Tying a Drowned Cricket

This video demonstrates how simple it is to design a fly pattern in the spur of the moment to meet your needs.

Fly Tying the Emotion Detector

Tying the Scimitar Shrimp

Central Cali Surf Perch Stars in Our Eyes and Sand in our Teeth

It has been a few days since I last posted. Sharon and I made it out of Nevada and over to the coast of California without incident. We've been through Paso Robles, over to Morro Bay and now back to Paso for a few days before heading back to the Pacific Ocean at Cayucos.

If you're wondering- but probably aren't.... -why I haven't written it's because I have been concentrating on the Morro Bay magazine story. For some reason when I'm working on one of these stories everything else goes out the window. More experienced writers may know how to get around it but being a bit of a neophyte it's still an issue. Anyway our first run out to the ocean went pretty well, salt scum on everything and excessive dust not withstanding. I can't remember the last time I had sand in my teeth for 2 days straight, but I'll get to that later.

When we pulled into Morro Bay we couldn't have asked for better weather or a more picturesque scene. The sky was mostly clear with a few scattered clouds on the horizon, the ocean a beautiful aquamarine and being visible from almost everywhere in the area, monolithic Morro Rock made for a tremendous natural point of reference. The dunes between our campground and the beach are covered with ice plants and several other flowering ground covers that I can't identify.

Early on in our first walk on the beach Sunday afternoon we were both amazed at the number of sand dollars on the beach. Other places we've been finding a sand dollar is a treat or as is the case in Panama City Beach almost a rarity to find one intact. When I spotted the first one it was pretty thrilling so I picked it up, then another and another until I had a veritable sand dollar fortune which being the philanthropic guy that I am I ended up leaving my fortune on the beach for someone more needy than myself. Seriously you could fill a tote sack with all the sand dollars on the Morro Strand State Beach in a single afternoon. It was good to see things like that still exist somewhere in the world.

I haven't seen that many sea birds in a small space in quite a while. There are enough that the locals hold a bird festival every year. There are Sand Pipers, Great Egrets, Little Egrets, Snowy Egrets, Tri-color Great Blue Herons, Green Herons, Ospreys, Cormorants, White Pelicans, Brown Pelicans and the venerable Sea Gulls not to mention all the land based birds. One of the most entertaining are the pelicans. They hunt the ocean breakers just off shore by gliding along in front of the breaker just before it rolls over. This apparently gives them a view into the water as they cruise along wings outstretched peering in looking for fish and suddenly they dive into the wave like a crashing surfer. As the wave rolls on in the Pelican bobs to the surface swallowing its catch before taking off to do it over again. The other amusing behavior is when they cruise along on the wind outside the breakers at about 30 feet over the ocean then suddenly dive in after a fish in the blink of an eye. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta eat.

There's a song by the band STYX titled Nothing Ever Goes as Planned. While the title is not exactly accurate it does depict the nature of life as it seems when big plans are in the works. The plan was to come in and take the beach by storm, capture a memory card full of photos, catch a pot load of surf perch and be done with it all in the blink of an eye. Well...................

As it turns out fishing in the Pacific Ocean, specifically the central California coast, is a bit more fickle than fishing in the Gulf of Mexico which is where all my saltwater fishing experience lies. There is much more to consider than tides and the overall weather. There is a reason surfers like this part of the coast, it has REALLY BIG waves created by really strong winds. After a morning of scouting, and a few hours fishing on the second day I thought it was all down hill from there. That's when I got a chance to sit down and get a really good look at surf-forecast.com with a slightly better understanding of what it's like out there. With no available information about the surf fishing around Morro Bay I had been relying on the information available for counties north and south of San Luis Obispo County. As it turns out the surf is almost nothing like those other location in terms of the character. While fly casters in other locations seldom go out in swells of 3 feet or greater the fly casters around Morro Bay consider the best conditions to be swells of 3 to 6 or even 7 feet! That's brutal water that can hurt or drown you.

Being brave and, as Sharon points out some times, not too bright I adopted the local attitude.....that is until the wind set in. That's also when we hunkered down except when we had to go out. With sustained winds at close to 30 mph sand blows like a dust storm in west Texas. Sand in your teeth, hair, eyes and every other conceivable place on your body, in your vehicle does not make for a pleasant time especially when you need to take photographs for a magazine. Needless to say it did NOT go as planned.

On the upside it didn't go all bad either. The first morning out I hooked-up on a pair of what I think were surf perch but didn't land them. I also met a local that shared a lot of valuable information including the trick to landing fish in the violent surf hydraulics. Instinctively as a trout fisherman the rod goes up when a fish is on. Turns out this is absolutely the wrong thing to do when fishing in the surf. According to my new friend the proper technique is to put the rod ti[p down in the water, strip like hell and back onto the beach as fast as possible otherwise the hydraulic surge of the surf creates slack and the surf perch is gone. I learned that lesson the hard way.

