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a long time ago, on a stream far, far away… |
Blake over at the Illinois Wisconsin Fishing blog came across a fellow angler playing tug-o-war with a nice musky on the Milwaukee River the other day. Check out the story here!
http://illinoiswisconsinfishing.blogspot.com/2011/08/crossing-paths-milwaukee-river-musky.html
I seem to have a problem getting away from incorporating eggs into my steelhead flies. Every time I tie some leeches or swimming style steelhead flies I find myself putting bright orange, pink, or green “egg” spots somewhere on the fly. These new flies are no different. These marabou spey flies are tied with an egg on the stinger hook which swings behind the pulsing marabou making it an irresistible meal to a steelhead. On some I added a conehead for weight, and all have a bit of deer hair to move some water. This fly in the black/blue color enticed more than a few summer steelhead last week.
The summer run of skamania strain steelhead is in full swing! I spent the last two days near the Indiana/Michigan border checking out some of Lake Michigan’s tributaries in search of the fish of “a thousand casts”…. NOT! In the small creeks right now it’s more like the fish of fifty casts! I only spent several hours each day fishing and my friend Kyle and I hooked almost a dozen fish. Every fisherman I talked to was having some success. At times I could see several fish moving around the deeper pools. These steelhead average 2-4 lbs more than fall/winter run steelhead as a result of spending one more year in the big lake. I believe that because they don’t spawn until January/February and are in the river so early they are less distracted by their urge to spawn therefore more aggressive! They were hitting nymphs, leeches, and spey flies in darker colors, but that’s just what we tried. They might have eaten anything. Things on the St. Joe were a bit different. I checked out the dam at Berrien Springs for the first time hoping to find some summer steelhead to play with on my spey rods. The river below the dam did have some spey favorable water but after talking to some fisherman and fishing some nice runs for an hour I declared we would have better luck in the smaller streams. I camped at a small park on the Dowagiac River, a tributary to the St. Joe that gets good returns of steelhead. We fished a couple pools by the campsite and near the dam on Pucker Street and didn’t find any fish. We talked with another couple fishing for steelhead there who said they had a couple bites last week but nothing all day. Things seemed much slower than I expected on the St. Joseph and Dowagiac Rivers. Indiana is going strong!
Egg Dangler Spey Fly right in the kisser!
Stumbled across this video at Field & Stream.
Every year, I try my hardest to make it out to Yellowstone National Park. This time my fiance and I headed there to hike some terrain, float some rivers, and (per my request) check out the infamous Slough Creek meadows. I had a chance to fish for some native Grayling and smaller Yellowstone cutthroat on the many meandering streams found within the park in the past, but I never had a chance to fish the meadows I had heard so much about.
The hike was grueling and long. We could not help but think about the signs that bears (one of which being a grizzly) had been seen in the past two days on that trail. It was all worth it though, and we eventually made it to the beatiful meadows we had heard so much about. The cutthroat were hard to find, but when we did figure out where they were holding it was “game on”. We probably only landed ten fish, but we missed hook sets on over twenty hefty cutthroats. This is definately a place to look into….just watch out for the bears.
First off, let me apologize for the lack of posts on my part. My obsession for fishing and travel has left me with little time to sit at a computer. I will be spending more time on the computer now that school is starting again, and I will finally get a chance to post on all my summer trips.
We had hopes that the Grayling would be abundant early this year, but they were simply not there; everything has come late this year in Colorado due to the massive snowpack. About a month ago, they weren’t in the creek, they weren’t feeding on the surface at the reservoir, and they weren’t cruising the shores. I tried everything in my box but it was nymphs about seven feet under an indicator that eventually did the trick. The fishing was really slow and we only caught a few, so we retired to the campsite.
The campsite was along North Michigan Reservoir and full of stocker Rainbows averaging 10-12”. This would be a great place to take a kid or someone just starting to fly fish. The fish would eat just about anything and put up great fights for their size.
I am sure that it has changed drastically up there now, but this is a great place to explore. Just about every piece of water in Walden holds fish. So get out there and explore.