Eagle-Eye View

Yesterday I took our new PaddleSki fishing for the first time. The point was to determine whether it is feasible for me to take the boat out alone, but the weather was grand so I was also hoping for some fish.
I found it easy to stand up and paddle or pole, and the high vantage point was perfect for spotting carp. Getting my fly to the fish was not so easy. When I put down the pole and picked up my fly rod, I left the boat at the mercy of the breeze which made it really hard to keep everything lined up long enough to make a cast. Tired of missing chances and spooking fish, I anchored and slipped into the water for some good old-fashioned wading. I was soon rewarded with a nice fish:
I dedicated most of the rest of the afternoon to casting from the boat. It got easier, and I feel that with some more practice I should be able to start catching carp from the boat.
Here's looking forward to more days like this soon!

The One that Got it's Picture Taken

Despite every single leg of our journey being late or delayed (thanks a lot Northwest!) we made it to Hawaii and back again.
Tara spent most of the week at a conference which gave me time to visit friends and get in some good time on the water. I brought a fly rod with me which was a pretty optimistic move because in Hawaii the conditions are rarely ideal for chasing o'io (bone fish) on the flats. But, things worked out, sort of.
The tides looked perfect so I met my friend Kirk in the afternoon and we headed out to a stretch of reef that I had never fished before. There were plenty of o'io to see. We were pretty much knee deep in fish until the sun set. Unfortunately, we were also fighting some heavy trade winds. I can recall one instance where I had two fish swimming right in front of me, no more than 20 feet away. It was really skinny water and their exposed tails and dorsal fins were bright silver in the late afternoon sun. Try as I might, I couldn't cast my fly 5 feet beyond the tip of my rod! I had to lean forward into the wind just to stay standing.
The sun set on us and we returned to the car fishless.
Undaunted, we returned that weekend with spinning rods, which are a much more practical tool in such windy weather. We saw a fair number of fish that day as well, and Kirk had one good hookup:
He didn't get the o'io to hand, but he did play it close enough for me to snap a picture of it:
Two seconds after I took the photo, the hook popped out and the fish swam off. Oh, well, that's bonefishing in Hawaii...

Flight of the Eagle!

I wanted to get a quick blog posted before tomorrow; Tara and I are leaving in the morning for a week in Hawaii.

Recently, we ordered an inflatable boat, the Sea Eagle PaddleSki. The boats are a bit on the spendy side compared to some other inflatables, but they have a 180 day money-back guarantee so we decided to try it out this summer.
It wasn't really warm on Sunday but we took the boat out for it's maiden voyage anyway. Even though all we had was the small foot pump that Sea Eagle included with the boat, it took less than five minutes to inflate both pontoons and the attach the seats. We were in the water within ten minutes of arriving!
The boat paddled well, and was stable enough for me to stand up and spot some carp. I think it will prove to be a very nice little fishing vessel.
My favorite thing about the PaddleSki is that inflated it is longer than our car, but folded up it fits easily in our trunk.
On another note: I learned about a new spot last week and spent a chilly morning exploring. I managed to land a few more sunfish, including two spotted bass. I can't wait to visit again...

Walking Creek

Since February, I've been making visits to a small stream I know, waiting for the smallmouth bass to move up from the main river and start looking for spawning sites. While I don't think the warm weather is here to stay yet, I had a feeling that the past week has been nice enough to get the fish moving.
Indeed, I found some fish that had begun nesting, and were big enough to catch. Ironically, none of them were smallmouth, which is all I had expected to find.
When I saw this fish (above) in the water, I thought for sure it was a smallmouth, but when I landed it I was suprised by the dark spots along it's lateral line. Typically, this kind of marking is found on largemouth bass but this fish definitely wasn't a largemouth. Based on the temperature of the water, I'm pretty sure this was actually a spotted bass, the first one I can remember catching.A nice little rock bass. These fish are also called "red eye," for obvious reasons.
This bluegill was the hardest fighter of the day. Lot's of people claim that "such-and-such a species is pound for pound the hardest fighting fish" but I wouldn't be surprised if a rigorous study handed that label to these little fellows.