Spey Casting Class March 6th 9am-4pm 2010
George Cook and Jon Hazlett on the same stage. This class for beginners or advanced casters promises to be a blast. Excellent instructors with vast experience and an entertaining approach. Bring your own rod or try one of the new weapons on hand. Lunch included $150. Call the shop to book, 541 342 7005.
This past week 12 Oregon anglers escaped the cold and spent a week fly fishing for bonefish at Los Roques Venezuela. We had a spectacular week of weather, good fishing and good times. Our food, lodging, and service were all top shelf. The lodge staff did a fantastic job of tending to our every need and more.
The food at the lodge was superb. We were served fresh fish for dinner every evening including Wahoo, Tuna, Barracuda, Snapper and Lobster. Lunches were packed by the lodge and eaten on the water during our fishing days. Lunch was simple, fresh fruit, sandwiches, fried rice, pasta, cookies, crackers and plenty of water. Breakfast was pancakes, eggs to order, arepas (corn dodgers) fresh fruit and a different fresh blended juice daily.
Our fishing day began around 8:30. One guide and one boatman accompanied two anglers out to the flats. Having one man in charge of the boat is really a bonus. After anglers and guide have walked the beach or flat, rather than trudging back through fish-less water, the boatman moves the boat to meet you and get you on to the next spot. This is a huge time saver, giving anglers more time to fish rather than walk.
Los Roques offers a huge variety of bonefish habitats and water types. White sandy beaches and flats, pancake flats (round patches or high spots inside the lagoon) with mottled sand and turtle grass, lagoons, cuts and back bays are all present. Near island flats are immense and anglers can walk for miles hunting bonefish, permit and other species.
Our trip focused on bonefish for the most part but there are numerous other species to chase while fishing at Los Roques. Tarpon, Snook, Permit, Snapper, Jacks and Barracuda are all present in good numbers. Our guides did there best to accommodate angler requests. The group had Permit “shots” none landed, jumped a Tarpon, caught Barracuda, jacks, snappers, and numerous bonefish.
The tremendous variety of water types and species options makes Los Roques an outstanding saltwater fly fishing destination.
Other Trip Notes
Los Roques is a great spot for couple who fish together or not. Most of the tourist traffic on Los Roques is not angling related. Hanging out on the beach, snorkeling, diving and sailing are some of the activities available.
Getting to and from usually involves staying in Caracas, our group stayed at the Euro Building Express. Our rooms were clean and the hotel felt very safe.
Gear Notes
The New Sage Xi3 rods performed fantastically on this trip. The rods are amazingly light and have a fast action allowing you to get out in front of fast moving saltwater species. I found the rods to load quickly at any distance.
I found the Scientific Anglers Saltwater Sharkskin line to perform fantastically. The line shoots great, floats high and can rip your fingers up without some protection to the creases in your stripping finger tips.
The new Nautilus G7 fly reel was an awesome match to the Sage Xi3. The reel is ridiculously light for a reel possessing an incredibly smooth and strong drag system. The G7 has a retrieval rate as good as any reel on the market. Most importantly the reel looks fantastic.
Must have fly patterns are the Gummy Minnow in #2,6 and 8. Gotcha Pearl, Gotcha Pink, Permit Crab, and Bonefish FX Shrimp. Numerous other patterns are sure to work, our best are listed.
Rio Bonefish Taper leaders worked very well turning over the Gummy Minnow and heavier patterns with ease.
Quality wading boots with very thick bottoms are very important at Los Roques. Walking on very sharp coral flats is part of the program. The Patagonia Marlwalker and Simms Flats Sneaker performed well.
To learn more about this trip please call or email me at 541 342 7005 and caddiseug@yahoo.com.–CD
The 2010 Northwest Fly Tyer and Fly Fishing Expo is set for March 12-13, 2010 at the Linn County Fairground and Expo Center in Albany Oregon.
The NW Fly Tyer and Fishing Expo brings together the social network of fly fisherman throughout the Northwest, Northern California, and Idaho. Over 2,000 people attended last year’s Expo. The NW Expo has been heralded as the “largest fly tying event west of the Mississippi”, with over 80 classes. Class choices include: fly tying techniques, fly casting (single and two handed), and fly fishing techniques. The NW Fly Tyer Expo is sponsored by the non- profit organization, Oregon Council of Federation of Fly Fishers (FFF). All proceeds are dedicated to education and conservation efforts within the state.
Nearly 200 tyers will be demonstrating in shifts all day, both days (March 12 & 13, 2010), plus 59 different vendors of products peculiarly of interest to fly fishers, “where & how to” programs, raffles, and silent and oral auctions of quality merchandise. Federation of Fly Fishers (FFF) members get free admission, non-members pay only $5.00. If you attend and are not yet an FFF member, you can join, and then get in free, basically a $5.00 discount for your membership!
