Hiking With A Fly Rod

Fearing yesterday's earthquake dislodged a few boulders along the road to a difficult to access local watering hole, we changed our plans to fish another local watershed we've not fished as of yet.  The Southland's drought has been cruel to our local resident wild trout.  This watershed was no different.  I was unable to make any fish rise and only saw a couple fish.  Chul only fared a tad bit better, making three fish rise but missing everyone.

Water conditions have been rough and although we had some rain the past couple weeks, it appears it may have been too much too soon.  It appears all the holes have been washed out and despite the water being low it is running incredibly fast with little to no holding water.

Today was a bust.  We checkout two other nearby watering holes and they looked just as bad.  The local wild trout fishing is pretty much over.  It may be years before we see any good fish.  With an El Nino predicted for this summer let's hope the saltwater makes up for it.

Sight Casting To Browns

This weekend we had planned on backpacking into the Kern but with rather less than impressive reports coming out of there we decided to hold off on that trip.  Instead we would stay local and check out how our local resident brown trout were holding up after the last big storm.  The first time I heard of this river was over a decade ago when Bud mentioned it to me back when he was a pro staffer at Marriott's.  Since then I had long forgotten about this water until Chul mentioned it to me when we first started fishing together.  Back then he managed a rather impressive brown and so it peaked my interest again.   We decided to check it out.

Water level was significantly less than the last time Chul fished here.  With the water low and clear the fish were still here and they were spooky and finicky.  Despite the conditions we managed several browns all on dries with the largest fish about eight inches but saw fish in the ten plus range.  While the fish were not as impressive as we had hoped the day was fun spent targeting specific fish testing our accuracy and technical skills.  Given the difficulty reaching this water, it's unlikely I'll be returning anytime soon but at least I can scratch it off my list of local waters fished.

Quality Time On Youtube

Illness has kept me down for the past week or so.  As a result I've been spending much of my time on the web trying to pass the time.  I think I've found my new favorite channel, Shooting Photography by Jonathan M McGee.  Here is just a sampling of his beautifully done videos. 

He has even done the trailer for the reborn John Rigby & Co (now properly located in London once again).