Empty Chair

Well here are my photos for this months topic of Empty Chair. I had a blast going around town and trying to shoot some fun shots. Next month I am choosing the topic of Reflection. Along with wagontales.blogspot.com I am hoping that homemadelovely.blogspot.com will also join in. Please feel free to join in at anytime, everybody is welcome to participate.

Some fun photos!

What's happening?

The Best part about these past couple of weeks was the visit back home to see my wife. It was great, we got stuff done around the house and we even had time to go to a Tulip festival that was going on while I was home. Those pictures will be coming shortly. Also got to have a nice lunch with her parents, brother and sister-n-law and their kiddo. I have to thank her parents also, they got the 50mm lens that I have been bugging my wife for since who knows when.

Today at work had to of been one of the best work days in my life if not The best. They sent us for 5 hours to go play with fire! Yea there was some meaning behind this about safety, bit in the end we were there for the fire. They set three scenarios up for us and we had to put them out individually. The smallest fire was about 15-20 ft tall and the largest was a reg station that made a fire ball, literally a fire ball about 10ft X 25ft, it was one of the coolest things! All of this said I was getting paid for this, LTD!

If anybody in Oregon is looking for fly recipes I am sorry that I have not done any in a while. I would check out the caddis fly fishing blog, they have great videos and they tell you how to fish them.

At the end of the month I will be posting 3-5 pictures with the content being an empty chair or seat of some sort, also over at wagontales.blogspot.com will be doing the same. Take a look at both sites and give some feedback on the photos. If anybody would like to join in please leave away to view your photos in the comment section.

Have a good weekend, off to pick up the mother from the airport. LTD

Trip to Spokane

Well I am in spokane, don't know if that is good or bad yet. I am starting my new job tomorrow, gas crewman! Sounds exciting doesn't it? Basically i am going to be getting paid to use all of my education on anatomy and use my muscles (or what muscles I have) to dig all day. No, all joking aside I am really excited to start and can't wait to see what doors this opens for me.

On my drive here I stopped to take a break and captured some photos just as the sun was setting.

I am excited to introduce my new toy, the Rokinon 8mm fish eye lens. I can't wait to really figure it out. LTD

Much Needed...

This past week we headed to the Sacramento River for two days of fishing. Wednesday I joined up with my dad and brother-n-law and headed down on Thursday morning. Before hitting the river we stopped in at the local fly shop in Redding to pick up some of their local knowledge. The weather forecast had the showers stopping around 9:00am so we were hoping for a clear day. With that forecast the big question for the day was waders or no waders? Thanks to some smart thinking and just plain looking up at the sky we decided on waders, otherwise it would have been a long day. From about 10 minutes in it showered, rained, or dumped. Although the weather was not hot the fishing was for the first day. The water was running just about perfect; right around 3400 cfs and great color. After 7 hours on the water we landed around 30 and lost 25 more. The majority of the fish were keyed in on the brown rubber legged bug and the yellow bead head pupa. My brother-n-law was using that setup with no weight and my dad was using the same setup with some weight, the setup without the weight hooked into more fish. It was running at the right depth that the fish were at, while my dad was probably below the majority of the fish.

What a group

It is a good size fish, my hands are just big

For me the most exciting part of the day was at 2:30pm, this is when a nice mayfly hatch came off. In my opinion there is nothing better than rolling out your line with a size 16 dry fly on the end. As soon as I realized that it was going to stay I tied on my dry fly and I was at it. I had 5 good sips at the fly with no takes, and then I got it. Just what you would want in a dry fly take, fish came screaming out of the water and pummeled the fly. It was fantastic, that one take is why I love to fly fish.

