Vole Skull
The skull image above was taken from an owl pellet near the Nature Conservancy Cabin. For scale, the entire skull could fit on my thumbnail. The pellet this skull came from contained at least 3 entire vole skeletons... The Spring clouds and snow on brown hillsides makes for wonderful contrast. Mid-April through mid-June is my favorite time of year to shoot Silver Creek.
April Tree Line. Salmon River Basin
3 image pano taken with the Nikon 35 f2 lens.
Spring Gray. Monochrome.
Still lots of snow up high and along the Upper Salmon River while the lower elevation snow, below 6,000 feet or so, is waning. I have been on the river 7 days a week and have seen all kinds of weather from one freakish, sunny, 60 degree day to lots of wind and snow showers especially in the Stanley area. No one day has been the same other than the fact my feet have been COLD day after day... More snow expected in Stanley tonight.
Warmest day of 2011 today with highs in Mackay somewhere around 60! Sunny skies though and the baetis did not explode like they would in cloudy conditions. Still good fishing... Lots of melting snow and the Salmon River has already seen a bump in flow and will continue to see an increase overnight.
Great stuff on all of our water if you can stay warm enough. Water temp yesterday morning on the Salmon was a balmy 35 degrees. Two more days of the season left on the Big Wood River, then it's steelheading on the Salmon and trout on the Big Lost River. High temps are expected to hit 50 degrees by Thursday in Ketchum! If so, the dry fly fishing should be stellar...
Images taken with the Nikon 14-24 2.8 lens.
New snow and dry fly fishing in March. With steelhead just starting and the Big Wood and Lost fishing well and others simply thinking about skiing there are plenty of great options... The flow on the Lost was bumped up almost 100 cfs to 218 cfs.
The bottom image is a 3 frame pano.
"Winter Wheel Line Pano"
The above image is a seven frame pano looking toward Picabo, Idaho. I used NIK's Color Effex Pro 2 for the black and white conversion and Photoshop CS5 for the photomerge process. The Queen's Crown is the prominent hill way in the background.
On a fishing note, the Lost and Big Wood are both fishing very well. Baetis and midges on the Lost and midges and a few small stones on the Wood. This is arguably one of the best weeks of the year on the Lost and Wood. Keep in mind the Lower Lost now is open year round.
As far as steelhead go on the Salmon I have been up to the upper river--Stanley area--quite a bit lately and while there are a few fish around it seems like it's going to be a waiting game until more fish start moving up. The water temp yesterday morning at 11 AM around mile marker 206 on the Salmon was 36 degrees!
Salmon River Bull Trout from nick price on Vimeo.
I just received my GoPro Video Camera and Eye Of Mine Housing and gave it a go for the first time yesterday. Right after I turned it on for the first time we hooked a nice Bull Trout. It was trying to eat a small white fish we had hooked... Much more to come.
The image above was taken on the Lost River yesterday. We were on the river by 10:15 and nothing was happening. The nothingness lasted about 3 full hours and then the full on midge and baetis madness erupted. There were almost too many bugs. A little technical but lots of fun.
I have been playing around with trying to get the reel blurry and other parts of the image in focus. Think strong fish ripping line from a reel and better yet a little water on the line spraying in different directions.
Image taken with the Nikon 35 f2 lens at 1/30 of a second.
"Lost River Rainbow"
The above image was taken today on the Lost River. Lots of baetis and midges to be had! The color on the fish right now is extrodinary.
Image taken with the Nikon 35 f2 lens.
"Sawtooths After A Storm"
I drove up to Stanley today and poked around looking for steelhead. There are fish in the upper river--Torrey's and upstream to Redfish-- but there does not appear to be that many from what I saw today. In about a week there should be substantially more fish in the upper river to make the trek to the Salmon River worthwhile. While the recent storm produced lots of rain at lower elevations, that was not the case at higher elevation. New snow on Titus was reported to be 14" with storm totals in the Sawtooths up to 30".
The above pano was taken handheld with the Nikon 50 1.8 lens.
"Red Winged Blackbird"
So...here's one just edited on NIK's new Silver Effex Pro 2. The selective color control point--essentially lets you decide where to restore color to a monochrome image-- is MUCH easier to use/work with than Photoshop and can yield some unique results. If you don't use any of NIK's plug-ins you can try them out for free for 15 days... Be advised, you will want to purchase after trying them out. They are pretty amazing!
I am off to Stanley tomorrow to look for and hopefully find some early season steelhead before the hordes show up in mid-April.
Every once in awhile I will be sharing another fly fishing photographer's website that really, in my opinion, stands out. Here's one by Matt Jones: http://theflyphoto.com/
In particular his underwater shots are phenomenal and his desire and willingness to share photography insight is exemplary... Anyway, check out his site.
It's his site, after all, that led me, yesterday, to purchase a Go Pro. I have not received it yet , but I am really looking forward to getting underwater video footage. If you have not been to the Go Pro website it's worth checking out the video that immediately pops up: http://gopro.com/
"Callibaetis Color"
Here's another image I skipped over last summer. It's of a callibaetis on Silver Creek and the focus is on the body rather than the head. This particular callibaetis had probably just molted which can explain the more vibrant body color. Image taken with the Nikon 105 2.8 and extension tubes.
I am in the process of going through my entire photo library and keywording just about all of my images. While this is a major pain to accomplish it really taught me a lesson: When uploading images--in my case into Aperture--ALWAYS add keywords, copyright and other pertinent info. It is far easier to do when uploading than years later with over 100,000 images to sort through.
Wet weather here today... Snowing. Wet snow.
I am still adding to my galleries and this one above just made the cut. It was taken early last fall and like many others didn't grab my attention when I originally uploaded it from my camera...
While the image above makes me think of warm summer nights, today was a real blast of spring with highs around 46! More precipitation forecast for tomorrow and tomorrow night. We'll see...
Girdle bug... "The Gird's The Word."
Spent Midge
Some images taken today on the Big Wood. Sunny and mid-forties today. Looks like highs in the forties through the week with clouds too. We couldn't ask for much more...
Images taken with the Nikon 105 2.8 and extension tubes.
Lots and lots of midges on the Big Wood right now and the dry fly fishing is really good at the moment and probably will only get better unless we see drastic changes in our weather. I was on the Wood in Hailey and north of Ketchum today and while there were certainly more bugs North Valley, there was still plenty of good stuff as far downstream as Hailey. The last two weeks of March really are some of the best weeks of the year for dries on the Wood.