Also, there is no charge for parking at the Linn County Fairgrounds facilities. Good food is available within the Exposition area. Tying classes are conveniently just down the hall from the main hall, and casting classes are in an adjacent building.
On Saturday evening, after the close of the show, there will be an opportunity to meet and mingle with fly tyers and instructors with a no-host bar, followed by the annual banquet and oral auction to conclude the festivities. It is not necessary to buy a dinner ticket to attend the auction. You may learn more about the Expo and sign up for classes or purchase banquet tickets here.
LV
Tags: Oregon Fly Fishing Clubs and Events
Dave Hughes, co-author of Western Hatches, author of Trout Flies, and 20 other titles will be at The Caddis Fly on Feb 27th.
Dave will be putting on a workshop on the Elements of Fly Fishing For Trout from 9am-3pm for $50/person, 20 person maximum. From 4pm-5pm Dave will be doing a book signing and tying demo, free and open to the public following.
Elements of Fly Fishing for Trout (a 4- to 5-hour workshop).
Includes the following three slide shows and a casting demonstration if space and weather permit.
Reading Trout Water: Learn to read water and find trout in creeks, streams, rivers, plus lakes and ponds. The initial skill in trout fishing is learning to focus your fishing in water where trout hang out, and to eliminate time wasted fishing water where they do not. Based on Dave’s books Reading Trout Water.
Selecting Trout Flies: Learn how to select the right type of fly—dry, emerger, nymph, wet fly, or streamer—for the situation you’re in: the type of water you’re fishing, and the naturals, or lack of them, that trout might be taking. Based on Dave’s books Handbook of Hatches, Trout Flies and Essential Trout Flies.
Tactics for Trout: Learn the most effective rigs, casts, and methods to present dry flies, nymphs, wet flies, and streamers to trout on waters moving and still. Based on Dave’s books Dry Fly Fishing, Nymph Fishing, and Trout Rigs and methods.
Casting Demonstration (weather permitting): Covers appropriate tackle selection for all types of trout fishing. Demonstrates the parts of the basic casting stroke, variations on the basic cast, and casts to apply the methods covered in the workshop. This is not a distance casting demonstration, rather a presentation of practical fishing casts that actually catch trout.
Dave Hughes: Dave is author of more than 20 books about fly fishing. They include the classic Western Hatches with Rick Hafele, American Fly Tying Manual, Handbook of Hatches, Reading Trout Water, Dry Fly Fishing, Nymph Fishing, and the massive reference Trout Flies. His latest book, published in 2009, is Nymphs for Streams and Stillwaters.
Call the shop to reserve your spot ASAP: 541-342-7005.
Warning: This post contains a fairly graphic image.
This isn’t the post I wanted to write about this trip. I wanted to write a love song about a remote backcountry stream somewhere between northern California and southern British Columbia, a place that has never been logged, where the runs of salmon and steelhead of decades and centuries past sway in the old growth sitka Spruce and douglas Fir and the younger alder and maples that stand along the stream banks. This place has strong runs of coho, chinook and steelhead. I make several pilgrimages a year there, where I always feel my spirits restored, my hopes renewed and my commitment to conservation of indigenous, self-sustaining coldwater fish populations reinvigorated.
I hiked in, greeted by the smell of death and stumbled on the poacher’s camp. A dead cow elk lay near an abondoned tent, debris and a igloo-esge wigwam constructed of douglas Fir boughs. The meat had been stripped of the side of the elk and much (to my untrained eye) had been wasted:
Near the corpse lay a calling card that completed the scene and gave a glimpse into the poacher’s mind. Not only unashamed but genuinely proud . . .
There were also signs of “fishing.” Abandoned bags of cured roe . . . my mind spun with the possibilities, poached hen salmon eggs used to poach steelhead in a pernicous cycle of waste and abuse. Somehow, the world felt cheaper and crueler, like the when unattainable girl you idolized from afar as a youth threw herself at some dumb jock who dumped her immediately and bragged to everybody who’d listen, relaying the story of conquest, sneering, laughing and coarse. Disgraceful. I strung up my rods.
