Fetha Styx

I noticed this morning that one of my trout snaps won April's photography contest at Fetha Styx, a purveyor of fine, custom fishing rods.

The winning shot:

Thanks to my Fetha-ed friends for selecting the image!

I added a few additional photos to the collection up at Currant Creek last weekend. The cutthroats up there are beauties.

Run for the Border

In some kind of twisted humor, the non-fisherman Murphy has enjoyed a phenomenal Spring. Here in the Rocky Mountains, April and May weekdays have been full of sunshine and warm temperatures. Weekends, on the other hand, have been below freezing and stormy for 2 solid months. At long last Spring broke through just in time for our Mother's Day trip to Idaho.

I was excited to meet Mom's new English mastiff puppy, Harley. At 14 weeks he tips the scales at 55 pounds and is expected to absorb voluminous quantities of nutrients until he reaches 200 lbs.

The dogs love Idaho. Kaiser and Sadie at first were very intimidating to the soon-to-be pituitary giant, but before long he warmed up and began his bid for alpha male status. The sunsets in Ririe provided some soft light for photographing the pups. Sadie is now 2, and Kaiser is about 22 months.

I tested the waters on Ririe Reservoir, which is a sleeper spot for large splake, fine-spotted Snake River cutthroat, and smallmouth bass. The runoff from Willow Creek had the water extremely off color, and I caught good numbers of kokanee salmon that were inexplicably in very shallow depths. Several fine-spotted cutts also made it to the net, but nothing over 16".

This was a good time to put my new Outcast PAC 9000 through some paces. The low-profile quad pontoon boat covered about 2 miles of shoreline with far less effort than I have been used to in the past. I plan on writing a short review of the boat in the next week or so.

My friend Lynn of BS Flies was nearby in Rexburg, and kindly offered to show me around. Lynn is an experienced guide and as I approached his truck I noticed a considerable gravitational field surrounding the F150 that was pulling nearby objects into shallow orbits. He explained to me that through careful research he has developed a system for never forgetting important fishing gear. The premise of this solution is simple and brilliant: Take everything with you, all the time.

On the drive North we stopped a few times in order to trigger controlled avalanches of equipment in the extended cab to avoid creating a dangerous situation should the brakes ever need to be applied.

We arrived at the fishing destination just in time, as the combined mass of my gear on top of his seemed very close to collapsing upon itself and forming a white dwarf.

The genius of the Large Fishing Collider soon became apparent when we discovered the all-important boat plug was broken and useless. Lynn walked over to his vehicle and proceeded to delve into the cubic hectare of valuables in the back seat. At one point I believed that he had been swallowed up by the leviathan, Jonah-like, but he soon emerged with a brand-new rubber boat plug and we were in business.

The full moon and clear skies over the previous night made for slow fishing but the potential was there!

Lynn runs one of the only guide services that I'm aware of that focuses almost exclusively on stillwater. Contact him (info@bsflies.com) if you want a world class experience on Henry's Lake, Island Park Reservoir, Ririe, or Sheridan Reservoir.

Of course we couldn't pass up opportunities to photograph a few birds. There were bald eagles, osprey, all manner of waterfowl, rough legged hawks, and American avocets surrounding the open water. We got a few photos of the avocets and a rough legged hawk.

Thanks again to Lynn for great company on the water, I'm looking forward to the next round.

Storms, Sails, and Rainbows

HDR is a technique where multiple photographs are taken in a series using bracketing, where some images are both under and over exposed intentionally. These images are then overlayed to create strong contrast and graphic compositions. Over the past couple of weeks I've been experimenting with this concept out at Utah's Great Salt Lake.

Drenching rains, which kept me from fishing today, had subsided. Unstable air chasing the front was perfect for sailing.

There was some verga to be seen, and a few drops of rain spattered down on the rocks.

Saltair isn't exactly what most would hope to find at the end of rainbow, but this one formed for all of 30 seconds before disappearing in the blink of an eye.

Looking East from the marina towards Salt Lake, plenty of storm clouds were still gathered.

I like the effect that HDR has on stone, and this compass at the observation deck is a good example.

Every time it storms I'm tempted to visit the Great Salt Lake. The skies and sunsets are spectacular, and this guy had the right idea with an ice cold one, a lei, and a caribbean style hat.

Wind but no Sails

These are a few additional shots from the Great Salt Lake expedition. The trip was specifically to experiment with HDR landscapes. Drop me a note and let me know what you think.

Hitting the Brine

The signs pointed to some excellent sky conditions tonight so I tossed the wide angle in the pack and drove West until things started to smell like billions of years of decomposing brine shrimp.

Great Salt Lake sunsets during impending weather changes rarely disappoint, and tonight was no exception.

I didn't have too much time to sort through the evening's shots, but it was well worth huffing the primordial ooze. Watch for Jay's Full Frame Goodness on his photo blog too.

Once Upon a Time

In the fairy tale, anything King Midas touches turns to gold. Of course, it’s a fictional account and everyone knows that Dionysus’ gift of the magic touch is nothing more than fantasy.

Likewise do fishermen drift away into the far reaches of the mind imagining that it is possible to find sun and blue sky when nearby temperatures dip to -6° Fahrenheit.

Equally ridiculous is the possibility of finding gold attached to the end of your line. It’s just a story.

Men do not wade in liquid ice near shores with fresh fallen snow, casting crystal clear fly lines to mythical fish. Such a thing would only be the product of an overactive imagination.

Thanks for the snap Jay - for more about the trip that never happened check out Fly Fisherman Forum.

A Tale of Two Fishermen

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it ws the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us..."
--Charles Dickens

This man was likely a fly fisherman. Spring brings with it new hope, but winter's tendrils still cling to the landscape. Ice melts, but temperature fluctuations and limited insect activity can make for highly technical fishing.

"Make a 60-foot cast to within about 3 feet of the bank just left of the sagebrush," Cody said as he guided me into a pod of thick rainbows in shallow, crystal clear water. I launched a tiny chironomid pupa up into the shallows with my left hand since the wind was bearing down from my right. I am not left-handed.

The strike indicator on my leader was bouncing all over on the waves, and I was watching for the slightest abnormal pause or twitch. It slowed down almost imperceptibly as it drifted with the wind, and I set the hook. "This could be a small fish," I commented as there wasn't much of an initial reaction. That's when 125 yards of line peeled off my reel and left me within 25 yards of having my entire line and backing ripped by a stillwater rainbow trout. Sixteen minutes later a hen that was unremarkable in most dimensions except that she was 3 inches thick across the back was in my net.

The fishing was challenging, and we made hundreds of casts that went unrewarded. Still, the sun was out and we were throwing small flies to big fish.

When they took our offerings, long duels were the norm.

After about 12 hours of difficult fishing, we had 24 fish over 20-inches in the net, and felt like things looked more like the Spring of hope than the Winter of despair.

These trout leave a bite mark on the soul, and sometimes other places too. Thanks for reading.