Hoppin' and Poppin'

Spring is right around the corner (even if we are supposed to get 4 damn inches of snow today), and with daylight savings time this weekend, later evenings means quick afternoon bass trips on the way home from work. I've been working on filling a bass box off and on for the past few months. I painted some popper heads a few weeks back and finally got the time to finish them last night.

I also knocked out a couple AZ Mini-Hoppers with the racing stripe foam.

It won't be long now......

Heading out west, where hoppers rule and rattlesnakes scare the sh*t out of you

I was invited to be in my friend's wedding so last week, I traveled solo to Sacramento California, fly rods in tow (or... at least in baggage claim).

 I arrived Thursday just in time for the rehearsal dinner, and had the wedding on Friday. The wedding was very close to Napa Valley and as you can imagine, the wine was incredible, as was my hangover on two hours of sleep on Saturday morning.

 My flight was leaving at 6am on Sunday so I fought through the jet lag and alcohol poisoning, and headed almost two hours northeast to fish the Yuba River. I was pretty amazed when I got there. The river bed itself was probably half a mile wide, but the actual water was only about 40-50 yards wide at the most. As I walked over the ankle breaking dried river rock, I heard someone playing the maracas. Turns it that sound was a rattlesnake. And then another one. Much different than the scariest thing you'd encounter when fishing around here, which would probably be a wasp.

 It was cool to do some traditional western hopper dropper fishing. What was really amazing to me was the fact that I'm in desert high country, with sweltering heating approaching 100 degrees, but I'm seeing Salmon jumping and starting their reds. It was an amazing site. I didn't last long. It was too hot and I was too hungover, but I did put in a good 2-3 hours. I hit a few spots, but the fear of snakes and my chosen attire of shorts, ankle socks, and sneakers didn't make a hike through the high brush sound too safe. I fished hoppers, and various droppers. I lost a nice fat slab on a hopper juan, and another on a psycho prince. The fish fight much harder out west than they do out here, that's for damn sure.

 I walked away empty handed, but I didn't mind. It was a great experience and I'd love to go back and spend more time there when I'm not dry heaving and dehydrated. Here's some pics of the journey. I only had my iPhone with me so they aren't that great, but it will give you an idea.

There were lots of huge stonefly shucks on the dried rocks. I can imagine that certain times of the year would be great fishing with them.

Downstream from the Route 20 bridge

These small lizards were all over in the rocks.

A couple shots from Sycamore Ranch. I saw quite a few salmon trekking up this way.

The sun rising over the Sierras the next morning from the airport at 6pm. You win this time Yuba, but I'll be back.

Quite a Sunday, and a big THANK YOU!

I'm sitting here, introducing my three year old to Harry Potter, and banging away at the laptop. I posted earlier asking for donations towards the Diabetes walk that I'm doing next month and I'm very surprised and extremely thankful for all the generosity already!

Thanks to Mike S., Frank A., and my good buddy Howard for their donations. Please let me know what bugs you want off the site, and email me your mailing address. I'll get to them at some point soon.

I also received a hefty donation from Dave over at Strip'n Flywear. Thanks Dave! I took some time to check out the website today and they have some great t-shirts available. I think I definitely need the "James Brown Trout"!


There's still plenty of time to donate, and my offer still stands on the free flies. Make sure you check out the Strip'n Flywear site by clicking on the banner over there --->

In other news, I did get some fishing time in today. It's definitely the 7th inning stretch of summer. Wet wading in sandals didn't cool me off, it made me chilly. The fish were starting to get sluggish. The wildflowers were starting to wilt.


I was mowing the lawn this afternoon and help this guy with his narrow escape from the Troy-Bilt blades.


I took it as a sign to tie on a Hopper Juan and hit the local creek.


After two long releases with some fiesty smallmouth, I finally found a big pod of gills that wanted to play. I pulled in about half a dozen of these guys before my feet were freezing. Yeah the fish weren't huge, but any action is good action as far as I'm concerned.



Time to hit the vise to twist up a few for my upcoming trip to Sacramento this week. I'm going to try to hit the American River. If you have any advice, I'd love to hear it!

My favorite fly of the year so far....

