Tom McGuane Awarded "Angler of the Year"

A well deserved award to one of the finest fly fishing writers of our generation.   Do you want to read a good book about the sport we love, read McGuane.

I couldn't have said it any better, so here's The Trout Underground (Tom Chandler) take on the award...... 

Tom McGuane Awarded Fly Rod & Reel Magazine’s “Angler of the Year”

Autumn is Also for Music, the Dogs and Fishing

After my wife and I worked around the house and yard Saturday, she was off with a crowd of friends to the city, and I to a concert with friends.  The concert was held at the very large barn of a local man as a fund raiser for the Raritan River Watershed Assn.  Michael Monroe, a one man acoustic folk band from Minnesota performed mostly with his guitars, but also with flutes (one made of glass), and other instruments played on his guitar and synthesized into drums, cellos, violins and other voices for harmony and sound that was electronically looped - so well, that by the time he was a few mintues into the song that if you closed your eyes you thought was coming from a good-sized band, complete with back up singers.  Very cool stuff, and the barn had the chops acoustically to pull it off beautifully.

On Sunday we were up early and off to the OMB FTC field trials.  If you like being outdoors, dogs, horses, good people, good food and lots of exercise - yep, in that order, sort of - this was a great day.

Field trials are contests between dogs that show their ability to perform, in the field, the things they were trained to do.  In this case, all the dogs competing were bird dogs - dogs trained to find upland birds, stand on point while the hunter approaches and flushes the bird, and then retrieve it after it is shot.  (Although live birds were used, no birds were shot as the dogs handlers used blanks.)  The dogs, and handlers, compete against each other for placements and points, which are assessed by two judges on horseback that follow the "braces" - two dogs at a time compete against each other.  The better a dog is at finding birds, pointing and following its handlers orders, the more points it is awarded.

We were on a large estate just down the road that is full of fields, hedgerows, thick brambles and dense tree lines.  When a brace goes off, first the dogs move into the first field, followed by the judges and as many spectactors that want to follow and watch the action.  The "hunt" follows the same route for each brace, and in this case it was about 2/3-3/4 mile from start to finish.  You start and finish in the same field, essentially going in a big circle.  The entire area was planted with many quail and pheasant prior to the trials.

So the brace goes off and the dogs run off and scour the field, sniffing, turning and shifting as they go in one direction to the other.  When they sense a bird, they slow as they approach, then stop, point (most of the time), and their handler walks up and the bird takes flight.  A shot is fired, and then the dog moves on - the entire time each handler is shouting directions and/or blowing a whistle to signal the dog.  It's fascinating, fun, and very social.   Some dogs are very smart and well trained, and others just seem to go through the motions.  The birds, well, the quails are small, swift and erratic in the air.  The pheasants are big, and quite quick for their size and take a straight path to the next area of cover.

Working the dogs early in the day.

 

Working the last field in a brace.

And finally, today I took off and hit the river with a friend.  The water was clear under warm skies and hazy sunshine.  The trout were looking up, which was good as I decided before I even got the river that I was only going to fish dry flies.  I was not disappointed - brought many browns and a couple of rainbows to hand.  Here are the only two flies I used today - well-chewed and ready for retirement.

Do I have to go to work tomorrow?

Autumn Is For The Birds

No I haven't been fishing in a couple of weeks, so I'm a little distracted..............my wife would tell you I'm always that way, and maybe she's right.

The first "bird" we'll discuss is of the two-legged species. An older bird, who's wife is of the blue haired variety and one that generally takes an obstreporous view of even the slightest change. On Saturday morning, volunteers assisted Trout Unlimited in planting trees along a section of the Musconetcong River as part of their stream restoration project on this fine New Jersey trout stream. There were about 30 of us, mostly unshaven, unshowered middle-aged men like myself, some of whom smelled of the prior night's drinking activities. When all was said and done, we had planted over 300 trees along several hundred yards of stream bank. (Go to the NJ Trout Unlimited link in the right margin for more info and photos of this gnarly crew - and the two youts that had to put up with us.)

So anyways, this old bird calls the state and tells them he is going to kill all the trees we planted.  He also tells one of the volunteers he is going to spray them with Roundup.  Seems he thinks we did a bad thing planting these trees.  He prefers the grass - nevermind that he doesn't own the property - that grass is his and dang-it, them trees don't belong there, even if they stabilize the river bank.

On Sunday morning I did my usual greeting of the day - slowly opening the bedroom curtains to expose the wilderness surrounding the house so as not to frighten any creratures - and there drinking from our pond was a huge, ten-point buck with his harem of does nervously millling about the grass behind him.  By the time I got my camera, he had moved into the woods and out of clear range.

