Stocking Trout

This school year we were able to help out with stocking trout at South Mountains again. Before the truck came we had a little time to fish. This guy was super eager to eat and he chomped at my fly as soon as it hit the water. I didn't set the hook then, but I hooked him and brought him to hand a little later.

Stocking trout there has been such an awesome experience. I love getting to be so close to the trout and I love feeling like I'm helping in some way. The students really get into it as well.

Over spring break I took a family friend up to Wilson's Creek to fish and scout out a good place to camp with the scouts. We fished the stocked section for a couple of hours with no success and hardly a sighting. We decided to try and find a campsite and followed a side trail for a little while. We found an awesome place to hammock alongside a stream. We wet our lines and both of us within a couple of casts caught our first wild trout. These were brookies, and they were eager to eat. We didn't even have to get the fly close to them, they swam several feet to eat our prince nymphs.

Looking forward to coming back here in a week from today with the scouts.

After spring break, I headed back to SoMo to help stock the LCS trout. We had plenty of time to fish that day and I found a bridge that the fish were holding under. There was a monster trout that I kept hitting on the nose with several different flies, and he never cared much. I have been looking into some streamer patterns to hopefully target these big fish better. I did catch three other fish in the process. Here are two of them:

Summer Fishing

Even though it has been summer, and I haven't gotten much time to fish or to tie flies. Every so often I have taken some time at night to tie a fly or two. I have tons of fun doing it, though I think some formal training might help... and some decent materials. Right now I have been tying with feathers I find at a local petting zoo, and a few materials I have bought. I'm hoping to get some decent hackle soon.

I have been fishing twice this summer, and I can proudly say that I can add two more fish to my long list of fish caught. One was a bream that I caught on a camp out with some friends from church. We were in Rutherfordton on the Broad river. I was using a children's rod I bought for J-Man. I cut up some freshwater clam and was casting and reeling it in. It was a little thing, but I was happy with it. Janet and J had hit the hay about an hour earlier, and I wanted to join them.

The second was actually this morning at a friend's pond. We were over there to help chaperon a camp out for Activity Day Girls. It was an awesome experience for the girls (about 15-20 between 8-11 years old). It was a clear night so they all crowed in under a giant tarp that helped to keep the dew off of them. They went swimming, fishing, got on the pond in a little boat, helped cook, baited for snapping turtles, and the list goes on. Janet had to sleep under the tarp with them (it was set up like a tent) because Lara needed another woman to have the two deep leadership. I was there to be a priesthood holder along with Tony. He slept in the house, and I slept in their camper with J. Everyone was teasing us because it seemed backwards having the pregnant lady sleep on the ground (we brought three pads for her), but being a male I am not allowed to sleep with the girls.

Anyway, it went super well, and I ended up catching a bass that was around 10 inches. I fished for a while with a hopper-popper, but had very little luck with it. One bass slurped it up, but I didn't set the hook quick enough. I noticed the bass were sneaking up on minnows at the water's edge and then they would strike and storm off. So I tied on a zonker that I had tied that looked like the minnows. I hooked up on the second cast, but alas, the bass shook it off. I kept trying and finally hooked another bass. This time I brought it to hand. I'm super inexperienced with taking the hook out, and this one was deep so it took me a while to get it out. The fish seemed to be fine though as I released it. I love feeling that rod bend. It is so much fun. It seems like spin casting/bait casting rods don't let you feel the fight as well. I have so much fun fighting to bring them in. It totally made my day catching a decent fish, and seeing that my zonker was so effective.

I think the shirt may have been good mojo.

The culprit 

First Flies

Janet's parents were super good to me this Christmas and gave me a fly tying kit as well as a gift card to Bass Pro. I have been wanting to start tying really bad, so I was/am super excited for the kit. I had never been to Bass Pro either, so that was exciting to have an excuse to go and explore the closest one (about an hour away). That store is huge, and I only had time to go through maybe half of it. I'm pretty sure I could spend days there and not see everything.

Anyway, I have had some time with Christmas break to start learning how tie flies. It is much harder than I thought. I totally understand why classes are so highly recommended. I have issues with crowding the eye of the hook, and tying them off still proves to be a challenge. I had to look up another way to do it than my kit told me because I just wasn't getting it. I now have four homemade flies: two wooly buggers, and two rock worms. Here they are:

My very first fly - a wooly bugger. The tail is way too long and bushy.

Here is my first fly compared to one I bought at a fly shop.

Here is my 2nd wooly bugger (my 4th fly in all).

Here are all 4. The ones on the right are rock worms. 

True meaning of this season

I have been struggling to get into the Christmas spirit this season. I seem to struggle more and more every year. This year I tend to blame the warm weather and school, but honestly those are superficial and have nothing to do with the true meaning of Christmas. Today Janet and I took cards and a treat to people we visit and home teach as well as some neighbors. We plan on delivering more tomorrow for FHE. It is a small thing but it has helped me to set my priorities straight. This is a video that seems to say everything I want to say. Christ is the biggest gift we have been given. If we learn to trust him and lean on him we will find more joy than through any other means.

He is the Gift – Christmas Video – #ShareTheGift:

Video

This is a video one of my students showed me. He and his dad are pretty big fly fishermen, and we talk about it every so often. His dad took this at South Mountains State Park. It's really cool to see the trout take his fly, and to see the fight.

Stocking Trout with the Outdoor Club

On November 5, I went up to South Mountains State Park with my Outdoor Club at work to help stock trout. I had heard that hatcheries sometimes need help with stocking smaller rivers and creeks through another blog, and thought I would find out if that was the case at South Mountains. It turns out that they were super excited to have our help. SM has delayed harvest designated water, which means that they are stocked four times a year, most of the year is 100% catch and release, and during the summer months you can catch and keep seven a day with no size limit. In the November stocking, the rangers usually have a training, so there is only one ranger in the park to help the hatchery truck stock. It takes several people to do the process efficiently because they have to take the fish from the truck to the river in five gallon buckets. For that reason they usually call up a nearby juvenile delinquent center, and ask for help from those kids. They were pretty excited to have a school group come and help with the process. Ten students came, along with one other teacher who helps with the club pretty often, and a bus driver I paint with over the summer named Johnny who loves to fish. It was a good size group, and the kids absolutely love the trip. We learned a lot about trout, and their habitat, as well as the importance of riparian zones. The students learned pretty quick how to identify brooks, rainbows, and browns.

Helping Out

This past week I gave South Mountains State Park a call to see if they needed any help stocking fish in October and November. They put 2000 trout in the water starting near the picnic area at the beginning of each month. I have been wanting to do this for a while after reading about it on another blog. They can't dump all the trout in one spot, so they have to spread them out using 5 gallon buckets going from the truck to the creek. I have an outdoor club that I run at the school I teach at, and I thought it would be a great way to get the students to learn about the environment, and how important trout are in an ecosystem. They are a great indicator of a clean and healthy water system. Anyway, the ranger was very excited to hear that we were interested in helping, and we are planning on heading up in the first week of November to help out. I called a little late to get the trip set up for the beginning of October. I'm super excited!

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As a side note, this is a really cool video I found this past week. I agree whole-heartedly with it. Whether we admit it or not, our health and our spirits are connected to the environment around us. A healthy environment = healthy us. I have always marveled at God's creations; I love to get away from civilization and soak them in. I find that one of the places I feel closest to Him is whenever I am furthest away from man.