Time to Hit the Reset Button

I was sitting on the drift boat last week with Andy and Austen, we were about to partake in our first smallmouth trip of the season. We had the deck stacked against us with high water, winter water temps, and 30mph winds, but we didn't care. It wasn't long after fishing the first hole with tubes, live minnows, and of course flies, that we realized it wasn't summer yet.

So with no fish at this point, we were all just talking about life and other random thoughts, when Andy started giving me crap about not writing my blog anymore. I responded with a few excuses about life, lack of time, and no motivation. That's when I decided to make a bet with Andy, "if we catch fish today, I'll blog about it".
Andy said "deal", Austen just kept fishing, and I picked up the fly rod and went to work.

They managed to get fish on tubes sporadically through the day, but I was hard headed and stuck with the fly rod and spent most of the day fishless. About 10 mins before we called it because of wind and lack of all around comfort, we slid down into an eddy where the water was all but motionless and I finally went tight to a solid smallmouth...

So Andy won, and here is my blog post.

 

Stoneflies and Bobbers - Orvis Recon 1003-4

Weather forecast started off saying it would be a pleasant but cold day on the water. This would mean not much wind and a bit of sun to warm us up in the below freezing temps. By the time Steve, Mike, and I had the boat in the water and we were all geared up, I couldn't feel my fingers and the wind was blowing around 20mph. Hey thats winter fishing though, we were floating the Lehigh on a section new to me, but Steve had floated it a few times, and decided best thing to do was float some stoneflies under bobbers, I mean what trout doesn't enjoy some golden stones at sub zero temps? We fished all day, managed 1 trout, and lost about a dozen flies. I think the chicken salad wraps and beer for lunch, saved the day, but hey we all could have been sitting inside doing nothing (by a fire), that just seems boring to me.

It was nice however, to test out the new Orvis Recon 1003 nymphing rod. It threw double stones and an indicator with no trouble. Very light to hand, and has unbelievable feel to it, the finalized design with the fighting butt made it very comfortable to fish all day long. It has a very soft tip, but when needed it has the torque to really put the hammer down on some bigger sized trout. A great rod for the money and might be my new favorite Czech nymphing stick.

Forgotten Post - Final Smallmouth Float

Through my thoughts and travels of great lakes steelhead, I have forgotten to post about an epic season ending trip for smallmouth bass. Andy and I decided a few weeks ago to take the clacka for one more float before putting her to bed for the winter. We had made the decision that if it was our last float we should do an exploratory float of a section of the Juniata that neither of us had floated before. The float quickly became my favorite with some fast and technical water and some amazing smallmouth. We never changed flies, all we fished was a white Roamer that was about 5 inches long. We put about 6-8 fish in the boat with at least that many more eats that we never connected with. That was until the end of the float, about 100 yards from the take out when I got crushed by an amazing 19 inch smallie and then Andy a few minutes later popped a 20 incher. Needless to say we reeled up and floated to the launch with large smiles on our faces and satisfied with our smallmouth season.

Beast of the East 2016

It was yet another adventure out in Warren PA fishing for musky with the crew. However this time we prevailed, between the two boats we moved 9 fish in two days. We had the same crew as last year, but this year we came to play. We were about 3/4 of the way through day one, Austen had a fish on first thing and lost it, I had 2 eats but couldn't connect. Corey was in the back of the boat throwing my rod with a Black/Red/Orange Triple Roamer and a fast sinking line, when I just heard "got one". I love hearing him say that, because I knew it was a musky and it was a good hook set before I even turned around. That was the only fish we landed but it was good enough to put us in 3rd place overall and 2nd largest fish of the tournament.

Epic Road Trip

Wow its been almost a month since my last post. I want to tell you all about the road trip Jack and I just recently got back from. I purchased a Clacka Craft Drift Boat that was going to cost me an arm and a leg to have shipped to me, so we decided to drive out ourselves. There were a few close calls with big game animals on the way out, nights spent sleeping on yeti coolers, and hours upon hours of driving but man was it a great trip. Jack and I fished Idaho for two days one of which was a float trip down the lower Henry's Fork. After that we headed a bit north to Montana where we experienced the Salmonfly hatch for the first time, and we floated the Bighorn for a day. Next stop was Wisconsin, we fished the drifts region, and some norther Wisconsin smallmouth water. We have a great time cooking most of our meals and only staying in cheap hotels to get a shower and the free continental breakfast! Here are a series of pictures from the trip.