Trout

Fall Steel

This rocket ship of a hen crushed my Aquatic Nuisance style Bad Hair Day. Nice hook set and then she took off. Some lighting fast runs and amazing classic acrobatics. After putting a little pressure on her, trying turn her back towards me, she burst into the shallow water and amazingly beached herself right where I normally try to land bigger fish in this run. Snapped a few photos and a got her back into the current. She was pretty exhausted. It was really neat to watch her for a little while under water as I was reviving her in the current. Such amazing looking fish. In the future I think I'm just going to try to tail fish in the current and snap a few photos rather than walking them towards a shallow bank. It's so much better for the fish and just looks neater, plus the photos that I take at the bank usually suck anyways.

End of Summer (run)

I was swinging a black and blue Bad Hair Day streamer through my favorite run at first light this morning and this guy smashed it mid swing. Great hook set and a fairly quick, but heart pounding, battle on my 6wt switch rod. After a few runs and some crazy Chinook style, stiff as a board acrobatics, I got him in the net. Snapped a few pictures, broke the tip off my rod in the process and got him back in the water. This was the biggest steelhead I've ever caught (~30 inches), and likely the biggest freshwater fish I'd ever brought to hand, except for a couple foul hooked, half-dead Chinooks that were incidentals while stripping streamers for fall browns.

After he took off, I walked back to the bank, sat down and took it all in. I've been consumed with trying to make this happen for weeks (maybe more like months or years). This was the best end result I could have hoped for. All the countless hours of fishing, my efforts with fly tying, rigging, researching and reading stuff online. Living and breathing swung flies, spey rods and steelhead...all for exactly this.

Ephoron Success

I hardly ever dry fly fish anymore, but this year the majority of my dry fly fishing has been at night. With Gray Drakes, Hex and now Ephorons, I've been having a heck of a time getting a fish to stay pinned. I did some research and I think my problem centers around two main areas:

1. Slack 
2. Angle of hook set.

I found the following video,  it really drove home some good points:


I went out tonight and started with a hopper. I missed a couple nice fish right off the bat.  So I  broke down what I was doing, worked on improving my angles and made sure I had zero slack once the fly landed.

Fish on!

 This guy came on the swing below the dam, I went look for stray summer steelhead before last light.

Start of the 2013 King Salmon Season

Made my way to the Little Manistee to check out all the rumors about the river being packed full of early Kings. I left the Interlochen area around 5:15AM and morning was already breaking.  Thought for sure I knew how to get to the access spot I was looking for, but I couldn't find it at first and didn't get on the water until almost 7AM.

Dave's Bad Hair Day in royal dress with a stinger.

Besides this guy, I only saw one other fish and it was a lot fresher.  Not a single bump, grab or hook-up, so I chalked it up to a recon trip. After I got off the water, I stopped by Schmidt Outfitters and talked to the new owner.  He gave me some suggestions as to where to go on the Little. He said the section I was fishing only had 1 or 2 good holes, which is pretty much what I observed.

In any case it was a nice day even without any fish.