But all was not lost.  In the tree just off the corner of the house there was a pair of Pileated Woodpeckers.  Beautiful birds, clinging to the bark and turning their heads this way and that, as they crept along and studied the surface for burrowing bugs.  Here's one working away on its quest for breakfast.

And here are the two of them after they moved to a new tree further from the house..

          

There are birds and there are birds, some are so-called for their attitude, and some for their altitude.

I prefer the red-headed variety.

Going Back to Go Forward - The Rogue River is Free Again

If you have ever fished the Rogue River in Oregon, you what a beautiful river it is......and yesterday, "The wild and scenic Rogue River has become even wilder with the demolition of a dam that had hindered passage of salmon and steelhead to their spawning grounds for 88 years."

Here's the full story from the NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/10/10/us/AP-US-Rogue-Gets-Wilder.html

One more dam down, plenty more to go.....................

Early Autumn Bliss

A couple of friends and I fished Sunday afternoon and not only was the fishing good, the weather was mighty fine as well. Due to some technical diffculties, the posting of this report was delayed.................and also due to  those same difficulities my original text of the event has taken leave of this post.  (It is Friday morning, I wrote the original on Sunday evening......the time stamp is crazy....I'm very glad I don't rely on techno to fish.) So without further postponment, here is the report in an abbreviated form.  Hopefully, the photos will be worth a thousand words, or at least a few more than I have time to write here.

The river - low, clear, but cool and inviting.  Throughout the afternoon there was a steady hatch of tiny Blue-winged Olives and a smattering of October Caddis.  The trout cooperated and eagerly took a well presented fly.  In the faster riffles and runs, my October Caddis dry (see prior posts), was the ticket.  In the flat water and slower runs, a size #24 BWO thorax dry was the required imitation.

A typical wild brown trout taken on a BWO.

A decent sized brown taken on a size #10 October Caddis fished right up into pocket water at the head of a pool - the fly is still in his jaw.  The trout in these stretches were aggressive and the fly barely moved 6 inches after landing before it would be hammered.  Hooking these fish was difficult, but unless you pricked them on a missed set, they would continue to rise and you'd have another shot.

An October Caddis that decided to join the party at our house the night before.  He didn't seem to eat or drink much though.

My imitation as fished above...............you can see it in the trout's mouth.....I know, the thorax is light hare's ear.  It works better than if I use orange dyed hare's ear - go figure, or better yet, ask the trout why they prefer it this way.  It's one of the mysteries of fly fishing I hope we never figure out because it would stop being fun and delightfully perplexing.

Get out and fish before the falling leaves make it near impossble...............

He Could Have Been Talking to Himself.......

Thanks to Ron Luchesi for this one

I'll Take Mine in a Size 24, No Mustard

That's what the trout have been saying the last couple of evenings.  Anything less (larger), and we'll just take a quick looksee and not even move from our cushion on the stream bottom.

Even when the size was right, the drift had to be pretty darned good to elicit a rise and closeup inspection by the trout.  Only a perfect presentation was worthy of a take, and most of those were done with the utmost caution.  Nerves of steel were necessary to get a hook up, as the takes were so touchy - you had to wait a split second before tightening the line to set up.  They needed time to actually sip it in, as the fish somehow knew that an artificial fly typically disappeared the second their lips touched the fly.  So....you see the trout rise to the fly, he tips upwards and glides through the water column, eyes on the prize.  Sometimes he turns away at the last moment, seeing something he doesn't quite like, leaving a soft wake that pushes the fly just enough to see it move.  Other times, he opens slightly, hesitates, and if you can stand to hold your relaxed tension for one half second more, he sips it in...........barely.  When the hook did find flesh, it wasn't much.

This little, size 24, blue-winged olive took a bunch of browns and rainbows the last couple of evenings.  It got beat pretty bad, but is still fishable as you can see.  And because I'm blind, I didn't notice I had forgtten to flatten the barb on this one and only noticed when I looked at this blow-up of the fly.  Tsk, tsk..................

I also took a few on this simple midge emerger.

And finally, the Isonychia/Slate Drake emeger tied with a caribou hair wing.  As dusk approached each evening, enough of the naturals started to hatch that I could switch to this larger fly (that I can see, damnit) and continue to catch fish.  This is another well-chewed fly that will be fished until it falls apart or joins others in a tree branch.

Get out and fish.  The weather's fine, and the fish are cooperative.

There's nothing like a well-chewed fly!