Sunday dry flies and rising cutthroat trout

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Despite battling a nasty cold, I sucked it up and got out fishing Sunday with my friend Matt. We headed south, choosing to fish the Snake in the canyon, hoping to have water to ourselves. After a little snowshoeing we got on the water; I opted to nymph fish while Matt threw streamers. Both tactics worked, the streamer a little more than the nymphs (at least for a while). I finally tied on a simple peacock soft hackle, a favorite of mine, and could hardly keep the fish off. Dead drifted, swung, it didn’t matter. The cutthroat trout loved it. After landing quite a few fish, I sat down and watched Matt fish. While sitting high above the water i started to see fish rise. That was all I needed. I tied on a small parachute adams, slid down the snowbank and began casting to risers. In the end, Matt and I had a fantastic afternoon of dry fly fishing.

 

bringing it in

mid march midge fishing

fine spotted cutthroat trout

True Confessions..

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Funny things happened this week. I opted for two things I swore I
never would do….

Number one: Me and the lady are headed to Florida in a few weeks
for some R & R and fishing. I’ll be honest, I never really had any
interest in Florida. Always figured if I made it that far southeast,
I’d continue on to lesser populated areas (ie. the Bahamas). Well
sometimes easy is better, especially when good friends are
involved. My good friend Kurt and his wife were kind enough to
invite us to join them on Anna Maria Island for a week in April.
They’ve been there a few times before and from the sounds of it,
Anna Maria island, located near Tampa on the gulf side, seems like
a nice, laid back place to kick up the feet and take it easy.
Apparently there are Snook on the beaches and other assorted fish
swimming in it’s warm waters. Florida’s not sounding so bad and
I’m getting more and more excited. Naturally I started tying up
some flies for the trip…. If anyone out there has any fishing tips
for this area, shoot me an email.

Second on the list of things I did this week was ordering a….. wait
for it….a tenkara (*cough*) rod. Feel free to make fun now. I’ll
own up and admit to spending the past few years making fun of
tenkara fishing; laughing at the idea of paying money for a
glorified cane pole. Maybe it was the dreary weather or the cold
i’ve been battling, maybe I got caught up in the idea of fishing a
long noodly rod on small cutthroat streams. In any event, I pulled
the trigger and ordered a basic starter rod, line, etc. And I gotta
say, after opening it up today, i’m pretty excited. Seems like a cool
thing to mess around with. It’ll never take the place of my
conventional fly fishing tackle, but it may just be a fun “toy” to
enjoy a day on the water with. I’ll keep you posted….

So there you have it. True confessions from Teton Fly Fishing’s
world headquarters. Something tells me both of these things are
gonna play out alright. Time for some whiskey…

week in review

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Spent the past week painting, teaching and tying/ organizing
some flies. The good news is that I finished and shipped a series
of cutthroat paintings to a client of mine. I think the four cutthroat
watercolors will look nice framed and matted in their new home.
Now it’s onto the next project, another commission that, if all goes
well should be finished in the next week or so.

All four painting together on the floor. Each one is
11×14″.Top left to bottom right: Snake river fine-spotted cutthroat,
Bonneville cutthroat, Yellowstone cutthroat and Colorado river
cutthroat. Anglers who catch all four species in Wyoming earn a
cuttslam certificate. You can read an old blog about our cuttslam adventure here.

series of cutthroat trout watercolors

The freelance art world is funny. Over the years I’ve done a
number of projects and it seems like when it rains, it pours (in a
good way). Besides the paintings I’m working on, it also looks like
I’ll be doing some illustrations for the JH Planet’s best of issue. I
did some work for them last year, doing chariactures of various
winners. They were happy with them and it looks like I’ll be getting
out the ink and watercolors to complete a few new pieces…

The weather’s been pretty good around here and maybe i’ll
sneak out in the next few days and wet a line. Hope folks take
advantage of warm temps over the weekend.

Not all streamers have to be articulated with tons of
rubber legs… Here are some simple, farily ugly, yet VERY effective
blinged-out wooly buggers for spring lake fishing. My thought
process, “let’s make’em look like a panther-martin or something”.
And yes, these blinged-out synthetic mutants will work in a river
too…

Recipe: tail: gold flash, body: white sparkly chenille,
palmered olive grizzly hackle, Yellow dumbell eyes. Hows that for
easy?

lake bling. some teton fly fishing flies for spring lake fishing

Fly tying and rainbows

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Ran over to the Teton Fly Fishing cabin in Dubois last week to spend a few days working on some paintings and other odds and ends. Lulu joined me and we had some fun roaming the river bottom and finding tennis balls in the Sage brush. I was particularly excited to organize and add a bunch of new fly tying materials to the cabin’s tying desk. It’s nice to be able to tie flies while at the cabin and also offer guests a place to tie. Every fly fishing cabin needs a fully stocked fly tying desk!

fly tying desk at the teton fly fishing cabin

Friday I had the pleasure of guiding some great folks from Mass. Rob and his two boys, Jake and Bo joined me for a fun day of fly fishing. The weather couldn’t have been better and the guys did great learning how to dead-drift nymphs and hooked some fish. The highlight came at the 11th hour when Jake, after loosing several fish, hooked a hot rainbow. The ‘bow ran up and down river, taking line off the reel in an effort to allude us. Jake did great, keeping pressure on the fish but letting him run and eventually got him close enough for me to net. He was all smiles as he admired his catch!

Jake with his first wyoming trout

A few days on the Snake

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I spent the better part of this past week fishing clients on the Snake river. For the most part the weather was great; sunny and temperatures in the 40s. We found some nice cutthroat trout feeding on midges in many side channels and back eddies. Jason, hailing from TN got to enjoy some great dry fly fishing on Thursday, bringing many nice cutts to hand.

Jason shows off a nice snake river cutthroat trout

Sunday proved a bit more difficult for me and my clients. We covered a lot of ground, fishing what I thought was great water. Unfortunately the wind really picked up, blowing straight up river and shutting down and hopes we had for some good dry fly fishing. The three guys were champs, not complaining at all when we switched to nymphs, fishing run after run. Eventually everyone managed some fish, include one BIG cutthroat, but I’d be lying if I said i wasn’t disappointed. I really wanted to get these guys on rising trout, but it just wasn’t in the cards for us (at least where we were fishing…)

It was nice to be out on the water for a few days and introduce visiting anglers to the waters I love so much. The fishing should continue to get better as we get into March.