n.taylor – Page 60

Return of The Taylor

March 16, 2010 by n.taylor Leave a Comment

The man is ridiculous

Every year I spend a lot of time driving to get to my favorite spring fishery. This year was no exception. I coordinated a small platoon to join me including Greg Drapeau (who was providing us with his first appearance since moving from Colorado last November) as well as the expertise of infallible Sean Surniak.

Temperature in the canyon at 7am in March? 4 degrees. It was so cold that when I broke off I just grabbed another rod out of the car. I didn’t even bring a pack with me, I just left everything in the car in hopes of being able to sit next to the heater. As is usually the case however, the fishing was great from first light until

This is Gregory

10:30 (or about the time it got warm). I spent a significant portion of my afternoon watching Surniak pick out the biggest fish in every pool and place perfect casts with perfect presentations that usually resulted in larger than life rainbow trout.

I picked up a valuable piece of information this fine day from Sean. His strategy was to place the fly three feet in front of the fish and adjust your weight accordingly.

[

Finally

I often find that I get too lazy to pull in my rig and and pinch on another shot. If all else fails he said, “Just throw on an old Buick and get that fly down.” Coupling this new found knowledge with Sean’s adamant requests to use smaller indicators, I adjusted my tactics and caught something that at least was respectable.

I’ll be back soon…

Where Have All My Rainbow’s Gone?

March 12, 2010 by n.taylor Leave a Comment

That's AM

The big push is not here yet. I’ve hit it fairly hard the last 10 days and by this time I usually have a few sightings of our boys and girls over 10lbs. I’ve seen some nice fish, but nothing like I have in years past. The very cold spring coupled with the fact that Spinney isn’t putting out a flow and 11 Mile is still has 2 feet of ice doesn’t help.

In order for the Rainbows to have a large run a few things need to happen.
My Theory:
1. The water in 11 Mile needs to warm enough to trigger a single large migration.
2. This happens when the ice breaks, letting in more sunlight, warming the water etc.
3. This can be accelerated with increased flows out of Spinney that will force the 11 Mile inlet to melt.

If this doesn’t warm up soon the spawn won’t be good this year. I’m going to say it now and put my low level reputation on the line.

Morning search

Trout Are Cold Too

February 10, 2010 by n.taylor Leave a Comment

Still working

]Most people, (myself included) generally think that once the temperatures reach below 30 degrees the season is over until a full blown spawning run. While this may be true most of the time sometimes you just get lucky and turn miserable winter fishing into what seems like mid-summer glory.

What can I say, the powder this year has been lackluster and as much as I enjoy spending 5 hours in traffic on my way to the lifts, I think I will beat the crowds and head off to the mall to do some fishing. Grab yourself a couple desert storms, eggs, and autumn splendors and your arsenal is ready. All you need to do now is figure out someway to motivate yourself to head out when every bone in your body is saying, “Sportscenter, HBO, XBox…” I generally just promise myself McDonald’s breakfast. Hasn’t failed me yet.
Flies and jackets are just part of the equation, you need some pretty good gear too. For instance, this nice Litespeed did the trick while completely frozen. As far as rods, none of that matters. If you get suckered into a $700 Orvis/Sage/Winston P.O.S. I’m sorry, no rod is worth more than $300 unless you are fishing salt.

Big n' nasty

I have yet to see someone need to make a 70 foot cast or make one better with a more expensive rod. Just go buy a TFO and spend the extra money on gas so you can warm yourself up at lunch.
Oh yeah, and if you want to get nice fish moving I suggest throwing some stuff at them that gets their attention. While Rainbows aren’t as carnivorous as Browns, they will get territorial when they are getting ready to start making babies. Just think of the way women act when you don’t put away the dishes and they’re 35 weeks along. Doesn’t take much to get them irritated.

Peekabo