As I write this a few things just occurred to me. I wonder if the editor knew that the surf is so much more volatile than other parts of the the west coast when he gave me the task of checking it out. If he did is that a vote of confidence or is he trying to bump me off? Either way the story is all but in the bag. We're heading back out that way after the weekend with stars in our eyes. The plan again is to finish getting photos and catch a few perch.......that is if we don't end up with sand in our teeth.

South Platte River, Big Wind and Nick's Swanky

Rewind back a week to the only fishing I've been able to squeeze in since leaving Texas in March. This is after all a fly fishing blog and some of you may be getting tired of reading about traveling.

Our Traveling Companion Dominic

Since we started our journey around the country last May I don't usually try to go fishing when we're in Colorado Springs. The goal is usually to get in, get our business done and get back on the road as quickly as possible. This trip through took a little twist and we ended up sitting for a week.

We took care of our normal business with the added chore of getting Dominic, our cat, to the vet for a dental cleaning that turned into multiple extractions. Not wanting to hit the road until he recovered from the anesthesia we added a week to our stay. Not only did that week give me a chance to do a few extra chores around town it also afforded me a chance to hit one of my favorite stretches of the South Platte.

I didn't exactly choose the perfect day to go up to The Charlie Meyers Wildlife Area formerly known as Spinney Mountain Ranch or maybe those signs have always been there I can't say because I have always gone in through the state park.

Midge Larvae From the Guadalupe River

The wind was howling from the moment I arrived. I's not unusual for the wind to be blowing up at South Park but this was more than normal.  So much for my plan to fish a spring dry fly. Up here the river is one of those rivers that on any given day there will be some risers that will take a dry. The addendum to that is you have to be able to make good casts and get good drifts. These trout get fished over very hard throughout the year and won't fall for a bad drift with a dry fly 95% of the time. I say 95% because even I can catch a trout on a dry fly here from time to time.

A Bunch of Nick's Swanky Midges

Not to be thwarted by the gale force winds I took a different approach and went with a dry/dropper rig from the beginning. I'm not much of a nympher or maybe I should say haven't been in the past. This winter I had the opportunity to spend some time with Nick of Nick Fly Fishing. During that time he taught me a thing or two about nymph fishing. For the most part in the past I've avoided nymphing techniques in favor of dries making my own excuses just to keep a dry fly on the water. Though Nick helped me to break that way of thinking -somewhat- I would still much rather see a trout take a fly from the surface: it's a visual thing. That said I'm starting to feel the thrill of suddenly having weight at the end of my line with no other indication of a take. That's a discussion for another time after much more on the water research.

In homage to Nick helping me along on the nymphing trail I opted for the fly he introduced me to on the Guadalupe this winter. One evening Nick texted me a photo of  the overly abundant midge larvae in the Guadalupe River along with the fly he was working on to imitate it. After some collaborative discussion he sent me a photo of the fly that we would eventually call Nick's Swanky Midge. It's a long story how the name came about but it stems from the glass bead head and the sparkling UV collar.



I figured it to be a good place to start given the number of midges in the river. It didn't take long for that decision to pay off but not without some work due to the wind. My first trout, a small cutbow came within 15 minutes of getting started. I can't say the action was fast and furious but it was definite enough to let me know the Swanky Midge was working. In total I was able to land five rainbows and cutbows all about the same size.

The wind was relentless gusting to, I would guess, around 25 mph with a sustain velocity of around 15-18 mph. It didn't take long for the novelty to start wearing off. I had encountered a pod of good size trout feeding on emergers but couldn't get them to take the Swanky deep. I tried it dropped shallow with only one refusal look. Netting the flow showed me exactly what fly they would take but the wind was too brutal to use it. Cast were going awry and the couple that did land well dragged horribly. I was left contemplating going home for the first time ever from this stretch of the South Platte without at least hooking a really good trout.

I started back to the parking lot walking upstream along the bank forcing short casts into the wind rolling off the Spinney Reservoir dam. The sun was approaching the horizon giving some hope of a lull in the wind's velocity but instead it just kept coming. As I rounded what would be my last bend in the river I turned and fired a cast at a favorite large rock in the river close to the far bank. The wind caught my line and catapulted it across dropping my flies just far enough upstream for the Swanky Midge to sink and drift along the back edge of the rock undoubtedly my best cast of the day thanks to the wind. When the Turk's Tarantula stopped and disappeared I lifted the rod thinking the midge was on the rock. Instead of dead weight I felt life, heavy life and it was moving fast downstream on 6X and a size 20 hook.

The trout in the South Platte like to jump when hooked putting on a show and this one did not disappoint. Though not as acrobatic as the browns I've taken here this one completely cleared the water  three times before diving deep into the current and holding there.With the light starting to fade I forced it as much as I dared eventually dragging all 22" of it into the net.

A couple times during the day I thought about calling it in due to the big winds. I'm sure glad I didn't because a fish like this makes it all worth it.

This is definitely one of my favorite stretches of river, anywhere. Nick and I are making plans to hit it in the fall when the browns cruise up from the lower reservoir. Hopefully we'll have some luck, plenty of Swanky Midges and just a little less wind.