Month: February 2018

Like every February, Mother Nature cannot make up her mind as she slowly transitions from winter to spring.  It’s a volatile time for the mind of the fly angler.  One day the conditions are perfect and the fishing is pretty good all things considered, and the next its 5 degrees out and you might as well be ice fishing.  That is how February typically goes and this year is no different.  On average this early season has been pretty normal despite the lack of snow on the ground below 4000 ft.  We are above 90% of average for the snowpack this season, we have a cooling trend keeping the temps well below freezing, and the trout are in no hurry to get going.

Water temps are still sub 40 for the most part with the lower river giving a few better days here and there.  It’s still early anglers, but many of us, if not all of us, are ready to get after it.  I for one, am tired of the cold.  I am ready for 50 degree days, rain, sun, and the smell of trees coming back to life.  I miss the sounds of the river in spring time and am patiently waiting for the conditions to be right…because lets face it…its still not fishing weather yet.  You can force it all you want…it is not gonna be spring before it is damn well ready.

With no fish to occupy my mind, and the current state of the country, the stresses of everyday life, and all the other stuff, its hard to get away from the noise, the feeling of to much connecion, the echo chamber of stupidity.  I find I am having to force myself to put down the phone, get off line, and try and occupy my mind with other things.  It’s hard when the only other thing you really think about is trout.

I crave the solitude. One thing I love about the spring is its slow pace.  Everything takes its time in the spring.  For someone like me who is a very visually stimulated person…I love to observe the river as she comes to life in the early season.  It is also why I am a sucker for a dry fly eat.  It is incredibly visually satisfying to watch trout eat flies on the surface of the river.  It gets my shit going.

The sound of the river all around you, the fly drifting along the seam, the shadow from the depths, the mouth opening and breaking the surface, the eat, the set, the fight…awwww ya.  That is my jam right there.  When something as simple and trivial as a fish eating a fake bug can literally take you out of one world and place you in another…that’s what I am in need of.  That is the only thing that will satiate this boredom and anxious patience.  I need trout in my life.

I love being solo in the woods, on mountains, and knee deep in rivers.  I got healthy through it, it helps with depression, I lost 90lbs by way of it, and I live a richer fuller life because of my time outside chasing trout and mountains.  Being by myself, away from civilization, unplugged from the world, and connected to the natural one around me.  It became addicting. Though it all I became what you would call an adrenaline junky, chasing ski lines, mountain tops, raging river rapids; I didn’t feel alive if I wasn’t flirting in the Danger Zone.  Did some stupid shit in my day.  I’ve fallen off enough mountains, almost drowned enough times, and been buried by enough snow to realize that dying doing what you love isn’t so great.  Being addicted to that kind of adrenaline rush is bad for your health.  Fly Fishing is much better for you in so many ways.  It gives me just enough of that adrenaline from my previous activities to keep me interested while giving me a trophy for my efforts that is more meaningful, fulfilling, and beautiful.  A gorgeous wild trout is way better than a mountaintop for my beardy face these days.  Fly fishing also has all the solitude I could want…but also has a large community of anglers to join and share in the fun with if you feel like company riverside.

I don’t always fish with others on my days off from guiding.  As the season progresses the less I want to fish with people in general anyway.  Burn out on people is very real and if you let it get to you it can fuck up your guide game.  So I enjoy my days off fishing alone as much as I can.  I have a few individuals I fish with, I can count them on one hand and not use all my fingers.  I also get a lot of requests or asks to go fishing throughout the year.  As the fishing picks up it becomes a weekly ritual of telling people I am too busy to fish for fun.  It’s not that I don’t want to…unless I don’t like you…but I gotta fill my days with paid fishing to make a living.  I don’t fish for free during guide season.  Gotta pay the bills and feed the kids.  And when you’re a guide…you never not a guide when you are fishing with others.

I get asked that same question every guide gets asked hundreds of times a season, “Do you fish on your days off?  What do you do for fun?”  To which I reply…”I fish.”  And I do.  By the middle of the season I typically take a day off a week to fish myself.  To keep my sanity, to keep my skills fresh, and just to remind myself of why I do what I do for a living.  If you can’t enjoy your work…you should find a new gig.  I love my job, and I love fishing.  I fish on my days off, typically solo, because I need that disconnect from the guiding, the job, the pressure to perform…so that I can enjoy fishing for what it is and what it does for me on a personal level…not a professional one.  I love the spring because its a slow start for guiding and I get a lot of days to fish myself.  If it ever gets here.  It’s also the time of the year where things wake up, and when you live here in Cle Elum…which is pretty boring in the winter….its nice to be out and about as the whole place comes to life.  Twitterpaited critters and birds, spawny trout, bugs finally flying around again, trees turning green and things budding up…after a long cold and fairly snow-less winter…the spring is a welcome to the senses.  Being able to be solo and surrounded by it for a bit before the work starts rolling in is the best part of spring.

