Fly Fishing the Everglades

I spent the New Years holiday in Florida with my wife's folks who live not too far from Everglades National Park and we managed to get out and fish in the park a few days by flats boat. The park is incredibly large and very difficult (at least for me) to navigate. We were somewhere back in the creeks in here.



This creek is actually an off-shoot of the creek running north-south in the lower part of the aerial photograph above. We bashed our way through these narrow mangrove choked creeks holding less than a foot of water that ultimately led to larger lakes.




Once we were sufficiently deep in the glades, we began poling through the shallow water and sightfishing to snook that were holding on the edge of the mangroves. Like this one.



And this 25 inch snook that my father in law Roger landed.



A couple more nice snook were landed.





All in all we spent two days fishing in the Everglades landing about 15 snook each day, mostly juveniles with 4 to 5 larger adults thrown in.

Steelhead Are Runnin'..

It's the right time and the steelies are definitely in the rivers. I spent the three day weekend with my buddy Adam breaking in some new pontoon boats and fishing for steelhead. We arrived mid-day and decided to wade rather than contend with the boats and organize a shuttle. We drove to one of our favorite holes and found it open with a drift boat fishing downstream a few hundred yards. They surely had fished it hard. but we gave it a go anyway.

A while after the hole was rested, Adam hooked up.


The fish.

And then he hooked up again.

And again.

And then I got one.

The next day we broke out the boats and floated the sh!t out of that river. In fact, we floated way too much. Our float was a mere 15 or so miles which left frustratingly little time to fish. We were told we were doing a long float, but not too long. I think a good float on this river is probably 5 or less miles over a full winter day.

The morning started strong though.

.

And that was all the fish landed that day, although I did lose two nice fish...
Sunday we waded a half day, and today it was my turn to do some landing. Which I did, despite the snow.

This fish was tagged, and the tag is being sent back to DFG.

I closed out the weekend with this nice wild steelie.

Trinity River Steelhead

I spent the weekend up on the Trinity with a couple friends. We fished exclusively by wading. On Saturday we fished downstream of Douglas city in the morning and saw quite a few steelies and salmon moving through, but no hookups. We moved a little upstream and fished a great looking run that had a ton of fish rolling. I hooked this nice wild fish.


We did not catch any more fish in the run but did see another angler catch two bright fish.

The next day we fished a few different holes. In the morning my buddy Adam hooked a big fish but it shook the hook after a nice aerial display. We moved again and I high sticked a half pounder out from behind a rock.

Finally we drove to the final run of the weekend and had a great looking spot to ourselves. Fish were everywhere. Adam hooked four but they were all a bit too hot to be landed. I hooked a BIG fish on an egg pattern that must have been a salmon. It never jumped or ran too hard, it just sort of bull dogged down deep and took line at will. I had broken my steelhead rod the previous day and was using a 5wt with 3x on the dropper. After about 5 minutes of battle my knot to the dropper fly broke. It would have been nice to land him, but at least I have this picture from the fight.

Adam in the same hole setting the hook.

Redwoods

I spent the labor day weekend backpacking with my wife in the Redwoods north of Eureka. Beautiful country and lots of halfpounders around...

River bed in the redwoods.



Big ferns.


The tallest tree.



Bridge.


There were some fish here.


And here.


And here.


Elk.


Side creek.


I hate fishing in such ugly spots.


More elk.

Pit River and McCloud Redbands

I spent last weekend up at the Pit and another stream which that I won't name. Fishing was good. Camping was good and the company was good.

This is the view down pit 3 from the dam at Britton.

My buddy steve with a pit river bow on.



This is a nice fish I caught at o'dark thirty or so. I thought this fella was bit bigger than the average pit bow but the best thing about this fish is that I caught him with a cross river roll cast. Also note the mayfly fluttering away in the upper right.



This is the best way to scout a run.



Someone had built a "forest bar" out in the woods. Note the bottle holder in the back and the nice flat bar.



This is a nice plunge pool on the second stream.



A plump McCloud Redband.



Shasta.

Upper East Carson Backcountry 2006

I went backpacking into the Upper East Carson drainage over the weekend. The water was much more off color than I had anticipated, although the trip was still fantastic and the fish cooperative, although not nearly as cooperative as usual for this area. The rule here is 100 fish days if you want them. This trip however was characterized by a much smaller number of hard earned fishing. I would give the river a week or so before hiking in here to fish.

This is the first crossing on day 1.

Heading up the meadow to the next crossing.

The second river crossing, it was tough to cross without stopping to wet a line.

This is a tree near our campground, it seems someone else likes this spot as well.

This is a pretty meaningful shot in my book, the confluence of the East Carson and Silver King Creek. Silver king is on the right and flowing clear, mixing with the muddy east carson.

Another shot of the same, silver king on the left.

Some interesting weather that evening.

A nice looking bend in the river.

Working hard...