Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Another great day on the water...

Holy cow it's been a long time since I posted anything on here... Gunahaftodobetter.

Instead of trying to recap the last month, I'm just going to pick things up like I never left...

The Wife and I got out fishing a bit on Sunday. It was a beautiful day, with just a hint of fall in the air. As you can tell, the water was crystal clear. We had been fishing this place off and on for the past couple months using mostly hoppers. After getting to the river around 3:00ish, there were hundreds of grasshoppers clicking about along with the occasional PMD mayfly spinners or caddis fly.

Not seeing any fish on the surface, we tied on a couple hopper-dropper rigs and got to fishing. The fishing was slower than it had been in the past, but persistence pays off. We caught a few Yellowstone cutthroat, a lost brown trout and the occasional whitefish.

I think this river may have been straightened back in the day. Much of the river is riffled and fairly shallow. To fish it, you end up hiking quite a ways, picking the best spots to cast while walking past the rest. We usually end up covering about 2 miles per day of fishing, and this day was no different.

The Wife got into a few fish too.
After fishing for a number of hours, we finally decided to turn back and head for the truck. However, with the sun starting its descent, we still had one more super sweet run to fish before calling it a day. We started fishing the run with our hopper-dropper rig and caught a couple fish, but then it happened. All of a sudden, we began to hear the sweet slurp of big fish taking small flies on the surface.

After a mild excitement-induced heart attack--not too dissimilar from the several heart attacks I experienced watching the Oregon Ducks trying to lose to Purdue the day before--I changed my fly to a small, size 16 light cahill similar to the mayflies we saw earlier. Oh yeah, we caught fish:
The last 1 1/2 hours of fishing was amazing. I caught this toad pretty quick after changing flies and numerous others followed. Kinda wish I'd moved my ugly mits out of the way because this fish had AMAZING color.

At one point The Wife missed what she thought was a large brown trout. Knowing that there could be truly huge fish in this river I tied on a big black streamer about 5 inches long after losing my light cahill. I cast across the current and began stripping in. On the first cast, a huge fish hit my fly. A split second later, my leader was toast and the fish was free. To Karta's excitement, it still jumped a couple times trying to throw my now detached fly. Without another black streamer like the one I just lost, I tied on a white one. After watching a large fish follow it for a few casts, I finally hooked lip and landed a couple cutthroat from 15-18 inches. Not nearly as large as the fish I lost...

As always, you can click on the pictures to enlarge them.

2 comments:

Jason said...

I watched some the Oregon-Purdue debacle and I thought of you. Of course, I only watched Oregon after VT won!

Anonymous said...

Wow, i think you guys got into some epicness. That is a sexy fish i must say, however the ugly dude in the background make you cringe a little! Its good to see you guys getting out and enjoying some of what WY has to offer.

As for me i was able to get out with a good friend and bike around Hagg Lake west of Portland. It was a pretty sweet 11 mile bike ride with a little elevation gain. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon. On our way back we were wondering through the booming metropolis of Gaston and noticed a sign for the One horse tavern. Now this was not your everyday bar, it had an old wooden cabin look on the outside with dark curtains on the windows. Well needless to say we had to stop in a check this place out. As we prepared ourselves for whatever was behind the doors, we entered. It was one of those bars that i dont think gets too many people in our, shall we say demographic. When we showed up there were four people there. The bar tender was in a cutoff shirt and jeans. There was also a older dude that was rocking something like a small mullet. It kinda looked like a dead squirrel was living on his head. And yes, the bar did have a unique atmosphere. After talking to the bar tender for a little bit about some interesting pics we saw on the wall. We became aware that this bar was evidently locally famous for their taco eating contest they hold annually. Also on every table was a lamp, and the lamp stem was a mold of a chicks leg with stockings on. It was a pretty classic bar.

Well i was surprised to hear that the ducks forgot how to play football. Sounds like after a cheep shot by BSU on the ducks QB they lost any confidence in throwing the football. And as anyone can tell you, it is impossible to run the football on every play. Hopefully they figure out their QB situation and step it up for the rest of the year.


Josh