The strategy was simple. Swing the swinging water, bobbercator the indicacator water and if the flies didn’t work, show ’em the spinner. I worked upstream fast as is my way without touching any fish and saw a flyfisher just ahead vacating a deep pool. Figuring he had thoroughly worked it with his flies I skipped mine, cast a spinner and retrieved slowly. A sea run cutty grabbed my lure but didn’t stick and I repeated the cast, retrieving even slower and a bucky buck, dual striped with a deep glowing red gill plate grabbed me and ran us up and down the pool before sucumbing. Of the fish I hooked or caught there is only this shot:
There were other hopeful signs. A log jam that started three years ago has continued to grow, accumulating habitat enhancing debris:
The stream was full of steelhead redds, I stopped counting at well over twenty in less than three miles:
I moved a steelhead with a swung intruder and it took position behind the fly, grabbed and I set too soon. There was no connection. Then it happened in this pool:
As my tandem offering drifted into the gut of the run my indicator plunged down and I was connected to the hottest steelhead I’ve ever hooked. The big buck went on a rampage, first running down toward the bouldery tailout I was able to turn him and he jumped in displeasure. He ran towards the top of the run, turned and reached full speed running downstream and again broke the surface, this time with the most impressive leap I’ve ever personally witnessed from a hooked steelhead, easily four feet. He came upstream one last time and powered down toward the tailout again, I tried to stop him from reaching the rapids below . . . . I put on the brakes and held on-but but leader didn’t and it was over. No great loss. My only regret is that I had been unable to locate the tripod or you’d be watching video of this ass-kicking instead of reading about it.
I continued to work upstream not doing any more good with the flyrod. I pitched my spinner just below a rapid and as soon as it hit the water a chrome hen grabbed it, breaking the surface I saw her silvery head and flanks as she spit my spinner back at me in disgust. I fished the next run with the flyrod and then caught a bright hen on a spinner. In this small water she also ran toward the downstream rapid and I knew I couldn’t stop her. I stopped fighting, opening my bale and she held in the tailout for several minutes under minimal tension. Lulled to sleep I moved her into deeper water and began the fight again, a quick tailing and she was off. A couple casts later, a buck who must have been courting her chased down my offering, took a swipe but wasn’t hooked.
Hiking out thorough the old growth in the moonless night, a small circle of light thrown by my headlamp, I wondered if the cougar and bear used the trail once darkness had fallen and I thought of the big steelhead trout in the small stream below and whether they too felt a tinge of fear at the wildness of it all.–KM
Jay Nicholas’s Marabou Simplicity is an easy-to-tie steelhead pattern for winter and summer fish. Jay demonstrates how to palmer marabou in this video and puts together a great pattern for swinging up big steelhead.
Jay’s Marabou Simplicity steelhead fly
Hook: TMC 7999 sizes 2-4
Thread: Lagartun x-strong 150 denier
Rib: Lagartun small oval silver tinsel
Body: Dubbed STS purple or Hareline custom blend purple
Colar: Hot Pink and Purple Extra-select Marabou
Wing: Flashabou Mirage
Be sure to check out our Steelhead Fly Patterns library for more steelhead fly tying instructions.
As part of the 2010 trout stocking plan for the McKenzie, ODFW will open up an additional five miles of river to native fish management on the Lower McKenzie River. The McKenzie Flyfishers spearheaded a population study of the wild fish in that section to see how the natives bounce back now that stocking is removed. The project was funded by our Trout Unlimited Chapter through a $5,000 grant from the Flyfishers Club of Oregon.
The wild trout population study will involve catching and tagging (or recording data on previously tagged fish) in the lower river between Hendricks and Bellinger. To kick this off on a solid footing, we are asking all participants to take part in a training session which will cover tagging procedures, data recording and study logistics. There are two sessions scheduled, so pick the most convenient and just show up. The sessions will be held at the ODFW Springfield Field Office at 3150 E. Main Street, Springfield, OR 97478 (the phone # is (541) 726-3515. The currently scheduled sessions are:
Session 1: Tuesday, March 2nd at 1:00 PM
Session 2: Thursday, March 4th at 6:00 PM
Each session will cover the same material so just pick one. As there may be fisherman who wish to participate, but cannot make either session, let me know and if we have enough interest, we will schedule another session. Alternatively, buddy up with someone who has been through the training session and fish with them. I will maintain training logs so if you need to know who you might fish with, give me a call or email me.
We will have participants from several clubs, so that we hope to make a big dent in the target tagging during the month of March. Please feel free to contact Dave Thomas regarding any questions you might have.
Dave Thomas
McKenzie Fly Fishers
Email: dthomas@sierraware.net
Phone: (541) 505-7213
If winter steelheading is kicking your butt and you need some gratuitous action, Metalhead is just what the doctor ordered. The sickos who brought you the Trout Bum Diaries (New Zealand & Patagonia) and Fish Bum Diaries (Mongolia) have turned their lenses to British Coumbia. Based on the trailer we saw a the Drake Film Tour, the film should be immensely entertaining. Enjoy!
