Report - 4/6/2013

Conditions: Sunny/partly cloudy 44F
Location: Oatka Creek, 3.08'
Time: 1:00P-3:30P
Predominant Bug(s): A midge landed on me, saw a couple popping off the surface but didnt ID them

Thought I'd take advantage of some nice weather and do some fishin!  I've tried and failed in the past to fish with nymphs, so I thought I'd give them a try again.  I tied on a gold ribbed pheasant and an unweighted pheasant, both 18s to a couple feet of 7x tippet, and made a couple casts with a couple splits and an indicator.  I tried a couple fairly uniform riffles with no luck and decided to move after I broke off on some rocks.

I switched up to heavier 5x with a size 12 prince and a size 18 transluscent bead pheasant and cast a few times to a riffle with a nice seam on the right hand side.  Now it was a little too choppy in the riffle for me to discern much adverse indicator movement, so any semblance of a quick set was out the window.  I was snagging bottom fairly regularly, which I understand is a good thing, so I got into a rhythm of putting some tension into the snags to free them.  So you can imagine my surprise when the rock I thought I had snagged on started moving!  My first trout on a nymph and first of 2013!!  It was a beautiful 14" brown and what a great fight it put on with a couple of nice runs.  He actually made me feel like my first day fishing all over again, I could get him in the net, had to dunk him back in the water multiple times to breathe because I couldnt get the tippet out from under his tongue.  But amidst all that, that fish reminded me what it was all about, what a great thrill it was.

It was unfortunate I found that nice seam with so little time left available.  A few casts later rewarded me with another tight line, but alas he broke free in the midst of a scamper downstream.  If only I knew which fly fooled him.

Overall, what a great day on the water!

Kabuto

When I was still a fresh, wide-eyed fly fisher only a few years ago, I used (and still use) the internet to explore concepts, equipment, strategy, and other things that were new to me.  I've highlighted a few sites in previous posts, but the ones I found early and keep going back to even today are brianonthefly.blogspot.com and Jordan Ross' jprossflyrods.com.  

Early on in my quest for trout and searching for good reading to pass the time in the evenings, I stumbled upon bfly's blog Brianonthefly.  It offered great tips and techniques to me, especially on local streams which I had been looking to learn more about at the time.  In one of his posts he mentioned commissioning a rod builder to build a custom fly rod for him.  It was to be a delicate piece built especially for very small creeks with spooky native brownies that take exceedingly small flies.  That builder ended up being Jordan and one visit to his website got me thinking about a custom fly rod of my own.

The next few months were spent pondering a seemingly eternal question.  Sparing the details of the journey and for reasons I have yet to fathom, I've decided to progress to the next phase of my fly fishing adventure, ROD BUILDING!

The best feature of custom rod building is obviously everything is DIY (well almost everything anyway).  This being my inaugural fly rod build, I knew early on that I wanted to dig in to my roots for design.  In case I hadn't discussed it previously, here's a brief synopsis of my background.

I was born on the island of Oahu in 1985 to my parents Dawne and Edwin and am of Filipino, Japanese, Chinese, Hawaiian, and Spanish descent.  My fiance is six different nationalities, so to say our children will be mutts is understating it!  I was raised in Hawaii until I was 13 years old when my family and I moved almost ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE USA to Albany, NY.  After high school, I chose RIT to obtain a very expensive piece of paper showing I had some knowledge of engineering, met my soon to be wife, started my career, and settled down into a house only last year.  Whew...

The order in which my nationalities were listed seemed to a be a good starting point for the major components of my rod, so off we went.  A cursory google search provided me with my first hurdle, a non-existent Philippine fly rod blank market.  Honestly, I'm not sure what I was expecting, so perhaps that is what allowed me to leap that hurdle quickly.

I knew I wanted to build something a little different than what the standard fly rod kits offered.  I've also been taking to fiberglass rods for a little while too and after searching the webs, decided upon a blank offered by Kabuto Rods in Japan.  The builds I got a chance to peruse using his standard, unsanded, translucent white blank were outstanding to say the least.  Gray Wolf's build shown to the right is no exception, with the others I saw equally as impressive in build, color, and component combination.

The other elements I chose to reflect my nationalities were:
Hawaiian: Nickel Silver Koa seat/Grandpa's lei feather
Spanish: Red (scarlet) and gold silk thread
Filipino: Grandpa's lei feather
Chinese: "Fly fishing rod" in simplified Chinese

And here were some of the vendors I used for the components:

Vendors:
Kabuto Rods - 7043, white, unsanded
Snake Brand Guides - Universal
JE Arguello Rod Company - Red Agate 9mm
The Hook & Hackle Company - Fishhawk Silk, FlexCoat Lite
RL Reel Seats - Koa Reel Seat

I'll be chronicling the build as it progresses as well as discussing some of the components in future posts, till next time!

1/11-1/12 Report

Just have a couple of notes from having a chance to sling some flies around at Oatka for a couple hours each of the last two days.

