Karma

I got off work a little early today so I decided to head up on the mountain and do some fishing.
I started off at the Green tying on a cicada with a tan zebra midge as a dropper. The cicadas did not hatch this year but this fly still grabs the fishes attention. The first hole I came to I saw a couple of fish cruising around and ended up catching one up top, kind of. Well... it always takes a couple of fish when using a cicada to be patient enough to let the fish take such a big fly.

As you can see my dropper fly snagged the dorsal fin after yanking the cicada out of the fishes mouth. Quite a fight after that!

After my first fish "caught" this boy around 10 years old asked if I was catching fish. He told me that he has been up and down this river all day long with his dad and hasn't caught anything let alone seen a fish. Well, being the nice guy that I am I told him I would find him a fish. It just so happened that the next hole we walked to had 2 nice fish in it that were actively feeding. One was a rainbow in the 18-20 inch range. For the green this was probably the biggest fish I would see today; however I held back and let him cast out with his bubble and fly. I don't think he caught the fish since I took off shortly after, but he was happy just to see a fish.

I left that boy and ended up slaying the fish up top with my cicada. I ended up catching over a dozen fish in a couple of hours with nearly 75% of them on the cicada.

The wind picked up on the green so I decided to head over to a little lake nearby that is stocked with brookies. The weeds at this lake were too thick to fish from the shore but the scenery was awesome and I was able to watch a lot of deer, including a nice 3 point buck, come up to drink.

On my way home I was looking out in this field and thought I saw a black cow. When I looked again it was a big black bear. I watched this bear wander around for about 20 minutes. It was getting dark so my pics did not turn out well at all.

In the photo below the bear was about 35 yards away from me so I started to yell and clap at him to see if I could scare him off. He just looked at me and even took a few more steps closer. He did not seemed bothered by me at all. There was a campground about 150 yards away, so hopefully this bear stays alive.

Recent Trips

July 15th at 11:59pm, Tyson Carter Watkins was born. This is our 3rd boy and he came just in time since I had a fishing trip planned on the 19th. A few months ago one of my old professors called me up wanting to float the green. He told me the last two weeks of July he had open and since Tiffany was due the 31st of July, we decided to go with the earlier dates. About a week ago at one of Tiffanys check ups, her doctor told her that she would have her baby within a week or two since she was already dialated to a 4. Well, we worked hard and got the baby out just in time for me to go on our trip.

I took Jim Ballard and his two boys up to Calder. I rowed them around in my drift boat while they trolled some wolley buggers. The hooked into quite a few fish but these were big fish and we only boated one fish. We fished Calder from 5:30 to about 8:00 then headed over to the green. On our way over to the green, Jim spotted this fawn stuck on the fence.

So, being the good samaritans that we are, we helped it off the fence. Once we got him off he screamed at us and ran straight into the fence again and again, so we just backed off and let him calm down. His back legs weren't working too well, so who knows what will happen. After that we floated the green. We caught a few small bows and had a good time going down the river.

Monday the 5th of July, my two boys and I hiked into middle rock to catch some big cutts. After packing my three year old in on my back, I was pissed to see what had happened. We hiked around to the far side like we always do to where you can get up on rocks and scout the lake for some big cruisers; however instead all we saw were white bellies. Apparently this lake winter killed and all the big fish were gone.

This lake was a small lake that had cutts up to 18 and 20 inches. We did see some fingerlings that had been planted in there so hopefully one day it will be good again.

Sorry... A lot of fishing trips and no pics. I will make up for it shortly!

Fishing the Scud

Yesterday I took Trent, Todd, and the boys up to the secret lake, after making them all promise to never disclose the location of this lake. When we arrived, Trent took the boys out in the drift boat to chuck some rapalas, while Todd and I walked the banks trying to spot some tiger trout. After Todd tied on a scud I saw him quickly disappear down a cliff enbankment. I ran over to see what he was up to and when I got there I quickly saw why he would brave a cliff to fish. From the top I had an excellent view of this monster tiger trout that was cruising the bank about 5-8 ft under the surface. From where I was this fish looked about 30 inches long and around 10 lbs. Todds fly was not sinking to where the fish was so I chucked him my rod which had a pregnant flip scud with plenty of lead on top and was tied in a size 10. BIG FLY! When Todd casted the fly out in front of this pig, the fish quickly turned to confront this monster scud, but ended up just brushing up against it. The fish changed directions and Todd once again casted out in front. As the scud sank we could easily see the fish turn again to take this meal, however this time we saw its massive mouth open as it took his fly. Todd set the hook and the fish was on. I quickly scampered down the cliff with my net to help land this fish. Long story short, this pig busted off the line right when I had half of his body in the net. Unfortunately the top half was out of the net and he slowly swam away.

After that we walked over to the inlet which still had some cutts podded up from their spawn. We caught quite a few cutts on the pregnant scud while stripping it in with short strips. The weather turned bad which made sight fishing for the tigers impossible.

Jace ended up catching a cutt with a red snowcone midge hanging from a bobber. Jace was not able to hold the fish on his own so his cousins, Tanner and Carter, were more than happy to help.

Tanner and Carter casting their rods.