Hiking 2/14

My friend Cameron and I headed out to do a hike in the Rattlesnake wilderness yesterday. My VW passat surprisingly made it up sawmill gulch road, which was covered with ice and snow. It was a beautiful day and the temps felt like they were in the upper 40's. As we hiked, it got warm enough to hike in T-shirts. There wasn't too much snow on the trails and we completed the 5 or 6 mile hike in about an hour and a half. There was some nice views at the top. On the way down we took some Go Pro video, Bear Grylls style, running and jumping down the mountain. It was a lot of fun. Here are some shots from the day.

Men Vs. Wild racing down the mountain

It is Here!

After about a week of frustrating video editing and converting files over and over again, I am pleased to present my very first video production, featuring the Missouri River! I had a great day last weekend on the Mo and shot some great footage. This past week I've been borrowing my friend Cameron's computer to edit the video with i-movie. It took me a little while to get used to the editor, but now I am used to it and I hope for my next vid, things will go a bit smoother. There is only one problem with this video....it is NOT in HD like I had promised. For some reason, editing the video from i-movie and exporting the file to YouTube caused the file to drop in quality. The highest it can play is 480p. I've spent the last couple of hours trying to figure out how to convert the file to a higher quality, but for some reason it just wont happen. However, I am very happy with the way the video turned out. So here it is! My first fly fishing mini-film. 

Clark Fork Afternoon/ F3T! (2/10)

Fished for a quick couple of hours on the Clark Fork Yesterday with Cody and Garret. We hit an access that I've never been to before. Cody had done well there the day before so we decided to give it a go before the F3T! I only brought my streamer rod. Cody and Garret headed downstream while I walked up to a nice pool. There was a downed tree out in the current. I casted my streamer right to the edge of it and slowly stripped it back....Smack! on the first cast. The fish felt heavy and I didn't see it until it was right in front of me. The fish bolted downstream towards a mess of sticks and debris. It was a decent fish. What I couldn't figure out was why the fish was fighting so hard. I thought that I had probably foul hooked the fish, but I was wrong. The fish was just a tough, chunky, feisty cutthroat. I'm not going to lie, I was yanking on that fish with the 6 wt, hydros and the fish would not give in. Finally the fish began to tire out. I snapped a few pics of the beautiful cutty and released him. It was a cool looking fish with a nicely developed lower jaw.

Shoulders!

The rest of the fishing was slow. I met up with Garret and Cody after following their foot prints in the snow for over a mile. They were definitely in the walking mood and they covered a lot of water. It looked like it payed off though. Cody had landed 1 bow and a whitefish and Garret had landed a beautiful bow. They were both nymphing.

After fishing we ate dinner real quick and flew over to the Wilma Theater for the event that we'd been waiting for! The 2012 Fly Fishing Film Tour! The place was packed, a sold out crowd of over 1,100 anglers, a new record for the F3T. Looks like Missoula is really the epicenter of Fly Fishing. The films.......wow they were really great. I can't even say which one was my favorite. They were all amazing. From "Sipping Dry", a film on the famous hatches of the Mo, to "Doc of the Drakes", a piece about the Brown Drake hatch on Silver Creek in Idaho and a man still chasing fish at the age of 84. All were amazing, and I could of sat there all night. It gave me a lot of ideas of where I want to fish before I die. Time to get started.....

Fly Fishing Film Tour Arrives in Missoula!

The 2012 Fly Fishing Film Tour has arrived in Missoula! Cody, Chris, Garret and I as well as just about every other fly fisherman in Missoula will be attending tonight. The featured films look pretty sweet. The one I'm most excited to see is "Sipping Dry", a film about the Missouri. To watch all the trailers for films that will be showing tonight, head on over to the F3T's website.....

http://flyfilmtour.com/

Tying Inventory/ 2 Headed Trout

Every couple of weeks, my desk become cluttered with fly tying materials and junk. I have put off cleaning my desk for a very long time and it finally got to the point today where I was unable to find anything that I actually wanted to find. I decided to do a mass cleaning and an inventory of all the fly tying material I own.

I made some surprising discoveries while cleaning. I managed to find my glasses and a wide variety of other items that I've been looking for. I also found that I had a whole other golden pheasant pelt that I didn't even know I had. Good stuff.

On to other news (I feel like a news anchor)...... I read a very interesting article today on a 2 headed trout found near a mine in eastern Idaho. The photo was found in a scientific report that also contained photos of several other deformities. The report was being used by the company J.R. Simplot to justify an increased level of selenium pollution in creeks near the mine. However, after the report was reviewed, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Fisheries biologist Joseph Skorupa found some flaws in the report.

The researchers who conducted the study failed to take into account the migrating fish as a total population count and also underestimated the number of fish that would suffer deformities in the creeks adjacent to the mine. Another flaw that was found in the report was that the selenium levels in one of the creeks exceeded even the standard levels of selenium that Simplot had proposed. Sounds like the company's own report came back to bite them. It really bothers me to see a company like this, trying to justify what they are doing to fish, birds and other animals.

For years the Clark Fork was polluted with mining deposits and the effects of that pollution show today. In the fall of 2011, I listened to a lecture by Patrick Saffel, the regional fisheries manager for western Montana. He explained that the population of trout in the Clark Fork is at about 1/5 of its capacity and that most juvenile trout are not surviving because of the toxins in the water from years of mining pollution. This still bothers me to no end and too see some of the same stuff going on today makes me want to start a riot or something. Either way, I think we can all gain one thing from this article.....Mining = Bad for trout.

Check out the full article at http://www.jhnewsandguide.com/article.php?art_id=8225.