Video Fishing Report – Page 2 – Fly Fishing Lifestyle in Salida, Colorado

March is for Midges

The plan had been to find a deep, slow stretch of water to try out a new strike indicator system I’d heard about. Although the days are getting warmer, I figured it was still a little early in the season to expect much of a hatch – that, plus the fact that with the sun high and bright overhead, the fish would likely be lurking deeper anyhow.

March is for midges from Hayden Mellsop on Vimeo.

So much for the theory. After drifting the indicator through a couple of feed lines with nothing to show for my efforts save a couple of snagged sticks ( the indicator worked fine, for that matter ) I spied up ahead a fish working the surface, rising every thirty seconds or so, and then another, a little further up in the run.

That was all I needed. The chance to catch one on top was too good to pass up. Off came the nymphs, on went a couple of dries. I couldn’t see any bugs on the water, so went small with my fly choice. The lead was a bright parachute tied by Salida’s own Fred Rasmussen, the trailer a little dark midge I could only pick out on the water every second or third cast.

I love this type of fishing. The takes are very subtle, often little more than guesswork, the sense of a swirl on the water’s surface in the vicinity of where you think your fly is, a gentle raising of the rod tip and the weight of a fish on the other end. An hour, five fish, and it was time to head home, the promise of more dry fly opportunities to come.

That Floating Feeling

The urge could be ignored no longer. The lengthening days, the return of bird song, the first of the year’s weeds greening and pushing through the still brown, dormant lawn. It was time to consign winter to the dustbin and admit that spring is in the air. We each have our own ways of acknowledging the new season. Mine is to get out on the river once more.

That Floating Feeling from Hayden Mellsop on Vimeo.

My raft, having sat dormant over the last few months under a covering of lawn furniture, Christmas decorations and various piles of outdoor gear, began to subtly attract my attention each time I entered the garage. When the text arrived from Pinky – “Bill’s had to pull out, got room for one more” – I hauled out my waders and headed down to Howard.

Some never leave the river, fishing it throughout the depths of winter, but for me come the first snow it is time to give both myself and the fish a break. Consequently, going fishing this time of the year always feels like returning to an old friend. The branches along the banks are still bare, the wind chops the iron grey surface of the water, and you squint as you tie small flies on to fine tippet with fingers already coarse and chapped, but you sense the stirring, the change taking place.

We caught fish, not in huge numbers, but sufficient to keep us entertained all afternoon. We caught them on stoneflies and tiny midges and mayflies and hares ears and muddlers. We hooked most in the mouth, others somewhere near and a few not even close. We caught them deep, we caught them shallow, but more than the fish, it was me, the fisherman, who caught the bug once more.

It’s Blue-Wing time on the Arkansas

Coming up in a few weeks, the Ark will be in the midst of one of the most renowned dry fly hatches in the West – the Mother’s Day caddis hatch. But right now there is another, less spectacular, but no less enjoyable hatch going on – the early spring blue-winged olive hatch.

Blue-wings are mayflies, and make up the second most important part of an Arkansas River trout’s diet, after caddis. Up close, blue-wings are a beautiful insect, delicate and short-lived. While some species may live for up to a year subsurface as nymphs, once they hatch into adults, the clock is ticking. The adult has no mouth parts with which to eat and sustain itself, so their life span in usually little more than twenty four hours. As you might imagine, they are on a mission.

That mission is to find a mate, do the business and lay eggs back in the river for the next generation before departing this mortal coil. There is no time for drawn out courtship rituals here – think spring break at Cancun or Ibiza.

Generally, blue-wings prefer to hatch on cooler, cloudy days. Once breaking through the surface film, they have to wait anywhere from thirty seconds to a few minutes while their wings inflate and dry out. It is at this time that they are most vulnerable, and as they hatch and float helplessly down the river, trout will line up along the foam lines and eddy lines to languidly sip them down.

Lately, we haven’t been having enough cooler, cloudy days, but they have been hatching anyway – when you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go, I guess. On this day that Caveman, Pinky and I floated, we had what you would call a typical blue wing kind of day. In the morning, small nymphs were working best, like pheasant tails and juju baetis. Once the adult blue-wings started to appear on the surface, we switched to dry flies and had a great couple of hours of top water action.

I’d also like to add that anyone can catch a trout on this river. It takes real skill and technique, however, to hook a sucker fish, let alone hook it in the tail. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Maui: How Bad Can it Be?

“It seems like an exercise in futility to me” said my wife, shrugging her shoulders. Not wishing to dwell too deeply on her observation, I took refuge in the fact that not everyone gets fishing.

