Remote Post From iPhone

I just settled in in Silver Gate, MT just outside of the NE corner of Yellowstone. Remarkably I can post on this site and receive email but I cannot send email. It's cool here with an expected high tomorrow of around 64. Soda Butte is a bit off color from thunder showers but is still fishing well. I fished Soda Butte for about twenty minutes this evening and did quite well. More to come... Here's an image I just took with my iPhone of my room where I just discovered a few mice running around.

Thunderstorms

We had a good thunderstorm last night and I was a little slow in getting out of bed.  I made it out though and didn't get the shots I was looking for, but here are a few anyway...

 

The Big Wood River is fishing almost like the Fall.  It has been fantastic with plenty of dry fly fishing starting around 9:30 or so and slowing down between 2 and 4 depending on the weather.  Baetis, midges, cream craneflies, #14 tan caddis and anything else fished with a zebra below.

 

Thunderstorm brewing and moving in:

 

 

Sun through the cottonwoods on the Big Wood River near Ketchum:

 

Back light and sun rays on the Big Wood.

Hoppertunity!

Here are a few images from today on Stalker Creek.  Hoppers and damsel flies and callibaetis.  Today really was my first day of the season watching fish eat hoppers on at least a semi regular basis.  As we cruise into September the callibaetis and hopper fishing should get better and better at Silver Creek.

 

Callibaetis Spinner:

 

 

Brown Drake Image

I am still sorting through hundreds of brown drake images I captured in mid June.  I just came across this one that I had passed over many times.

On a fishing note, with our cooler weather the Big Wood is fishing about as well as it could in August.  I was on the Wood just about all day today and saw many rising fish!  Thanks to our wet Spring and coupled with our cooler weather, things should stay quite good.  Think smaller patterns like #18 parachute adams, #16 PMD's and the standard tungsten zebra midge dropper.

 

June on Silver Creek:

 

Lost River Crawdads and More...

So here are a few images of some of the bugs and animals I have seen in the last couple of days.  Yes, the crawdad pics are from the Lost River.  I came across a family collecting buckets of them for an Idaho crawdad feast.   

 

 

 

 

 

Sun Valley Moose

Here's an image I captured today at the Trail Creek beaver ponds just outside of Sun Valley.  I was looking for something I liked and atypical for wildlife/moose pictures.  I handheld this shot at 200 mm for 1/5 of a second with the exposure comp. dialed down .7 of a stop.  It's a bit dreamy... and I kinda like it.

 

North Fork Big Wood

Here are a few more shots of the North Fork of the Wood but this time in color.  The color on the wings of the spruce moth is quite remarkable. 

Through college as an English Major I kept a small journal of quotes that caught my attention and every now and again I'll post a quote.  Here's one I think about often: "Those who walk slowly can, if they follow the right path, go much farther than those who run rapidly in the wrong direction." --Descartes

 

And that brings to mind the Yogi Berra predicament: "Hey, Yogi.  I think we are lost."  Yogi's response, "Yeah, but we are making good time."

 

Then, in My Other Life, by Paul Theroux: "If you don't care where you are, you're not lost."

 

 

 

 

 

A Day Off Spent On The River

Just capping off a non guide day.  Spent last night camping with my two sons and had a magnificent time.  Lots of sugar and good campfire talk.  Witnessed a prolific spruce moth flight.  While technically these bugs are not water born and do not emerge like other aquatic insects in a trout's diet, they do spend time on and near the water and are when available after mid-morning often devoured by hungry trout.  Small rainbows on the North Fork of the Big Wood took advantage of these large bugs around 9 AM.  Fish sat in corners and nooks and spots I would never have thought there would be fish.  I have plenty of pics to post over the next few days...

 

 

 

 

 

North Fork Big Wood Spruce Moth:

 

Campfire Smores:

Great Blue Heron Track

Here's an image of a Great Blue Heron track I saw today.  I also saw a cast of kestrels.  Say that 5 times fast!  I saw 5 kestrels within twenty or so yards of one another which I have never seen before.  Pretty amazing falcon and small too.  I also saw a parliament of owls in a spot where I usually do, a lone bat in the middle of the day, a tidings of magpies, a kettle of nighthawks and of course an unkindness of ravens.  While I did see a single great blue heron here and there, I never saw a siege (a group of herons is a siege).

