (3-4″) long on both the front and back. The saddle hackles should flare out. The overall fly length comes out to about 4-5″. I’ve tied them with Yellow/White, Black/White and Chartruese/White combos.
Finish the head with kevlar thread and epoxy the head and hackle wraps. All pike flys that work wear out. It must be those teeth. But this fly, if not lost, can be rebuilt because the body is essentially indestructable. I have a few that have gone through at least 3 sets of hackle.
I used this fly in both deep and shallow situations.
Find yourself some good flexible wire leader material such as Tiger Wire or Fenwick Iron thread and these things cast just like an Adams on a Spring Creek (well maybe not that delicate).
This guy fell to one of these on the Rainy River.
Slapout Mike
Tons of options in the Pacific Northwest
A good place to start if not already hooked up with em is http://washingtonflyfishing.com. They have a good forum and lots of information on their site.
Can’t go wrong with floating the Yakima. Last time I did it was in late December with a guide out of the Evening Hatch Fly Shop in Ellensburg. These guys really know the river as well as lots of other places in E. Wash. http://www.theeveninghatch.com/index.htm. Don’t forget that the Yakima has some really good smallmouth fishing in the canyon waters down to its confluence with the Columbia.
If you want to study up on Cutthroat fishing, you must get your hands on: Fly-Fishing Coastal Cutthroat Trout by Les Johnson. I think it is an Amato publication. This is the definitive work on the subject.
As for stillwaters, the west slope of the Cascades is loaded with them from Bellingham to Vancouver and the Spring is a great time for them. Lots of them have Silver Trout (Kokanee Landlocks) with very heavy populations. Many have boat rentals and a float tube is very handy on many of the smaller ones. When I lived out there in the 1970s, Mineral Lake in Lewis County was one of my favorites. http://www.washingtonlakes.com/FeaturedLake.aspx?id=142This Washington Lakes site has lots of useful info on stillwaters.
Three areas that you should condsider for something different
1) The San Juan Islands. Great inshore waters for ling and rockfish, clamming, crabing, and shrimping
2) The Olympic Penisular – Eastern foothills have lots of small lakes.
3) The Colville Indian Reservation in Okanagon County (N. Central Washington). The San Poil River which runs into the Columbia at FDR Lake is a classical freestone rainbow stream.Hope this helps.
Slapout Mike