I crave that Solitude.  If winter ever leaves these mountains…I am sure to find it.

 

Tamarack

The start of the season.  The river waking up…slowly.  The sun rises earlier each day.  Enticing me out of bed and towards the river.  It’s a time of the season I take my time with and enjoy now.  I’m a little more seasoned, a little more developed.  My younger self would have been fishing everyday, hard.  Trying to stick every single trout I could.  Cursing the river for being unproductive…blaming fish for not eating.  I still do it…but not as much.

These days…I wait…I observe….and I have learned some things about fly fishing over the years.  Especially after years of picky AF Yakima River trout.

Don’t cast to the fish…unless it’s gonna eat the fly.  Sounds stupid, but how many times have you beat the water with your rig trying to force feed that fish you know is in there?  Ya..I still catch myself doing it…”EAT YOUR FOOD FISH!!!”  But if you know the trout is in there…why not wait until you know its eating…before you cast at it.  Sure it may come out of its hidey hole and eat your fly just by throwing flies at it…it may not…but being able to damn near guarantee it…that’s angling for me.  Figuring out the best most opportune time to cast to the trout.  It’s one the key factors for guide season, when I can do my job effectively…put people on trout.  I don’t want to guide anglers unless I can give them the best opportunity at tricking a trout with a fly.

Because guiding is two parts for me.  Its about people…being able to enjoy a day riverside with individuals and share and experience fly fishing and all that it entails.  But its also angling.  You can’t consider yourself a professional if you don’t take the time to learn and hone the craft.  Like an athlete or musician, practice, study, rehearse, perform.  Or something along those lines.  Each guide day is a performance for me…I treat it like a gig, being a former musician.  I practice, I rehearse, I experiment and try new techniques and tactics I have learned and studied over the off season.  I also work on how to teach and demonstrate those things to various angler skill levels, learning styles, and people in general.  So that when it comes time for me to do my job…I am covered on the fishing end.  I don’t have to think about it…I just do it.  Casting…reading the water, rowing a line, playing and landing fish.  It all gets practiced and rehearsed as the river wakes up in the early season.  I have come to a point in my angling development and my guiding business where I understand the importance of that process, and what it does for my abilities and my business.  Gotta get my body, and my mind into shape.  Because guiding is a lot different than just fishing.  Especially when you strive for professionalism and excellence while also having a wicked awesome time.

In the early season this process has become what I like to call…The Chase.  I love to chase these wild animals up and down this river.  In my early angling I just wanted to catch fish.  Proving to myself, the trout, the river, my mentors, the people who gave me a hard time as I came up through fly fishing, all that…a young angler thinking he had something to prove.  If you stick with this activity you grow out of that.  These days its about being effective, efficient, in that interaction between the trout and me.  As the guide season starts it becomes about the interaction between trout, clients, and me.  A constant test of my abilities to break down and fly fish rivers for trout and relaying that world to anglers.  Its freaking sweet and can definitely be frustrating…but that’s fishing baby.  The was she goes.

The Chase for me is about finding that sweet spot where you are in tune with the river.  Like matching pitch I am the tuning fork for the anglers in my boat.  I have to be able to keep my anglers on pitch and on rhythm.  The river sings a song, and we play along.  Finding that juicy level of insight is half the fun for me.  Where are the fish, what are they doing, why, when will bugs move, what bugs, why, flows, weather, reading, searching, hunting…Chasing.  Mmmm…the stuff I live for and what I have come to learn, is what clients want.  They want to be in tune…it helps them understand the river and angling better, which makes them more successful when I am not around.  It’s not just about being able to put people on fish, its about sharing all the aspects of fly fishing.  I want a successful day for clients with me and when they go out on their own. So it has to be more than just putting people on fish.  Besides it makes the job more fun.

I spent the past two weeks fishing a handful of days trying to figure out where the river is at.  Its still early.  Water temps are slow, bugs aren’t moving, and fish are still sleepy.  But a year like this it comes on quick.  All of the sudden it will be on.  But it takes its time and after waiting all winter…another 10-20 days feels like a lifetime.  The patience pays off though.  What guide doesn’t like to call fish to the fly…taking my time and chasing these trout makes that a whole lot easier.

