All the other stuff

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23
Sep 10

Saltwater Fly Fishing School in Belize with Shane Kohlbeck

Well, look at this…

Over the years, The Fly Shop®, has built one of the premier Fly Fishing School programs in the country, and starting in 2009 we expanded the program to include a Fly Fishing School devoted entirely to Saltwater Fly Fishing, held at Belize River Lodge.

via (Link to the school) Saltwater Fly Fishing Schools with The Fly Shop®.

My good friend Shane who will be coming with me to El Pescador in Belize in a couple months will also be down in Belize to help teach at The Fly Shop’s Saltwater School at Belize River Lodge.

From the days when I sucked played basketball and soccer, I know that you get better only when you play with and against good players. Shane is one hell of an angler, so I’m glad I’ll be fishing with him in November. I can imagine how good this class would be at the Belize River Lodge.

Shane taught me how to do the single handed spey thing on the Lower Sacramento River back when I was coming off my first/last full season as a trout guide and I had moved to Redding to work for a small community foundation. Shane didn’t need to show me the ropes, but he did. He’s a great instructor, one hell of an angler and a mean fly tier.

For the overwhelming majority of folks out there, Shane could probably teach you a thing or two (dozen).

Buddy Shane sticking a fish on the Lower Sac at dusk.

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22
Sep 10

Your First Bonefish – Deneki Outdoors

This is why Deneki is pretty much awesome. Check out this little bit of goodness that just went up on the Deneki blog. He posts new content every day and it is consistently good stuff.

So you’re thinking about going bonefishing? Awesome! It’s a highly addictive sport in an amazing setting.

via (story link) Your First Bonefish.

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18
Sep 10

Things learned recently

First, the climate for buying and selling houses is crazy… a house that we bought 6 years ago with zero down and no questions asked is now something that lenders are taking a VERY close look at… one walked away from it, another has agreed to do the deal, about a week late. We’ll make about… get ready for it… $500. Luckily we only put in about $30K in improvements. I’m very glad to be getting out of the real-estate game in Silicon Valley where your half-a-million dollars doesn’t go real far.

Depending on the neighborhood, this could be $500,000 - $1,000,000

It takes a long time to get to Aitutaki… I just did a little Kayak search and it figures it would take about 68 hours to get from SFO to the capital of the Cook Islands (and longer to get to Aitutaki). Man… I’d love to fish with Butch, but that one is going to have to go on the “next 10 years” list.

2 1/2.

Turns out there is a glitch with the iPad kayak.com app in that it seemed to add about 45 hours to the trip to get to Aitutaki. It seems entirely possible to get to Aitutaki in something like 15 hours and maybe even less. I had one reader tell me this… which is awesome.

I think your calculations in flying to Aitutaki are a little off…my wife and I have tickets booked in January out of LA on Air New Zealand. We leave LA on a 9.5hr non-stop to Rorotonga, have a short layover and then 55 minutes to Aitutaki. The non stop is only available one day each week each direction, but it is available. Plan on fishing with Butch 4 days while there and the rest on my own. We’re going for two weeks too!

I have started doing a little contract work (non-fly fishing related, very Silicon Valley related). Work, as it turns out, gets in the way of writing this blog a bit. Still, it might actually make it easier for me to enter into negotiations on future trips with the wonderfully beautiful and intelligent woman I conned into marriage I call my wife.

I really like the Trout Underground… especially when I totally agree with him on things like the re-licensing effort on one of my favorite rivers. I have found that my local fly club has signed up with the lunatic fringe and won’t respond to my questions about why the hell we’d do that.

Frequent Flier miles on Alaska don’t do me a whole lot of good. No (as in zero) flights available for my open travel days to either Puerto Rico or Belize. Looks like I’ll be buying my plane ticket with cashish instead of accumulated miles. To this I say “boooooo.” However, on a positive note, the “SkyRider” seat has yet to become a reality… I don’t to take my red-eye on one of these satan seats.

