T-Rav and The Sledd

Yesterday I fished with my Man T-Rav and his buddy Sledd. We had some major stormage the night before and I was a little worried the river would reflect it. Fortunately the river looked good. Real good. We started the morning off doing some nymphing and put the hurt on them! Caught a couple of nice browns and tons of bows. At lunch we moved the ship to an upper river ramp and decided to take advantage of some clouds. We got out the meat sticks and started pushing water. We had some awesome action. Fish were moving off the banks and aggressively swinging at our flies. We ended up catching several nice fish but truly the excitement came from watching these fish get so angry at our flies!

Cliff and Mandy Part II

Yesterday I took Cliff and Mandy back out for day two of fishing. We had conditions similar to Friday so we started off with a similar plan. Catch a few fish on nymphs and get the monkey off our back, then move to streamers. The Nymph bite started off pretty strong and so we decided to quickly move into chucking meat in hopes to turn another "PB". We had a few good whacks and some good chases. Landed a couple but the bite slowed down. We then picked the nymphs back up and Mandy straight up dominated with three awesome rainbows  with back to back casts! The water finally started climbing up on us so we made the switch back to streamers. It was kinda slow, the sun had crept back out, and  the fish were being shy. I told them to make a few more casts before we had to make the trip back to the ramp and BAM! Cliff hooked up with yet another "PB" as his last cast! It was a great way to wrap up another stellar couple of days fly fishing on the Little Red River!

A Morning in the Hyde

Last week Mickey and I went out for a few hours in his Hyde. It was a great morning on the river with a good friend. We turned a few big boys but mostly just goofed around. It was nice to row around the drifter for a change. I wish I had a big fish pic to share with ya'll but this is all I got!

Cliff and Mandy!

Friday I fished with Cliff and Mandy Wright. We started off the day working some big nymphs on one of my favorite sections of the river. The first fish on the line was a 20+ inch brown that broke off right at the boat. We landed several more fish but had to work hard for them. We decided to chuck some streamers in search of a new "PB" ( personal best). By the end of the day we had reached that goal for both of them! It was really cool watching their casts get better and better and getting them hooked on the excitement of streamer fishing!

Holy Kipe!

The Little Red River has some amazing fish to offer anglers. It has a completely self sustaining wild brown trout population. It also has some incredible hulk-ish rainbows as well if you just dig your heels in. This is a rainbow caught this fall with a mangled monster kipe!

Funky Town

If you've read my blog before most of ya'll know I am a streamer addict. I love everything about it. I love to tie big Nasty flies, I love to work my tail off for that chase, the miss, the eats. Everything about it fires me up. Most of the time the pay off is worth all of the casts even if the fish isn't a monster. This is a photo of a brown that my boy Hays caught last time we fished together. It wasn't a monster fish but it was a beautiful brown trout and he ate a sex dungeon that Hays's tied. He forced the fish to come out of its hole on a bright and sunny day and eat, and that's just cool. Hope you enjoy this funky town photo Hays sent me!

Southern Style!

The new issue of Southern Culture on the Fly came live yesterday. Thew new "Ezine" is stellar. Some great photos of Pappa Rouse and Me doing our thing on the river, Some cool shots of Fat possum Holler, and bunches of other sick stuff too. Make sure you peep that "legs for days" fly. Ive been giving it some rod time as of late and been turning and sticking some great fish on it! Well done Dave and Steve for another awesome mag!

My Man Mike!

Yesterday I got to fish with my man Mike. Water was running a little over one generator. We decided to start off the morning nymphing. The bite was steady at first but tapered down. After a few fly changes we still had a hard  time getting them turned on. We then decided to search for some browns with the meat sticks. The cloud cover and water flow were perfect! The bite was on fire! We saw probably 7 or 8 solid browns try to eat and made connection with a couple good ones to turn the day into a pretty sweet day of trout fishing!

Wallace!

Yesterday I had the chance to fish with a new sport, which is always fun. Wallace has been fly fishing for a while but wanted to learn some new techniques. Specifically streamer fishing. We set out with learning as the main goal. We got the cast down and got after it. We got a few rainbows, and had a couple of good browns follow it but they just wouldn't commit. We ended up pegging this nice brown to make it all worth it. We then decided to play a number game and just bend the rod for a while. The nymph bite was pretty strong. With the high flows we certainly had to work for them but that's not a bad thing!

Norm!

Last Sunday I got the chance to fish with a good client of mine, Norm. It was a super fun day. Norm got things going with some pancakes and bacon. Any morning that starts with pancakes and bacon is  a good day! Water was fairly high but the weather was pretty decent. We decided to stay committed to chucking streamers looking for a lurker. We ended up catching quite a few fish in the 16-17 inch range. We had some serious swipes of larger fish and had a super solid eat from a good 21-22 incher but he managed to spit the hook. We did not find the monster we set out looking for but we did have a great time, ate good food, and got some good tugs from some sweet brown trout!

John and Jimbo

Thursday afternoon I got the pleasure of fishing with a couple of new clients John and Jimbo. The water was still running a solid 7,000 cfs but the air temp was in the 60's so they couldn't pass up the chance to do a little trout fishing. We started off catching the fire out of some rainbows but the boys wanted to look for a brown. We found a few. We even had a few super solid fish school us. It was a pretty sweet day to be on the Little Red River!

Sow Buggin'

So on The Little Red River one of the most important bugs to have in your box is truly the sow bug. Ive caught many extremely large fish on the little juicy protein nuggets. The sow bug holds his magic all year long. Ive seen many different patterns that people call a Sow bug, but very few actually look like a Sow bug and work like a true Sow bug pattern. When I first started guiding for Jamie he held great pride in his Sow Bug. He forced me to study the actual bug and tie up varieties of my own, after many efforts I was finally able to come up with the perfect match. Now after several year of cranking out thousands of sow bugs from behind the vice Pappa Rouse leaked another one of his secret stash flies to Orvis. The Rouse's JDUB Sow bug. I'm not going to tell you that you cant find any other sow bugs patterns out there that work but this fly was passed down to Jamie 18 years ago when first started guiding. He has now perfected it into the perfect Little Red River sow bug and I can assure if it is fished correctly it is a deadly dude!

Almost forgot!

This might just possibly be the first brown trout caught in 2012. This fish was caught and released on Jan 1st at about 8:30 am....who knows if it was actually the first one caught but it I bet it was on the Little Red River at least! Hope this fish brings me and my sports a lot of brown trout voodoo for 2012!

R&D time!

Over the past week I've had the chance to go fish with my man Hays from Jackson Ms. When we get the chance to fish together we typically just throw big meat at the big boys but it seems as if the past week or so we have had such a good bite on nymphs we decided to get down and dirty with them a little as well. We turned and landed some nice fish on streamers too. All on flies that we have just been experimenting with at the vice and needed some good R&D time with. Despite the fact it has been uber windy and super cold we buckled down and got after it! Here are a few of the fish we were rewarded with! Cheers to the new year!

Doctor Doctor!

So the fun just keeps on going. The river has remained at a pretty constant flow...BIG. The fishing has also remained awesome. Yesterday I got the chance to take out a good client and friend of JRFFA. Dr. Usdan and his friend Allen. It was Allen's first time to fly fish but rest assured he had no troubles catching on. We landed crazy amounts of solid browns. I think we may have only landed 4 rainbows yesterday two of which were over 16 inches. I think the Doc quit counting at 40 and that was before lunch! Here are a couple of the boys fish from their Adventure!