Time for an update

Ok, where to begin? I suppose I'll have to go back to the end of April, with a week bouncing around Florida with Stuart Bradow. We started near Orlando on some very fishy bass water. Stuart's daughter Sarah met up with us for some bigmouth action and proceeded to show the boys how it's done.

Poppers and big hairy topwater bugs were the order of the day, with angry greenfish exploding through the roof to destroy whatever made a lot of noise.
As the sun set, Stuart and I hit the road to the Keys, driving overnight and finally getting in to Big Pine just in time to drop the boat in and cruise the flats in search of whatever we could find.

I'd heard it had been a tough spring, with water temps over the winter being a bit colder than usual. Well, we found out the hard way just how true that was. With three long days spent prowling between Big Pine and Key West, we only spotted a handful of bones and permit, only one of which was even remotely interested in having a look at a fly. Ouch. We did manage a few mangrove snappers around some wrecks, but the big boys just didn't want to play. It was time to change it up. Hitting the road again, we cruised up to the Tampa Bay area and met up with Stuart's brother to chase speckled trout and redfish. At this point the Florida boys were resorting to bait, but I just had to throw flies.

We got into the trout pretty heavy, with some big schools working in the bay. I also managed to pick up a lizardfish and a wee baby jack crevalle for good measure. And by wee, I mean wee.



At this point, you may be asking yourself "Really? That's it?" Well, yeah. That's it. We didn't see a lot of fish. And that's just fine with me. We fished hard and did everything right, and for the most part, the fish just weren't there. What was there was great weather, good friends, cold beers, and a lot of laughs. And that's every bit as important. Which brings us to the next thing....

Ready to Rumble

It's snowing in Pinedale. Again. And it looks like it'll keep doing that more or less all this week. I was planning on heading to Texas to chase reds and bass but unfortunately the trip got canceled and left me stuck in the frozen north. Oh wait, no it didn't. After some last-minute scrambling, a plan was formulated. I'm heading down to Florida to meet up with my buddy Stu for an epic week of chasing whatever swims. The plan for now is to hit up big bass, tailing redfish and some hefty seatrout for a day then blast down to the Keys and get salty. We'll try to find some peacock bass on the way down in some of the freshwater canals in south Fl. Neither of us has targeted them specifically before, so it could be good or a complete disaster. Hopefully it's the former.

We're looking at hitting a few different places in the Keys. It's the beginning of prime time for the big 3 down there: tarpon, bonefish, and permit. There are also a bunch of lesser targeted fish to keep us occupied if the classics aren't cooperating. Snapper, snook, sharks, you name it. My outlook: if it swims in front of me, it gets hit with a fly. We'll end up at mile 0 in Key West and may even head out to the Maraquesas for some less traveled flats before turning around and heading north again to meet up with Stu's brother and a little offshore action in the Gulf.

That's a lot of fishing. And we've got a week to do it, which means we're going to be totally fried by the end of it. My last trip to the Keys was pretty much a blowout, with heavy winds making fishing extremely difficult. The weather outlook this time looks a lot better. Even so, I'll probably be checking the updates all day tomorrow as I'm sitting in airports. One of the big problems with living in the middle of nowhere is the simple fact that "you can't get there from here, ayuh." There's pretty much no way to get a direct flight to anywhere. Oh well. I'll post updates as we go and there will be plenty of pictures and possible video. Stay tuned...

Light My Fire

With Christmas just around the corner and practically no time to fish at the moment, I thought I'd share an old story. I'm sitting here watching the snow fall in frozen Wyoming and thinking back to adventures long past. Every year about this time this one creeps back into the forefront of my memory and lingers through the winter months, a constant companion to keep the fires going. Merry Christmas everyone and remember, the best things are most often those we never expect. I hope you enjoy...


I stared in disbelief. No more than ten feet from me, a huge dark shadow slid through the water. As it passed by the light from the dock glinted off its side just before it slipped back into the darkness. I sat and stared at the water for what felt like forever, hoping to see it again. Another flash caught my eye, a different one, maybe larger. Or was it the shadows playing with me? Hard to tell. I sat and waited. Then I saw it, another shape emerging from the dark. It was close, close enough to see a huge greenish gold eye catch the light just below the surface. It was December 18th, and I was in trouble.

