Buster wants to fish

This is a shout out to all my fans in Colorado.  I'm coming in this weekend for a fishing trip, and have a morning open for some pre-fishing fishing.  Assuming flows remain reasonable I'm thinking of hitting up my old home waters on the South Boulder Creek.  Friday morning till noonish.

Anyone care to join me?

Here's what a typical morning looks like:

Pond or Puddle

My parents are planning to move back to their original hometown in central Missouri for retirement.  With that goal in mind they recently acquired some land and are planning to build a house.  Pretty much all the land in the area is farmland or is surrounded by farmland.  This land is no different.  It's a little more rolling and wooded than some of the other land but it's generally similar.

When I was little, pretty much all our holidays (and a number of additional weekends) were spent down here with the extended family.  And every trip in which I could manage, there was some fishing involved.  When I was very little, the target was panfish and the medium was bobbers and worms.  As I aged I discovered that the more active pursuit of bass fishing was more enjoyable. Beyond that, there are also catfish and snapping turtles and certainly other creatures of the deep to chase.

With all this in mind, can you guess what my first question was when my dad told me they had picked out a plot of land?  Of course, it was "does it have any ponds?"  The answer was "yes, two."  My retort:  "Woohoo!"  The existence of small farm ponds everywhere in the area is very nearly a given.  These things are little tear drops of the gods and are sprinkled everywhere.  Then I visited in person and saw the ponds and felt slightly disappointed.  They are quite small.  Not so small as to not hold fish, but small enough that at best they hold a bunch of palm sized (max) panfish and couple 8-14" mini bass.

What was worse was that the best place to put the house was too close to the smaller of the two ponds, so it had to go. But perhaps that was a blessing in disguise.  This small pond was probably at most 30 feet across; a glorified mud puddle.  My dad was doubtful there were any fish in there, I figured a few small panfish.  We were both wrong.  I don't know all the details, but a few pictures arrived in my email inbox this week.  That pond had been drained and the fish were collected.  Here are the two pics I received.  I hope my cousin doesn't mind making his debut on my blog.

A pretty small bass, but a bass.  Very positive.  But even more positive was the ridiculous sized carp for a pond this small.

No I'm looking forward fishing the slightly larger pond that's still there.  Who knows what lies within!

I'm also looking forward to convincing my parents to either make that pond bigger or to put in another bigger one with all kinds of great bass and carp habitat.

Ouch and Gross

One picture will say it all.

It actually looked a lot worse yesterday and felt even worse the day before.

My apologies for the non-fishing related post and for the gross picture of my foot.

Spring Cleaning

First I must remind you what my current dry fly box looks like.  Or did look like before I did a little spring cleaning.  Here it is:

It came a little early, but I got what I publicly demanded for my birthday.  Or at least one of the many things I asked for.  And now it looks much more organized.  The two downsides now are 1) that it actually now appears like I have fewer flies, and 2) I have more space to fill so I need to tie some more!

Trouts and other fishes, here I come.

Oh, and thanks LM&M for the gift.

Dilemma

So I've gone back to tying flies this past week. I haven't really sat the at the tying desk for quite some time other than a few instances to tie up some steelhead monstrosities.  And then only because I had donated most of my supply to the riverbed.  But the air is again beginning to whisper about good times in Montana.  Fish to be caught, sun rays to soak up (weather permitting), good company to be had, and all that good stuff.  That air has blown me back to my fly tying desk.  Not because I'm in desperate need of flies for a looming trip, but because I'm excited about a somewhat distant trip and tying up some flies is one fun way to release that excited anxiety.

The problem, however, that tying flies has created is that my new creations don't fit in my dry fly box.  You would think that means I'm well stocked, but you would be wrong.  My dry box is pretty small and there are a lot of bugs in the world that trout eat.  Sure, eight and a half times out of ten I have what I need.  But those last one and a half times of ten are monumentally frustrating.  Those are the times where there are fish surfacing all around me, eating fly after fly in the darkening half-light of the encroaching dusk but refusing my offering time and time and time and time and time again.  That's what I'd like to be prepared to avoid.

This brings me to a dilemma.  I have way too many dry flies to fit in my fly box, but the whole point is to have all these patterns on hand.  

There are two possible solutions.  One would be to spend countless days on the water and drastically improve my angling skills to the point where I only require a couple patterns.  The other would simply require I acquire a new and larger fly box.  One of those is easy and one is hard.  Can you tell which path I intend to follow?

My birthday is coming up.

Hint hint.

Creep-meisters

Last week I was expecting a package and wanted to have it left at my front door. In order to do this I went to UPS's website and signed up for an account. That's when things got a bit creepy. To my knowledge I have never given certain bits of personal info to UPS, yet info they already have!

I'm not usually overly concerned about Big Brother or the lack of privacy we all suffer from these days, but this did leave me feeling just a bit exposed.

What on God's Green Earth?

What on God's green earth is this thing I have created? Well, after a few weeks of steelhead fishing my steelhead fly supply is getting a bit thin. Not that I've been breaking off so many steelhead, though, unfortunately. It's just a matter of time before you donate each bit of gear to a rock or something else on the bottom of the river. All but a few of my store-bought steelhead flies, by now, have met such an end.

And being new to steelhead fishing I have no idea what constitutes a steelhead fly. What I have gathered so far is that it really doesn't matter. It's sort of like a carp fly: as long as you can get the thing in front of a fish, you've got a chance regardless of what is tied on the hook. Within reason, of course. And I'm sure there will be those who argue I'm wrong and they may well be right.

So I sat down this week to tie up some random flies with whatever materials I had lying around. Here is one of the monstrosities that I produced. It's probably better that the fly is out of focus.