Spring Steel

Long overdue. And Oliver has the more thorough documentation of the trip, so we can perhaps expect that at some unknown time in the future.

April 2012, steelhead are working their way up the Skeena and Kitimat rivers to spawning grounds, fresh from the salt. So we headed Smithers-way.

Our reception at the Clong household was warm, as usual.

The rivers are closed around Smithers until later in the summer, so after some eating we headed west to Terrace, Smithers' ugly, yet charming larger sibling. We spent a couple of days on the Kitimat River. 

... a lot of which was spent scouting. Hypothesizing. 

The Kitimat is alleged to have one of the strongest runs of early spring steelhead, aided by returning hatchery-origin fish that you can bonk. This was an attractive feature.

But for all the effort, we saw only one pull. 

So we spent a few days on other rivers, one of which is renowned for its cutthroat and Dolly Varden fishing. They feed heavily in the spring on out-migrating salmon alevins, and the fishing would happen in these insane pulses as clouds of them were pushed though by the current. It was also one of the most beautiful places I've fished. 

And back on the steelhead front, there's a bit of a story. A while back, in the midst of a tying frenzy, Oliver sent me this video of some guy talking up this fly called the Squidro. I think it was this one. Anyways, I watched it, couldn't fucking stand the guy, and might have said something to the effect of "I'll never fish one of those, what a douchebag". So Oliver ties up a bunch, I think in part as a joke. But he was fishing them. 

Anyways, we're fishing pretty hard for a few days, without so much as seeing a steelhead. Apparently this is classic steelhead fishing. I go to sleep on maybe night 5, and have this vivid dream of fishing an orange Squidro, and catching a steelhead. I wake up with this burned into my mind. But in some weird bout of superstition, say nothing aloud. We fish a new piece of water that day, and I inexplicably (to Oliver, at least) tie on one of the orange Squidros. 

Douche-fly.

Cast, swing, step, repeat. 

Until I get to this fishy looking back channel. Cast, swing, PULL, jump, fish on. A hard fight, a lot of acrobatics, and we land it, a silvery fresh-from-the-ocean steelhead buck. 

Release, exhale. And then "So you might wonder why I was fishing that Squidro..."

Grayling.

After a few unsuccessful fly fishing outings this spring/summer, Kim and I got wind of a grayling river northwest of the city. Because I did not know the first thing about grayling, I relied on the internet and wholesale outfitters for fly advice. With the exception of the Griffith's gnat, all the recommended flies were the same as those I already stocked up on for trout - thankfully.

It took about 2.5 hours to get there and within five minutes I hooked into my first grayling (using a Griffith's gnat).

It was then Kim's turn to get into the action (with a Parachute Adams)

 

It was one of those outings where there was no point in counting fish. Every dry we tried elicited a response and I am guesstimating that we averaged a fish rising every four casts - for five straight hours.

What was super cool is the grayling did not seem to spook and I am sure we caught the same one multiple times.

The death of a legend

Sadly, as you may have already heard, Levon Helm died a few days ago.  I just heard.  In commemoration, I've posted a link to my new favourite Levon song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpSVEhNE5aA

Alberta - Trout - March - Fly Fishing

27 March 2012

A week out from my thesis defence, Lee and I decided to hit up the Crowsnest River. It seems this is among the few Alberta waters amenable to a fly rod in March. This is right before the river closes to let the fish spawn (in peace) and there are some absolute beasts waiting to be caught.

You all know the way - hwy 22

We tried many nymphs but the lightning bug was what they were hitting. Apparently this is among the best flies for winter conditions - I can now vouch for it.

We arrived around 10:30 and were on the water shortly there after. I caught this fish within fifteen minutes of my first cast. The best part of this video is that I thought it was just a camera - we filmed the fight but it's too big for the blog and this is the only photo I have of the fish

Things slowed down for the remainder of the morning: by mid-afternoon, when the sun got on the water, the fishing started to pick up and there were periods when every drift had a hit. The strikes were very light and we missed more than we set - but it was a lot of fun.

In the end, we landed a double digits worth of trout and one whitefish. Ten hours of driving for five hours of fishing - definitely worth it on this day.

The Spring Project (formerly Winter Project).

The finished rod is slowly turning on its electric motor as the last of the polymer sets over the guide wraps. The project took longer than it needed to, but a push at the end got it finished. I think it could all be done, start to finish, in a weekend if one were so inclined.

Back to the story...

I think at last post I was just fitting cork rings on the rod for the handle. I continued with that, and then glued the rings together with wood glue (Tite-bond 3) and put them in a press overnight. The glue kind of oozed out from between the rings, and they stick together real good.

Then comes the lathe. To shape the handle I used coarse grit sandpaper at first, then finer and finer grit to get the finished shape all silky smooth. I chose a full wells grip because I like the look. Also I feel like anything over a 6 weight rod should have a full wells grip. Also, a fighting butt for the end. For all the fighting. Okay, handle done. On to wrapping guides.

The guides need to be measured out carefully at particular distances from the tip top. I'm sure these measurements are some guy's job who slaves in a dark office and no longer finds any joy in fly fishing. So you mark out the locations of the guides by using thin strips of masking tape. I didn't quite realize how much of rod building is really about masking tape. We used a shit ton of that stuff.

The wrapping takes place on a wrapping table, that can be as shoddily or beautifully constructed as you want. Really, you just need a place to keep the thread with some tension, and a surface to rotate the rod. The process is finicky at first, but once you get the hang of it it goes fairly fast. The hardest part is the thin part of the blank at the top. I accomplished the wrapping in a weekend, thanks to shitty weather, a hangover, and a series of terrible movies in the background.

So the final step, once everything is wrapped on, is to coat the wraps with a polymer called Flex-Coat. You mix it like epoxy, a resin and a hardener, and then paint it on to the wraps until the stuff gets too tacky to work with. I did the whole rod using four batches of the polymer. When it hardens it maintains some flexibility so that it doesn't crack off when the rod flexes.

I'll be attaching the fighting butt with epoxy once the rod comes off the turning motor later today. Hopefully the next installment of this saga will involve gratuitous fish photos, and various in situ glamour shots of the rod.

Some mountain goat photos or shameless self promotion

The ESA bulletin just published some bad-ass photos to accompany an article Joey and I wrote.

Tomorrow - a first attempt