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Post-it-Note Fly

August 28, 2010 by Quinton Dowling

Every once in a while a truly inspired fly pattern is developed.  The Parachute Adams, the Elk Hair Caddis, the San Juan Worm.  Ok maybe not the last one but here’s a pattern Charlie Robinton developed late last night that should be added to every fly box in the country:

Hook: Size 10 Daiichi 1170

Thread: Yellow 6/0

Body: Pink post-it-note strip cut “feathered”

Antennae: Pink Post-it-Note

Tying Aid: 1 fifth Tequila (Reposado works well) and limes

To tie this fly start by drinking the bottle of tequila.  Now that your mind is nice and focused find some post-it-notes.  Cut a strip off the bottom of the note 1/2 inch wide.  Careful, don’t cut yourself, those scissors are sharp and the paper won’t stop moving.  Now figure out how your vice works and put a hook in it.  No, don’t put the hook in your finger, put it in the vice.  Right.  Wrap some yellow thread on the hook.  Now, find the strip of post it note and make a bunch of cuts most of the way through the strip along its length.  If you think that’s complicated now try doing it after step 1.  Got that done?  Cool.  Tie one end of the strip onto the hook close to the bend and advance the thread forward.  Wrap the post-it forward so the little tabs you made stick out but point backwards.  Think cactus-meets-caddis.  Tie it off when you get to the front.  Add a couple antennae made from two little pieces of post-it.  Throw a few half hitches over the eye.  Now go reward yourself with a beer or six!

Filed Under: Emerald Water Anglers Tagged With: Emerald Water Anglers, fly tying, Post it Note, Tequila

Excerpt from an angling mother.

August 13, 2010 by Quinton Dowling

This morning my mom, Susan, sent me the following email:

“The Powder is roaring, irrigation water being let out of Philips reservoir. Just as I started casting to some slow water along the bank, thunder started rolling very close by. I cast a few more times, caught some 6-8 inchers and then the storm broke right over head. Too close to ignore, too far to make it back to my car so I retreated to a postage stamp sized island and hunkered down in some tall grass and a couple of spindly bushes. The lightning lit up the already perfectly light sky in broad zig zag flashes, immediately followed by cracking, roaring thunder. It sounded like I was sitting underneath the Blue Angels as the thunder went crashing from one side of the valley to the other. And for minutes at a time. Longest chest shaking thunder I have ever sat under. The rain came down like a monsoon and then hail the size of marbles and then more rain. There was so much lightening that the thunder overlapped itself. I was drenched in no time. My old trusty Cabella’s raincoat failed me. I was a bit nervous about the lightning and put my rod horizontal in the grass away from me. I turned to look out at the main flow of the river and whoa, fish feeding like maniacs. Right in the middle of the main current. Jumping clear out of the water. The storm must have pushed a lot of bugs into the water because the trout were going crazy. Then I went crazy: there were some NICE fish. BIG fish. Oooh, it took all the restraint I could muster to sit the storm out. Took about 40 minutes of agonizing patience but finally I waded out to the middle, skated a little gray fly below me and hook up! One of the biggest trout I have caught on the Powder. I laughed aloud. Spend a freezing hour catching about a dozen of these lovelies. What a spot. I only left because I was numb from my neck down. My legs and feet tingled as they warmed up in the car with the heater on full blast. I was cold. I was ecstatic. I am still high. You should of been there…………..”

I know you all wish you were there too; I sure do.

Susan (Mom) releases a Powder River rainbow.

Filed Under: Emerald Water Anglers Tagged With: Big Fish, Envy, Lightning, Moms, Patience, Small Creeks, Storms, Thunder

Sometimes you just wanna catch a fish

March 27, 2010 by Quinton Dowling

This past weekend I flew down to San Francisco for my buddy’s (www.reddheadflyfishing.com) birthday. We drove up to Reno Thursday night, got a crummy hotel room ’cause it was below freezing, and set out to fish the Truckee river the next morning.

The Truckee is a beautiful tailwater for much of it’s length.  It flows out of the Sierra Nevada mountains, is joined by the little Truckee, and flow through a stunning river valley before entering the “town” of Reno.  Of course we fished the beautiful section.  And got skunked.

