Madison and Firehold River in the Park

 We arrived in West Yellowstone late Tuesday afternoon.  We checked into our rather small room and drove into the park to fish the Madison at 8 mile for evening caddis.  The fishing was pretty tough.  I caught a couple, but nothing impressive.  After a heavy rain we drove up to the meadow on the firehole river.  After catching 3 browns on a white caddis it was dark and time to had back to West Yellowstone. 

Real Fishermen Drink Good Coffee!

Check out Mayfly Coffee - Doc hasn't been on the water much lately, but he's been roasting some outstanding coffee.  Check it out!  Mayfly Roasting

Yellowstone

I'm less than a week from flying to West Yellowstone to spend almost a full week fishing the park.  Can't wait.  I'll post some reports if I catch fish, and maybe even if I don't! 

A few minutes on Gore and Eagle

I got a yardpass for a few hours of fishing on our recent trip to Colorado.  I didn't think I'd have much luck considering the weather and the reports of tough fishing on Gore creek, but I managed to stick a couple of nice fish, including this beautiful brown:

 The next day the wife agreed to ride the city bus down to a spot on Eagle River and let me fish for  a few minutes.  The weather was outstanding.

 I waded my way upstream and found a great run.  I caught a couple, but had and missed a number of very large fish.  The water was clear on both days, so I spent all of my time site fishing.  On the Eagle, I had on a 20 plus inch fish, and just couldn't keep him on the line.  I had a number of 16 plus inch trout chase my streamer, but couldn't get solid hook-ups.  I could have spent days fishing, but I knew the wife was ready to go, and this was an anniversary trip, so I had to put the flyrod away.  Until another time....

Hiwassee Feb. 2014

I met up with Streamer Rob and Goto for a float down the Hiwassee in Reliance. Originally, we were counting on two generators, but TVA decided to pulse this weekend. We decided to give it a go regardless.  It worked out pretty well.  We put in at the launch at the 10 a.m. pulse and made our way slowly down stream.  The fishing was slow for the 3-4 hours.  The 2nd pulse came on around 2 p.m. and we decided to take a break and eat lunch.  We then drifted our way down a little further and found a nice set of runs.  The highlight of the trip was at the end, when a nice hatch came off, and we started getting into fish on dry flies, nymphs, and streamers.  I hooked a large bow that spit the hook about 5 seconds into the fight - I saw the fish, probably 18-20 inches.  I managed a nice 15 inch bow to hand, but the one that got away was painful. We didn't catch a ton of fish, but it was a really good day to be on the water. 

No Fire on Fires Creek

 I met up with Doc in Ducktown.  We had decided to spend a few hours fishing Fires Creek.  The weather was great, but the fishing was rough.  I guess when the creek is full of ice that should be a good sign that the fish probably won't be moving too much.  A good trip nonetheless.  Surprisingly, there was a small hatch of blue wings, and I found a stonefly walking on the ice (see pic below).