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3. McKenzie Redside

Found this guy in the McKenzie River this morning. One of the nicer/larger fish that I have caught lately. Aching hands well rewarded!!

Nice 'bow there, Keystoner! Ah, yes, the McKenzie...my ex-wife and I fished it one July afternoon and evening, the afternoon out of a rubber raft and evening by wading. We caught a bunch of those redbands, only one of which was wild - you could tell by the colors and the fins. Oregon is a beautiful place! Enjoy your new home. And, if you ever get down to the Coos Bay area, go visit South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve - I once had a field biology job there (my very first!) back in '92-'93. Tell them all that Jonathon DeNike says Hi! And there are sea-run cutthroat and coho in those little creeks that run through the reserve, especially Winchester Creek.

Jonathon

There you go, Matt! I know you have been working your "you know what off" out there trying to get that river to co-operate and there is your reward! Hey! You are one of "those Pennsylvania Boys" and weren't about to give up as long as you knew there were trout out there...:)

I have always said that us mid-west/easterner's cut our teeth on some of the most educated trout, in some of the toughest casting spots around...Those western "wild" trout are naive in comparison...You should do just fine...:) This last sentence is meant to rattle Kurt's cage...:)

Spence

I agree with spence when he says that the eastern boys don't give up and know how to do things on the river ha. Nice job Matt!

Most of our Western wild trout went to Stanford.

Thanks guys! It's been spotty, I'll be skunked for days, and then I'll get 5 in an hour. Same fly the next day. nothing. Every now and then, I get a beauty like this one. I have also gotten into a few which have straight schooled me! As in, take me down to my backing and then break off in about 2 seconds, just amazing.

It's also tough because unlike everyone else out here, I don't have a boat. But I keep on wailing away just the same.

Hi Matt,

Nice rainbow. By the look of things, you're starting to get quite acclimated.:)



Ha! Now you know why Seyfu and I have been talking about never going below 5x on the big freestones and 6x (if we can help it) on the spring creeks. When a decent rainbow gets it into his head to hit the accelerator, there's no way to stop them on the tackle it usually takes to fool them.



Not surprising on the river where the modern drift-boat was worked out.

Spence -



A long day on the river has me too tired to get my cage rattled. The size 20 baetid fishing was intense for our easy wild rainbows.:)

Regards,

Kurt

Indeed. One of the hardest aspects of this river is that I'm used to PA creeks where 7X is mandatory. It's hard for me to put a fly on 5X tippet and actually expect a trout to eat it. These McKenzie River fish also have A LOT more room to run! I've landed a fair ammount of large Browns on 7X back in PA, and they do run, but they have a lot less range in a limestone that is only 10 feet wide. It's also much easier to chase after them. In a majority of the bank fishing situations I've been in on the McKenzie, there's just no way you're going to do that. You just gotta stand there, try to maintain, and brace yourself for the moment when your line goes slack, causing a certain four letter word to spontaneously leave your lips.

Glad to hear you are hitting them out there, Matt. What flies are you using? For the July evening fishing I described above, my ex- and I were throwing #12 Elkhair Caddis with a yellow body and grey wings and hackle. I was told to try this pattern by a float-guide I talked to over the phone, and it worked like a charm!

Jonathon

P.S. I don't ever go below 4x around these parts and I got no shortage of trout over the summer months, but then again a lot of them were brookies, or if browns, most were caught in the evening into darkness (though some took hoppers in broad daylight on the Pine). Ours must not be as educated as those PA fish. If, as Sayfu says, "Most of our Western wild trout went to Stanford", our brookies must be high school dropouts!

Yeah, the streams I'm refering to hold wild browns that see [almost] exclusively fly pressure, and a lot of it. These streams are often low and clear. Add to that, the fact that most of the bugs being imitated are size 20 or smaller. I can't count the number of times I've seen a fish move to my fly, carefully consider it, and then pass. Of course, the stockies are a bit easier.

Fly selection out here has been one of the things I've had trouble nailing down. Haven't found any "sure" bets yet. Ironically, perhaps, the old Quasimodo Flashback Pheasant tail 16 that was such a hit in PA, is also what I've had the most consistent success on here. Just goes to show you... I've also taken them on stonefly nymphs, mega-princes, rubberlegs pheasant tails, and wooly buggers. Haven't done too much dry fly fishing (I'm kind of a nymph addict), but when I have I used the caddis you mention, as well as BWOs on damp mornings. No real success yet with these. I'm looking forward to/hoping for some decent midge action this winter.

Matt, we have a lot of worm dunkers around these parts, perhaps explaining the lower education level of our fishies. Plus, most of our flies are larger - I haven't talked to many folks here in Michigan that would ever go down to a size 20, and I myself have almost never gone below a #16, with most of my dry fly fishing happening with #12-14 and even some #10 (and much bigger during Hex hatches, of course).

The nice thing about the Pine River system is that it receives NO stocking! It's all wild fish, which is one more reason to throw them all back, and there's lots of brookies in it, though the browns and rainbows are there if you look for them. It isn't big fish water, but the bigger ones are out there, as one fellow who I had no real reason to doubt told me he got a 4-lb. brown not too far downstream from one of my favorite spots. Of course, this could always have been a lake-run fish from the big waters of Lake Huron...