Colin digs into his boxes looking for a fly to change our luck.

Colin digs into his boxes looking for a fly to change our luck.

When you fly for two hours and drive for four, you really want to catch a fish.  Plus it’s the end of winter, and Pacific Northwest steelheading (I live in Seattle) is closed.  In other words, I hadn’t caught a fish in a while.  I was understandably anxious to catch a fish, and so was Colin, it was his birthday after all.  Finally we caught a couple fish closer to town, which made us feel a lot better, but sometimes you just want to catch fish, lots of fish.

The next day we fished downstream of Reno.  Here the river goes into a canyon before flowing into Pyramid Lake.  The canyon has been urbanized in many sections, and as a result the river has been heavily channelized.  In recent years though the Nature Conservancy has done extensive restorative work on the river.  And the result?

In the morning we managed to move a couple fish each.  I was particularly pleased by two healthy 16 inch cutts, which are a good indicator of water quality.  Then the beatis started coming off.   Beatis hatches don’t bring up every fish in the river, but they do bring up pods of fish.  In the sections of the river that have been restored we found plenty of rising trout of all ages, another good sign of a healthy fishery. Though small, the beatis even brought up some nice browns, like this 24 inch bruiser.

This brown fell for a Beatis emerger in the restored section east of Reno.

This brown fell for a Beatis emerger in the restored section east of Reno.

The Truckee river downstream of Reno is a great example of what can happen when a river gets a little TLC.  Because fish love a healthy ecosystem and sometimes you just wanna catch fish.  Humans have wrecked a lot of fisheries, but with a little care and elbow grease, we can fix at least some of our mistakes, and improve fishing along the way.

Filed Under: Emerald Water Anglers Tagged With: Baetis, brown trout, California, Conservation, Emerald Water Anglers, Sierra Nevada, Truckee River

Shoulda Been There Yesterday

January 12, 2010 by Quinton Dowling

As a fishermen you spend a lot of your time looking for that special place where no other angler has been before; virgin water. Maybe you travel to Montana, Alaska, Argentina, New Zealand, Kamchatka, the South Pacific, or the Indian Ocean. And maybe when you get there the fishing is everything you ever wanted. Or maybe the fishing is a little tough, the wind blowing kinda hard, the water’s sorta murky. Maybe the guide/shop-owner/local says “you shoulda been there last week” or, “you shoulda come next week.” When you hear that you know somebody was there last week, and somebody will be there next week. In other words: it’s not virgin water.
Then one day you decide to drive to that little blue squiggle on the map that you’ve always thought about fishing. You don’t even know if there are fish there. And maybe when you get there you don’t find a parking lot, and maybe you don’t find a red Hills Bro’s coffee can in the bushes either. Perhaps you have to hike a little to find any water that looks fishy. You find some fishy water, fish it for an hour and catch nothing. So maybe you go home. Or not. Maybe you fish another hour and move a fish. Then you move another, and then you catch one. And another. And another. They’re native, or maybe they’re not but they’ve been there long enough that all signs of hatchery origin have disappeared. Maybe they’ve been there long enough you could even call them wild. The fish: beautiful, and the water: virgin.
You fish until dark, and drive home smiling. Thoughts of bright, strong, and just-a-little-naïve fish swirling through your head. Maybe now, Monday morning, when you close your eyes at work, you see fish flashing after your fly. And maybe your fishing buddy calls you up and asks how the fishing was. You say, “oh, it was just a little creek,” or, “there were a few small fish.” Something like that. Or, maybe, if your buddy is a really good buddy you say, “oh man, you shoulda been there…”

Filed Under: Emerald Water Anglers Tagged With: exploring, local fishing, New water

My New Years Resolution

January 1, 2010 by Quinton Dowling

I don’t think I’ve ever made a new years resolution. I usually try to make resolutions as they occur to me, instead of saving them all for the end of the year. The New Year provides a delineation between past and future useful for self analysis, but it never really moved me to make a resolution. This year however, I am making a New Years resolution.
Making a New Years resolution is a big deal for me. This day, today, January 1, 2010 marks the end of living the dream. 12 years ago I received my first fly rod, a 9’ sage DS2 five weight, for Christmas. I still have it, though now I have many other fly rods as well. Five or so months later I received waders for my eleventh birthday and I was hooked. Quickly I resolved to become a fly-fishing guide, and, after a little research I decided the best place in the world to guide is Alaska. It took me six years, but just after my 17th birthday I was on a plane to Anchorage where I would meet my new boss, Kirk Gay, the owner of Valhalla Lodge.
I was living the dream, fishing every day in the Bristol Bay region. That summer I saw my first truly monster rainbow, caught my first grayling, pike and lake trout; my fly-fishing world was redefined. During the school year I would fish the Puget Sound almost every day after school, and steelhead or trout fish on the weekends. Every summer I was back in Alaska with the bears and monster rainbows.
When I graduated from high school I selected a college based on proximity to fly fishing and skiing. It turns out that you can’t graduate from college and fish or ski every day of the school year. I had to cut back on my fishing, but I still managed to catch some very nice brown trout and backpack into some of the most remote trout fishing secrets in the West.
I graduated from college and spent four months helping a friend open a fly fishing lodge on the mouth of the Kvichak River. We spent the day building and painting, and at night discovered that 30” rainbows will smack a slider like you wouldn’t believe.
This fall I decided it was time to settle down, get a career, and use that college degree. Now I work as a chemist at the Infectious Disease Research Institute. I live on First Hill. It’s weird admitting that I am a young urban professional after so many years of defining myself as a trout bum. Finding out that my boss was not okay with you leaving work early to catch some anadromous fish was a disillusioning experience. I’ve had to come up with other ways to satisfy my addiction. I spend hours editing photos and reading blogs and magazines but it just isn’t the same.
So this year I’m making a New Years resolution. I resolve to get out on the water more. Tomorrow I’m gonna go see if the sea run cutts still remember me. Hope to see you all out there.

Filed Under: Emerald Water Anglers Tagged With: New Years Resolutions

Experiential Conservation

November 22, 2009 by Quinton Dowling

The bird dove towards my head at 60 miles per hour, screaming its head off. At the last second she swerved away from me and flew off. Before she could circle around for another pass I beat a hasty retreat to the boat. From the river I could hear my clients laughing.

On the Kvichak River arctic terns mean business! You learn quickly not to approach their nests unless you want to be driven off by a 3-4 ounce bird. Unfortunately, in June all of the best fishing is around the gravel bars and islands where the terns breed. Every day my clients and I were amused and not a little intimidated by these birds aerial bombardment. You quickly warm to their unabashed bravado and impressive flying skills. Artic terns really are amazing birds.

Every year arctic terns migrate from the South Pole to the North. They live in perpetual summer, passing through the tropics during the spring and fall, living in the Polar Regions only during the warm summer months. Their yearly journey is approximately 40,000 km (25,000 miles) which is the longest migration of any bird in the world.

Like salmon, arctic terns nest in the same place they were born, often in the exact same colonies. Nests are built on gravel bars in the open and if approached, adults will aggressively dive bomb trespassers. During the breeding season these terns live mainly on small fish and, in the area of Alaska where I work, those fish are almost entirely salmon smolt.

In June hundreds of millions of sockeye salmon smolt, possibly as many as three quarters of a billion fish, swim out of Lake Iliamna into the Kvichak river. Here, on the gravel bars near the mouth the river, thousands of arctic terns nest. Exact numbers of terns are not well known. Indeed, there is very limited data on arctic tern populations throughout their breeding range, but some populations are in decline.

So what does this have to do with conservation? Like most of the species in the Lake Iliamna/Kvichak River area, these birds are threatened by the proposed Pebble Mine. The breeding colonies along the Kvichak River require huge amounts of food to rear their young. Without the salmon, the colony cannot survive, and the salmon are threatened. Salmon require pristine tributaries for spawning grounds and a healthy ecosystem in which to grow in until they are ready to swim for the ocean. Any disruption to the environment, even temporary, could be catastrophic for arctic terns.

