More Good Stuff

More searching around the net (kind of an awesome pun) has led me to a couple more great resources for you all to check out. First off is the Trout Unlimited Magazine archive. For anyone who didn't know, who hasn't had the time or funds to get a subscription, you can actually check out the past magazines online. I was so excited to find them, that I have read through most of them already. I would definitely recommend checking it out. They offer a lot of great information on different fish species, special interest pieces, and keep the readers up to date on several stream restoration projects.

Secondly, I recently came across a website that hosts a public television show called: Fly Tying: The Anglers Art. It is a neat little show put on by two gentlemen who love to tie flies and talk about fishing. I have already learned several great tips from these two and I think no matter what level of tier you are, it can be a helpful show to watch. Let me know what you think!

Please use the links below. I will also post this on the links portion of the website!

Fly Tying The Anglers Art

Trout Unlimited Magazine Archive

Enjoy!

A Warm November and Afternoon Rainbows

This past Saturday, I took advantage of the warm weather that is sweeping across the Twin Cities area. I headed to one of my favorite local lakes to do some fly fishing. Most of the time it has just been for practice aiming for panfish like bluegill and pumpkinseed. But with the cooler temps that we have seen the last couple weeks many of the panfish have receded to greater depths and I can't reach them anymore. But, feeling quite optimistic, I visited the lake anyway hoping that I could catch one of the trout that rumor has it, inhabit the lake I was visiting. As I proceeded to make my way around the lake I found a large amount of wildlife also out, enjoying the warm weather. There were numerous geese and muskrats paddling around on the water surface. I had ventured to a part of the lake that was sheltered from the breeze and therefore quite calm. The surface was very undisturbed and I threw out my popper hoping for some action from a bluegill. I was greeted with a little sunny almost immediately and as I worked to get it from the hook a large splash caught my attention. Something had made a decent ripple farther out from shore. As I continued to watch several more ripples began to appear. I hastily searched for a different fly in my box not sure what to pick because I didn't really see any bugs to speak of. In the process of switching flies I saw several fish jump out of the water, including a trout that jumped three times from the water within a span of just seconds. It was truly magnificent. Finally I settled on a fly that I had made my self which you can see below. To my absolute amazement, it worked, and I caught two very nice Rainbow Trout. They were roughly 16" and quite fat. They fought hard and it was truly exhilarating to catch a fish on something that I had made. I'll leave you with my best picture.

Enjoy.

Fish Lake Adventures

So here are some pictures of my adventure at Fish Lake today. I've been out the past couple days there, but I haven't had my camera. Today I finally brought it. Fly fishing has been good, but the wind was a bit of an inconvenience sometimes. I also met this cool kid name Carl who is a really good fisherman for how young he is. He caught quite a few bass, bull heads, and panfish.
Hopefully all this fly fishing I've been doing is helping to improve my skills.I also paid a visit to Holland lake to see what that looks like and I'm very excited to do some fishing there this week. They have a very nice dock to cast off of and a great park in general. Finally, I got a picture up of a brown trout I tried to draw last night along with some new zonker flies I tied. Let me know what you think.

Enjoy.

Fishing in Michigan's Lower Peninsula!

After school got out, my girlfriend and I have traveled downstate to visit my family and among all of the stuff were doing, were getting to do a bit of fishing! Today we spent some time at the Mill Pond in Northport. We were trying to catch some stocked trout from a recent fishing derby. We also have tried to catch some fish in the local marina which included pike, steelhead, and a monster carp! Stay tuned, hopefully there will be news of a magnificent catch!

River Report 3/24/12

On Friday afternoon, I finally got to go out and do a bit of fishing. I checked one of my favored sites and was surprised to find a few people parked nearby. The people there didn't stay long, however, and I ended up having the river to myself.
With the snow melt finally drawing to a close the rivers seem to be slowing down a bit and it seemed like a good time to check for some trout! I began with a fake crawler and had no luck. I then switched to a dead crawler I found nearby, which also resulted in no bites. My next choice of bait was a bit more exhilarating; trying a daredevil spoon, which resulted in a very nice rise from some sort of fish. But being far away kept me from seeing what it was for sure. I tried a few other baits and got a few more rises, but the fish just wouldn't bite!
Point being, there are some fish moving up the rivers, just have to find the right bait for them! Good luck!

Rivers Are Heating Up!

With all of this nice warm weather, the snow is melting quick and that means that the rivers are starting to flow freely with the spring melt. As the ice melts on the lakes, many fish will begin to make there runs up river or start to spawn and that's a good time to fish.

Fishing The Pier

A couple of gentlemen I ran into the other day said, that the warm weather is making a few fish start to run but its been pretty hit and miss. It will be fun to hit a few streams this week and see if anything is moving yet. Pretty soon there will hopefully be runs of steelhead and smelt!

Stay tuned!