White River – Aug 11 2012

Got a chance to fish the White River below Bull Shoals Dam last weekend. Toby Vaughn and I fished Roundhouse and Wild Cat shoals. Action was slow at Roundhouse in the morning. We think the water was still falling from earlier generation so we moved up to Wild Cat shoals.

The photo is Toby hooked up with a average Rainbow at Wild Cat Shoals. Midges seemed to be the fly of choice for the afternoon.

We caught all average Rainbows. No Browns and nothing larger than average. The weather was great and so was the pizza at Nima’s!

Sowbug Roundup 2011

I was able to go to the Sowbug Roundup in Moutain Home Arkansas this last weekend. I tied on Saturday morning. This was the first time that I was able to tie at the Sowbug, though I have tied at some other shows over the last couple of years.

I was tying a Dave Martin pattern, a spider pictured here.

There are many very good tiers there each year and I am honored to be a part of them. I recall the first Sowbug Roundup I went to as a beginning fly tier. I learned a lot and started tying flies after that. Hopefully I’ll be there again in 2012.

Sowbug Roundup and White River Fishing!

Today I attended the Sowbug Roundup in Mountain Home.  It is a Fly Fishing get together with a lot of fly tiers demonstrating various flies and techniques.

I was able to stop at the White River on the way for a couple hours to fish before hand. The fish were taking midges, and the hot fly turned out to be a gray Yong’s Special, size 21. Yes that size is correct, as it’s tied on a 102Y hook which is odd sized.

After the Sowbug, I left to hit the river again. I could not waste low water and sunny weather indoors.  The surprise of the day came on two consecutive casts. The first one is this 20 inch Brown Trout.

The second one was almost a twin to the first, just a bit longer at 21 inches.

Both were caught swinging a green soft hackle during a very light caddis fly hatch.

Reel Recovery in Arkansas

I get to to go help with a Reel Recovery outing in Arkansas this weekend.  This group helps men that are recovering from cancer by conducting fly fishing retreats. I’ll post some pictures and a complete story when I get back. I am not sure if we’ll be fishing the White or Norfork yet . . . As always, it depends on the generation schedule for the dams.

As with anything, things will go wrong when you are trying to do something good. I was on the way home after a half day of work, to pack and hit the road. The car started complaining about my left headlight. So here I sit at the Ford dealer waiting for them to fix it. I used to be able to go to Wal-Mart, buy a replacement and pop it in. Not so with this newer car. The dealer has to change it . . . go figure. Nice design feature that Ford came up with.

Tri-Lakes Conclave

I tied flies at my first conclave a couple weeks ago. It was an interesting experience. I had gone to these events as a spectator before to see what other people tie and how they tie their flies. It was different being on the other side of the vise. Several people (small show) came by to see what I was tying and see how I did it. I tied something we call a Gitzit. It’s a small crawfish type pattern that I use mainly for bass.

The picture below are not my flies. They are just a couple very nice life like flies that a guy was tying.

Ice in NW Arkansas

We have had plenty of ice this week. Here are a few selected pictures. The first is a view down our road. Lot’s of ice in the trees.
This next one is the car with about 4 inches of ice on top of it. I’ll have to start it and run the defroster for a while if I need to take it anywhere!

I tried a little macro shot of a twig hanging down. Lots more ice that wood there.

During the power outage we made a great beef stew on a 6 qt dutch oven. I used some charcoal briquettes and put it on top the Weber gill. Also used the little gas camp stove for heating things up.

Keep Warm!

Tightlines Outing – Little Red River

I am a member of the Tightlines Fly Fishing Club that meets in Springdale, Arkansas. For our November outing we spent the weekend at the Rim Shoals campground in a 12 bunk “cabin”. Other than eating, and playing guitars, we did manage to get a little fishing in.

Do to the high water running on the White and Norfork Rivers, we decided to drive down to the Little Red River near Heber Springs, AR. We fished an area called Winkley Shoals. This is a pretty river to fish. The view downstream from out location looked like this.

The river that day was very crowded. When we got there, the three of us fishing together took turns on a single spot. One would catch a fish then turn the hole over to the next one. After a bit of that, we finally got a long enough stretch for all us to spread out a bit. It was still “combat” fishing.