The people behind Pebble Mine claim that for every fish killed by the mine, they will replace it. But for that short period while the smolt are gone, what will happen to the terns? Without their primary source of food during the breeding season, they will die.

We in the fly fishing community need to help. We need to get involved with conservation.

How can we do that? By sharing the experiences that made us as fly fishermen realize we need to conserve. Every week I had new clients, and a new opportunity to educate them about the wonders of the environment, including arctic terns. By explaining the complex web between salmon, terns and a healthy ecosystem, and then facilitating a positive experience in that ecosystem, my clients came to understand why the ecosystem is worth protecting, and why Pebble Mine cannot be allowed to exist.

For conservation issues everywhere fly fishermen hold a powerful education tool. Take someone fishing and share the experience of your favorite piece of water. Let the environment speak for itself and conservation practically becomes a natural reflex regardless of race, religion or political orientation. We can all do our part. Take someone fishing. Get involved in experiential conservation.

Filed Under: Emerald Water Anglers

Awesome

October 18, 2009 by Quinton Dowling

bear_mountainsAwesome: Awe inspiring. In a word Alaska is awesome. I have just finished up a four month season guiding in the Bristol Bay area of Alaska and even after four years fishing the same watersheds, after countless flights into small streams, hundreds of bears, salmon, eagles, pike, and those famous rainbows, I am still inspired.

It’s the type of country that you can’t ignore. It pervades every aspect of your senses. Overwhelms the mind, stops you in your tracks and all you can do is stare. In the morning, driving up a river through the mist and sun sometimes all I could do is laugh and laugh.

If you haven’t been there you need to go. You need to see it for yourself, see the rivers running red with sockeye. Watch the fight, the life and death struggle for survival. For those four short months before the country is once again gripped by snow and ice every plant and animal tries to get what it needs to survive. Feel the wind whip lake Iliamna into a pounding ocean. Feel the dew collected on your boat in the morning. Shove feet into frozen wading boots after the first frost. Laugh at friends, faces stained purple, for greedily eating blueberries handfuls at a time. Watch the seasons change.

In June bushes start to bud out and you’ll see the Arctic Tern arrive fresh from Antarctica. They raise their chicks on gravel bars and small islands; feed on millions of salmon smolt heading for the ocean, and then, a month and a half later, leave for Antarctica. In July you stand amazed watching many millions of bright silver Sockeye push up the Kvichak, the Alagnack, the Neknek, the Nushagak; they are headed for the exact same stretch of gravel bottom they were born in. From the air the fish are a dark band as far up and down the river as you can see. August brings the spawn and every anglers rainbow filled dreams come true. You will see what happens when so many salmon are spawning eggs visibly roll down the river, and bears are too fat from salmon to take interest in those strange upright animals waving sticks at the river. September brings death and decay. The spawning salmon complete their life cycle and die. Yet even in death there is life here. Young bears, too inexperienced to catch salmon on their own, now feast on the dead and rotting carcasses. Trout, after gorging on eggs, sit in slow water and around weed beds eating salmon flesh rolling along the bottom. This is what you will see and it is awesome.

Alaska is special, unique, irreplaceable. Alaska is a natural treasure worth more than any amount of precious metals. Yet this area of Alaska is threatened. Pebble mine, a proposed project to dig a hole miles across and thousands of feet deep all in the quest for gold, sits at the head of two pristine watersheds. News of the mineral finds have attracted greed and new claims have sprung up on nearby streams like the Kaskanak, a tributary to the Kvichak river.

For our children to have the chance to stand in awe of natures awesome power these mines must not be allowed to continue. Some environments are too precious and too fragile for such invasive consumption. Once these mines are built the Bristol Bay area will never be the same.

After spending time in Alaska enjoying the beauty, the unspoiled wilderness, pristine waters, thundering storms and tranquil sunrises I can think of no better superlative to encompass what Alaska is than awesome. And sometimes what is awesome needs a little protection from us.

For more information check out these links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_Mine#Possible_mining_plan

www.redgoldfilm.com

http://www.stoppebblemine.com/

www.renewableresourcescoalition.org/pebble_mine.htm

Filed Under: Emerald Water Anglers

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