Wa.... Someplace New

I went out fishing for awhile today with my buddies Randy and Jesse. We arrived at our spot around 10:15, a place I haven't ever been to before. As soon as we hopped in, fish started slamming our flies. I'll throw up a more detailed report later. For now, here's some of today's pics. Suffice it to say the only fly getting more attention than mine was the one on President Clinton's Trousers. Anyone know what book that is?

Winter Carp And Bullets (Two Things Jay Knows About)

It had been a long time since I had gotten a call from Brandon, a good fishing buddy of mine, so I was excited to see his name on the Caller ID pad while watching some football yesterday. I already knew what was coming.

"Hey"
"Hey, you wanna go fish?"
"Where?"
"Carp"
"Carp?"
"Carp"

I never would have gone out on a cold day in late november to go fish for CARP, but according to Brandon, they had been eating lately, and I wanted to get some fishing in. About thirty minutes later, I met Brandon at our local carp pond. When I got there, he was just finishing rigging up. I saw him start casting, so I walked on over, as soon as I got there, he yelled, "Carp!"

As it turned out, that would be the only fish of the day. The rest of that lake was pretty dead, so we moved onto another close pond. Plenty of fish there, and eating, but for some reason both myself and Brandon couldn't keep the fish on. But hey, that's probably the last carp anyone will catch in that pond this season. Cool!

P.S. Keep an eye out next time your walking the Boulder Creek path. Someone was probably working on his target practice...

Or running from the cops

LOL Fest

First day of snowboarding tomorrow, which means the end of fishing for the year... NOT!!!! Be safe out there kids.

Fishing Epiphanies

As some of you know, I went to the a famous section of a river near Fairplay about a month ago. It was my first time there, and it was pretty much how I imagined. Lots of people, not tons of fish, but some real big boys. We arrived around 8:00 at the upper parking lot, and I hopped out and started looking for fish. After walking for a little while, I spotted a few nice browns. I flipped in a few casts, and one of the fish ate my fly. I set the hook, watched the fish swim upstream with my fly, and rub his head against a rock until my flies popped out. Time to try something new. I walked up a few steps further, and was casting to a nice fish until I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. That boulder I sitting in the river was swimming around. Holy shit, that's a huge fish! I started casting to him, and after about ten minutes, I got a reward. The fish calmly inhaled my fly, and the battle was on. Sadly, the battle ended when he porpoised down a waterfall, pounded my tippet along rocks, and snapped me off. I'm not even kidding you. I decided to take a break from these fish, and headed down lower to a nice deep hole. I flipped in the next six casts, and proceeded to pull out five nice fish and a pee-wee football shaped rainbow. So now I wasn't worried about the skunk. We kept fishing down the river, caught a few more fish, and headed to lunch. Afterwards, we went back to the first section. Low and behold, the big boy was back. I worked him for a good few minutes, and he finally got angry enough to eat the fly. I set the hook once again, and tried to turn his head towards me. He had other plans though, and dove into the tall grass in the water. Well, there goes my fly. So we moved on, kept fishing for the rest of the day, caught a few more fish, and headed home. Yes we did look for the big fish again, but he was no where to be found. Guess he was finally smart enough to leave. As we were driving home, I was a little upset with myself. But then I realized something: 1) It's not fishing if you catch every fish, and it wouldn't be fun if you did, and 2) I caught a bunch of fish, and a beautiful brown around 21 inches. However you put this, it can't be anything but a great day.

So, a great day. I'll get those pictures of my friend's camera sometime this week, and post them.

Randy Hicks Of RMA With A Nice Fall Brown

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! I always start to think at this time of year that there is work to be done. Of course you still have to fish, so you don't go completely insane. Wait, yea. So you don't go completely insane. But over the year, you probably lost a lot of gear too. I know I did. So you have to start getting your crap together for the next season. That can mean going down to the local fly shop to re stock on leaders and tippet, finding that new rod you really wanted (and told your wife you really needed), or in my case, tying a bunch of flies that I put in trees, under rocks, molded into ice, and bent out in the leather of the car. So what patterns do I tie? Nothing special. I don't really tie many flies to exact replicas like a lot of people do. I was one of those kids who didn't follow the instructions in the lego sets. So I like to look at a bunch of different patters, take parts of each one, and make variations. What are you gonna be tying up this Winter?

Too Many Worms?

Adventures Of A Cold Fish And The Quest For The World's Largest Dessert

Hey hey! I'm back from the Blue! Our trip was tons of fun. My grandma picked me up just before 5, way before the sun's alarm clock had rung. As it turned out, it never would come out that day. It was snowing very lightly when we left, and it just kept getting heavier as we made our way toward Silverthorne. By the time we got to our first fishing spot, it was really snowing hard. I followed some almost invisible tracks in the snow along a path that actually kind of scared me. After getting past that though, I met up with Randy and a couple other guys from Rocky Mountain Anglers. The fishing was kind of what you'd expect, hitting the far banks with nymph rigs, not catching a ton of fish, but enough to make it a lot of fun. After a few hours, Randy and the guys headed back to Boulder and we headed to our next spot. I fished the Outlet Stores for a while my grandma got some lunch, but to no avail. You could see some nice fish from the Bridge, but they weren't too interested in my flies. I got one halfhearted strike, but nothing else. We moved up above Lake Dillon after a little while, to check out another place Randy had told me about. When I got to the river it was much smaller than I expected, and I was a little worried. Could there really be some fish in this tiny little thing? I walked down the stream for a few yards, and saw something little and red swim up the river. What was that? And suddenly I was in a river of red. Kokanee Salmon! So for the next few hours, I threw the brightest flies I had at these silly looking fish. And I caught some! We left after another two hours, checked into a hotel, and went to dinner at the Mint. It's a very cool restraunt where you cook your own steaks on an open fire grill, and finish it off with the Ice Cream potato that I posted last night.

We fished for a little while this morning, then headed home. Super fun!

Wow

My dessert weighs two pounds!!!

The moment of truth

That moment when there's three wraps of backing left on your reel... Heading out to the Blue tomorrow, hope to bring back a story

Super Size Me

This is a streamer I've been throwing around a lot this fall. Does it look like a fish? No. Does it catch fish? Yes!

Sylvandale, Pt 1

Sylvan Dale Was A Great Time, Hopefully I'll have some more pictures soon.

Stones and Groans

I've been trying to teach myself how to tie Stoneflies for the Dream Stream (Round Two!) Next week. Yes, I will post pictures from both of them, hopefully at the same time. Anyway, these Stones are what I've come up with so far. Anybody got any other personal favorites for Big Stones?

New Video

Well, it's in the works. I've been thinking about doing a movie for awhile now. Sure, I could take some video and throw it up on the screen. So that's what I'll do. Instead, I'm going to try and put my time into it, take lots of good video, edit it well, and make a really nice final. I'm hoping to take video up until August '12, then start editing. And Howard, Halloween has its costs as well....

Stitches Are Out

Hey There!

Bruised and Battered, But Still Kicking

The Snow Day Calculator is giving me a 98% chance of a snow day tomorrow. Let's hope! First, I hope everyone had a fun and safe Halloween. My friend asked me what I was doing this weekend, and I told him I was going fishing. "It's gonna snow on Saturday" he said. Really? Well, that changes everything. I'll go fishing on Saturday. We laughed, but then I got to thinking. Is there really that much of a difference between Summer and Winter? Yes, Captain Obvious, it's cold in the Winter. Yes, the bugs aren't around. But if you put the time and effort into getting out there and fishing, is there really such thing as a season for fishing?