1/11
Air was 44F and Garbutt gauge was ~3.1 ft.  I had tied up some chartreuse and black single and double bunnies for the occasion, but was skunked on those.  I'm still getting a feel for where the fish are in the winter, so I tried hitting the banks and the one area I knew to be deeper.  But alas, no luck on that occasion.

1/12
Air temp was 57F yesterday and what a wonderful day to be out as evidenced by the full parking lot! However, a glance at the Garbutt gauge may have told me to stay home.  I underestimated how much the recent snowmelt swells the creek as the gauge read ~3.9 ft, the highest I've ever fished!  As a result, the water was much murkier than I'm used to and I tried compensating with large nymphs on the walk up and a white double bunny on the way down.  Skunked again, but really, to have a day like that in the middle of winter was such a wonderful thing.

Have a great week!

Christmas Eve 2012 Report

About 30 degrees and a gage height of ~3.00 feet at Oatka today.  Skunked but a start time of 9:15 and fishing big streamers may have had something to do with that.  Still, it was wonderful getting out and having the creek all to myself the whole time.  Can't wait to go again!

Merry christmas everyone!

Heavy rig casting (nymphs, streamers, sink tips, and maybe sinking lines?)

My post this morning got me thinking about all the trouble I had been having trying to cast heavy rigs.  Lefty's pointers in this video really helped me understand what I'm doing wrong.

It seems any slack line through the cast caused my major issues with line tangling and "jerkiness."  Well the jerk at the end of my normal back cast caused that slack line!  It isn't normally an issue with dries because they don't have the weight to jerk the line back and cause slack.

So the lessons learned are

1) make sure as much of the line is at the top of the water as you can with a roll cast

2) constant load on the rod during the back cast via a side-armed, circular motion (sounds like a Belgian style cast now that I think about it)

3) finish with a high overhead cast with a little pull on the end to help straighten out the leader

4) make the rod tip circle, not your hand

Finally some room to breathe...

The summer and fall have been a hectic time for my fiance and I.  I wrote previously that we purchased our first home together, so you can imagine that the last few months have been a whirlwind of activity, especially since we decided to host Thanksgiving this year for both our families.

Needless to say, there hasn't been much free time for some fishing.  What makes it a little better for me (but not for our fishy friends) is that many of our area streams have had such a low flow for the summer.  The last time I went out to Oatka a couple of months ago, I felt so bad that I didn't even feel like fishing again until some extended rain came.  It never did.

Now that Thanksgiving is over, I'm finding myself with a little more time...to not fish hehe.  Every time I procrastinate a little and visit some of the fly fishing blogs/sites I frequent, I'm amazed at how devoted to the sport these writers/authors are as well as how much time they have to devote to it.  It seems this part of my life keeps getting busier and busier, though some of the fault is my own (hobbies like hydroponics, home brewing, fly tying, etc.)  I've also never partaken in the excellent lake run fishing we have in the region though I had hoped to begin this year, hopefully next year will be the ticket.

In anticipation of that I've added some some old/vintage toys to the arsenal to a fill out a spot in my collection.  I had recently found an interest in glass rods after following The Fiberglass Manifesto's blog as well as several glass builds by Jordan of JP Ross Fly Rods.  Both spoke of unique abilities inherent to fiberglass, so I thought what the heck, and found a Fenwick 857 from 1978-79 in great condition on ebay for $62!  I had previously won another auction for a Medalist 1495 from the earlier 1970's (before they moved production overseas) and after a good bit of lawn casting with a Cortland DT7 Sylk line, what a great match it was!  I'll have to test it where it counts and with a few other lines just to be sure, but it loads the rod well and casting is so effortless out to 40-50 feet.  The slower action is, I think, a wonderful thing as well and loads the rod more deeply, contributing to its casting ease I'm sure.  I'll have to remember how heavy a presentation it presents on the water too and judge line choices from that as well.  I meant for it to be a steelhead/streamer rod, but if it needs to be pressed into service as a dry fly rod, I'd like to know if it can.

Lastly, my family's annual snowboarding trip is coming up a bit earlier this year, scheduled for the week between Christmas and New Years.  Whiteface is the destination and I was excited to discover that the AuSable River, Fran Betters' home waters, is right there running through Wilmington and Lake Placid.  Not planning to fish at all, but hopefully I can get some good pictures of that historic water!  Until next time.

I complained a bit in my last post about my clinch knots pulling out and resulting in lost fish and more importantly lost fish WITH hooks in their craws (which I certainly wouldn't want). I had been using a knot called the Davy Knot prior to these past few outings, so I suppose I regressed into something that was familiar (and fast to tie).  With the break-offs I've been having I think I better get back into using a Davy or a "Double Davy" shown below (courtesy of Matt's Bucket Blog) or a non-slip mono loop for looped connections.  Here is also a great article by Tim Romano about what life is like from a fishy point of view.