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3. Iso's Help Get the Skunk Out of the Boat

Finally!!! Manistee River, guide Ed McCoy, and some Iso's, help brighten up a couple Michigan angler's weekend!

Nice fish in the daylight hours...

Spence

Really nice fish, Spence! Beautiful looking river too. Just my style!

Ok...When you coming over?! :)

Spence

Well done Spence, those are some beautiful browns and love the brookie.

Mike.

Spence,very nice!! But it looks like you two guys were passing that big brown trout back and forth for the photos! :-)

Very pretty fish, Spence! What are the length/weight stats on that big guy?

Jonathon

Based on the spotting patterns I believe Picture #1 & #3 are the same fish but I don't think it is the same fish as in pictures 6, 7 & 9. I don't think that Spence would be passing around a fish as beautiful as the one he is holding. Maybe I'm wrong but Spence's fish appears much more heavy bodied then the one the other fellow is holding.

Nice work!

Here's a question for you, Spence: how the hell do you get your freakin' fish to SIT STILL for photos??? I keep them all in the net and it's the dickens to get them to calm down for a nice shot. Do you guys hypnotize them or something? Fight them to exhaustion (I assume not)? Play soothing music?? Chant something spiritual??? Of course, I'm sure it makes it easier to have someone else in the boat...

Jonathon

He turns them upside down, belly up, and tickles them a bit until they go into a trance.

Matt, I've actually done that with frogs, and it worked! I suppose I'll have to try that next time I get one worthy of a photo...

Jonathon

Matt, I am just kidding trying to give the ol' Spence a hard time. He sends me emails while fishing out East and then heading out West, etc. We can't give him any slack. He has become a full time trout bum, like you!! :-)

Wiflyfisher wrote;



Yep, I've been retired 11 years and two months now. I try to fish 100 days a year. I'd like to fish more but I want to stay married. I've fished 35 days since late April. I'm going up to my cabin six more days before I leave for Montana and I'll be there for ten days. At this rate I'll probably break 100 days.

I guess I sometimes take things to literally. It is interesting to study spotting patterns on brown trout though. Before I started to go to Montana with my current partner he would go out about two weeks before I got there. One year he caught a really big trout and I also caught a big trout in the same area. It just happened that both the pictures he took and the ones I took were of the same side of the fish.

He made me aware of the unique spotting patterns and how you can know if you, and others, are catching the same trout. I'll try and attach the pictures.

Sorry boys! I was running when I tossed this up the other night and didn't fill in the blanks...Matt is correct...I have a couple pics of my trout and my friends Bill's fish.

My fish came on day two and was 21 and a half inches.

Bill caught nearly exact 19"er's on day 1 and day 2...Plus a nice 16" fish.

We caught quite a few other fish, but as usual, the ones we missed will haunt us. I had two on day one that were in big fish spots that both turned on my fly only to have me somehow miss them.

On day two we came upon a fish feeding in the "Y" of the branches left by a fallen tree in the river. Ed, the guide, looked at me and said, "Spence. No guts no glory! What you have to lose but some tippet and a fly?" Somehow my fly landed right in front of him and he turned and chased it downstream into the bubble line and inhaled it...It then muscled its way down into the rest of the tree, and I was on 3X! It freed itself and I was left hooked to the tree!

My friend Bill had a similar thing happen but he was successful. I caught a nice rise out of the corner of my eye as we passed and I was beyond the fish...I yelled to Bill in the rear and he tossed the fly perfectly into the bubble line and the fish took it and he landed it...I think that was the smaller Brown pic after the Brook...If the fish hadn't eaten his fly he would of hooked a clump of growth just below the fish...I watched as this took place and if we had a camera running then it would of been cool.

Are we square? :)

Spence

Oh...Jonathon...That 2nd pic of my fish he's blurred...He wasn't co-operating...We try to be very careful with these brutes and get them back swimming again ASAP...If there is any problem that slows the process or puts the trout in danger, no picture is taken. We go nowhere until the trout has swam strongly out of our hands on its own power...These are gorgeous brutes and we are blessed that they are in our Michigan rivers.

That guy had a couple Chestnut lamprey scars on him.

Bill's 19" fish of day one failed to get its picture taken because it's fight was actually weaker than that of the 16" fish he caught that day...Wasn't sure why so he was rested along the side of the boat a while and off he went.

Spence

One other thing...We were on the Manistee downstream a good distance from Grayling...The Brown Drakes start up here, according to Ed,seven days after the Iso's...We caught all these fish in the daytime while all those chasing Drakes in the upper water were sitting around in the dark waiting for things to get going and then it rained on them!...Both evenings we had a steady rain as the spinners were getting started and it chased them back to the shrubs...Both of us wonder what it would of been like had the rain stayed away and those spinners had come down!

Beside's the Iso's we had Gray Drakes and Cahill's and a few sulphers and small olives...Damn! I love Iso's!!! They illicit crazy feeding behavior in trout...Gets them all geeked up with all those swimming nymphs scurrying past their heads...:) Got to love it!

I may have said this already, but I have floated with Ed three Junes in a row and have broken 20"s all three times! His flies are offered in the Orvis catalogs...Ed McCoy's AP Drakes and the secret one we were trying out for him on this trip...Another guide Johnny Ray calls the secret fly, "Hash-tag, you still can't buy this!" :)

I have seen a zillion great flies tied by a zillion wonderful tiers, but Ed has it going on...That he let me stare at it for as long as I did, and the times he's let me peer into his boxes, I truly appreciate...He told me he didn't care if I figured out how to tie it and tied them for myself, but he'd bean me royally if I sold them anywhere! :) Oh...and then there's the secret Pteronarcy's dorsata he let me toss around for a while...Wow!

The attention to detail may put a kibosh on these making it to production...Usually the manufacturers want flies it takes little time to produce.

Spence