Slammin' Fatties

Some recent pics of some fish I landed the other day.  With the hot weather the carp are getting into the shallows and starting to do their thing, however, they do feed while they breed.

A tip for anyone out there who cares...make sure your line is CLEAR of any hazards prior to hooking into a freight train.  I did not follow this advice and had stepped over mine line and upon hooking the fish in the second pic and watching the line burn out through my hand and hearing my drag start screaming only to suddenly have my fly line slam up into my boys.  (This was NOT a pleasurable experience and fish apparently can't hear you say "timeout") Anyhow, after some pretty sweet gymnastic moves on my end I was able to get the line untangled without taking a swim.

Way cooler than the carp was catching  a freshwater drum.  It was a nice surprise and was the first one of that kind I had caught.

Til next time....

Some recent fish and randomness

I was able to get up to the Northwoods last weekend and fished the Cisco Chain for Walleye but didn't come up with any.   We then switched over to smallmouth and started crushing it but have no pics of course.  The lake our house is on produced some fantastic popper fishing with good size gills and crappie and even a nice largemouth which was a good time.

Also had the chance to capture some loons and almost got them in the boat thanks to the "Loon call app" my brother installed on his droid phone.  We literally had them 5' from the boat and watched them diving and saw one come up with a crayfish.  It was way cool. 

I also managed to grab a long exposure of the northern lights which was cool considering it was my first real attempt at night photography.

More recently,  I headed out to a small creek near my place here on the north shore and was able to grab this little carp.  It was without question one of the lamest carp I've hooked and only took a couple  5' runs.  Still fun none the less.

Filmmaker Mark Titus asks the question “Have we learned enough from our past mistakes to save the last, great wild salmon runs on the planet?”

Update

Fishing for me has been non-existent lately which has been a bummer but it's insane how much other stuff I have gotten done!

Anyways,  I've been out once for some largemouth and did pretty well for how early it is for them in the season and yesterday I blew 2 chances and some actively feeding carp.  Things should get better as I'm heading up north this coming weekend to fish walleye and pike on the Cisco Chain.

A buddy of mine informed me that he blasted a turkey about a week ago and I quickly jumped on the opportunity for a hoard of free feathers.  I grabbed the entire tail spread and all of the wings as well as a good amount of breast feathers that I plan on burning into spey hackles.  

We may be gone as of late but we will hopefully not be forgotten.  Things should start heating up here for us in the coming months.

Dee flies anyone?????

More spey wings!

Here are a few photos that pretty much wrap up our spring steel heading....

Anthony giving the local tress the business

And last, but certainly not least....

Milwaukee River Still life.

Cheers!

Gone AWOL

So it has been a while since we have had any blog activity. I assure anyone out there who cares (Which I am sure most of you don't) that we are still alive and well.

I have a busy month ahead of me. With two spring turkey tags to fill, possible travels over the big pond to our east, and in the first week of June I will be headed on an epic fishing journey, into the bowels of Ontario. This special fly in trip, sort of fell into my lap thanks to some extremely generous friends of mine, who happen to suffer from my same condition. (Fish on the brain-isidous).

I have been at the vise almost every night for the past week or two, trying to build up enough quality flies to bring with me. Attempting to cover all my bases for top water and sub-surface has become an entertaining challenge. Not to mention I am tying for multiple species including but not limited to Pike, Smallmouth and Walleye. With that said, posting photos of my progress at the wee hours of the night has not been my top priority. I will however, take inventory and post up some flies.

For now here is a picture of our destination; an island, on a lake, only accessible by float plane.