Jonathon

Hmmm...This is an interesting comment Jonathon...Maybe the bugs get smaller, then, the further upstream on the Au Sable and closer to Grayling one gets. :)

Tricos (22-26), Baetis (many,many, Baetis down to say 24 or so), my formally named P anoka (24-26), not to mention midges...P adoptiva is an 18, E dorothea an 18 or slightly smaller,small caddis (micro-caddis), Tiny Early Winter Stones (16-20), small ants...You may be missing some very fine fishing there buddy.

Spence

Just off the top of my head.... excellent fishing hatches #18 or smaller on the upper AuSable (Michigan).... baetis, adoptiva, dorothea,tricorythodes, chimarra caddis, anoka (formally).... micro caddis I don't know the names of and midges I don't know the names of...

There is a considerable amount of fishing time when, if you want to "match the hatch", you will have a fly on that's #18 or smaller, no question...

I would have to say 14 and 16 are the most used dry fly size I fling. Cut down a griffiths 16 to fish tricos and it was the only way I could catch em. I just didn't have anything smaller. Worked like a charm. 5x is as small as I go.

I just don't run into these "teeny tiny" hatches on the waters I fish, guys (Rifle and Pine Rivers). And these streams are much closer to me than the waters you fellas fish on the Au Sable, so that's where I go. It just hasn't happened to me, and you know, that's just fine...

Jonathon

That absolutely is just fine, buddy. I traveled 3,000 miles from "teeny tiny" hatch land, and they're stilling telling me to throw 16s and 18s out there. What gives?

Maybe if I drive over to your section of the Rifle or Pine, I could fish a fly I could actualy see, and then I might actually get to being a half decent dry fly guy. Fish on, brother.

Yes it is...As they say, "To each his own", right?

Mr. Neal will tell you and he's said it here before that them Grayling boys like to toss large flies...There is an old saying, "Big flies equals big fish"...Hell! There are some folk that just fish the Hex and consider that the fishing season, but all I'm saying is that there is some fine fishing to be had by going small. Sometimes, size does matter...;)



I have told the story somewhere here before about sitting in a screened porch on the N Branch of the Au Sable when an angler waded down to the stairs just below where I was sitting. He gave me a lecture about his religion that he could never see a reason to fish anything smaller than a 12 or 14...I pointed to the size 24 (old P adoptiva) literally covering my screen and I said, "I've been doing very well on these", pointing in the direction of the screen. He squinted at them and shook his head from side to side and made a face like he was denying what his eyes had just seen and mumbled, "No way!", as he headed off downstream...I was a heretic to him...Damn near a member of the occult! :)

There is a great deal of faith like qualities in fly fishing...Blind faith, if you ask me. Tie on the "usual" or "the old trusty" and thrash the water in to a froth of hopefulness and prayer...:) A nice thing about this churchiness, when the dinky flies are about anyway, is sometimes the church is empty and I find myself in solitude...I can almost hear the snores of the sleeping Hex-Men...:)

So, Jonathon, you are going to stand by your thought that there is a trout filled stream in good old Michigan without a Baetid or Trico hatch? Even the trout-free Huron has a nice Trico hatch. My father was a lay minister in Hillman and he was always a bit troubled over his doubt-ridden son and would tell me that somethings are just a matter of faith...Ok then. :)

"A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." Paul Simon "The Boxer".

I'm actually going to see him here in Detroit this Friday evening...My little sister is taking her old "hippie" brother. There is almost 17 years difference between us.

"Detroit. Detroit. You've got a hell of a hockey team. You got a left-handed way of making a man sign up on that automotive dream...Oh yeah." "Papa Hobo" Paul Simon

That last one's for Tony in PA...;)

"Michigan seems like a dream to me now...We've all gone to look for America" P Simon

Spence

Spence, if I saw these teeny tinies hatching in any numbers on the waters that I fish, and fish rising to them, I would tie them and fish them. BUT I DON'T. Get it? I've seen a few tiny mayflies here and there, but NEVER in any significant numbers and when they are around I don't see any fish rising, probably because there aren't ENOUGH of them to justify feeding on top!

One day on the Rifle, there were fish rising all over the place, to something that I couldn't see, as there were almost no visible flies of ANY size on the water. I saw maybe less than a dozen mayflies and caddisflies all afternoon, yet the water seemed to be almost boiling with fish! I tied on a #12 Female Adams (I posted this story on here back then, early June I think it was) and had fish hitting it left and right, most of which were little guys I couldn't hook, but I did bring 7 browns to hand and lost probably three more.

If it were happening on the rivers that I fish, I would go small, but whenever I am there I just don't see it, and I think I do plenty of trout fishing these days, as well as when I lived up here 10-13 years ago.

BTW, do the smallies in the Huron feed on the Tricos? I would guess NOT...

Jonathon

And he carries the reminders
Of ev'ry glove that laid him down
Or cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame,
"I am leaving, I am leaving."

Kind of like 2009


Cathy, I said, as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh


I never really considered myself a hippie...

Tony,

Very nice trico hackle-stacker. Reversing it is interesting.

Kurt