Beulah Blog

Yuba, UC Davis property above the Hwy 20 bridge, one of my personal favorites when I can gain access (and a convenient drive from home, hence my bias), May 2014. Beulah 5 wt. CZ rod, modified Andy Burk leader, sculpin jig anchor fly, anything #16 or #18 on dropper.

Here you go:

This gallery includes Sam Yee landing a dink with a salmon net. What a character.

“Deer Creek is flowing above 60 CFS depositing mud into the Yuba River, the river is blown…” say all the area fly shops on their fishing reports.

“Jared, can you fish the Yuba this weekend? It’s BLOWN.” “Yep, I think I can do that.”

Beulah 5 wt. CZ (or European, I can’t remember what they’re going to be called) and an 11′ 7″ “mystery rod” tackle a river that’s “blown”. Rivers like to be “blown”, as you will see….

I’ll park these here, says Jared. (mystery rod in hand)

 

Let’s get busy!

Where the hell is everybody? This place is usually crowded.

Shit, the ranger, hide your beer. Oh, he doesn’t care. Cool Dog.

 

So, we used SA 6 wt. nymph and steelhead lines on both 5 wt. rods and were able to both CZ nymph and indicator fish as needed. Our leaders were modified Andy Burk leaders, surprisingly for both methods. My leader consists of about 6 feet of 8 lb. PowerPro with a 2.25 mm tippet ring at the bottom. The top loop is the PowerPro contained inside some Gudebrod braided butt, 15 lb. made into a tight loop. A loop of Gudebrod 20 lb. is on the flyline. Below the tippet ring is a typical dropper rig made of 3x flouro main and 4x dropper. My anchor flies were a 1/8 or 1/16 oz. sculpin jig that I developed with a pink SJ worm, or whatever on the dropper. Jared’s big fish was on a fly we called the “cat poop”, a #2 or #4 dark brown shape that resembled a Jurassic stonefly, a big sculpin, or cat poop. He lost the fly on the next fish. He doesn’t listen. The pattern is lost.

For indicator, we cut off the braided upper loop and attached a tippet ring, then a 18″ 2x monofilament butt section. A Thingamabobber was put in the butt section as close to the tippet ring as possible so we could get a good vertical drop. That’s about it for what worked.

 

Built my rod. Built three of them – one for James all fancied up to look like a Beulah rod, and one each for Jared Paine and Me. Jared and I have fished, tied and built rods together for well over 10 years. We were really into this project. We built ours with recycled graphite reel seats and a discarded cork handles from when I used to work at Powell. We used REC Recoil single-foot titanium wire guides and 3/0 silk thread. A minimum of thread finish and we had 10 foot weapons that weighed in at 3 3/4 0z. We were pumped up to get out and wiggle them.

We stayed in the same house in McCloud from my trip in 2011. Late September. On our first night we started above the lower falls and worked up.

Things started happening fast. The 5 wt. was attracting fish!

 

Notice the arc in the rod. This is what I’ve been looking for! We caught dinks and sizeable fish on 6x and 3x and it was all very good on this rod.

 

That particular fish:

 

 

Another:

 

and another;

 

 

Let’s go to the Upper Sac…….

 

O.k., good idea.

I’m tired, let’s go home. I told you to put the cooler in the truck, what were you thinking?

and decided on a 5 wt., a 4 wt., and a 3 wt. 10 foot Czech or European nymph rod series. Taper, guide spacing, reel seat, weight, all of that was bantered about for a couple more years until James had his factory build a one-off prototype of the 3 wt. and 4 wt. for testing, Summer 2013. We had the 5 wt. dialed in already and Jared Paine and I were fishing with it as of Summer 2012.

What do you do when you have something like that in your hands? Go to Michigan. Traverse City. The Ausable, Manistee and Pere Marquette. The home of the “Adams” dry fly. I could see no other options. I had my sights set on two rivers – the Jordan and Boardman which are close to Traverse city. If you ever have a chance to go there you really should go. For the fishing. For the amazing fruit and produce. And the people are great.

I went in August. The water was a little warm, less than ideal. I checked out the Jordan and access wasn’t good for Czech nymphing so I defaulted the Boardman. It’s beautiful.

 

 

The 3 wt. is capable of a really nice tuck-cast.

 

The water was heavily silted by a recent deconstruction of a gravel dam at Brown Bridge. We saw very little life in the water – bugs and fish were scarce. After a few hours we headed back to where we parked.

The scour from these bridge culverts gave us a clear gravel bottom to fish on.

