It's been a busy few weeks for us here at Tippets and Tales. From new waders to end of the month craziness at the office. It's all been in an effort to chase some chrome over the last couple of weekends.
Good weather and good company made the last two weekends a ton of fun. We fished familiar water and found new stretches. We drank some good beer and knocked back some firewater. Here's a taste of why I work so hard and why it's all worth it.
It's hard to beat a good photo essay. When it's a fly fishing photo essay, I enjoy spending a bit of time to study each and immerse myself in it. It may just be a moment, but a good photo tells more than a story, it conveys a feeling and brings the viewer in. At least that what I strive for in my photography.
Stuart passed along a link to the Best Made Co.'s website which featured a great spread by Craig Buckbee. As I sit here editing a mountain of images, it's features like this that help fuel the fire and give me the inspiration to get out and shoot more.
My phone rang, it was Pat Ehlers.
“It’s going to be seventy degrees; you want to fish Big Muskego?”
I met Pat at 8:00am, we were on the water by 8:30 and watched the duck hunters come in.
“Fly or spin?”
Pat loaded three rods onto the boat, “Fly only, should be a good day for it.”
He was using his new 7wt design and I was using the 8wt. Both are good rods for casting large bass and pike flies, which is a good thing because big flies were what we threw including a monster of a fly, the Game Changer, a Flymen articulated special. I would use a 9wt but the 7wt cast it if you didn’t mind a sloppy cast now and then.
The sun is warm; the water has a slight chop. Pat set us up on a long drift from one reed clump to another and he hits first with a good sized pike followed by a bass. I change flies after getting no strikes from a chartreuse minnow pattern. It’s a craft fur minnow, white and green with big eyes. Second cast and good bass hits, five casts later another bass and then a pike. Pat changes flies to a grey and white minnow pattern that I was thinking of stealing. Pike and bass charge it.
The wind picks up. We do a long drift and it’s time to go in.
“You think Lefty Kreh is right about fly fishing having about ten years left in it?”
“Well, lots of people have talked about the demise of fly fishing.”
"I think if they were with us today, they might change their mind, unless they had to cast that big ass fly.”
“Man up Van Dorn.”
The sun was warm, the water was clear, the fish were plentiful.
Stuart Van Dorn