I've mentioned in quite a few posts that the AZ mini-hopper has been killing it for me. I'm serious. I've probably caught at least 200 fish so far this year on this fly. It's taken largemouth, smallmouth, bluegill, crappie, bows, and a brown. At first I had trouble with the bass on it. It was a little small for them. I decided to tweak the original to make it work. First, I double stacked the foam. This made it look like a bigger meal, and it floats much better this way. I also went bigger on the hook size. Bass started to get more peirced lips when I moved down to sizes 8-10 from the 12-14 I was doing well with for panfish and trout. Finally, I was watching Craven's video on tying the Charlie Boy Hopper and I liked how his hair stuck up high on the top of the fly. I started stacking the deer hair above the foam, also increasing the size of the fly. That's about all that was needed. The contrast of the orange foam and legs against the green ice dubbed body seems to work the best for me.

I'm not sure what the bass take it as, but it sure as hell does work. These are really easy to tie and since I primarily use them for bass, they can be sloppy.

Size 8 Mustad Standard Dry Fly Hook
2mm Craft Foam, stacked using spray adhesive
Orvis Caddis Green Ice Dubbing
Deer Hair
3/0 Brown Monocord

Vacation, summed up in two words...BAD FISHING

Well, I got back from the beach on Saturday night and I was so swamped with over 1000 work emails and meetings, that this is the first time I've had to get a blog update going.

I had a great week at the beach. I spent lots of time with my son, wife, in-laws, and my sister's whole brood of kids. The weather was nice. The beer was cold. The only bad thing was the fishing. We got there during the heat wave when it was approaching 100 degrees. The weird thing was, the gulf stream shifted and the water temps were in the low 60s! I think it really stirred up the fish.

I did have a few highlights though. Shortly after by blog post about sitting in the pier with a beer in my hand, my rod almost shot off the dock into the water. I managed to grab it and set the hook. It was hands down the biggest fish I had ever hooked. After fighting this thing and having it run my line on my 10 foot surf spinning rod almost all the way out for a good 5-10 minutes, I finally got a look at it. It was a giant 6-7 foot brown shark. I got him to get to the surface one time and I think he then finally realized that something was wrong. He ran like hell and my 35 lb line couldn't do anything to stop him. He broke me off, but continued to cruise around the area for a good 10 minutes afterwards with his fin sticking out of the water. Needless to say, the swimmers along the docks of their houses in the bay quickly got the heck out of the water. I was in total shock but there's no way I could have landed that fish.

Later that night, I decided to stop by the same spot and take a look. I saw some bait fish busting the surface every few minutes along the edges of the shadows from the docked boats. I thought it might have been some blues so I quickly grabbed my 8 weight and threw on a gurgler. Three casts later I had a fish smash it. He really did not fight too much and I got him to the dock and it was a striper, around 18-20 inches. I was pretty high off the water so I was happy that he flipped in the air, spit the fly and swam away. The only bad thing was, I didn't get a pic. He was my first striper on a fly rod and I have nothing to show for it.

After that, it was days of NOTHING. No kingfish in the surf. No flounder in the bay. The only luck I was having were a few dogfish and one eel from the bay later at night on big chunks of bunker. The biggest of those was a 3 foot sandshark. I did get a picture of him.


That was about the extent of my fishing for the whole week, besides one short flounder in the bay one afternoon. Blah. At least Michael had a blast (Although he still loves to eat the sand!)


I was pretty happy to get home and get a chance at some freshwater fish who were actually around. I wet waded a mile long stretch of the creek behind my house on Sunday and I only brought one fly, the AZ mini-hopper. (You all need to tie some of these, they work on everything!) Even though I didn't find mommy or daddy, their 10-12 inch children were more than willing to com out and play. They still managed to put some bend in the 4 weight.



Before I got, I'd like to personally say thanks to DKile over at PAFlyFish.com for the shoutout on his "Blogs of Summer" post. If you're new to the site, thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoy it and I promise that you'll see lots more tying going on once the fishing slows down in the fall.

What do you do when a massive rainstorm hits?

We had inches of rain yesterday and every stretch of moving water is a chocolate milk shake right now. I remembered that there's a small pond about a mile from me that I've been meaning to try for the last year. Turns out, it's absolutely full of massive gills who love foam hoppers. I pulled a few approaching two lbs today. I landed over 20. Surprisingly, I saw no bass though.


Also, I forgot to post this last week, but here's the first photo of our upcoming addition. January can't get here fast enough!


I think I'm heading out later this evening to a big lake with Nick to see if we can find some Crappie and Bass on streamers. More later.