Late summer and early fall have become ritual for me the last couple of seasons. As the doldrums of summer make the trout wary and the river flows can become less than desireable, an old friend returns wreak havoc on the hordes of bait that reside off the coast. When Euthynnus alletteratus shows up in good numbers, many anglers who get the chance to tangle with them can’t focus on anything but chasing them.
Euthynnus alletteratus is more commonly referred to as the false albacore, fat Albert, little tuna, or little tunny. These wonderful pelagic species make their appearances for a very small time frame most years and provide the shore angler with a small taste of an offshore species. With their blistering runs and often visual feeding frenzies, false albacore make for an awesome experience for the fly angler. As long as you can get close enough or are graced with a passing school, you will often have a chance of hooking one. Hang on and watch your fingers however as they are true speed demons and will take your line and a fair to large amount of your backing before turning around on you mid fight.
So far this season the chase has been real, the feeding great and the catching somewhere in between. A bit of a challenge at times as they can be very selective on what they eat, and a majority of their food preferences area on the smaller side, false albacore can make some affairs as maddening as matching a hatch of tiny insects on a trout stream. Needless to say I have recently become addicted to these fish like a trophy hunter with his quarry. Here are just a few highlights from the small handful of outings this season. And I can’t wait to get back out there and chase them again. Hopefully more to follow, and some interesting fly patterns to share over the winter. Stay tuned.
Write comment (0 Comments)Well Brian is once again at it with the videos, and he's highlighted another one of my patterns (thanks for the love bud). In this installment he ties up the scaled down version of my Juggernaut streamer, which in my opinion is the most conducive size if your chasing trout. So, sit back relax, grab your favorite beverage and have a good time. Get your vise and materials ready to tie up this guy once your done as it is one of those patterns conducive to chasing aggressive browns in the weeks to come.
Write comment (0 Comments)
Hello all, seems like an eternity since I last posted something with some substance that engaged all of you out there in cyberspace. I greatly apologize for not continuing to feed you some fun stuff courtesy of my fanatical passion for our lovely sport of both tying and fishing. I guess you could say I needed to take a little break from the “content” generating side of things to reassess a few of my own directions, ideals, personal goals, etc. This past year has been a very rewarding one both inside and outside the flyfishing world. But it seemed as I watched many things unfold before my eyes on social media and in real time, it was definitely a great time for me to unplug a bit and figure out just what my direction was.
As I type this I am currently looking at 951 calendar days left of a 20 year career in State Service, a State Service that at one time coincided with my secondary career as a guide. both careers seemed to succinctly meld together nicely prior to starting a family and provided me with some tremendous opportunities. I wouldn’t even be typing this to you all today if it wasn’t for many of these great opportunities; I never imagined in my wildest dreams that I would wind up having a role in the flyfishing world in anything beyond my own personal time spent on the water. I have to pinch myself still to this day on occasion just to make sure this isn’t a dream. Over the course of the last 16 years I have been honored to meet some of the nicest most genuine people who are just as passionate as myself with our great sport, and I am humbled to say that some are my closest of friends.
To go along with this, I would like to think it all came to fruition based upon the hard work that I put in, but mostly because of the way that I treated those that I crossed paths with. What troubles me of late is the level angst and separation in the online community of fisherman (never mind society in general) who are now within keyboard distance of many of the people whom are in the industry. We seemed to have lost that buffer zone so to speak and everyone is now so easily connected with a click of a mouse or stroke of the keyboard. We are all human beings and are entitled to have a bad day once in awhile, but what I have noticed as of late is the freedom of others to blatantly disrespect one another by just typing whatever comes to mind before giving it some thought. This is ever more frequent during the months of August and September in the trout community as most trout fisheries that aren’t tail-waters slow or are unfishable. Its an annual ritual, but one that has gotten to be a bit much for me to watch so I simply choose not to. Keep it above the belt folks, and move on, life's too short and it is only fishing after all.
Before I loose you all let me get back on track, I am happy to say that I will be making appearances once again at several of the regional flyfishing and flytying events/shows this winter. To go hand in hand with that, I have a nice compliment of fresh patterns to unveil and some videos to accompany them that I plan on releasing over the fall and winter. There will be a mix of new and older presentations given to handful of clubs as well, so I suggest you check the calendar on the website to see if I will be in your area as I plan on updating this very shortly as I iron out and solidify all of my destinations and appearances.
So, aside from family time and water time what have I been up to you ask? If you all follow me on facebook you'd have seen that gardening and chickens came into our life pretty hard this year. At our old house we had a very small garden, but with our new place having an ideal space for a much larger garden, it was a no brainer. So when I wasn't spinning bugs, I was either building out a chicken coop or our garden and fence.
The Montana Fly Company has also recently released their 2017/2018 addendum to their catalog and once again there are some nice additions from fly library now available. I highly recommend getting a hold of your local shops ear if you want to get your hands on some as it will be the way to obtain some of my patterns for a little while. Why do you ask? I think many of you already know, but I have signed on to do another book project. This one however is multitudes more involved from the last and will take up a heck of a lot more of my free time this go around. What I will say however, is this will be a very rewarding project for not only myself, but for all of you out there who have a fascination with Streamer patterns. That is about all I can say right now, as time moves on you will all get a better idea of the project in it’s totality. So what does this all mean? For starters, my custom fly business will be on hold while I once again concentrate on writing. Most of you have already figured this out as the web store is offline on the site; you can still order books and inquire about materials but flies tied by yours truly will be on hold until further notice. If I tie anything at all it will be brought with me to any of the shows that I attend so keep that in mind. I will still however have materials to sell, an email can most likely accommodate those requests. Lastly, I will have some new flies to unveil from this seasons excursions on the water so expect to see some tying videos in the months ahead. Heck, I may even do a live-feed tying deal again, but don’t hold your breathe. Some other cool things are on the horizon as well so stay tuned. Wish me luck and see you all soon. Here is a few photos from the past few months depicting some of the fun I've had. Cheers!
Write comment (0 Comments)