 

My heart was pounding – I knew I was going to catch the only fish in this river, and here it is:

My fear was gone. Our 3 wt. CZ rod not only didn’t repel fish but it attracted them. This protype rod and the 4 wt.were almost immediately sent to the CZ Republic for field testing. I wasn’t ready to give them up yet!

The next day we fished the skinny water above Brown Bridge where the gravel dam was. Pretty but the raft and canoe traffic and the lack of high-gradient were definitely not in our favor. I asked around and someone recommended the Pine River, about an hour south. We scouted the Pine until we found the right water which was above the raft and canoe traffic. All the people we encountered that were floating the Boardman and the Pine were really polite.

Here’s a glimpse of the Pine:

Perfect! A shot from the bridge looking upstream, the canoe put-in is just downstream. After only a few minutes I hooked a 12 inch or so brown on the 3 wt. He took a #10 golden olive CZ nymph. My wife was downstream and the fish bounced, I mean bounced out of the net as I was getting ready to take a picture.

The Beaulah 3 wt. CZ rod performed perfectly. I think it’s going to be pretty popular for a lot of different types of water and an upgrade for people who fish the Gray’s equivalent.

 

 

Around 2002 or so I was at a Mt. Tamalpais Fly Club Meeting and our presenters were Andy Burk and Steve Korbay on Czech Nymphing. We were shown flies, how to tie Czech nymphs, rigs, rods and techniques by both Andy and Steve. I went home and got to work right away. The “rod” poised between my legs was my second protoype CZ rod constructed on a Seeker blank. The first was a Thomas and Thomas Vector blank, plus I owned Sage 10 foot XP’s in 4-7 wt. All my 10-footers at that time were pretty decent indicator rods for both bank and drift-boat fishing, great roll casters, great at mending, and got the job done for CZ nymphing. I wasn’t overjoyed with the performance of these rods, nor any others that I fished, but I stayed optimistic. Something would someday come my way, given how the popularity of European nymphing techniques and technology was starting to permeate the fly fishing market here in the U.S.

A little bit about the picture – I sent this picture to a few people and it ended up in the hands of a CA DFG Biologist whom I shall refer to only as “Roger”. His response was a “reply to all” and I was blessed with his opinion. I laughed my ass off at his response. He claimed that the fish was a “mount” based on his observations and he justified his opinion point by point. I, of course, “replied to all” and expressed my opinion. “Roger” and I became quick friends and he may be included later in my tales.

Also, I sent a copy of this picture to Shane Stalcup. My friendship with Shane is worth another lengthy blog. Anyway, this picture was going to be in Shane’s book “Caddisflies, Top to Bottom”. He passed away before the book was finished. I’ve been in conversations for a long, long time with Shane’s mom and Amato Publishing about finishing the book for him. Enough said about that.

I was at the Fly fishing Show in Pleasanton in 2008 and bought four Beulah rods from James. The 4/5 and 5/6 Switch and 5 wt. Guide series rods quickly became my new favorites.

 A couple of years later I went to the Spey-O-Rama in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park because I knew James was going to be there and wanted to hang out and enjoy a couple barley sodas, learn a little something about spey-fishing and to get my hands on the new Beulah Platinum Series switch rods. Wielding a 6 wt. Platinum Switch rod with some kind of magic line they put on it I was casting across and out of the pond. Over and over again. I felt like a kid who just learned to ride a bike without training wheels. Then I cast the 5 wt. Platinum Switch. The answer was in my hands. I went home and fell asleep that night dreaming of shooting casts with the 6 wt. and making a Czech Nymph rod out of the 5 wt.

I returned the next day and told James what I thought and gave him some of my CZ nymphs and my improved version of the Andy Burk CZ nymphing leader. And this marks the beginning of the tale of the development of my three (plus one) favorite go-to flyrods.

A preview of the result – a 5 wt. Beulah CZ rod prototype at work. As usual, it’s the “rod” poised between my legs while I’m holding a trout. More about the development of this rod series for Beulah to follow in future posts.