My son Ross has a knack for smiling for the camera! He pretty good at that. He had a good day and caught a lot of fish. He has not fished much the last couple years and this was his first trip out with me in a long time.

Next up is out fellow Tightlines member, Bob Wiken. He’s sporting a nice sticker Rainbow on the end of his line.

None of us caught anything larger. Most were stocker type Rainbows but the weather was very nice and the fishing was good also. You can’t beat that!

One of the things about this river is the amount of food for the fish. There are a lot of Sowbugs on the river and here is a picture of some Little Red Sowbugs.

After 7 years of Trout Fishing, I finally caught a fish using a fly called the White River Sowbug. it’s the first fly I learned how to tie and though I have used it several times over the years, I never caught a fish on it.

What follows are pictures of the “Intruders”. These guys landed on the river while we were fishing. In fact they landed on top the very run I was fishing. I actually had to pull my line out of the way to make sure I did not somehow get tangled up with one. They then started feeding where we were once fishing . . . .

The End!

Fishin during a Hurricane

While the Texas Gulf was watching hurricane Ike, I was home doing bills and other boring things. Around Noon I got a call from a fellow Tightlines Fly Fishing club member. He called to see what I was up to since we had not talked in weeks. He said that he was on the way over to the White River below Bull Shoals since they had shutdown the dam. A dam on the White River system that is not generating is a rare phenomenon thing this year. Needless to say there has been very little Trout fishing this year unless you have a boat and want to fish high water. Shortly after hanging up the phone, I decided to join him and head over. Arriving at the river at 3:30, I figured we had until 7:30 to fish this spot as they had turned the generation back on at 3pm. Being 12 miles below the dam, 4 hours is the estimated time that the water would arrive, making wading tough if not impossible.

The weather was not very good. Foggy, rainy etc etc being on the edge of what was left of Ike. I caught a nice Rainbow right off the bat and then lived through a dry spell while I searched for more fish and the right fly.

I finally found a spot where there was a couple fish rising every so often. Not enough to indicate a hatch. but enough to indicate a fish was actually in the area. afer going through a few flies, I put on a Red #16 Copper Jon. Eureka, a hit on the 2nd cast. Lading that fish and making another cast, I hooked another an my tippet broke, leaving me with one less Copper Jon which are hard for me to tie. I tries a Zebra Copper Jon, and had little luck. There’s a saying that gos something like “It’s not good to leave fish to find fish.” I decided to change flies to a different pattern when you just broke off a fish on the previous pattern, is not the smartest thing to do either. So it was back to the Red Copper John (RCJ). Another fish . . . . then another . . . I ended up catching a fish on almost every third cast. The first few were good fat Rainbows about 14 inches. Then something interesting happened. Each successive fish was getting smaller and smaller. When the last one hit about 8 inches I decided to move upstream about 30 ft to try a fresh part of the current seam I was fishing.

The first cast in this spot felt like it hung on the bottom, and then it quickly ran down stream, then up, over the shoal I was fishing behind and into the next pool up stream taking lots of line with it. Looking down, I saw that I was almost into my backing and headed after the fish. While fighting this brute, the tornado sirens went off scaring the you know what out of me as we were only 150 yds from the siren. I finally landed the fish, looking around the whole time making sure I was not going to get hit from behind by a tornado or something. Turned out to be a 20 inch, very fat, Brown Trout. Fumbling around, I got a not so great photo of the fish, complete with raindrops on the lens. With the water off the lense, I tried for a better picture but the camera battery died . . . . . I spent some time making sure the fish was revived after the long fight. I held him facing upstream in the current for several minutes. I released him when he tried to escape and seemed string enough to head out on his own. I watching him swim off and stop a ways away on the bottom, then he headed upstream to live another day.

Quick Fishing Trip to a Local Creek

I had not been fishing in a long time. This evening I decided to go down to a local stream that’s not far from the house. I spent about an hour exploring a section of stream. I caught one smallmouth bass, one spotted bass and several panfish. The bass were caught using a Clouser Minnow, and the passfish took a small white popper.

Big Clouser Minnow !

Ever need a large fly for hopefully Big Fish?
I decided to tie up large Clouser for some bass. It’s on a 3/0 Gama hook and is 6 inches long. Those eyes are 1/4″ I-Balz.