Forbes.com lists “North America’s Top 10 Trout-Fishing Towns”

Didn’t know that Forbes is keeping a “Top 10 trout fishing”  list, but what do I know? My back-yard fishing destination, the town of Redding, made the list — in case you’re wondering, my backyard is very big.  With all the great fishing spots, the world class guides and fishing destinations  Redding has to offer,  the top ten status is well deserved. Now if Forbes could only spell my name right on the photo credit that would be even better

You can read the article and what other towns made the list here .

“Rivers of a Lost Coast”

Yesterday I went to see “Rivers of a Lost Coast”, a documentary about Northern California’s steelhead rivers and their decline. The story is told through the eyes of fly fishermen who fished through the heydays of California Steelhead and Salmon runs. It also tells the remarkable story and rivalry of  legendary fly fishermen and ultimate fly fishing junkies, Bill Schaadt and Ted Lindner. It is an incredibly well done documentary, entertaining as it is enlightening. Kudos to the film makers Justin Coupe and Palmer Taylor. I highly recommend it to anyone, even none fly fisherman will enjoy this film.  I give it 4 thumbs up.

You can find out more at: http://www.riversofalostcoast.com

New Fly Fishing Artwork Released

 

I was finally able to work on some new large format canvas prints and add a new fly fishing  photo gallery to my online storefront.  If you have a big empty wall that needs some serious fly fishing art, these large format prints are a must see.  I create them using multiple high-resolution exposures that are “stitched” together. This ensures a high-quality, detail-rich print.  I am inspired by some landscape oil painters, so it is no accident that some of the photos have the look and feel of oil paintings. Once the final image is created, it is then printed onto canvas using a pigment inkjet printer. These prints are very archivable and, in addition, are lacquered with a UV-resistant coating for further protection. The canvas is Gallery Wrapped (stretched on fine art stretcher bars) and is delivered ready to hang.  I am still working on some more pieces and will be adding them to the Large Format Gallery in the near future so keep checking in. To go to the gallery directly click here.

Mel Krieger – The Lost Interview

About this interview:
Over 10 years ago, when I first conceived the idea for Fly Fishing Junkie, the Internet was still in it’s infancy and blogs really didn’t exist yet. Having always built my own websites I started work on the Fly Fishing Junkie site, which was very crude by today’s standards.  Between my first child being born and being sucked up into a multimedia startup, I was forced to put Fly Fishing Junkie on hold. Recently I found the transcript of an interview which I did in 1998 with Mel Krieger at the Golden Gate Fly Fishing Club. I used to be a member of the club, and still have fond memories of the Gin Fizz brunches and all the help the folks at the club gave me to get rid of my bad casting habits. Mel, who was also a member, frequently taught classes there. On one of those occasions he was gracious enough to sit down with me for a brief interview. Please note that when reading the interview you need to add about ten years to any of the time references. 

FFJ: It was great today seeing you again in action. How many people do you think you’ve taught fly-casting throughout your career, any idea? 

MK: I couldn’t begin to tell you, but it has been thousands. 

FFJ: How long have you been doing this now?

 

MK: About 30 years. I first started teaching in the Fenwick schools. For a while the Fenwick Rod Company was one of the first companies ever to set up fly fishing schools throughout the country and Fenwick actually appointed different people to run the schools. I did the schools on the West Coast, Gary Borger did them in the Midwest, and another man did them on the East Coast. I did all these weekend schools while I worked at other things. And got more and more involved in teaching, started writing a bit and then Fenwick lost their power in the marketplace. At one time Fenwick ruled the fly fishing market. I mean if you didn’t have a Fenwick rod  . . . I mean people laughed at you. If you had a Winston bamboo you were the odd one in a crowd. And then what happened is that Winston started making a good glass rods as well. In those days Fenwick did a really wonderful thing . . . I mean we had schools almost in every state of the union and they were full, but nobody was really promoting fly-fishing schools. So we got into it. 

 

FFJ: What did you do before fly-fishing? 

 

MK: Well, I was a sales manager for a refrigeration company, mainly involved in sales. Then I opened up a small business, a travel agency, and we opened up a visa service.

 

FFJ: What kind of service?

 

MK: A visa service, we got visa’s for people traveling outside the United States because San Francisco is a center for the consular corps. So that earned me enough income so I had a little more time to start doing more teaching, more fishing. I started traveling and taking groups with me. I discovered that I was pretty a good analyst and I started reading on fly-casting and what not. 

