Bycatch

I took a new friend fishing last week. Toby recently moved to Nashville from Florida and was interested in carp so I took him to one of my more consistent spots where we spent the morning (and a good portion of the afternoon!) throwing flies at fish. Toby did very well for a first timer. He quickly learned to pick up on the subtle body language of fish and had four or five very near misses. I hooked one fish which unfortunately made a sudden and explosive run and broke me off under a dock.
One thing that again struck me that day was how easy catching other species seems in comparison. At one point Toby "saw a flash of fluorescent green and flicked (his) fly at it." A minute later he had a nice bass in the boat:

 I had a similar experience this week, again while hunting carp:

Unfortunately, the carp fishing was not as good as the bass fishing. Conditions were tough and the fish were spooky. With some persistence, and some mucky wading, I finally got a carp in the net:

As luck would have it, I also brought a light spinning rod and a jar of corn. In the last half hour before we had to leave I baited a hook and tossed it into a depression where I knew carp were feeding. After about 20 minutes the reel buzzed - we had a customer! I paddled the boat while Tara fought the fish across the bay. She did a perfect job and played the fish like a pro. She was not so eager to actually hold her prize for a photo but I managed to convince her:

That's a big fish!

Special Delivery

Some time ago Drew, a friend of mine from way back, called me and asked if I tied my own flies.

"Sure" I told him.

"OK, I'm sending you something."

That was pretty much the extent of the conversation.

A few days later I received an envelope with no letter. Instead, it contained a single flight feather from a macaw!

Most of the feathers I use in fly tying are small and soft - hackle feathers, so I had to think for a bit about how to employ this unique specimen.
With some advice and inspiration from the Ronnie at the fly shop I sat down at the vice. First I tied a very simple bead-head nymph:

Next I tied in a bunch of barbs from the macaw:

 I pulled the barbs back and secured them to form an iridescent "shell." Finally I trimmed the ends to make a short tail:

I tied a couple of these "macaw nymphs" in slightly different color schemes. I gave one to Ronnie to try on some Caney Fork trout and I took the other one out just this week to try on some hungry locals:

Trans-Siberian

We're just back from a trip on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, a nearly 5000 mile journey from Moscow to Beijing. We spent several days in Severobaikalsk, a small city at the northern tip of Lake Baikal.

 The lake has about half the surface area of Lake Michigan, but at over a mile deep it holds more fresh water than all of the Great Lakes combined! It is also home to many unique species of plants and animals, including a rare freshwater seal and a small salmonid species called omul. Omul is an important food fish in the area. It is mostly dried or smoked but also eaten raw with salt sprinkled on top.

 We spent one day touring the tip of the lake by boat. We stopped for lunch at a beach on the end of a long, thin barrier island. Great schools of juvenile omul moved close to shore and, despite their normally zooplanktonivorous nature, I was able to catch quite a few of them on a small red fly.

 For more pictures of our trip, please visit my Picasa Web Album: Trans-Siberian Railroad.

Trophy Hunting

I recently met Gil, a fellow carp angler, through a mutual friend. Via email we have been sharing some of our favorite fishing spots. Gil mentioned an urban pond near town that is full of small carp.

Not wanting to fight the crowds on the Fourth of July Weekend I decided instead to check out this new spot. It was very urban - fed by storm drains and run off, but it was teeming with little carp and some small buffalo. The fish were busy feeding near the bank, either rooting in the mud or swimming parallel to shore and plucking food-like items floating near the surface. I made one lap of the pond and caught one carp. On my second lap I spotted a real trophy fish. I missed it on my first try but the second time it couldn't resist the tiny golden nymph I offered. I was thrilled, a carp this small is one in a million!

Highs in the 90's

 Fishing can be addictive. I don't think it is a chemical addiction. Thrilling moments are too short and too few to qualify fishing as an adrenaline rush, and it is simply not aerobic enough to produce a "runner's high." Instead I suspect that the addiction is more cerebral. Like an obsession with golf, catching fish is a physical and mental challenge with many uncontrollable variables. It is the desire to overcome the challenge, to solve the puzzle, that compels us to fish constantly.
A friend of mine, Haichao, has recently experienced the challenge of fishing and I have a feeling that he is now, and forever will be, an addict.

Starting small...

but getting bigger!

You Give Love a Bad Name

Our good friends in Hawaii just got married. Tara was the maid of honor and I agreed to play photographer. Needless to say we were pretty busy but I managed to fit in a few days of fishing between wedding related activities.

I met up with my friend Kirk early one morning and we waded out to fish for white ulua along the edge of the reef. We had some success, a couple of whites, one bluefin ulua and a big cornet fish:

A few days later we went out for o'io (bonefish.) We often fly fish for o'io but Kirk reported that the fish in this particular area are very difficult to hook with a fly rod. Instead we headed out early, at low tide, to catch some crabs:

With our bait in tow we made our way to the edge of the reef. The hope was that the bonefish were waiting in the deeper water for the tide to rise so that they could safely enter the flat in search of a meal, like the delicious crabs we had just caught. We cast our bait along the drop off and waited patiently. Within ten minutes Kirk had a nice fish on his line:

We spent most of the day on the water. Kirk landed one more fish and I hooked one but lost it. We saw many fish though, some quite large. Kirk says that he has seen o'io in the area that are probably bigger than the world record. I can't wait to get back out there!

Free Ride

Things finally worked out so that I could take Miles on the carp fishing trip that he won back in February. The recent flooding has temporarily restricted my carp fishing to one lake. So that's where we headed.
The wind picked up off and on, and the sun hid behind the clouds some but overall the conditions were favorable. We saw plenty of feeding fish but also large schools of excited carp, a sign of imminent spawning.
Miles wasted no time in putting his fly in front of some hungry fish but he quickly found out that setting the hook on a wily carp is a delicate matter indeed! We fished hard through the morning and Miles' timing improved but he had yet to make contact with his first carp. At one point he made a nice cast to a feeding fish and felt a tug. For one moment we both thought he had finally succeeded but it was just a feisty sunfish that had taken the fly!
Early in the afternoon Miles encouraged me to take a turn fishing. I cast to a few fish along the shoreline with no luck but then spotted a big mud toward the middle of the bay. I paddled quietly within range and made a couple casts before the carp spotted my fly and inhaled it. The hook popped free after only a few seconds and the carp escaped but I think that witnessing that hook-up gave Miles new confidence. We found a pair of fish feeding in the shallows with their shiny backs sticking out of water. One fish got nervous and moved off but the second stayed and Miles dropped his fly gently beside it. The fish scooted forward and paused. I don't know if I managed to give an instruction or if I was holding my breath in anticipation, but Miles timed his strip perfectly and hooked up his first carp!

The fish stayed in front of us and Miles kept it on a short leash which was the right thing to do because it wanted nothing more than to swim up into a nearby tangle of branches. Unfortunately, after a lively tug of war, the tippet snapped and the carp escaped. Nevertheless, I was impressed with Miles' persistence and his quick adaptation to a different style of fishing. He definitely deserved that fish and I'm sure it won't be long before he pulls one into the boat.