October Trout

It was got damn cold out but with no trips on the board, might as well go fishing.

Fish Porn is for Humans

Fly Fishing Film Tour has been making its way around the country promoting nearly a dozen fly fishing films.  Last night the crew was in Arlington, VA at the Draft House Cinema showing their lineup.  A few were underwhelming and a few were great.
Standouts:

Fly fishing and fly fishers can be so damn righteous, this small  mob of middle-aged punk rockers get their fix yelling angry lyrics at angrier teenagers, and occasionally at stubborn trout.  They're not hog tiers when it comes to fishing but you don't have to be to feel the love.


"Doc of the Drakes" has two messages it shares with the world; do what you love and you can do it forever, and any fish can be a trophy... but it helps if it's 25".  Doc is an old man by his own account, and Parkinson's  has left him with a shaky hand.  Of course, that doesn't matter as long as you can set the hook right.  The trout make him work for his catch, but he finds his trophy.


This one takes me out of DC and puts me back in "the land of giants."  Nothing's more exhilarating than chasing steelhead in Alaska.  These guys do it in true dirt bag style.

Now there were some mentionables, Fly a Legacy, The Arctic, and Riding High: A Season on the Fly.
The night was great, with tons of give-a-ways, good food and drink, good people.
Check it out. FlyFishingFilmTour

In The Flesh

When salmon carcass is thick in the river, when fishing for trophy trout, nothing beats the flesh fly.  It might be a bit bold or lacking in the sophistication many newer trout flies possess but it catches fish.

It's a quick and easy tie, and you'll want a box full

These are about as small as you'll see them.  Some are 4"-6" inches long, articulated and weighted, but these are considered micro.  They are simply wrapped rabbit fur strips in colors that mimic the rotting flesh that fills the waters.

You don't need to be a perfectionist to tie a flesh fly that will catch fish

Don't be surprised by high numbers of big trout

Around Camp

Just to fill in a few holes.  Here are some shots from around camp and on the water.

Meet Canyon

He's not so happy here - went for an inadvertent swim

It might seem like over kill but strong pliers and good scissors are a must

A shell makes first wake on Kenai Lake

PHWFF National Rod Building Contest

The Project Healing Waters national rod building competition has announced the winners.  Vets from around the country finished their rods a few weeks ago and submitted them into the nation-wide contest for a bid to travel to one of many fly fishing destinations.  The rods submitted were pieces of art, many paying tribute to military honors and medals.

Feather inlay above the handle and on the ferrule.

The competition had three categories for entry:

Category 1

     Those participants with disabling wounds, injuries, or disorders of the upper limbs, eyes,  or neurological system causing greater than 10% impairment.

Category 2

    Those participants with other injuries, but without the above named impairments or limitations.

Category 3

     Those participants who have built a rod in a previous year’s contest.

Abbondondola's winning stars and stripes rod.

The winners for the three categories are bellow:

Category 1

1st Andy Anderson, Long Beach

2nd Chase Gean, Ft. Huachuca

3rd Chris Bollinger, Long Beach

Category 2

1st Louis Doyon, Togus VAMC

2nd Henry Lessard, Togus VAMC

3rd Gabe Castleberry, Wilmington, NC

Category 3

1st Anthony Abbondondola, Togus VAMC

2nd Jesse Garza, Long Beach

3rd Bill Boyce, Long Beach

US Marine Corp rod by Gabe Castleberry

Curious what they won?  The winners get to choose one of these trips:

• Blue Valley Ranch in Colorado (September 29 - October 1)
• Kodiak Alaska trip (July 31 - August 6)
• Flint Rainbow Club Salmon trip in Michigan (October 12 - 16)
• Big Horn River trip Billings, Montana (June 4-8)
• 4th Annual Wilderness North Canada trip (July 7-12)

Congrats to Chris on a beautiful rod and a 3rd place finish.

Congratulations to all of the contestants and the winners.  Props to by friends at the Long Beach VA for big numbers among the winners and amazing works.  These are beautiful rods and will look great with a heavy bend in them!

For more on Project Healing Waters visit www.ProjectHealingWaters.org

For more on the competition and for more photos visit http://hookhack.com/html/projecthealingwaters

Project Healing Waters at Jess Ranch Lakes

If you haven't yet heard of Project Healing Waters or seen someone who's life fly fishing has changed, it's time to do some reading.  That power has been around for many hundreds of years but more recently it  has taken on a new form.  Project Healing Waters started in 2005 with the intent to help disabled veterans heal physically and emotionally through fly fishing and fly tying education and outings.  PHW now offers itself to veterans at over 70 medical centers and Veteran Affairs hospitals.

PHW rod tube holding the hopes and efforts of one of the veterans.

I have recently become involved with PHW functioning at the VA in Long Beach, CA through the Long Beach Casting Club.  As I entered the program the vets were half way through building their own fly rods.  The rods flaunted decorative ties, rod seats and handles, many paying tribute to war time and country.  Each veteran had a rod to build and keep as an introduction to the world of fly fishing.  Just two weeks ago the rods were finished and some of them sent to Maryland for a national PHW rod building competition in a bid for best rod and a guided trip to Montana.

One vet's rod is a marked tribute.

For the second time in two years volunteers and veterans made the trip  to Jess Ranch Lakes, a hatchery in the high desert of Southern California with associated trout ponds .  Hi-Desert Fly Fishers catered the outing with food and drink, and helped many of the vets test their new gear.  Though the fish were big, I mean really big, it was a challenge to really test the rods.

