12-7-03 - Early Morning on the Waterloo and it's great; all the vegetation is gone giving me an uninterrupted view of the stream as I walk along the bank!

Pulled out a nice smaller wild brown, as always, on the Tucker Nymph!

Rainbows were tough to hook up with...many in the pod I was working simply had lockjaw.

FMA put a new spin on a well-known fish holding hole by fishing from the other bank. 16/22 out of ONE HOLE in probably less than one hour under WINTER conditions. Where was that performance YESTERDAY FMA?!

One of FMA's favorite catches of the weekend, a nice larger wild brown. This guy will live on to be a trophy someday. (Copyright 2003 Fred Anderson)

FMA got in the spirit landing several wild browns! (Copyright 2003 Fred Anderson)

After a quick trip to the North Bear, I hit the downtown pool on South Bear...several fish were rising at the tail.

First Rainbow of the afternoon. Since it's winter we let them all go today so there will be plenty of fish to carry over until stocking resumes in March.

Just another winter rainbow for MP.

Keep those winter rainbows coming baby!

Team BLT poses for a shot at one of the two honey holes that secured their victory in the Smackdown.

VIDEO?! That's right, this link opens up to a QuickTime vid. of Redhat hooking up but losing on the South Bear. There are still so many features of my new Nikon that I haven't played with yet, video being one of them! 7.6 MB - if you prefer to download it to your hard drive "right click" on the picture and chose "save target as".

VIDEO again! This time, Red Hat bags his quarry - 16.2 MB.

This was the fish that Red Hat landed in the 2nd. video above.

12-07-03 - Pet Fly Smackdown "Afterparty"

Waters Fished: Waterloo Creek, North Bear Creek, South Bear Creek
Fish Caught: 11
Outing Date: 12-07-03
Weather: Cloudy
Air Temp: 40's, sporadic breezes
Water Temp: Water Temps were around 39-40F
Water Level: Normal.
Water Color: All were clear
Fish Species: Brown Trout, Rainbow Trout
Pattern Fished: Tucker Nymph
Pattern Color: as per the original pattern
Fishing Quality: surprisingly good!

Alright folks, so the "Afterparty" was actually the campfire, but hey, what better way to celebrate than to keep on fishing, right?

Well, I was a bit sick with something on Sunday morning, and still am, as it's Thursday and I really don't even have the energy to write this! So needless to say, I slept in a bit on Sunday morning while the BLTs and Greg headed out to fish.

Their first stop was the Waterloo; later in the morning I met up with FMA and he headed out that way too...after some breakfast and a shower I finally made it to the water. Meanwhile, Fruitbat was already home and FAT was headed that way as well; the boys were sick too.

Well, at first it didn't sound too good for the Waterloo...only a couple fish were taken in the normal spots. I met up with FMA and the rest headed upstream to try other pools. So FMA and I spent the morning working over the water that had already been pounded by our buddies.

In all fairness they should have perhaps stayed?! From what I hear they only hooked into 2 or 3 fish upstream. Meanwhile, I gave FMA the verbal tour, describing the various fish-holding holes downstream from our drop in. After about 30 minutes, Fred came back up and said, "Look, I had to come back up. I would feel really guilty if I didn't tell you, I've gone 15/19 in that pool downstream." LOL, I went down to check it out and figured out WHY he was doing so well...most folks can't get a good presentation into the pool from the common bank; cross the river and you make that pool your b*tch; Fred ended his time there just a few minutes later with a total of 16/22 if I remember correctly!

Well, after noon we made our way over to the North Bear. Since the BLTs headed over there earlier, FMA and I literally hit EVERY spot on the North AND South Bear - no sign of their vehicles. I left Fred at the Junction of the Bears and headed out for another look (I was Tim's ride home!). Along the way I stopped at the South Bear right in town; found a few 'bows smackin' the surface in the first pool. Put in some long distance casts (about 60 feet) as anything closer was spooking them and keeping them off the surface. When I got the long presentation going, I was rewarded with 4 fish landed, a couple hitting the Tucker Nymph the instant it hit the water.

Well, I headed back to the North Bear and found the BLT's vehicles at the FIRST PLACE we had looked earlier! Feeling pretty lousy, I decided a nap was in order.

When I finally came to via the sounds of B and Red Hat walking up to the car, I learned that the North Bear was crowded and things hadn't gone so well. More bites than the Waterloo, but not the action they had seen the day before. So the unanimous decision was to head back to the South Bear's honey holes and end the day catchin' fish!

B had some ibuprofen which I thankfully downed; by the time we made it to the South Bear I was still under the weather so I opted not to fish. But I was starting to feel better, so what the heck, I walked down with my camera and figured I'd watch my buddies fish.

Man, what I good time I had watchin' the boys work the pools. I ran back and forth between the two holes which happened to be the ones B and I found on our first trip to the South Bear. By the way, there's something like 5 miles of Lower South Bear. Well, that's 5 ROAD miles...the river winds and twists a lot, so there could easily be 7-10 miles of river down there to explore. SWEET! Obviously there's more good spots just waiting to be found.

I took some pictures, but the real highlight of the evening was trying out my camera's "movie" functionality, which allows me to capture up to 1 minute of quarter-screen video! I'll leave you with these final comments; they hooked a lot of fish, and I have the videos to prove it! Check them out if you're on a high speed connection!

So is this the end of fishing for 2003? Perhaps. Then again, there has been rumors of Steelheads and Browns still being taken on the fly in the Milwaukee and Root. And Chromeseeker has suggested another WINTER TROUT RUN before we close out the year. 130 days in 2003 so far...you know me...it might be worth checking back before 2004 starts (which, BTW, I think I'll be fishing on 01-01-04, can't think of a better way to ring in the New Year!).

  MP