Stillwater Fly Fishing
Birthday Week 2010
Dec 2nd
Everyone who knows me knows that my birthday is the best day for the year. (At least for me it is) I am free to go and do anything thing I want, which always ends up with me going fishing with my beautiful wife. This year I started the celebrations off a little early and spend the week leading up to the big day, having a good time.
With work taking me up to Coalville, I spent the afternoon on a local lake catching Rainbows and Browns from the shore, stripping buggers. Ended the day on the river without any love from the bigger streamer eating browns that lurk in its undercut banks.
Powell 2010
Nov 5th
Our annual September Lake Powell trip was better then ever. (It even felt more like a vacation than a trip) The weather for the most part stayed awesome giving us lots of glass for wakeboarding, surfing, sking and of course chasing boils. The main focus of the trip was water sports, since Liz and I had just picked up a Mastercraft X-30 the week before the trip. The ole Glastron was great and treated us well, but lets be real. Its not even close to as nice as an X-30. With our new baby, I spent most of the off time checking out how things worked on the boat. (like the shower, bilge pump, ballast tanks, speakers, etc…) The rest of the time we hungout on the houseboat playing cards, eating, laying out, watching movies on the cliff walls and catching bass and carp that patrolled the houseboat. One of the best parts of the trip was that we didn’t have to go out side of our cove to find great fishing. The cove we stayed held lots of shad and where you find shad you find ambushing strippers and bass. So every morning and evening we listened for the boils and when we heard them its was an all out stampede to get to them before they stopped. In all it was a little piece of heaven on earth. There are few other things that rival a 7 day vacation to Lake Powell durning the first weekend in September. Its a magical place to say the least. The pictures will help tell the rest of the story…
Summer Chironomids Part 1
Oct 28th
Its been to long since my last post. Life has been busy to say the least. Lots has changed over the past couple months with a new job, three week training in WI, and trips almost every weekend I was home. So over the next couple weeks I am going to try and catch back up with some of my favorite trips over the summer and into fall.
With hall passes from the wives, Hoss and I decided to try one of our favorite stillwaters. We had a hunch that these finicky fish would be in the shallows eating Chironomids and Scuds. We must have played our cards right, because the fish were in and they were on what we had. We started stripping scuds over the moss beds for cruisers that we could site fish. It was very productive in the early hours as the fish were more aggressive and were targeting scuds in the shallows. As the late morning sun warmed the water we started noticing more and more fish breaking the surface further out, ambushing the emerging chironomids. With this in mind we switched over to a chirono set-up and with the help of the wind we were into fish on a constant basis. It was interesting to note that the more the wind blew the better the fishing was. But as the wind settled the fish were less interested in our offering. Luckily for us the wind blew almost all afternoon putting our bugs over lots of oversized Tiger & Colorado Cutthroats Trout. As we ended our day all we could talk about was the next time we were going to come back. That when you know it was a great day! I’ll let the pics tell the rest of the story…
2010 Ice Off
Aug 15th
So this years ice off came at the worst possible time. By the time the lakes started to unveil themselves I was already well under the grasp of religiously fishing some local BWO hatches. When Strawberry was just getting good, I drove right past it and to the 
Green River for the week, missing out on some of my favorite fishing of the year. But it wasn’t a complete bust this year. Jord and I were able to sneak away chase some big kitties as they patrolled the ice free shallows. The day started off slow as we got to the lake to find that the ice that was open the day before re-froze, leaving us sitting around from 7am to noon waiting on the ice to peel back. Since we had some free time we managed to clean up the garbage around the lake and Jord was able to catch a little cutty as it moved into the shallows of the spring. Once the ice softened up we fished hard for the few fish that were active enough to want to eat in the freezing water. Even though the catch rate wasn’t a typical ice-off experience, it was still nice to be there and have the chance. My favorite fish of the day was a big momma tiger that I spotted just feet from the shore, when I casted over her. I told Jord that she wouldn’t eat, but as my fly floated over her face she opened her mouth and sucked it in. I was so surprised that I didn’t even set the hook, giving her all kinds of time to spit it out. As luck was on my side the hook stuck and I found I had a tight line and a big grin.
Trash Talk and The Brothers
Feb 28th
A couple weeks ago, I had the opportunity to fish with my two younger bros, Jordan and Gunner. Its always a good time when we fish together, with lots of messing around, trash talk and brotherly competition. This day was special though. We were targeting oversized fish that would make any angler smile. So with that in mind the trash talking began. I was talking all kinds of trash to Jordan about our last outing, but it wasn’t until I hooked up with a small 26 inch bow on my second cast, that I was able to back-up what I was throwing up. After that my head and mouth grew ten sizes. It really didn’t matter though, the picky fish were kind to us all that morning and we all had our hands on some of the biggest fish of our lives.
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Fish Stories
Dec 30th
From an early age I liked fish stories. I like telling them and listening to them. I remember my grandpa telling us the same fishing stories over and over while we drove to the “ole Berry Patch” at 5 am. To me these stories and the countless others told by friends and family make up a personal memory book that I store close to my heart. Its in a fishing story that a child creates dreams for the future, learns lessons from the past, and legends are made. Over the past few months I have had many great stories written, but one sticks out more than all the rest. It all started the day after Thanksgiving, while most were taking advantage of the Black Friday deals, I fled to the mountains for a little R&R.