Top end fly rods.
Date: The other day.
Time: Mid-afternoon.
Weather: Sloppy snowstorm.
My Mood: Rather poor.
Final Decision: What the hell.
Rod: Beulah 9’9” Platinum 7wt.
Line: Hand chopped 270 gr. franken-skagit. 9 feet of T6.
Fly: Olive/black Gartside Soft Hackle.
The technique: Letting the fly dangle idly (hopelessly, almost) while thrashing my left arm to warm up my hand. Whoops…there’s one.
Spend a couple hours on washboard roads, gritting your teeth, and listening to parts of your truck gradually loosen and begin to rattle….
Find the river. Turn, drive upstream. Find the right pullout where the little valley spills in from the other side….
Pull over there. Jump out. Let the dogs jump out and sniff and pee on stuff. Stretch with excitement in the sudden quiet….
Assemble your gear, whistle the pups into line, and start hiking. Wade the river, and leave two good beers in the mouth of the creek. Head up that valley….
Give it an hour, that should be enough. Turn down to the creek at the dead tree, just past the big rock, but if you hit that clump of bushes you’ve gone too far…
Stick the key in the lock, say the password, kneel at the altar, rub your lucky rock, take a sip of whiskey….
Or whatever you think works….
You’ll see the pool where you should start. You wouldn’t think that it’d hold that many fish, ….but it might. You won’t think any of them will crack two feet, bend out a tube-fly hook, lead you a hundred yards downstream, or almost beach themselves chasing your fly into the shallows, either….
But they might. One way to find out.
A face only a streamer fisherman could love.
my favorite fin, on one of my favorite fish, in one of my favorite places.
Buh bye.
Friends, it was a tough fall. Wait, let me back up. It was a tough summer. Remember the high water temperatures? The endless 95-degree days and all that nonsense? Yeah, it was a while ago, and it’s full-on winter now. So…Never mind about that.
As I was saying, a tough fall.
Not many steelhead swam back to Idaho. I heard a lot of them ended up in this river just over the border in Washington and Oregon, but I wasn’t fishing that river. Don’t ask me why not. I just wasn’t. I was fighting the good fight, or whatever you call it, and imposing that fight upon my dad as well. Poor guy, he just wants to escape his responsibilities and routine and spend a week and a half fishing for steelhead, and I make him do it on the biggest, trickiest, crowdedest river this state has, the Clearwater. At least I don’t make him fish dry flies.
We didn’t expect much. It was my only week to swing flies for the fall (more on that later), and fish counts over the dams were abysmal. We weren’t completely disappointed. In our second run of the second morning, Dad broke his three-year Clearwater streak of utter shit luck and landed this one.
Nice one Dad.
Same day, different run. We kept fishing through the dog-day sunlight because, well, I personally drank way too much coffee to go take a nap, though that might have been the sensible thing. I spent two-thirds of the afternoon’s run getting glassy eyed, watching my skater pull a pointless wake. Why was I fishing a skater? Because why not. I love watching them, and I love that when a fish shows on your fly it feels like a magic trick made real-life. On a river like the Clearwater, especially on a low-fish year, it’s not going to be about the numbers anyway (though to be honest, it never is, no matter where I am). So the occasional fish might as well be special, really special. I didn’t really perk up until the tailout, which felt inexplicably greasy. Good sense might have said it was a little too fast, but I kept fishing it through the lip and into the first few scattered waves of the riffle, because who needs good sense. They can hold further down in that stuff than you’d expect…unless, for a reason you can’t put a finger on, you kind of expect it…so I made sure not to even flinch when the first splashy boil blew up juuuust behind my skater…or when the second boil missed it as well, eight feet closer to the bank and two seconds later. I might’ve said something that’d get you to the principal’s office in grade school, but I tried to act like Dec Hogan or somebody was watching, and suavely backed up several steps. Tied on a little size 9 orange-bodied muddler with shaky hands and had at it again. Took me several swings to get back down there, but he was in the same spot. Yeah, “he”. I got a few good looks as he was airing out around the middle of the riffle – another thick, wild b-run male. And then, there was just stationary tension on the line. What the hell? I hauled back slowly. I could still feel some movement. I read the water where my line seemed to come from, and put together the two and two that meant I was wrapped half around a rock. (OK, don’t do anything stupid, you’ve got a big, mean, real deal fish short-leashed.) I was getting ready to wade back out into the tailout above: the rock in question was only about thirty feet from shore. I could do it. I could make this end well…and then I watched him thrash, half out of the water, and break me off.
