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Humble in the Jungle

August 2, 2016 By Steve Santagati Leave a Comment

My summer months are primarily spent going after striped bass in Maine. I’m unemployed  which means I fish every day. And when you fish every day you will inevitably have sessions when you don’t catch anything. I’m transparent with this fact even when the fat tourist barks out the hackneyed expression: “Catch anything?”

Not catching anything teaches me just as much as catching. I take the time with both the latter and the former to register the “why” and put it in my fish brain. The rules are there are no rules when it comes to fly fishing. Yes, there is etiquette and being responsible with the fish but how you catch them on a fly rod is up to you. IMG_3209

I’m fortunate to run into some humble and confident anglers from time to time. I watch them and share information. Not all of them fly fish either. Am I against trebble hooks? You betcha; they should be outlawed.  Do I recoil at the sight of styrofoam worm containers and trash? Of course. But I judge bait and spin casters one man at a time.

There are some guys out there who are responsible and have taught me a lot that I directly apply to fly fishing.

My point is simple; it’s the humble man who learns the most because his mind is like a parachute; open.  I caught the fish in this picture yon my Beulah 8wt Opel and nautilus No. ten. With 17lb fluorocarbon tippet. I put a swivel on my line so my fly doesn’t twist. This is my biggest this summer; 37″ and weighed about 25 lbs. Yes, he went into my backing. Yes, I’ve lost many fish this summer. Yes, I often go out and don’t catch a thing.  Yes, I’m obsessed with fly fishing.  #catchandrelease

Filed Under: Uncategorized

A Summer Flashback, Episode 2.

April 28, 2016 By Mark Martin Leave a Comment

John and his wife came to the Middle Fork Salmon from Brooklyn.  He was a writer, she was a nurse.  While six days of roughish camping and float dry-fly fishing may not have been squarely in their comfort zones, we were comfortable with each other.  I think there’s an effect whereby having very little in common can lead to some of the best conversation; kind of an inverse of what you’d expect.  Anyway, despite John’s pelagic fishing experience on the Atlantic, neither he nor LuHung had really spent any time with a fly rod.  As is usual, the first day was a learning curve of casting and dead-drifting; and for me, getting a feel for just how gung-ho these guys were – in other words, how badly they wanted to catch trout, and how many they expected to catch.  I did my normal dance between instruction and forming a true interpersonal connection, but there was one thing I couldn’t figure out.  One spot on the record where the needle kept skipping, if you will.  I couldn’t figure out for the life of me if I needed to, or even should, bring up this one thing:  Neither of them seemed to be able to hook a trout.  Out of the literal dozens that came up to eat their flies, each turned and dove for the depths again.  Now, as a guide, this is kind of troubling in a sense – the hooking of a fish is a goal of sorts, a measure of success for most; including the guide.  But did they care?  Were they trying to hide embarrassment at their seeming inability to stick one, and if I brought it up, it’d introduce the kind of awkward that’d change our dynamic for the duration?

In the end, the guide-y guide side of me came through.  I brought it up.  I don’t remember how, but I brought it up.  John looked back and grinned, and said, “We talked about it before we even got on the boat… we don’t need to hook a fish.  We just want to watch ‘em do what they do.  These trout are beautiful.  They’re like nothing we’ve ever seen back East, and we’d almost rather not drag them around too much.”

Fine with me.  Because as it turns out, that attitude meant we could relate to each other.  They’d somehow entered into fly fishing with a mentality that normally takes years to develop (it did for me anyway).   Quite a few  (the horde of brand-name clad, PBR-swilling, fish-counting, big-ego bro’s who seem to be multiplying on every river system in every mountain town) never seem to develop it at all.  John and LuHung were folks who, by default, already knew that there was more to life and self-satisfaction than some quantitative kind of fly fishing success: a notion I totally embrace despite identifying with fly fishing as pretty much my over-arching lifestyle.

But it was still somehow really, really hard to watch them not set the hook on all those fish.

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This one John hooked accidentally. I netted it on purpose though.

 

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And these because I’ve allegedly not posted very many cutthroat photos. Some of the few I was able to get pics of, what with last year’s absurdly high water temps.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Spring’s swings.

April 22, 2016 By Mark Martin Leave a Comment

Today, friends, I give you trout porn.  Not much other than trout porn. I’ve gotten blanked more than I’d like to admit, and had a couple spectacular days as well.

It’s a delicate time of year where I fish:  some rainbows are starting to dig redds and get their groove on, while others are tanked up in perfect swing runs, getting hormonally enraged and hungry.  Several days’ time can tip the balance, and suddenly they’re all spawning, and thus off-limits to any angler with a brain or heart, or indeed any consideration for something other than his fragile ego and attendant instagram feed.  As far as I can see, we’re tipping now; and in a few more days, they’ll have passed on wild genetics to a new generation.  Still a delicate time – again, if you’re not too concerned about grip-and-grins on your social media self-representation, you probably don’t want to poke too many malnourished post-spawners either.  (Mind the holes/runs above and below a redd – usually those contain the fish that didn’t want to hang out on their redd in the shallow water all day, in plain sight of every predator, but are spawners nonetheless.) (And by “mind”, I mean, “Don’t fish”.)

So let’s tie some flies, yeah?  Summer’s a half-step away, and in about two short months you’ll find cutties looking skyward for the first salmon flies and other early stones.  There are summer streamer ideas (and proven favorites) to be birthed from that vise, and while I’m thinking of it, summer steelhead are probably starting to turn homeward from Katmchatka or the Aleutians or wherever they’ve been.

Anyways.  On to the promised trout porn.  Retrospective winter steelhead and summer cutthroat writings to come.

 

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The end of a long dry spell: a nondescript tension that turned into a long, hard fight.

 

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As close to perfection as you can get 500 miles inland.

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This is my dad, with a fish that was pretty much where I told him it might be… love when I’m right like that.

 

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Can’t complain.

 

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Sometimes you have to get out the tape, just out of curiosity…

 

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Matt’s release, I always seem to cut someone’s head off.

 

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hefty hoist.

 

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New fish in the old spot!

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Winter swinging

February 16, 2016 By Eric Ishiwata Leave a Comment

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I’m a lightweight.  I hate the cold.  Unfortunately, winter is the best time to do one of my favorite things in life…swinging two-handers for trout.

Beulah Onyx 12’4″ 5wt + Tonic 400 + Pro Tube streamers.

 

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An example of when NOT to use your camera’s macro function…bummer.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized

a Quick One.

January 20, 2016 By Mark Martin Leave a Comment

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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.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

A Summer Flashback, episode 1.

January 16, 2016 By Mark Martin Leave a Comment

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.

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A face only a streamer fisherman could love.

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my favorite fin, on one of my favorite fish, in one of my favorite places.

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Buh bye.

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Tough fish in a Tough Season

December 12, 2015 By Mark Martin Leave a Comment

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.

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.

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.

Hello there, new friend.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Seeing Spots before my eyes

December 3, 2015 By Steve Santagati Leave a Comment

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.

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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 missingIMG_0065IMG_0051!

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.

 

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Deschutes

November 25, 2015 By Eric Ishiwata Leave a Comment

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.

Ishi DPhoto: 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.”

Ish boatPhoto: 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.

Fish Mover Up ClosePhoto: Bruce Berry

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: flies, Ishiwata, Onyx 5wt, Platinum 6, steelhead

Running Up the Score

August 12, 2015 By admin Leave a Comment

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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.”

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Merciless

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: flies, Ishiwata, Platinum 4wt single, Rockies, trout

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