As a kid, the holidays always meant drunk relatives watching football, way too much food, and most importantly, the much anticipated week off from school for Christmas. I wasn’t particularly fond of sitting in class and the annual holiday break was about the best gift I could get. This usually meant more time sitting in a duck blind in misery, but that beat math or history hands down. This particular year however, my parents surprised my brother and I with a family trip to the Caribbean. It was to be a week spent on the beach, snorkeling, bumming around, and generally wasting time. At 15 years old, this was a far better option than sitting frozen in a duck blind. Visions of beach babes and mischief danced through my hormone addled brain. This was going to be awesome.

I made it exactly one day before my plans of finding the babe of my dreams were abandoned. Heading back from the beach long after dark, the rhythm of a steel drum band still echoing across the water, I passed by the small marina. A splash drew my attention to the water. Funny, I didn’t see anyone there, and whatever it was couldn’t have been a fish. It was too loud for that. I walked down the gas dock to the end, where a single light shone on the water. It was there that I first saw them, mirrored scales along sleek sides slinking in and out of the shadows. I didn’t know what they were or how I was going to do it, but they were here, they were huge, and I was going to catch one no matter what it took.

For some reason I figured it would be easy, just walk up, cast, and reel in fish. Apparently I forgot about the fact that I’d more or less given up on fishing a few years prior and had certainly never fished for anything like these. With no experience and no guidance I set out to catch one of the beasts with a beat up old rig I managed to scrounge up. I quickly found out I was wrong. I somehow hooked one up before too long, and immediately realized how poorly prepared I was. I lost every ounce of cockiness I had that first night. By the time it was over I was exhausted and humbled. I was certainly glad that nobody else was there to witness the beating I had taken. Over the next several nights I kept at it, always hopeful for that one fish to cooperate. Sometimes I’d get takes, but usually that big bucket mouth would stay sealed shut as the fish swam up to, then past my offerings. If it did open, I’d miss the hookset, break it off, or have the hook fly back in my face on the first jump. My little sideshow on the dock held the rest of my family’s interest for a few nights, but eventually they gave up on seeing something exciting. I kept at it though, trying this and that, changing the retrieve and presentation, watching for the fish’s reaction. Maybe I wasn’t missing school after all.

It all came down to the last night. It was now or never. They were there, I knew now that they came in for the baitfish that were attracted to the light. I’d cast, retrieve, nothing. The shadows went about their business as usual, glinting here and there when the light touched their scales just right. It got later and later with nothing happening. I stopped looking for specific fish and started blind casting into the dark, beyond the light’s reach. Suddenly, my line came tight. There was an unbelievable pull and the reel was singing before I knew what happened. Through the darkness I could see the fish launch out of the water and crash back down. It ran back towards, then past me and I knew I was in trouble. It was big, bigger than anything I’d ever hooked. There was no way this was going to happen. I was reeling like mad, breathing hard, and sweating profusely in the humid tropical air. I’d catch up on the slack line just in time to have it ripped back out. One way, now the other the fish ran. Forever went by and still it fought, every leap and tug threatening to snap my ratty leader. My fingers wrapped white knuckle around the rod grip, the butt digging into my stomach, I started to laugh. Somewhere in the distance the steel drum band was still playing, their rendition of Feliz Navidad echoing across the beach. It was Christmas Eve and I was getting the best gift I could ask for.

Whether I landed it or not doesn’t really matter at this point, but I’d like to thank you, Mr. Megalops, for that gift. Better than missing school, better than anything wrapped up in paper under a tree, better even than beach babes, you gave me an education and rekindled the fire.

Droppin' Bottom

The pursuit of rockfish has taken us to new lows. Literally. We've gone beyond the limits of fly gear and started plumbing the depths for new sea monsters. What will you find at 300' down? All sorts of wacky stuff. It seems 300 feet is a great depth for yelloweye rockfish, also known as red snapper.

