The Kid's Fish...

The back bay of a local lake was FULL of them.  Dozens, milling around and oh so willing to crush the little popper on the end of my 4 wt.

As a kid, I was annoyed when I caught these fish.

I wanted bass.  I wanted trout.  I wanted salmon and steelhead.  Big kid fish,  fish that moms and dads, uncles and adults were proficient in catching.  Not these stupid bluegills and sunfish.

Conversations with the other kids on the dock usually went something like this

"got one!"

"what is it?"

"shoot, a bluegill"

"ugh....again?"

To us, they were a bycatch that we had little interest in.

Today, I take solace in their simplicity.  See food, eat, fight far greater than their size should allow.

With kids and work and all the other normal adult mind benders, it's a beautiful thing to sit on my pontoon boat in the post dawn hours of a saturday morning and take joy in panfish.  Watching one slide up under the popper, inspect it and lightly sip it down as if it was a Missouri River trout taking a trico is as fun as it gets...

Having a rough week at work?  Go remind yourself that the kid's fish works wonders for you as an adult.

Naturally Buggy...

Steelhead off season is time to get funky on the vice, and I've been drawn to the natural colors that fish tend to key into on the Eastside steelhead rivers that we call home water.

Pairing my second love of pheasant hunting, it's quite a pleasure to combine harvested materials and turn them into something that looks very productive

I believe these colors turn on the latent feeding insect that these fish posses.

Or maybe...just maybe

They want to kill it

Either way, I'll take it.

Urban Bass Discovery

3 Minutes from the house.  4 casts.  3 bass hooked.  1 micro crappie.  1 bass under Big C's control

A pretty fine evening if you ask me.

Wild Kill Fishery on the North Umpqua???

Photo Courtesy of North Umpqua Fly Guide

Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has scheduled a meeting June 6th in Salem to review the Costal Management Plan in regards to steelhead management in the Umpqua Basin.

While not on the Costal Management Plan, there's an expectation of a large vocal contingent to attend the meeting to voice their desire to open the N. Umpqua to retention of wild steelhead

What The FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK

Here's some action items that if you can, do.

1.  Get over to the North Umpqua Fly Guide's blog and read more in depth about this meeting and issue

2.  Email ODFW and give them a piece of your mind about this BS possibility.     odfw.commission@state.or.us

3.  Sign the online petition that you are against such lunacy.   Click HERE to do so


Do something, now.  While I have never set a boot into this great river,  my greatest desire that even if I never do fish it, I want to know there are places like it that exist and fish into perpetuity.   Once gone, it's damn hard to get it back.

Back in 2003...

Flipping through the pages of a 2003 Summer edition of the Fish and Fly and I found, well, a picture that makes me laugh

There's so much bubba to this picture.  Neoprene nut huggers.  Camo rain jacket.  Borrowed net.

This was really my starting point in my fly fishing journey.  2003 was really the year I fell down the rabbit hole and knew that this was it.  

Lake Lenore isn't the prettiest place, and the nasty wind that day had me bobbing all over the place in my float tube.  Frustrated, I jettisoned the tube and took to the bank.  I was so tired of watching the conga line of chironomid fishermen in their anchored pontoons rail on the Lohonton's that inhabit that lake that I was about to say faaaaaak it and give up.

Well, this fish took pity on me and took my bug and went off to the races.  No net and my biggest fish on the fly rod to date thrashing around, I needed help.  Thankfully a kind angler brought me his net and OMR was there to snap the picture.

You have to start somewhere...don't you?

One Man's Trash...

As kids, they were carp aficionados.

Down from their house, the slough off the Columbia was full of them.  A quick detour to the slaughterhouse where they collected their bait of dried cows blood directly off the killing floor and they were ready.  Armed with cane poles and baited hooks, they laid siege.

They caught carp after carp after carp in that slough.  

I wish I could tell you that they were nice to those fish, but in those days they're quarry weren't well thought of.  Cut the tails off and chuck them back in the water.  What did they know? There were thousands of them in that smelly, gross water.   They were boys being 10 year old boys.  Lord know we all have some sort of story like that in our recesses of our childhood.

60 years later and here I am finding gold in another generations trash.   The first time I asked my father to go carp fishing with me it caused more than just a chuckle and a raised eyebrow

His mind changed when the backing knot cleared the last guide and kept going out.

Purple Fly Eater....

Chopaka Lake Rainbows may or may not have an affinity for Purple Haze Mayfly Emergers...

Just saying.