A rainbow takes a look but won't be fooled.

A HI-DESERT angler ties on a new fly.

Like all good fishers we had our excuses ready, punctuated by some very exciting hook-ups and a netted fish now and again.  The excitement of being on the water made the low numbers quickly forgotten.  The peace, the friends and the focus on the water reduces what’s important to what’s in front of you.  The water becomes the focus, the fish are the goal, and what is not immediately around you becomes far, far away.

The biggest hook-up of the day doubles over a 6wt. rod.

It is harder now for someone to find the outdoors, to get out of the urban, the workplace, the hospital and go fishing.  PHW makes fishers out of war veterans and out of heros.  

The possibility of a large fish gets everyone on their feet.

You don’t have to have seen the perils of a war to know the power of fly-fishing.  It treats all of us the same.

Long Beach Chapter Project Healing Waters is ready now to start fly tying.  In September the vets will be traveling to Montana self-made and ready for world class trout, precious time on the water, and a trip they more than deserve.  To learn more about Project Healing Waters and  PHW at Long Beach visit:
www.projecthealingwaters.org
 www.longbeachcastingclub.org

San Antonio Dreams

Here, water rules.  The Inland Empire, southern California,  a vast valley of metropolitan growth.  From the Santa Monica beaches to San Bernardino an hour and a quarter east (without traffic) extends one of America's largest and most highly populated continuous developed areas.  About 15 million people are obliviously tied up in the battle for water consumption, but a few of us want to use whatever water is still between banks for something a bit different.  Despite diminutive fish and graffitied banks I still enjoy fishing around here, where #18 is a small fly and 10 inch fish are trophies.

It seems to me, though I'm no expert, that there are untold stories about the fish that used to inhabits mountain streams and valley rivers where there are now homes and highways.  Dormant myths involving pack mules and hardy souls searching the south west for answers and finding finned monsters can't possibly have been relegated to my dazed mind.  Somewhere in words written or unspoken exist trout and men and adventures now buried beneath dams and broad suburban roads.

Now, though the fishes may be as small as the water they live in, they remain eager, hardy, tested, and some of them caught.

The San Antonio Canyon is home to the San Antonio creeks and its undersized fishes.  Weekends are hopeless as the lower part of the creek becomes more of a bathtub to weekenders than a place to retreat to, but once past the crowds the noise of the white water reduces one's surroundings to oneself, thoughts, and the water.  Alertness becomes concentrated into sight and feel.  The hunt is not for fish, they are too small to see in white water.  The hunt is for water - water that feels of fish.  Deeper, slower, bluer, fishier.

Graffitied walls of a ruined bridge - this road was decommissioned in 1969. 

Be prepared to cover ground.  The hiking is either up or down, balancing on fallen trees, following log mazes above thorny nettles and impassable brush, and hopping rock to rock.  Moving away from the bank to skirt around some thick brush and then returning to examine the water.

The water roars as recent rain and snowmelt have swollen San Antonio.

There is something surprisingly endearing about small fish.  It could be the small water they live in, their eagerness to take a fly too big for their mouth, their disproportionately large eyes or their frantic vibrations on the end of the rod.  Weather they are arctic grayling, brookies or just diminutive rainbows, I like small fish.

This 6-incher catches its breath in shallow water.

San Antonio runs clear and fast, water pouring over ledges and through brush.  As is usually the case I try to cover a lot of ground.  Much of the water is too fast or uneven to get a decent drift but every so often there is a pool or riffle that deserves high attention.  I rarely cast for fish.  The thickest vegetation in the parched canyon is along the banks.   Drifts are achieved only by high-sticking directly above the hole or by under powering roll casts to gain a few extra feet.  Now and again I will remove the butt section of my rod and cast with the top few sections.  The strikes usually come quickly, if you can detect them.  Even small fish learn quickly that an insect with a hook attached isn't an insect at all.  Missing strikes happens, and with barbless hooks you don't land every fish you set on.  They'll often rise for a dry and fail to get their mouths around the dressing and hook, leaving it floating not quite as high as before.  One thing is for sure about these small trout, they are eager.  They do not deliberate over whether or not to eat, or critique the use of a silver bead instead of a gold one, or shy away from some of the more artful imitations of naturals.  They pounce and then vibrate, pause, and then vibrate some more until they are released back into hiding.  I was told once that when a fish is small enough to fit in just one hand and when it won't cease from squirming, to turn it belly-up.  Whether this calms the fish or simply disorients it, the hook does come out best when the fish is still.

Large eyes look back at me after realizing I'm on the other end of the Hare's Ear.

Another small trout shines in just a centimeter of water before finding the deep.

So I will continue to fish San Antonio, to hop its rocks and walk its shores, to acknowledge its urban setting and let the roar reduce my surroundings to myself and my intent, and to catch its fish and then release them again.  Each mini rainbow representing the hardships of a desert canyon and the persistence of each trout.  Each tiny fish  triggering the thought and the dream that somewhere in these mountain waters, motionless among the heavy creek-bed rocks, laughing at my silver bead head and the fish that fall for it, lays the grandaddy, the fish that requires and net and two hands to hold, silent with the adventures he has seen.

Except for a few black spots and a hint of red, this trout disappears in the mirage of grays and browns.