There's a few halibut down there as well, lucky for us this one wasn't much bigger or it would still be swimming and we would have a few repairs to do.

We also found out that if you are in a big school of salmon in shallow water and want a bigger tug on the line, just drop some big dead herring looking thing on the bottom and hang on. Way to go Jo, you wrastle that doggie.

Rock Fish

The salmos (ok, oncorhynchi technically) are still being stubborn and not coming in so I headed out this afternoon with Lance (Minnesotean extraordinaire) in his Zodiac to go find whatever we could find. We motored a few miles up the coast to check out a creek that I'd eyeballed on Google Earth and proceeded to find nothing but crab pots. Being in a clump of islands, we figured there had to be fish around somewhere and utilizing the latest in ultra techy fish finder gear we were able to find fish of some unknown species in 60 to 180 feet of water. Yesssssss. I know what you're thinking, and yes, that's a hell of a lot of water to drop a fly down. Lance had no qualms about dropping a big fish-shaped chunk of lead or something and proceeded to nail what we think is a Quillback Rockfish.

The AK G&F rockfish ID guide is pretty poor, so "we think" is about as close as we're getting on this one. Not to be outdone, and of course packing my arsenal of piscatorial terrorism for the trip, I rigged up the 300 gr. sinking line and started plumbing the depths. In a matter of a few minutes we BOTH limited out. Yep, you read that right, I used the phrase "limited out" when referring to myself. Unfortunately for us and the fish, the rules up here require you to keep all non-pelagic rockfish because of a fun little physiological quirk. The swim bladders in these guys don't adjust very quickly, and when you bring them up they tend to experience a bit of decompression, aka internal hemmoraging from which they probably won't recover. Soooo legally you've got to keep them. The only real problem, as I later discovered, is that being a non-resident, I can only keep, and therefore only fish until I catch two. Yep, two. This is a problem for three reasons. One: It makes me stop fishing. Two: They're damn good eating and I want to eat more. (I'm of the opinion that AK just hates non resident types. Don't believe me? Check out the regs some time.) And three: It's going to take me a long ass time to catch all the different species of these things if I can only catch two fish on any given day. Laaaaaaaaame.

Another fun factoid: Rockfish are equipped with spines on their dorsal fin which pack a nice little surprise. Not only are they extremely sharp, they have a nice toxin in them that burns like a bastard if you get stuck. They're also equipped with spines on their other fins and gill plates that don't pack the same punch but will tear you up.
Tomorrow's plan: rock fish.

AK

It's June in southeast Alaska and it's a bit of a change from dusty Wyoming. As I sit and eat breakfast I can look out the window and watch the cruise ships rolling into the harbor. Pretty soon the float planes are buzzing about and the docks are crawling with tourists despite the intermittent rain showers. I'm able to see all this because the house I'm in is on a really steep hill. It's so steep in fact, that our "street" is actually just a wooden staircase that runs several hundred feet up from the bottom of the hill to our parking lot at the top. We have intersections on this street, other similarly styled "streets" with mailboxes and trashcans and such, complete with street signs and everything. It's a bit of a departure from what I'm used to, as I said.

With the shop getting geared up for trips as well as our private areas opening up soon I've been prepping base camp, repairing gear, getting licenses sorted out, and checking out new water. Somewhere in all the chaos I've found the time to get into some coastal cutthroat and even a few gigantic sculpins. Actually they're saltwater rockfish, but they look just like monstrous sculpins if you ask me. The trout are keying up on the salmon fry that are recently hatched as well as a variety of stoneflies. The rockfish seem to be more interested in whatever furry bunny strip concoction you can put in front of them on a sinking line. Finding time is a bit of a joke around here, with somewhere around 19 hours of light to work with you can get a hell of a lot done in a day. Like fish in the rain or eat crabs. Lots of crabs.


The Cohos are staging in the creek mouths and it'll just be a few days now before the first fish make their run up into the fresh water and all hell breaks loose. Until then, I'm going to try to catch as many different species of rockers on a fly as possible. I know once the salmon really get thick I'll forget about the saltwater species for a while so now's the time. There are lots of them, so it could be interesting.