Trip into the North woods

Got back late last night from a 3 day trip in the Maine woods.  Fishing was action packed for a lot of smallish salmon, and small to mid sized brookies.  Bug were downright insane!  Mosquitoes in the morning and evening, black flies and mooseflies the size of my thumb the rest.  Constant wind on the rivers made casting suck, but was probably a good thing.  Thursday night rain revealed that my tent leaked, als made me cut a night of and leave saturday before the rain came that night.  Got to see a mink successfully fish as well- kinda cool.

  Started fishing Thursday Afternoon up by the Dam- first cast hooked into a good fish in the quickwater that immediately broke me off.  Upped the tipped size of my dropper and got back too it catching many smallish salmon and a couple decent brookies.  Friday morning was wet, but had me up early.  Fished an area of ledge drops with deep pools below- areas like this were not productive at all this trip.  After a few hours here I went back up to the dam for a bit and caught a couple more small salmon.  After lunch I drove 45 min to another river to try for some brookies.  Had a good time here catching several small and mid sized fish, as well as hooking into 1 big guy that unfortunately came off.  Drove back to try and fish the dam, but was so exhausted I just fished behind the campsite, caught a small trout and salmon.  Sat morning had me back up at the dam.  Slow this morning- only hooking one salmon in several hours.  Went back to camp for a late breakfast and decided to explore the river a bit.  Walked about 1/2 mile upstream and found a riffle with some rising fish.  There were ton of tiny caddis in the air, and when I got down to a size 18 caddis dry I started catching several 10 inch or so trout.  I have a 2wt rod that I use for small streams, but I really with I had it for this section because it would have been a blast.  Lunch at 1 and with the impeding rain I decided to pull up camp and not get leaked on my face for another night.  I took the scenic route home so I could fish the moose on the way home.  Got there and ran into a highschool buddy I havent seen in years.  Water was in to woods as the flow was way high.  Decided to try the EO instead.  It was also stupid high, but I fished it for a couple hours anyway with only 1 hookup.  Made it home at 9pm exhausted but happy

Family Fish day at Pickerel Pond

Dudley's Fall Trout

Camp with brandon

Spent the day Fishing the lake with my nephew Brandon.  I caught 7 largemouth bass on a fruit cocktail bass popper fly.  The first fish hit the fly a soon as it hit the water.

Day trip out to "camp"

Went fishing with my nephew Brandon fir a couple ours today.  Was my first real attempt at fishing for largemouth with popper on my flyrod.  First cast the fly sat on the water for about 5 seconds then just disappeared below.  I caught 7 bass and had a great afternoon!

Missouri with the Family

I just got back from a trip to Missouri to visit some friends. While this was mostly a family vacation, we did get some fishing in. The first trip was to Bennett Springs. This was my first time fishing a real spring creek. It was amazing to see a stream about the size of the Roach just erupt out of the ground. 52 degree water on a 95 degree day was nice too! The water was crystal clear and full of trout. it was totally sight fishing and you need a totally drag free drift. Any movement at all and they wouldn't even look at it. We did manage to land some bows, my daughter even caught one!













A couple days later we rented a pontoon boat and went fishing on Lake Taneycomo. This "lake" is really just a damned up section of the White River. The fish were running real deep, and I didn't bring a sinking line, so I ended up fishing lead head marabou jigs on a spinning rod. When we were at the marina we found out the Missouri record brown trout was caught here earlier this spring (29 pounds). We didn't find any browns, but we all got into some bows here.







That afternoon the girls wanted to go to the Butterfly Palace, so they dropped Kevin and I up on the White River. We meet several great people who helped us with flies, and we got into our biggest fish of the trip here! This was just below a true bottom release dam, and again the water was in the 50's even though it was in the mid 90's outside.

A New Trout Pond

Walked into a new trout pond this AM. Water was like a mirror, and trout were rising all over. They were very spooky though and I could not get close enough to them to cast to em. I had to just sit still and wait until they came in close enough to cast to.

Friday Morning brookies

So I have been waiting all week to go back to the stream I was briefly at last week that had the huge hatch on it. I didn't feel like lugging my canoe into it so I decided to try my first attempt at stream fishing from a float tube. Where I was is basically a really long beaver flowage so it actually worked well. The big problem was the unrelenting wind!! I was not sure I was going to be able to make it back up stream!!! Well there was no hatch at all today, but I was able to get some fish on streamers and nymphs. I had two hawks circle over my head for most of the day.