Stellako on a dry fly

I had a bit of time this weekend and my choice was take the boat out to a lake or wade the Stellako river again trying to fool rainbows with a dry fly. Well, dry fly fishing won, so off I went.

Last night I tied up a few dry fly patterns and had one on and ready to go before even reaching the river. Having fished it just last week I already had a plan for where I wanted to fish and went straight for those spots.

Despite some pretty good wind, all it took was one cast and I was already into fish. A healthy rainbow who put up a nice fight and some acrobatics came to hand and was released. The first stop produced a few decent fish and then went quiet. I wandered downstream, hooking into a few small fish on the way. I stopped at a nice pocket of water and happened to look upstream just in time to see the back end of a black bear duck into the shrubs on the opposite bank. As I looked down stream around the corner I could see another black bear, on my side of the river, standing on the bank.
I figured I had better leave them alone and went back up stream to where I started.

When I reached the head of the river, the rain and hail decided to make an appearance which made my decision to leave a little bit easier.

Today wasn't the fast and furious action of last weekend but some nice fish were caught. I think something was trying to tell me to put away the fishing rod and pick up the rifle. I saw six deer on the short drive to the river and two bears on the river. We'll see what happens next weekend.

The fly of the day was a cinnamon caddis type pattern, larger than I would have thought seemed to be more effective in bringing the rainbows up.

Hook: standard size 10 or 12 dry fly hook
Thread: 8/0 tan thread
Body: rusty brown dubbin
Body hackle: brown dry fly hackle
Rib: extra small copper wire
Wing: elk hair

On the vise

In preparation on my trip to the Skeena River and surrounding area tomorrow, I have been trying up all sorts of salmon and steelhead flies. The latest of which is a variation of a favorite steelhead fly of mine. I have tied it in a variety of colours such as pink/purple, blue/black and now an orange/copper. I'm hoping to entice some steel and maybe a coho with it. I have had good sucess with copper flies for coho in the past.

For those of you interested the recipe is:

Hook: Owner size 2 - model 5115-091 tied as a stinger on a 25mm waddington shank.
Thread: 140 orange
Tail: copper flashabou
Body: wrapped copper flashabou
Hackle: black hackle tied in at the tip
Dubbing ball: holographic - gold orange diamond dub
Under wing: uv pearl crystal flash
Wing : orange fox fur (or craft fur)
Over wing: black angel hair
Collar hackle: natural guinea

Low and clear fly fishing at the Capilano

Four o'clock in the morning is so early!

After only getting about 4 hours of sleep the night before, I was up and ready to hit the Capilano river with my fly rod for some early season coho.
When we arrived at the river we were happy to see it was quite void of the usual crowds of fishermen.  This was probably due to the early hour and the fact it was a weekday. Not to mention we were in for some tough fishing due to the very low and clear water. In these conditions it is important to go with small size offerings. Today I was using size 10 and 12 flies.
We started off near the highway bridge, a popular run I had never visited before. I can see the attraction to that run, there was a decent pool and some nice water to fish with a few boulders u der the water to provide structure. However, with the low clear water there were no fish holding there. So after giving it a try and coming up empty handed we moved on and up stream to find some more water to drop a fly in.
At our next stop we found a nice deep pool that had some surface action with a variety of sizes of fish from little smolts to decent sized coho. The main pool with all the action proved to be full of tight lipped fish. I went for a bit of a walk down stream and managed a couple small fish (4 and 6 inches). Not wanting to bither the little guys I moved on and found some nice pocket water. The water was deep and slow enough and a slightly agitated surface so I could not see down into the clear water. Perfect... except it was quite the technical pocket to fish with varying currents, tight quarters and the challenge of etting the fly down deep without the rest of the line getting caught in the heavier current and sweeping the fly out. At first I tried it with a bead head fly (as seen in the picture) and a heavy sink tip, but it wasn't enough to keep the fly deep. I felt my fly was not in the zone fast enough or long enough. The pocket was no more than about 8-10 feet long and maybe 2-3 feet wide of slower water. Nothing was tempted to try my fly. My next step was to secure a tiny splitshot to the leader to help keep it in the zone. No sooner had I done this and i could see a coho follow my fly up on the retrieve ( which was more or a slow lift upstream than a strip) but trn away last second. This happened two times before it slammed the fly. The coho took to the air with a couple jumps, some vigorous headshakes and then snap.... my leader broke just above the fly. I was disappointed but excited at the same time.
Unfortunately, that was the only other fish we touched this morning and it was the only one we saw hooked. The water needs to come up a bit to bring in some fresh fish.