 

The GBH track:

 

August!

So it's August and it's not fishing like August due in large part to our wet and cool Spring.  Water levels are great and temps are cooler than normal.  Just about everything we have in our local area seems to be fishing well except for perhaps our higher elevation water, like the Copper Basin, that has been seeing quite a bit of pressure and quite a bit a fish harvesting.  Without a doubt, taking of limits in the Copper Basin area has greatly impacted the fishing.  It would be great to have catch and release up there.  We'll see...  Here are a few from the last 3 or so days:

 

 

 

Lower Lost Cottonwoods:

 

Stonefly shucks on the Lower Lost:

Thunderheads

We are back in the thunderstorm cycle and there are a few brewing as I write this.  I guided the Wood today and found the fishing to be OK.  We caught fish and tried a bunch of different patterns.  Small #16 tan craneflies, PMD's, #16 tan caddis, #12 tan caddis and they all worked with some success.  Our water is in great shape and hopefully the normal mid-August doldrums don't really happen this year on the Wood.  We'll see.

 

Here's a slideshow that is absolutely worth checking out.  It's of the recent winner of the Follow The Light Foundation grant.  The 4 other finalists also have suberb shots.  http://vimeo.com/13187971

 

 

Here's a shot of a flying ant taken at Silver Creek:

 

Dreamy and fast.  Airborn rainbow:

 

Here's the same image converted to black and white and underexposed in post processing.  You can make up your own mind as to which image pulls you in more:

More Rising Rainbows

So here are a few more rising rainbow shots.  I am looking forward to trying to perfect this shot in the Fall with sharper light.  But for now, here they are...

Here's the first paragraph from William Kittredge's, Hole In The Sky.  He was a writing professor of mine at The University of Montana.  "Maybe children wake to a love affair every other morning or so; if given any chance, they seem to like the sight and smell and feel of things so much.  Falling for the world could be a thing that happens to them all the time.  I hope so, I hope it is purely commonplace.  I'm trying to imagine that it is, that our childhood love of things is perfectly justifiable.  Think of light and how far it falls, to us.  To fall, we say, naming a fundamental way of going to the world--falling."

 

 

 

 

Rising Rainbow

Here's a shot of a rainbow about to delicately sip a spent female trico at Silver Creek.  I was able to watch this particular fish feed for a half an hour or so.  Pretty cool to watch it pick out the bugs it wanted and sometimes come up and examine a pmd spinner and then refuse it.  From what I could see this fish was primarily eating trico spinners and occassionally adult baetis.

 

Here's a line I heard today (it was spontaneous):  "We had a band going but we never got a gig.  Christmas with 10 friends over doesn't count." --Andrew Dorn

 

Summer Heat And More Tricos

Here are a few more trico images taken at Silver Creek.  The weather has been hot and, well, it feels like the middle of the summer.  Hatches are starting to wane on the Big Wood and tricos at the Creek are picking up.  The flows on the Lost are around 524 cfs and have been fluctuating a little. 

And, a line to remember when trying to present a delicate cast: "His leader and then fly turned over and began to come down as though it were a butterfly landing with sore feet." --Bob Anderson

 

 

 

 

Female Tricos

I had a chance to go shoot tricos yesterday morning at Silver Creek prior to a guide trip.  The bugs started around 8 AM and went to about 11 AM. The males seemed to far out number the females.  So what is the difference between the male and female trico?  The males are close to jet black.  The females' bodies are a yellowish white and are often accompanied by eggs near the end of their body on the underside.  I found a few spider webs loaded with thriving tricos and on 3 occassions I threw a small portion of the web laden with tricos into the water.  All 3 times the trico bait ball was sipped as delicately as though it were a single spinner!  Get out your fly tying vice and come up with something creative...

I also guided the creek in the evenning and if I could recommend any one thing it would be DEET.  While there was a lot of surface activity, the mosquitos were prolific.  I donated a fare amount of blood.

 

Here are a few female trico pictures: