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Picture Of The Month



SD2OR with a trophy fall walleye

Topic: Smallmouth? Wait! What?  (Read 2501 times)

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Tinker

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  • Location: 42.74°N 124.5°W
  • Date Registered: May 2013
  • Posts: 3304
You take up fly fishing - I did, at least - thinking about trout.  Rainbow trout, cutthroat trout, brook trout... all kinds of trout.  I bought a second-hand rod, reel, line, and some flies at an Estate Sale and ran as fast as I could to the river - but I also carried my beloved ultralight spinning gear, just in case.

Eventually the spinning gear was consigned to the closet and I thought, "There can't be anything more enjoyable than standing in a fine little river catching trout after trout all day long!" and I was right.  For a while. Until I watched a fellow catch a Chinook with his fly rod.  He ran across the river towards me, face flushed in triumph, holding his salmon and babbling, over-and-over, "I caught it on a #2 orange Clouser!"

I never understood why he kept repeating "#2 orange Clouser" since I hadn't asked him about it.  In fact, I hadn't said a single word.  As I stood there, staring in silent disbelief, I reckoned he was trying to convince himself he'd caught a salmon, using a fly rod and whatever a #2 orange Clouser might be.

Thus endeth my trout fishing career and a new, heavier fly rod entered my life.  And I learned what a Clouser minnow was, too.

I spent days thinking about where that fellow was standing, how wide the river is at that spot, where the salmon travel as they swim past, what the nearly constant wind is like along that stretch of river.  I knew I needed to be able to cast a #2 Clouser - damn the color - at least 70 feet in calm air to have any hope of casting to salmon in that river.

Days of practice stretched into weeks, then months.  Every day, I’d spend an hour practicing my casts on the front lawn, into a lake, into the river, and at last, eighty feet was possible, and once I cast the entire 105-feet of my fly line!  Oh, sure, my shoulder wasn't happy about it and my wrist was starting to grumble, but I was ready to catch a salmon.  With a #2 Clouser.

Soon after, someone posted a photo, right here in this very topic, of flies they’d tied for catching surf perch.  Surf perch with a fly rod?  “Nonsense!  I catch surf perch, and one needs three or four ounces of lead - sometimes six ounces - to reach where the surf perch play” but the idea of how much fun it could be to catch surf perch with a fly rod had me in its grasp.  Another new fly rod, lighter than my salmon rod, entered my life and now I had to get serious about making long casts, into the wind and over the breakers where I fish for surf perch.

More hours, weeks and months followed until I could routinely cast ninety feet in calm air, or fifty feet into the wind.

Then came kayak fly-fishing for groundfish.  I’d caught fish from my kayak using spinning gear, so it seemed a natural progression of my fly fishing career to try it from my kayak, and happily, I could use my salmon fly rod to go ocean fishing.  It was just right to toss big, shaggy flies and heavy sink tips.

But... casting a fly while sitting in a kayak is nothing like casting flies when you’re standing up.  More practice, more days, more weeks.  I came to understand I was never going to make a 90 foot cast from my kayak, but I finally got to where I could hit fifty, maybe fifty-five feet, over-and-over.

Life was good.  Surf perch when I felt like it.  Rockfish when I could.  Salmon and steelhead are still a dream - but I'm ready for them whenever they decide to cooperate.

Here I am.  I have three fly rods, one for trout, one for surf perch and steelhead, and one for salmon and groundfish - and I can cast all three out to fifty feet in a kayak, seventy feet when standing upright, and one of them I can cast quite a bit further.  I'm so committed to fly-fishing I even have two fly tying vises and boxes upon boxes of feathers, furs, and stuff that's sparkly.  I can tie tube flies, I can tie tiny dry flies, and I can tie #2 Clouser minnows with one hand tied behind my back – just pick a color and give me three minutes.

Yesterday I went fishing.  Did I go fishing for early salmon?  I did not.  Steelhead season is months away.  Trout season has closed.  The ocean was a mess so the rockfish were safe, and while tuna are hanging in fairly close to shore, I don't make 8 mile trips in my kayak (not straight out, due West, anyway).

We - that guy who ties surf perch flies and started me down this foolish path - went fishing for smallmouth bass.  For the love of Pete!  Smallmouth bass?

You know how far you have to cast to catch a smallmouth bass?  Ten feet.  Twenty at most.  I can cast 90 feet!  I have shoulder muscles that could lift a Smart Car if I thought lifting it was worth a minute of my time, and I own a wrist that can open the most stubborn jar of olives... and I'm making ten, fifteen, twenty foot casts to catch smallmouth bass?

Why?

Because my friend, my mentor, my fishing companion - and the source of all this fly flinging foolishness - likes to fish in this particular river.  No, he doesn't like it, he loves this river.  In the parking lot, when he can see this river, the look of lust on his face often makes me want to holler, "You and the river need to get a room, for pity's sake!"

We went there, to that river, yesterday.  After a week of hearing about chasing salmon in bays and laying crab pots, and dreams of maybe sneaking out to sea, I got a call the night before and was told, in a sad yet lustful voice: "The River.  Nine o'clock.  Be there!"

There were no smallmouths in that river yesterday.  All the fellows with power boats we met assured us the smallmouth had been there the day before, in large numbers, and they were the giant economy size to boot.  Isn't it always like that?  Sometimes you time it right, sometimes you're a day late.

We entertained ourselves well enough by catching every tree branch within ten feet of the water, foul-hooking and releasing rocks, almost landing a fine, nearly trophy-sized mink, and changing flies until we'd each tried every fly we were carrying.  "Surely this will work!" didn't work.  Not yesterday.  Surely it would have worked the day before, had we bothered to be there.

This time of year - especially after a few windy days - the river can get muddy from the dust and dirt blowing around.  You can look down and see the layer of dust floating on the surface.  It often makes me cringe, knowing I'll make the long drive home with a dirty kayak on the truck (I have standards, you know).

What yesterday may have lacked in smallmouth - or any other kind of fish except minks - it made up for in dust on the water.  Later, back home, I had to use a jackhammer to get rid of the bathtub ring.  Okay, you caught me; that was an exaggeration.  I only had to use a power washer, but it was the thickest and most persistent bathtub ring I've ever had to clean off my kayak.

I also cleaned my fly line.  I loop it into a bathtub and add a drop or two of Dawn, let it soak for a while, and then rinse it off.  When done, and after draining the water from the tub, there was a heavy bathtub ring in the bathtub. From cleaning my fly line.  Imagine that.

All told, it was a good day - it always is when I can be in my kayak on any water (even dirty water), and it's a lovely little river, albeit devoid of fish right now, plus, one cannot ask for a better fishing companion (applications to be my replacement are still being accepted).  It simply seems odd to me that I worked so hard to learn how to cast a fly a long, long way, but these days I never need to do it.

Good luck to everyone fishing Sunset Bay tomorrow.  Make sure you secure your catch - I may not need to cast for distance and accuracy these days, but I still can and I’d like to add “First Place – 2019 AOTD” to my signature line.  Your fish will do me just fine.
« Last Edit: August 23, 2019, 07:27:46 PM by Tinker »
I expected the worst, but it was worse than I expected...


  • Location: The Gorge
  • Date Registered: Feb 2009
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A great read and lordy if it ain't the truth... One fish leads to another fly rod...

Fred "True" Trujillo
"This above all: to thine own self, be true, and it must follow, as the day the night, thou canst not then be false to any man."


Spot

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Thank You!

That was the best thing I've read in long time.

-Mark-
« Last Edit: August 23, 2019, 08:15:35 PM by Spot »
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.  --Mark Twain

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Mellow Yellow

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Bravo. Just bravo.  :hello2:

Good luck.


hdpwipmonkey

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Another great read Tinker. 
Every time I see a new post with you as the author, it gets read first!

Keep them coming!
Ray
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PNW

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