Portrait of a Beat-down’s Aftermath…He took just outside that bigger wave, and broke off not far from there as well.
That was the only steelhead I’ve hooked in the year 2015.
(Disclaimer: I did leave for the majority of the fall season, and rowed a boat down the Grand Canyon, where there are zero steelhead. Not an excuse, but a pretty decent explanation.)
Anyway, dry spells happen, and they happen to all of us. As they do, your odds get better and better. Or so I like to tell myself. I don’t know where my next fish will come from, or when. I know it will eat a swung fly; one that I tied or a friend tied. For now, for me, that’s good enough.
Hello there, new friend.
Place: Hunter Island South Carolina a.k.a “The Dirty South” 😉 December.
Fishing had been horrible even for the “live baiters” and guys with boats [ no boat for me and no $ for a guide right now so I was from-shore fishing only]. Having been eaten alive by mosquitos on long hikes to places with no fish I was cynical at best. But then I met this super cool local redneck chick [I’m a redneck so we had that in common]. She “hooked me up” with the general location of a solid spot and I fished there that evening on outgoing tide! Every cast I landed a speckled trout. My point? Be nice to the locals and be friendly to all on the road.
The Story:
The next morning.
The tide was coming in fast around me and was standing on a island of razor sharp oyster shells, knee deep mud, and sea grass. I wasn’t in my waders, no stripping basket, nothing, just my rod – it was a spur of the moment decision. I thought to myself, “I had caught plenty of Speckled Trout there last night, I’ll see if anything is there on incoming tide on my way out of town.” I live in a tiny home / ford transit 250 so I pulled my home to the side of the road and ran to the spot knowing I only had maybe 15 minutes before the water would be too high.
Fly: Small: maybe a size 10 clouser. I picked it because it did double duty; part shrimp looking and part bait fish.
Rod: Beulah 6/7 switch.
I thought for sure I was out gunned when it hooked. I had never put this rod thru such an extreme test. Would the rod snap? I had to keep changing the angle. The fish went where it wanted to go stripping line and I ran up the bank and followed. I had no idea what I had hooked. A Red would have been too good to be true. I thought it was a black tip shark and said, “fuck it, I’ll see how long I can keep it on.” Then, the head and tail came out of the water and my heart stopped. Omg! My first Red and it’s a monster. Now I had to get it in and get a photo. But NO CAMERA WITH ME! I yelled to some guys passing in a small boat and asked if they had a camera. They said, “What the fuck are you some Hollywood celebrity, we ain’t got no camera. But whadda ya got there?” I ignored them and focused on the lug on the end of my line.
Fish: Red / Spot about 15 or more lbs and 30″. It’s hard to tell from the pict but look at my size 10 foot, the rod, and that huge 10wt Nautilus reel. < Yeah, I know it’s too big for this rod but I’m unconventional. No Rules.
*Note: Bogagrips just used to keep his head down for pict! #catchandrelease
I landed the fish and sprinted to my #vantagati to get my iPhone! Too big for a selfie but here you go. I was high for 4 hours after that, reliving every moment of the catch. I fish alone. I don’t have anyone to fish with most of the time so I got on the phone and sent a text to everyone and anyone I thought would care. I had to put it here too. This is why I fish. This is why I love it. Not just for big fish but for the entire experience and everything WE get to see while fly fishing that the rest of the world is missing
!
For more on the van and life on the road:[ instagram sstevebbff ] I’ve been fishing my way from Maine to here and this was a highlight.
It was day three of a four-day trip and things weren’t looking good. The water clarity was off, weather pattern stale, and salmon were clogging the prime runs. Even with the three other sticks in our group—all of them seasoned locals—we’d only scratched-out two fish.
Photo: Bruce Berry
After tough morning and a tougher afternoon, I started rehearsing those lines fishermen tell themselves when things fall short of expectations: great just hanging out with friends, always good checking out new water, strung together some really nice casts…you know, lies.
By 4:00, we were set up on one of the more popular runs but almost everything was wrong—brown water, cloudless skies, and sun shining directly into the fishes’ eyes. Wiser gents on the roadside patiently waited for better conditions but pure desperation drove me to fish. I racked my Onyx 5wt dry line set up and went for maximum confidence: a battle-tested Platinum 12’6” 6wt, 425 Tonic, and 10’ of T-11. Out of charity, Bruce handed me one of his black/purple/red Fish Movers with a set of instructions: “Tie this on and give me a shout when you hook a fish. I need photos of this fly hanging out of a fish’s mouth.”