On the surface, it was hard to argue with her. The wind was blowing steadily onshore, 15 to 20 knots, gusting to 40, or so said the weather forecast. A group of surfers were huddled in the questionable shelter of some trees along the beachfront, staring forlornly at the messy shore break. The ocean beyond was an iron grey, a belt of approaching showers blurring the line between sea and sky.

If I wasn’t going to catch any fish, however, the elements were the last thing I could blame. Ignorance headed that list. We’d been in Maui a little over a week, and in that time the weather had been unseasonable windy and wet. I’d been putting off going fishing for several days, waiting for favorable tides and conditions, but had finally decided to strap on my man pants and get out there.

The Hawaiian Islands in general, and Maui in particular, are not regarded as prime salt water fly fishing destinations. The land rises steeply out of the sea, meaning very little in the way of flats for wading, and in many places the rocks sharp, the remnants of ongoing volcanic activity. Speaking to a couple of locals on a previous trip, I’d learned that this time of the year isn’t the best time for finding fish in close to the shore anyway.

I had a nine weight with a sink tip, a handful of clousers and a fresh spool of 20 pound test. I turned to my wife as I got out of the car and replied “I know, but how bad can it be?” In my youth I’d hiked shorelines very similar, armed with a hand line or surfcaster, some heavy weights and a packet of frozen pilchards for bait. Back then, I was fishing for snapper, gurnard and rock cod, bottom feeders mostly.

Here, it was a whole new ball game. The reefs abounded with strange fish of every color combination imaginable, ranging in size from smaller than my clousers to a pound or so. But it was the fish that fed on these guys that I was hoping would be around. It felt good to be in the water, wading out to rock outcrops, leaping from boulder to boulder, timing my movements with the ebb and flow of the waves.

The dark clouser didn’t do much, but after a while I switched to a neon green, easier to see in the overcast, and I started to get a few chasers – nothing huge, and I couldn’t figure out if they were interested or just saying “wtf is that?” The hundred yards or so between the surf break and the shore was a labyrinth of reefs and channels, the water surging and draining, the fish riding the waves in and retreating with the outflow.

Alas, despite the chasers, I couldn’t get a fish to hook up to help counter my wife’s skepticism. An exercise in futility it was, if putting dinner on the table had been the objective. But for a Kiwi boy land-locked in the Rockies, it was great to taste the salt air and experience its sting on my skin, to feel the surge of the ocean against my legs and stand and stare back across the limitless ocean towards home.

So, no photos of fish to share, no tales of Ahab and Leviathan, but how about that sunset? Taken from the deck of our holiday home, through a mai tai infused lense. As I said before, “How bad can it be?”

How Sick Are You, Really?

(Note: This article previously appeared in High Country Angler Magazine)

If you’re any kind of fisherman, you’ve probably had the finger of accusation pointed at you from time to time. Usually it’s a spouse, significant other, or family member. “You think more about fishing than you do about me”. “The guy at the fly shop sees more of you than I do.” “You never look at me the way you look at that reel.”

And let’s face it, nine times out of ten it is true. There is no hiding from the fact that as fishermen, we are, to differing degrees, struck down with the sickness. For some, the symptoms are relatively mild, the cure relatively straight forward. A couple of times a year, you head to the river for some quiet time. A few hours, a clearer head, and you are back to your normal station in life, a functioning, productive human being. For others the situation is more complex, the symptoms hold deeper, the cure less attainable. Social interaction becomes problematic, personal hygiene an irrelevance, the need to have two feet planted in water somewhere an unquenchable thirst. The question that preys most on the mind is this: How sick am I? Am I sick at all? Am I OK and everyone else is sick? Jeez, doesn’t that guy with the slightly bulging eyes look like that bull trout I landed in Idaho last fall?

So how do you find out if your sickness is mild or untreatable? Where do you go for an impartial diagnosis? Certainly not to a medical doctor. They’ll either be infected themselves, or else “one of them”, that is, a non fisherman, and so in no position to make any judgements. Psychologist? What the heck would they know anyway, they’re probably too screwed up dealing with other people’s problems in the first place. Family? Gimme a break, they’re the ones pointing the finger in the first place, so no hope of impartiality there. No, the only hope is through an honest and searching self assessment.

So grab a pen, paper and a bottle of Scotch ( in vino veritas ), and take the “Is It Me, Or The Whole Damn World Who Is Sick?” test. Answer the following six questions honestly, and for each answer score the same number of points as the answer you choose.

