Lake MI is Up – a little know fact

Lake Michigan/Huron (one big lake for lake level purposes) is up 4″ in the last month and is up a whopping 15″ in the last year.  Since each inch of water represents 390 billion gallons, that means Lake Michigan has added 5.85 trillion gallons of water in just the past year.

A worthy cause- Our Two Hands by Bloodknots Fly Fishing


Our Two Hands by Bloodknots Fly Fishing. This project has recently been brought to our attention and is worth your time & maybe your hard earned money.

The idea behind this film is to raise awareness of the plight of the Wild Steelhead in the western states, it’s native home, whose stocks are dwindling. Most of the individuals who are involved in this project are “in the fishing biz”, who spend the majority of their time fishing and guiding for steelhead, using the two handed rod, aka, the Spey rod, using the swung fly method. Some of them are our friends. All of them care deeply for wild steelhead.

Fishing the swung fly with a two handed rod requires skill, patience and lots of faith. The only method I can think of that might be harder to catch a steelhead with is with your bare hands! The attraction for me to fishing in this manner is complex…be it the fact that the technique was developed along the Spey river in Scotland hundreds of years ago to fish for Atlantic Salmon, where there is little backcast room and long casts are needed. Be it the beauty of the casts. Be it the beautiful flies and their histories. Then there is fact that you feel the fish take your fly, sometimes savagely, after you have enticed or irritated it into doing so, as opposed to “feeding” it below a bobber and not feeling anything until you set the hook. Fish when hooked on the swing set the hook themselves, shaking you out of the medatative trance of cast, swing, take a step or two, repeat. You are asking the fish to play along in your game, to join you on a journey of trust and to have faith that you will release it to make more beautiful and perfect creatures. Some of the reasons we love to fish this way is the fight that our beloved steelhead puts up…watching that backing peel off your reel and hearing that drag sing keeps us casting through those slumps and times where you feel like you are on cast number 957 and working towards number 1,000 that this fish is fabled for.

I learned to steelhead fish with a 15′ Sage 8 weight and a floating line on the Salmon River in North Fork, Idaho, swinging flies with names like Silver Hilton, Muddler, Green Butt Skunk, Macks Canyon, October Caddis, Greased Liner, Purple Peril and Skykomish Sunrise, at the beginning of the really hard times for these fish. The steelhead of the Salmon River, ID, swim hundreds of miles to return to their spawning grounds, through the perils dams, netting, seals, eagles and osprey, along with a host of the oceans creatures that are big enough to eat them. The biggest disadvantage against them is what we as humans have done and continue to do to impede their ability to return and propagate their species. Steelhead have the ability to live after they have spawned. Here in the Great Lakes, it is very easy for them to swim back out to the freshwater sea and put that all important weight back on so that they can come in and spawn again. We don’t know how many of the west coast steelhead actually make it back to sea. The coastal river fish obviously have the advantage of a shorter migration, whereas the fish of the Upper Columbia basin have the odds stacked against them.

These fish are majestic creatures who deserve our love and attention. In the lifetimes of our fathers, the steelhead on the west coast has gone from a bathtub like faucet turned full on to a drip out of the kitchen sink.
Please support this film to bring awareness to the greatest of our native fishes.

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Yogi stealing the trash

Swing the Fly Issue 2.1 Summer 2014

Check out the online magazine Swing the Fly, new Summer 2014 Issue

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Get Costa Gear

Here is a link for some free Costa Gear, just got sign up just follow the link.  15 give aways from now until 4th of July.

 

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Summer 2014 Revive Fly Fishing Mag Issue

Here is a link to a new online magazine for me.  Revive, new issue just added.  Check it out.

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DNR Muskie Survey Please Help

There is a one year survey, on the lakes listed below, to gather information on muskellunge fishing (effort and catch). There are or will be boxes placed at access sites with survey cards. The cards can be complete and mailed or the survey can be completed online. This online option is much easier to do for you and makes it easier to compile the data for the DNR. If you visit one of these waters grab a card from the box and it has the link below as well as a QR code that you can scan with your smartphone.

If you fished any of the LP lakes over the weekend (or any of the UP lakes starting 5/15/14) and each time you fish them until 3/15/15 please complete the survey. This information helps biologists manage these fisheries. Next year the survey will rotate to another 15-20 waters.

LP Lakes 
Bellaire
Belleville
Black
Budd
Hamiln
Intermediate
Long, Grand Traverse
Margrethe
Murray
Winyah
Wixom

UP Lakes 
Chicagon
Emily
Kingston
McKeever

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MuskellungeCreel

Streamers and New Hat

Kean O. beating up on the brown trout with some baitfish streamer action, also sporting a New Mangled Fly Media baseball cap.  Been personally wearing my new cap for a couple weeks, did take a little while to break in, but have to admit it’s a very comfortable hat.  Brim is about the perfect length and the dark under brim really helps with cutting glare and spotting fish.

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Happy Angler putting on a Sharkwave

One of my favorite little stickers.  Means new fly lines.  Stringing up the new 5wt Skarkwave Trout and GPX for the 2014 season.  Can’t wait for the dry fly.  Current BWO’s and Little Black Stones.  But Russ Maddin reported the first Henny of the year.  We are so close!