Photo: Bruce Berry
Within ten swings, I heard a slow click-click from my Perfect and in an instant I was connected to a red hot anadromous freight train. One problem: Bruce had already fished his way around the corner and was well out of earshot. Determined to help him get the proof of the fly mojo, I was faced with the challenge of not only landing a hot fish, but doing so while I rock-scrambled downstream in hopes of grabbing Bruce’s attention. After banging my shins, dunking, and working the steelhead free from not one but two snags, I somehow made it back to boat, netted the fish, and flagged down Bruce in time to snap a couple photos and safely release the fish.
Photo: Bruce Berry
Brownie, #10 Drunken Hopper, 8’8″ Platinum 4wt
The 1968 meeting between Ohio State and Michigan was a blowout. Leading 42-12 late in the fourth quarter, the Buckeyes ran one in for another touchdown and Woody Hayes, OSU coaching legend, mercilessly sent out his squad for a two point conversion. When asked later why chose to run up the score–trying for the two-point conversion rather than the standard one-point field goal–Hayes simply replied, “Because the rules won’t let you go for three.”
Merciless
Texas Saltwater Flats Bull Redfish
Port Aransas has a good bull redfish run but most notably in the deep channels, inlets and passes. Nonetheless, they do come up onto the flats at certain times (like NOW)! Sight casting opportunities have really kicked up lately thanks to a lack of clouds and the winds are more favorable in the morning making it possible to hunt for these bigger redfish.
Black Drum
Super stealth is key and having a boat that can take you way way back in the back is a must! It takes a bit of work polling into places like this but it is worth every ounce of the energy and time it takes to get in and out. Equipped with Beulah’s Opal Fly Rod (newest saltwater line up), it delivers the fly well to these fish even in tight quarters. And if you need to take a long shot at a trailer the oversize snake guides really let the line shoot cleanly. Its got power to put some extra pressure on a bruiser too and this rod really knows how to get the job done.
With a bit of care one can even manage to take multiple shots at fish and with proper presentation these fish are eating! Along with those hefty redfish in the super skinny water are also good numbers of schooled up black drum. They aren’t puppies and put up a good fight too.
I’ve got dates open in August and September has some dates open also. October is mostly booked but I do still have a few dates open at that time too. Give me a call and lets go fishing! Capt Kenjo 361-500-2552
Bulls can run but they cant hide!
Arguably some of the most productive fly fishing in New England is along the Rhode Island Coast. The open shoreline is exposed to cool clean water of the North Atlantic while islands, bays, and beaches provide prime habitat for bait and predator fish. In Early Spring, stripe bass migrate into the area and inundate the waterways in search of food.
On a recent visit I was able to explore and fish some of the tidal salt ponds that dot the RI coast line. These massive tidal ponds are rich with life, bait, stripers, and incredible fly fishing opportunities. Expanses of flats are punctuated by deeper channels and small grassy islands. Tidal fluctuations and current present an ever changing landscape and huge variety for fly fishing stripe bass.
The ponds flood and ebb twice daily. The tide brings cool nutrient rich water, an abundance of bait, and predatory fish. Stripers swim in and out of the ponds through breech ways which open out to the Atlantic. Understanding the tides is key to fishing the ponds successfully. These ponds hold huge volumes of water and take so long to fill and empty that they have their own schedule for high and low tide. Tidal differences in the front of the pond can be 3 hours different from the ocean tides, and even 5 hours difference towards the back of the ponds. It might take a day or two to figure out exact time of the tidal change, but it’s absolutely necessary for knowing when and where to fish inside the ponds.
Much of the flats become exposed at low tide and fish will either exit the ponds, or lay in deeper channels and holes. The dropping tide was most productive for me and I would time my outings to begin an hour or two before the high tide and fish for 2-3 hours into the drop.
Shore fishing from the breech way jetties, or walk wading can be productive, but the ponds are best accessed with Kayak or shallow draft boats. This will allow you access to flats and back channels. Most people I saw pond fishing were trolling from boats in the channels, leaving the flats virtually unfished.
When Stripe bass do come up on the flats, they can be very challenging to take with a fly. They will spook easy and are often more selective than not. As with Permit, bonefish, or any flats quarry, presentation is everything. Anticipating the fishes’ movement and having a fly waiting will increase your odds. The ponds hold sand eels, crabs shrimp, and small baitfish; flies should be a close match.
We used Kayaks and rowed from spot to spot casting from the bank or sometimes getting out and wading the flats. Unfortunately, on this trip, grey skies during high tide hours made spotting fish difficult, but I have fished the ponds under better conditions and would put it right up there with the bone fishing I’ve done in the tropics.
On cloudy days, I found myself moving between rips and deeper troughs searching for fish. I adopted the belief that either they are there or not and would not spend too much time if fish weren’t showing or biting. After pulling the kayak up onto a point or beach, I would cast step cast until I found fish or exhausted the spot and moved on. The ponds are uncrowded and pressure is light. Site fishing on the flats is virtually untouched on the ponds and you can easily get away and have entire flats to yourself. Night fishing under the full moon was also very productive casting black Clousers into rips and troughs.
On our best day we landed 10 and lost another 5 fish in a 4 hour span, and even found time to harvest some littleneck clams for dinner. The fish were not big on this outing, most in the 25-30” range, but super fun on 8 & 9wt rods.
Gear Talk~
RI Saltwater Ponds~
Opal 8wt – Perfect for the flats and delicate presentation casting small bait patterns and crustaceans.
Line: Serum 300gr w/integrated sink clear 12’tip. The smaller size Serum lines have extended rear tapers to soften the presentation, but cast quick and accurate yet still powers decent size flies.
Opal 9wt – loaded with 300gr sink was used in deeper water situations casting sand eels and baitfish.
Opal Surf 7/8 & 9/10 – The only choice for blind casting and covering water. Opal Surf rods make distance casting easy and covering water a cinch.
Line: Serum tip system – Throughout the tide cycle I was able to adjust the sink rate by changing the tip and kept the fly in the zone through the full tide cycle.
Welcome to Central Oregon, the land of trout, steelhead, and… bass?! For those who have been asleep the past ten years several of Central Oregon’s high cascade lakes have become home to substantial populations of hearty largemouth bass. Keep in mind this isn’t a post about conservation or invasive species. Its about bass fishing with Beulah’s platinum 9′ 9″ 7 weight.
Every summer I have a lull in my guiding schedule just before steelhead start to run in the Lower Deschutes. I have made a habit of heading up to the lakes near Bend during this time to escape the heat and do the stillwater thing. This time I was joined by my father in law Bruce Fox, lifelong Bend resident and fisherman.
For Bruce’s birthday each year “the kids” usually pitch in and we get him a Beulah rod. He has built quite the arsenal. One of the recent additions was the platinum series 9′ 9″ 7 weight. We decided to give this rod a field test chasing ole’ bucket mouth.
A few notes about this rod…
Accuracy: The way we do it this type of fishing is almost 100% sight casting so fly placement is key. You have to land the fly behind or off to the side of the bass so that the fish thinks it’s his idea to investigate the fly. The 9′ 9″ 7 wt is deadly accurate at medium to (relatively) long distance even casting huge not-so-aerodynamic flies.
Delicacy: Summer conditions on the Cascade Lakes are often calm and sunny. This year we have low water. If the fly line lands too splashy say goodbye to garbage gut… he didn’t grow that big by entertaining sloppy presentations. The 7 weight line lands softer than heavier lines, providing us with many opportunities under spooky conditions.
Safety: In our boat safety is an attitude! These bass are looking for a meal, not a snack. We obliged by casting giant streamers that I found in the saltwater fly bins at Deschutes Angler. These flies are big, and the hooks that they are tied on are down right scary. Now I trust my father in law to do his very best to avoid snagging me, but I am a little bit gun shy these days after taking a size 2 owner to the face back in April (winter steelheading accident). I have to admit that the extra nine inches of rod made me feel much more comfortable having a caveman sized hook zipping overhead.
It was a fun day, even with tough fishing and 90+ degree heat. We caught a handful of bass and even a few nice rainbows sipping callibaetis (the seven weight worked well for that also, not too heavy). We brought a few different rods but since we took turns fishing and managing the boat we never had to fight over the 7 weight.
Several years ago, some friends and I came upon what became one of my favorite outdoor films: a production called Signatures. It embodied most of what I believe in about the work and play I take part in; but to the point, something said by one of the film’s featured Japanese fly-fishermen stayed with me. He said that in Japan, they didn’t fish for particular species as much as they fished seasons – one season, a particular trout would be available; as that season faded, the cherry salmon or some other species would show up or start feeding. This glimpse of fishing lifestyle struck a chord with me then, as I realized that I’ve ended up living and fishing a lot like this.
In central Idaho, most of the woods and waters are still pretty wild. Rivers are freestone and vary widely in flow and temperature throughout the year. By late fall, say, most of the fishing in this area is laid to rest, replaced by backcountry skiing the snow that becomes next year’s river. In the spring, the rivers swell with this runoff and rush greenish-brown and icy for several weeks. As the snowpack and its attendant melt recedes, the landscape is just starting to fluoresce into its short-lived vibrant green, and some of the trout that we identify with these freestone rivers begin to creep back into the summer places from which we know them. In other words, we fish seasons.
The middle of spring’s season brings back into the rivers a predator fish unlike any other I know of. The bull trout hasn’t had an easy go of things – in a time recent enough that your grandfather could remember it, a bounty was actually placed on them with a cash reward for their tails. The theory was, of course, that the bull trout’s appetite for chinook salmon smolt was responsible for the salmon’s decline – never mind the overharvest, slash-and-burn logging, downstream construction of massive fish killing dams, or any human factor. So the bull trout were intentionally killed by anglers, then decimated by the same salmon decline for which they were blamed. Put in these contexts, it’s a testament to their overall toughness that they’ve managed to survive as a species at all. In some out-of-the way places, they persist, and maybe even almost thrive. They’re never an easy drive to get to, they’re never exactly abundant, and there’s never a guarantee that you’ll even hook one. The camping’s not the most comfortable this time of year either, but this is a hunt that is always worthy of the season.
They’ll eat dries every now and then, but adding this chunk of tungsten makes it a better bet.
Did I mention the fishing for them isn’t the simplest either? Honestly, if I thought I needed fewer split shot to get to these fish, I’d use fewer split shot. I guess one could say this is trout fishing, but like the fish themselves, it’s a pretty unique form. In no other situation have I ever caught such ugly, beautiful, angry fish so close to my rod tip, or seen such an aggressive fish be so wary of the goings-on above the water’s surface. More often than I probably ought to admit, I’ve watched bull trout, who are spoken of as being voracious to the point of true stupidity, utterly ignore my fly – hell, several flies – on swing after swing. The more I find them, the more I learn about them, the more I respect them.
In this season, my 9’9” Platinum 7-weight thrives. Throwing a half-ounce of split shot and a cone-weighted tube streamer. And by “throwing” I mean getting it anywhere from ten feet away to across the run to that little boulder cluster that might be just enough of a current break. It’s got enough length to manage what a couple buddies and I half-jokingly call “Czech streamering” (more on that in another post, perhaps), but is compact enough to sneak through the willow tangle of a tight little canyon. And though you can probably get the biggest, toughest bulls to hand with a smaller rod, I’d prefer not to exhaust them. Even with this setup I pretty much always feel like we’re an even enough match. I’ve said it before, they’re tough.
I discovered bull trout the first week I lived in Idaho, and it’s been a love affair ever since. I love out-of-the-way, I love hidden in plain sight, and I love the glamor-free approach that bull trout demand. I love how they sometimes crush a baitfish fly in a 180 degree head to tail turn, and how they sometimes seem to just gently materialize as growing tension upon it; as if to eat something before it knows it’s dead.
This fly knew it was dead as soon as that mouth closed on it.
This week, I watched a second bull trout circle and slash around the one I was fighting, trying to eat my tube fly that had slid up my leader. A couple times I saw it actually take the second fly, shake it like a dog with a rope toy, and release it once it realized something wasn’t right. I landed the one, and never did tempt the other back. Half an hour and three or four holes later, I hooked the most vibrantly colored cutthroat I’ve ever seen.
I’ve never seen one so well-dressed.
I’ll admit that some of my favorite things about the season are actually not in the river at all. When the spring rain comes around and switches off with some warmer days, some good food grows in the woods around here. It’s been a great season for mushrooms such as morels, and other little wild edibles. In fact, I found a good wild onion patch right after I released that cutthroat. They ended up garnishing a batch of posole, and also transplanted into the greenhouse at the warehouse I guide out of. Hopefully they’ll seed out and keep our food seasoned for a few years to come. Anyways, that’s all I have for now. The rain just let up a little, and it’s probably time I headed to the river; this season isn’t going to fish itself.
Riverside wild onions for a Mexican stew.
Morels, fresh or dried, are amazing.