1: You arrive home from your latest fishing trip. Your kids: 1) Rush in to your arms, and welcome you back with cries of “Did you have fun, Daddy?” and “We’re so glad your home, let’s help you unpack.” 2) Greet your arrival home with total indifference, resuming their video game with barely a glance in your direction. 3) Run screaming to their mother, yelling “Mom there’s a strange, hairy, smelly person standing in the kitchen trying to hug us!.”

2: The real reason you okayed your kids getting that new hamster was to: 1) Teach them about the responsibilities of caring for another living creature. 2) Give them something to do so they wouldn’t hassle you so much about taking them to soccer practice or dance recital. 3) That light tan patch of fur on Fluffy’s back is the perfect shade of color for those caddis nymphs you are planning to tie for your upcoming trip to Montana.

3: That attractive blonde from the accounting department has been casting furtive glances in your direction lately, and blushes slightly every time you meet her eye. You decide the best course of action is to: 1) Empty your bladder, take a deep breath and going up to her and say that although, as a fisherman, you sadly have zero social skills, you would love to take a walk along a riverbank with her sometime. 2) Ignore her, on the assumption that once she got to know you, she’d dump you anyway. 3) Just the thought of trying to initiate a conversation with her makes you empty your bladder before you make it to the bathroom.

4: Your mother calls to point out that it has been a few months since you’ve dropped by to visit, especially disconcerting considering you live only three blocks away. Your response is to: 1) Realize that she is correct, and decide to cancel that trip to the river this afternoon, and drop by and visit, and maybe mow her lawns for her. 2) You figure she is correct, you have been neglecting her lately, and decide to drop by to visit this afternoon, but, what the heck, you’ll take the 3wt along just in case there’s enough light left at the end of the day to hit the river for a few casts. 3) Patiently explain to her that for the last few weeks the blue wings have been hatching, in fact the best hatch in recent memory. It’s only supposed to last for a couple more weeks, and you’ll be around to say “hi” after that, then making a note to have her number added to your blocked caller list.

5: Your daughter comes home breathless one evening, telling you that Steve just proposed, and she accepted. They want to tie the knot at the end of June, which corresponds with the stone fly hatch in the Gunny Gorge. Your response is to: 1) Break down in tears at the thought of your little treasure getting married and leaving the nest. But Steve is a great, sober guy with a great job, and you’d hoped all along she would choose him and not that jerk on the Harley. 2) Break down in tears at the thought of your little treasure getting married and leaving the nest. But Steve is a great, sober guy with a great job, and you’ll get him a 5 wt as an engagement present, hopefully gaining a fishing buddy as well as a son in law. And thank God she didn’t pursue things with that spin fishing jerk on the Harley. 3) Break down in tears as you realize that you’ll have cancel the trip to the Gorge this year, unless you can talk her into an on river wedding. Damn, life sure would have been a heck of a lot easier if she’d just ran off with that guy on the Harley.

6: Your wife announces that she has been thinking about learning to fish. She saw on Oprah the other day how fly fishing is naturally suited to a woman’s physiology and disposition. If she likes it she’ll be able to come along on your fishing trips, and won’t that be fun? Your response is : 1) Lend her your 5 wt, and organize for her to sign on with the local outfitter’s women’s fishing program. This is your dream come true, finally something you can share together outside of your normal domestic relationship. 2) Lend her your 5 wt, and organize for her to sign on with the local outfitter’s women’s fishing program, but lovingly explain that for you, fishing is a means of having a life outside of marriage, but you are sure she’ll make many new friends along the way herself. 3) Break out in a cold sweat, and after surveying all the options, set her up with the crustiest guide you know, and tell him there’s an extra hundred in his tip if she comes home with the words “I hate fishing, and that guide’s a real jerk” on her lips.

Scoring:

6 – 8: Relax, you’re fine. In fact, getting out and fishing a little more wouldn’t do any harm.

9 -11: You still fit well within the bell curve of accepted social norms. Carry on as you are, but the need for constant self assessment is advised.

12 – 14: Check yourself into a psychiatric facility specializing in the treatment of narcissism and denial while you can still do so voluntarily. It will make it a lot easier to maybe get out later on.

15 – 18: As Macbeth stated: “ I am in blood steeped so far, that should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as the go o’er.” In other words, too late to turn back now. Withdraw immediately from society, buy that remote tract with the Unibomber shed on it you’ve always wanted anyway, ditch the razor and cell phone, and fish your ass off.