Bryce with one of his many

The Young Guns

Thank you Dry Fly

The "Guide" and his monster

Day two was a completely different beast. The weather was sunny and the water was starting to mud up. Also today we had another guy join up with us, so we split up and took two separate boats. There was the experienced boat with my dad and his buddy who is a guide in southern Oregon and then there was the young gun boat with Bryce and myself. They might have had experience on their side but we had youth and enthusiasm on ours, so we figured we should be able to out fish these guys. We did land the first fish of the day but that is pretty much were our lead stopped. Fishing was completely different, the spots that were productive the day before began to get muddy and the fish weren’t biting. By lunch we had a total of 5 fish landed with 4 more lost and the experienced boat had 7 landed with 6 more lost. We had ourselves a hole to dig out of. After lunch the fishing just got worse, I shouldn’t say worse the fish were more selective. We ended the day with 8 fish landed while the experienced guys had a dozen to show for their efforts. I guess it does pay off to have a guide in your boat. All in all it was a great trip, I think I can speak for everybody that this kind of trip was needed, winter"idist" was setting in and fishing had been slow. LTD

On the Rogue again

Katie and I decided to take an early three day weekend and head down to Medford to see the parents. The girls spend the days doing “crafts” and I got to head back onto the water were I started this obsession with fly fishing, the Rogue. It is always a blast getting to go fishing with my dad and even more so on a river where you can fish for steelhead and in the same drift dry fly fish for trout.

The day started much differently than what I am used to, it started at 8:30am instead of my normal 6:00am. We were on the water by 9:30am and fishing shortly after with no other boats in sight, it was already turning out to be a good day with no boats and a bit more sleep. As we made our way down river we had to pick our slots a bit more than normal since the river was running a bit lower than usual. Once submerged rocks are now sticking out of the water and many troughs and tail outs were a bit shallower than we would have liked, but it makes for a challenging day on the Rogue. Right at noon and about halfway through the drift with no fished hooked, a very nice hatch of what seemed to be a cross of a bwo and an emerger started and would last the rest of the float. After watching the hatch get swallowed by some feisty trout and eating some lunch we were back after the big fish.

We came to the last riffle of the drift that could have the chance of holding some steel. After making 2 or 3 passes with me fishing we decided to switch rolls and I would man the oars and my dad would fish. Now I don’t know if it is luck, skill, or a combination but sure as a frog has water proof ears my dad lands this nice native fish.

After he posed with the fish it was returned back in the water unharmed and a bit wiser not to eat everything it sees, I took my dad back upstream and fished the run once more. Nothing happened this time, which leads me to believe it was luck. He offered to take me back upstream once more before moving on, and I am glad he did. Nearly at the very end of the run I landed this mixture of a steelhead trout. It was not big enough to be a full steelhead but it was one of the larger trout I have seen on the Rogue, so for the sake of the season I am calling it a steelhead, small but a steelhead.

There you have it, the first day of a three day weekend in Medford. Oh, I almost forgot to mention my meeting of the Rogue legend, Odus. Odus is a 90 year old man who dry fly fish’s right around 350 days out of the year, this guy is the creator of some of the deadliest flies on the Rogue. LTD

Whammy!

Water level, 5.3ft.
Weather Forecast, Rain.
Overall Steelhead conditions, Perfect.

6:30am, truck is gassed up, loaded and I am off. After dropping the key off at the shuttle place I am on the water and fishing. Well trying to fish, in the first 30 minutes of being on the water I lost 6 flies. Yea 6, that is a lot of time out of the water and missing some good fish. Once I finally got some rhythm it was game time. The water was great, the color and clarity were right on the mark. I made my was down to the boulder garden and went to work. Started dead drifting my slots with the 2 fly setup. Whammy! 4 or 5 casts in it happened, a big take on the trailing fly and then the fight began. A big run back towards the boat then a jump and turn down river. After a few more small runs this nice 25 incher came in.

After the excitement of my first winter steelhead of the season the rest of the day was a victory lap it seemed like. Making my way down river I got one more tug on the line but no other fish to hand. The weather held up fairly decent, with only a few sprinkles here and there the majority of the day was just overcast skies.

With a great day on the water complete I found yet another reason why I love my Tundra. While another boater was taking out of the water I was cleaning up my boat. After 3 or 4 attempts from the fellow fisherman at making it back up the slippery boat ramp I offered to pull him out. So with the cable connected to the front of the guys truck and front of mine, I put the Tundra into reverse and with no hesitation on the truck's part it just pulls the other right up the ramp as if it was nothing. So with everything that went on it was a day that will not be forgotten.