Trout Source

Steelhead dementia -- in Northern California

Just having fun chasing the beast

…and New York
It snowed all night and all the following day. He said the slush was so thick on Elk Creek that the water was the consistency of a Slushy… both his egg and nymph dropper were little ice cubes. His line, leader and indicator were of course coated with ice. The temp was 21. He normally does not go fishing when it is 20 degrees or colder. Hey, 21 degrees, well that's doable.

High Sierras – snow at last (Truckee, CA)

Aggressive Ice (Au Sable, MI):
Occassionally, we'd be fishing, and the boat would get rammed in the back -- like getting rearended at a stopsign.  Ice flows.  Some a dozen feet wide.

Cold? (Frying Pan, UT)

Winter in Michigan (Au Sable):

This is a dry fly at the bottom of a tippet…

“Winter conditions” in Oregon

Ice Age Retreating
The Yak is looking delicious today after 3 weeks of freeze up.  We plan to fish tomorrow and rip some lips somewhere.

Northern California Storms – Impact Photos:
Eel River before and after 6” of rain in 48 hours

Smith River carnage (CA)
Last week's rains brought the Smith to the brink of flood stage… Aside from high, swift, muddy water, hundreds of trees were swept downriver. Guide Mick Thomas said the number of trees and woody debris in the river reminded him of a logging operation.

But it sure helped the Trinity (see graphs like these on Troutsource)

“Predators are badass” (Yellowstone)
Several hundred yards below 7 Mile Bridge, I noticed a bobcat sitting on an old Doulgas Fir near the river bank.  Off the log it walked onto the bank and moved upstream to another log jam…  Predators are badass and this one put on a great show for us… Several minutes later the cat pounced and pulled out a muskrat from the depths of a log jam.

Truckee rainbow -- or rainbow-lahontan hybrid? (Truckee, CA)

Reflections on the Pupal Stage: A San Juan Guide & Shop Owner
When I was much younger, I used to spend a lot of my time hanging around my mother's kitchen, complaining that I was bored. Her standard reply was always the same--"Well, go outside and do something", and my comeback was the usual--"But there's nothing to do." This verbal exchange would always result in her response of running down a litany of activities... Lucky for her, I soon discovered fishing, a pastime that left us both, much happier. I find it a bit ironic, that I now spend a lot of my time as an adult, extolling the virtues of "going outside and doing something", to others.

When the student was ready, the teacher caught nothing (MI):
Man, did I show him a few things. I showed him how to nearly fall in about three times. I showed him how to lose your entire rig from the split shot through the second fly about four times. And I showed him how to just generally not catch fish. He on the other hand showed me how to catch 3 or 4.

Poetry (Colorado River, AZ)
The fishing was better in the softer water up in the boulder field