 

I discovered that the tournament casters were much more sophisticated than all the fishing writers were in terms of fly casting, and much of the fly casting information was the kind of stuff that was passed on from generation to generation. It wasn’t really up to snuff with modem fly casting, so with that in mind I started writing a little bit and exploring. The best information I got on fly-casting at that time was from a tournament caster in England, who wrote a pretty good book on casting. He was heavily involved in tournament casting.

The Blame Game

Seems that the blame game has become America’s and the world’s favorite past time. Any given hour you can turn on the tube or the radio and hear politicians and talking heads point the finger and blame “them” or “they” for everything from the economic crisis, the out of control national debt, the latest crime spree and so on. For a politician or a partisan pundit the blame game is, of course, part of their playbook, that’s how they make a living and get elected.  But unfortunately the blame game is not just limited to those making a living blaming others; no, the blame game has now become everyone’s favorite past time. Global warming, it’s all the fault of the Chinese and their coal burning plants, OR it’s a liberal conspiracy perpetrated by a bunch of left wing scientists that want to destroy the economy, OR it’s the people that drive those big SUVs  . . . you get the idea. Blame some other group or person and you don’t have to look in the mirror.  Blaming others allows us to absolve ourselves from taking any responsibility for our own actions and actually have an honest debate. In short the blame game is convenient, we all do it, all the time.

Of course the fly fishing community is not immune to the blame game either.

The Mysterious Bottle Nose Trout

So the other day I took my nephew Max, who was visiting from out of town, on a one-day fishing excursion to Putah Creek. March is not the best time to hit the creek, but we didn’t have many options available to us. Fortunately Max took a long his new camera, which kept this young and aspiring photographer busy, while I re-rigged and retrieved flies out of trees.  In case you’ve never fished Putah creek, it is a very “technical” body of water to fish, with lots of brush, finicky trout and fast water. After exploring different sections of the river in search of a good spot, we did finally find a run that looked promising and hooked up.

I must say that I have caught a lot of strange trout over the years, but this one was a first. My first impression was that this was a new species, or some kind of abomination. The nose of the trout was elongated and rectangular, it looked somewhat like the nose of a porpoise. Did I in fact catch a freak of nature or maybe even a new mutation of trout? After Max took a few pictures, I released the fish in awe, contemplating new names for this species,  ”The Cyrano de Bergerac trout, Bottle Nose trout, Porpoise Head “ 

 

 

But I knew there had to be an explanation, so I posted the picture on Bono’s Putah Creek Web Forum. Apparently I had caught a “spawned-out male”.  We all know that before they spawn, trout will go through a transformation. Besides changing color, the dominant males form a hooked jaw (aka kype).  But what happens after the spawn? Well the jaw mutates back, and during that process the fish might go through some funny stages.  So in the end I didn’t discover a new species, but I did learn something

Cool Gear and Stuff

Last weekend I visited the Pleasanton fly fishing show. I hadn’t been to a fly fishing exhibit for some time, so it was nice to run into some familiar faces. My favorite product of the whole show were the new wading boots by Korkers. Korkers came up with an ingenious system that lets you easily replace the sole of your boot. From what I can tell  the system seems very well designed.

Is this the coolest fish in the sea or an elaborate hoax?

 The Macropinna Microstoma gets my vote for coolest fish around. 

California’s Salmon run in recession

It isn’t bad enough that the economy is in the tank, even the salmon runs are in a recession. Bad water management and climate change are surely to blame for creating these conditions, but it seems the problem goes far beyond. The San Francisco Chronicle just released an interesting article  regarding the decline in Chinook runs, you can read the entire article here. We can only hope this is just a cyclical phenomena.

Tips & Tricks – What to do when you drown your camera

 

Let’s face it shit happens, to some more than to others. Drowning cameras is one of those things I actually seem to be quiet good at. In fact over the last 15 years I have drowned one Leica, a Nikon F3, several point and shoots and my trusted Canon 20D backup camera. In fact the image above was taken with my 20D just before it totally got submerged right next to the fish – now that would have been a picture The amazing thing is that of all the cameras I drowned over the years, the Canon 20D was one of the very few I was able to save, despite the fact that it was submerged the longest and had the most electronics in it. 

So here is the story: In 2005, I was fishing on the Trinity and had finally found a promising hole with some fish rolling in it.