cosmo | Horseshoe Bar Fish & Game Preserve, Inc.

Crazy caddis hatch

cosmo — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 04:58:14 +0000

I fished with my 12 year old son Clay today. We hiked down beyond the cathedral. There were both medium brown caddis and October caddis hatching from 4:30 pm on. And there were a lot of them. Best hatch I’ve seen at the club, of any type, since the march browns this spring — actually better.

Clay hooked a pretty good sized fish on an orange stimulator. After a nice arial and a couple of runs it stopped short about five feet from shore. I kept telling him to swing it over to me so I could net it. And he kept saying “I can’t!” Thinking he hooked a monster — and I could just barely see it beneath the surface, because it was obscured by the glare — I took a few steps toward it. That riled-up the fish and he wriggled off the hook. What happened was that the nymph that was tied about 4-5 feet behind the stim got snagged on a rock, and the fish couldn’t move except a little side-to-side.

The rest of the fish we caught took size 16 parachute BWOs.

Clay says he wants to fish more. Cosmo is a happy dad. I think he is going to get his own Tenkara rod too.

Can’t wait to hit the club again.

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Tenkara fishing looks awesome

cosmo — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 17:58:34 +0000

After seeing a Tenkara rod up-close-and-personal last night at the club, I’m stoked to try it. The simplicity of the rod and flies is very intriguing. While a huge part of fly fishing for me is pulling off a perfect cast and the rush of seeing a fish smash your dry fly — or even better, watching the fish appear out of the depths to roll on your fly — I really do love the quiet intimate nature of short line fishing. I have to say that my fly fishing world has just been rocked.

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Hackles cleared out in area shops!

cosmo — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 15:53:03 +0000

Apparently some famous rock-star has made it into a fassion to wear hackle feathers in your hair. So, as if genetic hackles weren’t already too expensive, now they’ve become a hot commodity. I can’t find any anywhere. Anyone have a secret source they wouldn’t mind sharing?

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Zugs and other bugs.

cosmo — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 08:01:41 +0000

I fished the club today (Sunday). It was one of those rare days where I could have gone home skunked but still with a smile on my face. Off the water it was a bit hot, but there was just enough breeze to keep you from melting inside your fishing vest. On the water it was absolutely glorious. The breeze from the water was just perfect. I could have stayed in the water indefinitely. The water temperature has come up considerably since just a week or so ago. I waded all day in thin cotton pants with neoprene booties in my wading boots. No numb toes today.

I started out nymphing with a zugbug with various flies trailing it. That yielded several nice fish, one of which had me scrambling down stream because he was big and hot and didn’t want to get into my net. He kept surging into the current.

By the time I got to the lake there were PMDs coming off. I nymphed from the rocks by the tunnel for a while, but didn’t catch anything. I decided to launch a boat to get close to the fish I saw rising. A parachute PMD, on the first cast, hooked one hot fish but the hook broke right at the end of the shank while fighting him. It must have been a fluke because that was it for dries for quite a while, even though more and more fish were rising. I didn’t realize at first that the rises were splashy and not leaving bubbles. Once I did, I used my aquarium net to scoop just below the surface. I cought a rusty colored spinner in the film. Luckily I had two Antron winged rusty spinners so I tied one on behind my parachute PMD. By this time there was literally a feeding frenzey going on. But the only thing that worked was to submerge my flies and strip them in slowly. All subsequent fish took the spinners.

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Report 6/24/2011

cosmo — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 23:41:51 +0000

I fished the Middle Fork outside the club for about an hour yesterday. Despite the high flows, there was a mixed hatch and fish working it. PMDs were predominate and coming off strong. Water was tinted the color of Lipton Iced Tea. There was about 1 foot of visibility.

Over all, though, it seems spring conditions are finally upon us.

One guy I ran into said he’s been catching browns on salmon eggs, so we might start trailing glo bugs behind our nymphs at the club.

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Fishing yesterday #!@%*

cosmo — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 22:49:08 +0000

Yesterday (Sunday, 1/23/2011) I tried for a repeat of last week’s success. Last week it was warm and clear. I hooked six fish and landed five — all on orange glo bugs.

When I got there, at between 1 and 2 PM, the clear blue skies lulled me into dressing lightly. But by the time I got to the end of the trail through the bear cave I realized it was rather cold by the water. And, standing in the water sucked what little body heat I had right out of me. I ended up starting to get hypothermic. My legs got painful from standing in the water, even with waders on. I couldn’t move my fingers enough to tie a knot. It was really amazing how long it took me to rig up after breaking off on a snag. And I can tell you this much, Rio Fluoroflex is not going to be in my vest in cold water/air fishing conditions in the future. Although I’ve had great success in warmer water with Rio’s Fluoroflex, in the cold I’ll be using Sportsman’s Warehouse house brand Fluorocarbon tippet. When cold, Rio is brittle, breaks from even the slightest tug, and does weird things while you try to tie it.

I ended up hooking into a really big fish in the pocket near the end of the tributary. I lost it after a pretty good fight. Then I went down stream for a while and caught nothing. Then back to the tributary to work my way upstream, wading was tough from the high flows, but I was able to manage it. I only caught one more fish, a 12″ rainbow. Both were enticed by PT Nymphs – small, like a #18.

I only had one glo bug, and it fell apart on the first or second cast. I did have some Troutbeads, which came highly recommended at Fly Fishing Specialties. But, those didn’t work out because I couldn’t get them to roll over on the cast and they kept snagging on either my thingamabobber or my leading nymph. I ditched the beads and went straight to a single nymph rig. When I use the Troutbeads again, I’m going to have to use a much heaver tippet and much smaller hooks. And I think I’ll mark a red yolk dot on them with a red sharpie.

I should have gone skiing. It would have been warmer! ;-)

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