No... no thank you.

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12
Sep 10

Bass’n isn’t bonefishing

I got a gifted couple of hours today to hit the local reservoir. I was in search of carp and quickly found them. Sadly, again, I found them under mats of plant matter, totally unfishable (at least to my meager carping skillz). So, I started looking for some bass.

Now, I know bonefish are bass are worlds apart. Still, when the wind picked up I used it as a little time at the practice range. I worked on the timing of my haul, the tightness of my loops, the accuracy of the cast… some were better than others, but it was good to get some stick time.

A bonus… there are fish at the practice range.

Not a bonefish.

I was thinking about Sandy Moret and his comments about people not putting in the time work on their casting. I probably need to actually work with an instructor a bit, something I haven’t done for about a decade. I’m hoping my next trip doesn’t have any forehead smacking casts.

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10
Sep 10

Aquarium Day

Today I went to the aquarium at the California Academy of Sciences with my folks, my daughter, a friend of mine and the little boy she nannies for. Kids at the aquarium… always fun.

One of my favorite areas is right inside the aquarium… it is a shallow, white sand enclosure that has rays, black tip sharks and a few small tarpon, mixed in with other fish. The small tarpon are really small… maybe 20″ or so. On my last trip there were three. Today… well… they said there were 2, but I think they double counted. I saw one. I asked what had happened and they suspect one of the black tips was doing a little pantry raiding at night. I’m suspecting that the small tarpon they said “must be hiding” was an encore pantry raid.

Feeding time... the official feeding time, that is.

Down below, in the main aquarium, you can also see another tarpon, but this one isn’t small… it’s a pretty nice fish, actually.

Mr. T

While we were there I thought I’d check to see if I might be able to actually see the bonefish they have in their collection… caught in 1918 off Sausalito. I didn’t get a call back until we got home, but I was told that “Sure,” I could set up a time to take a picture of the Bonefish of the SF Bay.

I asked about the size of the fish… turns out it is about 11 inches… a juvenile. That does explain a bit. As I understand it, the juveniles have a much higher tolerance to low temperatures than do the adults. It does make you wonder what was happening with the ocean conditions around 1918.

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08
Sep 10

Labor Day Search for Fish

I was going to go bonefishing on Labor Day. However, when I checked the fuel level on my private jet, it was too low to get me to the Keys, so I scratched the bonefish mission and decided I’d head out in search of the Golden Ghost at a reservoir about 10 miles from my house. No jet lag… another bonus.

The good news was that I found carp right away. The bad news was that they were under big mats of vegetation with their hoover mouths sucking down plant matter.

So, they were under there...

Loud “Slups” could be heard, I could see them moving under the rafts of vegetation, but… well… how the hell am I supposed to cast to them? Clearly, this wasn’t going to work very well.

Talking about “clear,” there was very little that was clear out there on Calero Reservoir…

Clear as mud.

Kind of hard to see a fish that sits on/near the bottom when this is the visibility.

(I should add, I have lots of excuses as to why I pretty much sucked at hooking up with Ms. Carp… the most obvious is that I’m still pretty new at carp fishing and don’t exactly have the fisheries or the fish dialed.)

After searching for carp that weren’t all cozy under a blanket of weeds, I decided just to catch something and catch something I did… lots and lots of somethings. I can report that the juvenile LMB population in Calero is very, very healthy.

Can you still call them a Large Mouth Bass when they are this size?

I did get a couple bigger than this, but really, they were mostly pretty small. Still, catching is catching and fishing is better than not fishing.

Yertle the Turtle lives around here, I think.

So, another day of fishing is in the books. Plans for a Fall bonefishing trip are in the works and hinge on way too many variables to make it actually happen, but the possibility is clearly there that I’ll be fishing before the calendar switches over to 2011.