 

In this part of the world (Idaho), there’s an unmercifully short window of time when everything lines up just right.  The river temps have cooled down, flows have stabilized or fluctuate evenly, the weather’s unbelievably comfortable, and best of all, fish are in the rivers. It’s called OCTOBER.  For me, it follows a summer of working 80-hour guiding weeks and scattered bull trout missions.  It feels like a well-deserved reward by the time it’s here, and it makes me a little giddy…specifically the thought and reality of steelhead eating traditional wet and surface flies in the low-light of the mornings and evenings (or whenever it happens).  It’s a few weeks of a strange routine:

 

1. Up as dark and early as you feel you need to be to get your favored run

 

2. Fish hard as hell until the sun’s on the water

 

3. Keep fishing until you can’t deal with the yawning

 

4. Head back to the campsite for a truck-bed nap

 

5. Wake up, set up a vise on the tailgate, and tie something tasty on an Alec Jackson hook

 

6. And head back out for a couple runs before dark.  Repeat as needed.

 

Now, the nights have lengthened and cooled just a little too much for the river temps to keep fish as active as they were. By late November in Idaho, we might as well keep our skis exercised, tie flies and read some Haig-Brown, and think about what coastal rivers we’d like to hit this winter.  Unless trout are still eating swung flies in the town river…but more on that later.

 

Every summer-run steelhead flyfisher has at least heard about the deal with the Clearwater.  Huge river, plenty of anglers, roaring major highway alongside its entire length…and fish up to 20 pounds that will eat dry flies.  I know…it’s crazy.  Doesn’t seem like a place that ought to exist anymore, but there it is.  It’s a place for your 7- and 8-weight Beulah Platinum and Onyx 13-14 footers.  It’s a place without a reason for anything less than 12lb tippet.  It’s also the place where I caught my first steelhead on the swing, on a two-hander Poppy lent me from the Red Shed.  I brought it back to him well after dark.

 

So for several years I’ve been spending at least a few weeks per fall trying to figure out what it holds for me.  And I’ll be honest – at times, the Clearwater and I haven’t really been on speaking terms, even when I was still there and persisting in the face of complete desperation.  Slowly, though, I’ve been having more success.

This time around, it came on my first morning, altogether unexpectedly.  In the gray light, a 12-pound wild buck ate my skater so subtly I didn’t even see its rise.  It set the tone for the first couple weeks of the month:  getting grabbed at least one or two times per day, sometimes on surface flies, and sometimes on intermediate sink-tips.

 

My dad came to visit – he’s been trying to land a steelhead for three years of trips north by west.  When the weekend-warrior crowds began to assail the Clearwater, we split for a much more out-of-the-way place a few hours away and at the opposite end of the high-desert steelhead river spectrum.  That is, it’s got about 120 cubic feet of water per second flowing through it, and (generally) a bit smaller fish.  We made a good call.  Our first day there I hiked up on Dad at a greasy, bouldery run, just as he was playing in his first steelhead; a cute little wild male.  I was pleased to see that he hadn’t succumbed to the temptation to nymph, and had swung an Orange Heron through that spot for his first fish instead.  I talked to him on the phone recently, and he told me he’s been having constant steelhead dreams.  It began, he said, on the plane back to Maine:  he startled himself awake between two irritated travelers when he thought a Clearwater fish was pulling his grab loop and about to make noise on the reel.

 

After living and breathing a 13- foot rod and an enormous river, it was a great breath of different air to be catching fish on a 9’9 Platinum 7-weight and dry flies.  The old-fashioned way still works just fine.

 

A few days and some hot little high-desert fish later, though, the weather was about to take a temporary turn for the worse – or, indeed, better by steelhead standards.  Rain clouds settled in very slowly as we drove back to the Clearwater, and I got hopeful.  We met up with some other central Idaho low-life spey casting types, and in 24 hours, the pack of us hooked into as many fish as we all had in the entire two weeks prior.  I got the shine off a brand new (and delightful) 13’7 Onyx 7-weight, and we came to know the joy of hooking multiple 15-pound fish in the same run.  Maybe it’s partly superstition, and I know from experience that it doesn’t produce every single time, but a falling barometer sure makes me feel a hell of a lot more confident.

 

Even as I write this, the window’s already firmly closed.  Snow’s hammering most of Idaho, and water temps have taken a dive from the upper 40’s (still pretty confidently swingy) to the 30’s (not impossible, but not at all inspiring).  This is happening a little earlier this year than last, but that’s the way it goes.  All I can do is try to pack as much into the prime time as I’m able.  I never feel quite ready for either the beginning or the end of the October anyway.  But until a weather pattern changes, I’m going to be satisfied with a few swung-up local rainbows interspersed between powder days (with any luck).  The ocean, as well, is only a solid day’s drive away…

 

For slideshow click Here.

 

The rains have begun in Oregon and with them come a bounty of fish and mushrooms. Last weekend’s adventure began mid river where water temps have dropped enough to hold steelhead that have followed spawning salmon into the mid and upper river. I was fortunate enough to have my good friend Bryce up for a visit and a couple days fishing.