Plus…I need to fish.  I haven’t spent any real time fishing since October.  Coming off the bench with no warm up isn’t how I roll.  So I fish.  Yes it is slow right now, but its a perfect time to practice, put some miles on the wading boots by hiking around the woods and rivers.  Only fishing when the window is prime.  Mid and late afternoon still.  Working on my casts, presentations, sometimes with dries even though they won’t eat.   Practice tracking the fly, reading how it will ride, anticipating where fish might eat later on.  Estimating flow changes and how it will effect things.  Angles and casting lines for clients from the boat and on foot.  Approach methods, types of casts to use, types of drifts to look for.  It’s all gotta be practiced.  And frankly its a really enjoyable part of this guiding business that I don’t take for granted.

So if you see me riverside over the next 3 weeks…that’s what I am doing.  Getting my shit ready.  I will keep everyone posted on what the river is up to along the way.  Gonna hit the river again tomorrow and do a report.  Hope to see ya riverside.

Tamarack

   

New Logo Update

That’s all…going fishing tomorrow through Wednesday.   I’ll let ya know how it goes.

(Color isn’t that green…wordpress doesn’t like it.  But I can did the lime green over hunter orange.)

While the river takes its damn sweet time dropping into a fishable level I am getting lots on inquiries and questions on spring time guide trips.  I am running my Spring Time Special which is a 6 hour float for 2 anglers at $275.00.  That runs until April 15.  The spring is shaping up to be a good one with way more days to fish than the previous spring.

The spring time is a special time here on the Yakima.  Anglers that come out for a spring time guided trip are typically gifted with large trout and big fights.  The spring is when the larger fish wake up first and get hangry…for two reasons.  They just came out of a long hibernation through the winter…and the spawn will be on their minds.  Trout don’t spawn until late April and into May here and they eat ferociously in preparation for procreation!  Plus they get all colored up in the spring and are by far at their prettiest!

Spring fishing can be a challenge.  A time when weather, flows, and water temps play a very key role in how productive the river can be.  I spend my time prior to guiding in March locating fish, where they are, when they will move, and what is on the menu.  Its that time of the season where being on river everyday possible gets you that much more tuned in to what is going on under the water.  Hatches will start…BWO’s and Skwallas, then the March Browns.  And don’t forget the scuplins!

The spring fishing days are broken down into three key parts.  Searching out large fish with streamers.  This is something I will be doing a lot more of with clients this season.  I bought 2 trout spey rods and set ups for swinging streamers to big nasty trout this spring.  Trout Spey is a really fun way to get into streamer fishing and honestly makes the entire process of chucking meat to trout easier and more inviting to new anglers that want to feel the tug of aggressive predatory trout!

Nymphing the slow water, the deep water…can produce lunker trout.  When that indicator dives a foot and moves up river six its pretty freaking sweet.  Just last week I watched a 6lbs give an angling buddy a run for his money before being landed.  It happens in the spring!  The Skwalla Stoneflies have already started moving around and I expect that hatch to be in full swing come the first and second weeks of March.  Breaking down the Skwalla hatch and nymphing prior to the big bugs coming off can be a blast!
And of course dry flies.  While dry fly fishing in the spring can be isolated to select window during the day…it can produce some of the most explosive eats of the season.  There is nothing quite like big ol rainbow trout coming completely out of the water and engulfing large skwalla dries.  And there is nothing more painstaking than watching pods of fish below riffles feed selectively on mayflies.  The time of the year when 5X and 12 foot leaders can make all the difference between landing a picky 18’er and watching refuse your fly and give you the fin.

The spring is a great time to be on the Yakima for anglers that are looking for a challenge and are after big ass trout.  The little guys don’t need to eat as much and its still cold for them…but big fish…they are awake and eager.  You can look back at my social media posts…the average size fish in the spring is 16 plus.  We just don’t get a lot of smaller guys yet. You may not catch a lot of them…but they make up for it with their quality and how much of a fight they put up.  There is nothing quite like the raw power of spring time trout.

My Spring days are starting to get booked so if chasing trout this early season in March and April strikes your fancy then get on the calendar before things are full!  Each year my business grows and I have all my clients to thank for it!  I am so looking forward to the guide season and sharing the experience of fly fishing familiar and new clients this season.  Things are starting, anglers are itching, and the guide season is already starting to get booked up.  Give me a call, send me a message, or yell at me on the river to reserve a day this spring with Tamarack’s Guide Service.

 

Tamarack