I’ll add that I have a growing hatred for jet skis. The near constant sound of a blender without the alcoholic goodness/payoff… well… it makes me hate people that I don’t know.

whaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaa

If I’d actually caught a bunch of carp, I’d probably feel differently… probably.

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02
Sep 10

Bahamian Kalik Beer

Wishing I was having one of these right now… as it would mean I was just in from a bonefish flat somewhere in the Bahamas.

As with any other national treasure, the owner country is selfishly possessive. To have a Kalik , you have to go to the Bahamas.

via Bahamian Kalik Beer.

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29
Aug 10

Want to fly your own plane to Christmas Island? – Stuff.co.nz

A couple of guys are going to fly from Santa Barbara to Christmas Island, and then on to New Zealand (not without stopping). It is not a short trip. These guys had to take out the four back seats to add X4 the fuel capacity. I’m just glad they are going to try and find some bonefish while they are in Christmas.

The aircraft has been modified slightly for the journey: it was originally designed to carry 335 litres of fuel.

“We will be carrying 264 gallons [1200 litres] mostly housed in a huge rubber ferry tank that occupies the space where the four back seats used to be.

via No plain delivery for this plane | Stuff.co.nz.

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23
Aug 10

A little Tahoe time

As happens to most of us, I recently had a birthday. In general, I have one of these things a year and I try to find myself on a river when it comes about.

This year I went with a couple of friends (John and Phil) up to do some exploring around Tahoe. Most of my trout fishing has taken place a couple hundred miles North of here and I really have not poked around Tahoe too much. I do so little exploring in my trout fishing these days, this was a welcome change of pace.

Beautiful Blue Lakes Creek

We stuck to little creeks in part to help get my friend Phil into fish since he is a relative new-comer to fly fishing. It worked. Phil caught a few fish, including fish unassisted. If you like Drum n Bass, you might dig Phil’s work in Bachelors of Science.

Phil landing a trout, solo

John doesn’t do anything interesting. In fact, he kind of smells. He’s old and maybe even a little bit “special.” I’d add that somehow I think he out-pegged me in the catching department by about 2. Out-catching a guy on his birthday… I’d call him a bastard except I’ve met his parents. So, I’ll call him “bastard-ish.”

Look at him, all smug...

A bonefish is a special species that has captured my imagination. Rainbow trout are my “home” fish, if there is such a thing. However, I think that there be no more beautiful creature than a small brook trout.

Brookie

Good times were had. More than a couple beers were drunk. Another one in the books.

I should add that we got absolutely soaked… the skies opened and let loose with buckets and buckets of rain and a little hail. I think this is the first time that I’ve experienced rain on my birthday. We tried not to let the rain get in the way, but the lack of rain jackets (or waders… I mean, it’s AUGUST) really did not end up in the “Plus” column. Still… good times… good times.

Waiting in traffic to get to the toll plaza at the entrance of the Bay Bridge we saw a very, very odd thing.

That's a dog... with a helmet... on a motorcycle.

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17
Aug 10

Tag Ends 8-16-10

Man… how did it get to be 10:45 PM?

That means I don’t have the time to transcribe my interview with Vaughn Cochran. I will get that up tomorrow though.

Costa Winner

In other news, we have a winner for the Costa Del Mar give-away. If your name is Greg and you live in Arlington, you already know you are a winner. Otherwise, thanks for subscribing.

Miracle Crash in Caribbean

I heard about the airline crash on the Colombian Island of San Andres… amazing that only one person was killed and that because of a heart attack. Amazing also that Colombia has an island in the Caribbean that might… just might have bonefish on it.

A note for subscribers…

Since the give-away has been given away, you may want to unsubscribe (I am nothing if not prolific). I heard from a couple people that the unsubscribe didn’t work for them. If not, just shoot me an email or leave a comment and I’ll manually unsubscribe you. Thanks for reading.

Bonefish on the Brain Bonefish and all that relates (maybe a bit about tarpon too).