A late start had us on the water at the crack of noon. Surprisingly we had the river and an incredible display of fall foliage to ourselves. After less than an hour of searching, we found fish. Bryce hooked and landed a nice 6lb adult on the Platinum 12’6” Spey rod using a Tonic head, 10’ of T-11 and a black intruder. Less than 10 minutes later he had another nice steelhead in the same area. After a few photos, and Bryce let me take a shot at the run and I waded out into the same spot. I was fishing on the surface with the Onyx 5wt Spey rod, Elixir switch 350, floating polyleader and a spey style green butt skunk. The fish were not picky and I hooked up immediately. After an energetic aerial display had an 8 lb buck to hand. We traded off turns and landed 4 out of 5 nice, adult steelhead.

After the fishing slowed, we packed it in and headed West over the pass to the coast. Our host Jamie and Ashley had been having good luck with Chinook salmon on some local coastal streams, where fresh fish are entering the system.

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We enjoyed a relaxing morning and a beautiful drive to a local coastal stream. Fish were rolling at the put in and our spirit levels high. For gear we used Opal 10 wt rods with Serum 350 tip system, one set up with clear intermediate tip, the other with T-8 tip. The flies varied from small Clousers to Crazy Charlie’s. The trick was finding where in the water column the salmon were suspended, then swinging the fly in and ever so slowly stripping it back. The strikes came both soft and hard, but all good. We ended the day hooking 4 and landing one Chinook on a float that started 4 miles upriver to within a half mile of the Ocean.

The following day a sobering hike in the mountains yielded 10lbs of Chanterelles and the dinner menu was set.

Check out the Baja Mexico slideshow.

For those who braved the hurricane devastation and threat of Dengue fever, the Baja bite was wide open last week. Sardines have rained down on the peninsula and with them came hungry fish of all kinds.

Our trip started at team Beulah’s usual Baja haunt.  Flyfishing, by any other standard, would have been considered excellent but by Bahia Buenos standards it was so so. A reunion with old friends at the quincinera of a very good friend’s daughter made up for it. After much celebration, and a couple days of fishing, we decided to chase our commercial fishing compadre down the coast. The rumors of a tuna bite in the area had us packing up and heading out early. It proved a great decision and ended up being one of the most productive 24 hrs. of fishing I have experienced in Baja.

A pre-dawn ride, complete with ten miles of hurricane thrashed dirt road lead us to a primitive winter fish camp with some of our local captain friends. The greeting was curt; “Hay Atun?” Response: “Si …muchos!”, and he wasn’t lying.

A hundred feet from shore lays a blue hole and in it, 40-80 lb. yellow fin tuna were jumping and commercial pangueros had rods bent as they doubled over in exhaustion battling the big fish. We rode past the spectacle with Capt Texas confident we would find a more suitable sized fish for fly fishing. Ten minutes later it only took a couple handfuls of sardines to get the 15-30 lb. tuna popping. We had Beulah Opal 10 and 11 wt. saltwater fly rods rigged w/Serum fly lines at 350 and 400 gr., 20 lb. tippets and sardine fly patterns. The yellow fin tuna were hungry and plentiful. These fish are as beautiful and strong as they are tasty. They kept us busy all afternoon and we even had a few Dorado 15-25 lbs. come to our party as well. If that wasn’t enough sea life, we watched a 200 lb. blue marlin chase one of our hooked tuna beneath the panga. I know this all sounds too good to be true, but it got even better.

The next morning we were flying out at 2:00pm, but had a couple hours to fish in the am. With Texas’s convincing, we decided to stay in close and go for roosterfish. Again, it was only a couple minutes, a few sardines tossed less than a hundred yards from where we launched, and we were casting to roosterfish. Fish 15-60 lbs. busting all around us. These fish were aggressive and seemed not quite as educated as the fish to the North, which see flies all spring long.

We landed a couple Roosters, lost a few and even landed some large skipjack for commercial sharking bait. Within a couple hours we exhausted our sardines and it was time to get cleaned up and head home.

The ten mile ride down a dirt road into a primitive fish camp, along with the rides in beat up pickups and worn commercial pangas, was a throwback to old Baja and simpler times. The trip was a re discovery of what Baja used to, and still can be with a willingness to venture, explore, and trust the word of old friends who have fished these waters since childhood. Thanks to Texas, Mark, Marcos, Marisol, Hugo et al for laughs, beer, fish and friendship new and old.