5/22/07

This fact was excruciatingly obvious today.

The fifteen foot beam dropped like a sprung bear trap and roughly tapped me on the shoulder.  I crumbled to the floor of the unfinished yurt, writhing and moaning in the manliest voice I could muster.  A few inches to the left and I would have taken it right on the noggin.  Something tells me that my paint-stained cap would have done little to deflect the impact.

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1) Because there's just something about a dude wearing camo, holding a bloody bear carcass. (Headline inside: "Do Goldilocks a Favor.") Sure, you might not ask him to take your SATs for you, but when your gutless little hippy car slides off the road in a snowstorm, guarantee this dude rolls up in an F350 and pulls your pansy ass out. 

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Chuffer

Here's one for the quick and dirty set. My version of the Loop-Tuft Emerger. It's the bastard love child of the CDC Loop Wing Emerger and the Sparkle Dun, and it's a great fly for selective trout.

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Chuffer

At the risk of repeating myself (again) I decided to do a fly with wally wings for the second video. However, I did this one as a parachute so it's not totally redundant. Now, you've just watched the video and I know what you're thinking. You're wondering just what exactly makes that fly an emerger? Well, I could go and make up some reason for it, like bodies being submerged in the film and what not, but the truth is it was late at night, I was drinking, I made a mistake, and I'm too lazy to go back and fix it. You'll definitely notice some errors in the fly as well. Now, let’s get on to the meat of things.

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Chuffer

This is the only fly that I absolutely cannot be without. It just flat out works anytime there are mayflies on the water. Use this emerger as a general mayfly pattern, or use the techniques shown in the video to build a very effective emerger for your favorite hatch. Enjoy!

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After thirteen hours of traveling the dog and I landed in the booming metropolis that is King Salmon, Alaska. Recycled air and gritty street dust clung to oily fir, the dog was pretty dirty too. The scene: an unpaved parking lot outside a sagging airport sprinkled with gaunt commercial fishermen and scruffy, tired eyed young men carrying rod tubes and dry bags; guys like me, fishing guides.

I'm back. I returned, against my better judgment, for another season of massive trout, eighteen hour days and skidding jet boats. I returned for another four months of wilderness isolation living in a glorified tent, professional ego fluffing and wind knot detangling. The biting flies immediately swarmed my face and I realized that there was no one to meet my plane, no dented blue van waiting with keys in the ignition. They either forgot me, or they were just late, neither of which came as a shock. Welcome back.
 

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I'm sick of waiting for Bie to make a new blog post. He's been fighting that shark for like two months. So here's a quick rundown since July, like Berman's Fastest Three Minutes:

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Painful reality sets in – I don’t have a single salmonfly pattern in my box, and suddenly my meager caddis feels like trying to pawn off a puny cocktail weiner at an all-you-can-eat bratwurst fest...

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Bacchus, the Roman god of feasting and excess, would be proud – the orgy is in full swing and the sheer visual gluttony of the event makes focusing on the details of trying to get everything right even harder. 

Separating the continuous splashy grabs of over-eager young‘uns from the confident, rolling takes of the big fish is like trying to pick out the salient points of breaking news on a radio station full of static...

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I'm fried. Fighting butt buried deep in my belly, my left hand bends backwards on the foregrip of a 12-weight while my right hand palms the bottom of a Tibor, trying desperately to slow the spinning. The 80-pound blue shark at the end of my line is heading deep for another run (again), and I saw my backing knot disappear into the depths a long time ago.

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