Jay Nicholas demonstrates his methods for building sink tips for his Skagit spey lines using bulk T-14. Building the loop-to-loop connectors can be tricky, and Jay shows you his method for securing loops.
Last week Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) unveiled a legislative rider, “The Emergency Temporary Water Supply Amendment” that would would weaken pumping restrictions designed to protect delta smelt and migrating salmon in the San Francisco Bay and Delta.
As most in Oregon are painfully aware, the collapse of the Sacramento salmon (40,000 last year down from 750,000 in 2002) has led to the cancellation of much of Oregon’s commercial salmon fishing the last two years. This collapse, due in large part to water diversions for agriculture has had significant adverse economic impacts up and down the west coast.
The good news is that west coast members of Congress, including Peter DeFazio, David Wu and Earl Blumenauer are fired up about Ms. Feinstein’s actions. In a letter addressed to Feinstein they urge the withdrawal of the rider pointing out that it is drought, not environmental protections that have exacerbated water problems and that in any event irrigators have obtained all or nearly all of their contractual water supply. The letter also expresses concern that the rider preempts science in order to legislate unsustainable water exports out of the Bay-Delta.
Ms. Feinstein has heard from her colleagues, but it can’t hurt to hear from you. It might also be a good idea to write Senator Wyden and Senator Merkely since as far as I can tell, they haven’t entered the fray–KM
With promising reports streaming in from the lower Mckenzie, I decided some subsurface sampling on Middle Fork of the Willamette was in order. I’m a misanthrope like that and besides, I resolved to fish the MFW at least once a month this winter and I already skipped January. I caught the warmest couple hours of the day and saw a bunch of BWOs that interested me more than the fish. Fortunately, a few trout couldn’t pass on my nymphs. The biggest rainbow of the day (16″) ate a #12 Copper John tied on a 1X long hook. The Mega Prince also produced but the Copper John was definitely hotter.–KM
After 5 days with the in-laws in town, my friend Jeff needed to get out fishing before he freaked out. With inspiration from the Fly Fishing Film Tour videos from the night before still fresh on our brains, we headed out early for coastal winter steelhead. After making the shuttle arrangements (hoping the rig would be there when we took out this time) we threw the boat in. A few boats ahead of us. Not too bad though, I’ve seen worse. It was a bit cooler than other mornings; a little sting in the fingertips. But we knew this cool morning was forcasted to turn into a beautiful day. Equipped with a couple Thingamabobber/globug setups with 1X Rio Flouroflex Plus and a switch rod for swinging flies we proceeded to hunt for some chrome. It wasn’t long before we were finding what we were looking for.
A small colored-up buck which took 2 surprisingly blistering runs into the backing of my Nautilus CCF 8
A beautiful hatchery fish with “the sweetest eating meat”
And of course, a chrome native
After a couple more hook-ups where the fish eventually made a better move in the battle, we found our way to the ramp (car waiting). With a fist bump or two, we both commented several times on the way home that it wasn’t a bad way to spend a sunny, 60 degree Wednesday in February.
-Jason Cichy
On Sunday February 21, Trout Unlimited members and the public are invited to participate in riparian vegetation enhancement project in the Whilamut natural area of Alton Baker park on the Willamette River. We will be expanding our project area planting an additional 100 or more native trees and plants.
What began 2007 as a blackberry thicket has been transformed into an area where native vegetation may again thrive. As you know, invasive species are insidious and we need to continue our assault.
The site is approximately 10 minutes by foot east of the Autzen footbridge and west of the I-5 bridge on the north bank of the Willamette river.
The work party is scheduled from 9:30 am to 12:00. Meet at the Stream Team’s tent near our site. It will be hard to miss. It isn’t a bad idea to bring your own pair of gloves but Eugene’s Stream Team also provides gloves and tools so you can come as you are.
This is a great opportunity to enhance conditions on the urban section of the Wllamette and to meet people who care about fish and native plants as much as you do. Hope to see you there!
Contact brentross@gmail.com for further info or questions
Yesterday we had Russell Bassett, Native Fish Society River Steward coordinator out on the high seas chasing bottom-fish with Clouser minnows and shooting heads. Early spring is a great time to chase ling cod and blue and black rockfish on the Oregon Coast.
-NS
I was trying to come up with something to say about these photos, but my son is screaming in my ear so it’s a little difficult to be reflective. Awesome day, awesome fish. No bugs on top yet, but at the bottom of the run we swung wet flies and I had a big trout boil once, and then connect for a second. So we’re close to some non-nymphing action. But I’ll take big fish and bobbicators any day.
-MS
