my sunday morning sanctuary

Today I woke up and the river was calling me. I had the day off and thought I might as well go ahead and go to my church....yeah, that would be the river. It's probably the warmest,sunniest day of 2010. Not the ideal streamer weather, but I just couldn't resist. I started off chucking yellow and had several flashes and tags, but could not get anybody to commit. I switched colors and a few moments later I saw this big beauty come out from the undercut bank and crush my fly! As I brought her in some guys in the yard asked me if I wanted to come up and borrow their skillet! I laughed and said, "no thanks, she's going right back where she came from" and I think the guys had to pick their jaws up off the floor as I put the fish back in the river. Hopefully I will see her again soon!

a few new tricks

Friday evening I got a call about guiding on Saturday. I jumped all over it! I had met Clint several times at the launch and seen him on the river, but never had the chance to fish him. We had some of the lowest water of the year. Haven't seen much of that lately. We got to fish some of my favorite drifts using regular nymphing techniques which was great. We caught fish pretty consistently all morning. We enjoyed a nice turkey sammy and a cream soda for lunch and by that time the water had caught us so we ran back up, put the boat on the trailer, and headed up river. We did some cool two unit high water fishing and caught several nice rainbows! Clint had no idea you could fish in that kind of water, so he came away with some cool new secrets for fishing on his own. We had great weather which was also a plus!

Big John and The Farns.

Thursday I took out John and Robert. I hadn't had a chance to fish these guys since the fall, so it was their first trip of 2010. It was a cold day and we spent the first half of the day breaking ice out of the rod guides. We didn't have much of a low water window but we found some willing fish. The guys caught mostly rainbows with a few brownies thrown in the mix. It turned out to be a rather nice afternoon, full of good times.

Shad Kill

Last Thursday to Monday, Jamie and I fished a great group of guys from St Louis. Chris also joined in for Saturday and Sunday. We fished these guys about a month ago on the Little Red and boy was it tough fishing! This time we fished them on the White River and it was sweet. We gave them a pretty good mix of throwing streamers and drifting shad flies. We fished from the Dam to Cotter and caught nice fish everywhere in between. On Sunday the shad started coming through like crazy! The birds where going wild and so were the fish! The only problem was too many boats started to put the fish down, so our bite was really off and on. The guys got into some thumper rainbows up at the Dam in the 17- 20 inch slot and some nicer browns further down river. Many of them were over 20 inches. We fished the guys hard for 5 days. It was a nice change of pace and a good time!

A snowy morning!

Yesterday morning Hays and I woke up and the ground was covered in snow. We decided it wasn't in our best interest to try to drive on the snow with the trailer, so we suited up in our waders and headed to Winkley for some early morning wading. We knew we wouldn't have long before the water caught up to us so we grabbed a handful of flies and headed out. We fished for about an hour and caught a dozen rainbows and a little brownie. Nothing huge, but the serenity of fishing in the snow with almost a foot on the banks was breathtakingly beautiful. It was certainly a cool experience and super peaceful.

Good times!

Last weekend my fishing buddy Hays came up from Jackson to do some fishing with me. We fished the Little Red on Saturday and fished the White on Sunday. On Saturday, the morning started off great. Within the first hour we had several strikes and saw a few big fish. After that it was toasted. We put in a good day of chucking streamers and the fish just didn't want to act right. We left Heber Sunday morning around 5: 30am and headed north to Cotter. We had fish all over the place! We had action all day and the river to ourselves. We ended up leaving the river around 2 to head home with some good memories and a few new fish stories.