Mount Evans Wilderness Area

I’ve been watching my calendar for several months now waiting for ice off. The day finally came to exercise my legs and wet the line at elevation. Jon Hill and I were kicking around a few ideas where we should go, but finally settled on staying in the Front Range. We had new guy with us that just moved to the great state of Colorado. He was the only one to get skunked, but I don’t think it even mattered to him. We walked into the Mt. Evans Wilderness area and had a mini Colorado Adventure.

The forecast called for a 50% chance of snow, and it snowed 50% of the time.

The fishing was tougher then I remember it being at this lake, and I'm sure the cloud cover and snow didn't help much. We still managed a few red bellied fish. I fished a streamer with a dropper, and caught fish on both.

Jon was chasing fish at the outlet most of the day, and caught a few.

I release 99% of fish I catch, but on this day I felt like killing. My first fish of the day became the victim of a horrible death. The new guy had never had fresh raw trout, so after the killing we ate a piece of the fish's shoulder. Fish doesn't get any fresher then this!

It was the type of day where a small fire was such a luxury, and the rest of the fish was smoked over an open fire.

We  ended the day fishing the outlet area. Jon caught a cool moment on what we thought was video, but instead he had his camera set to a time lapse shot. This was one of those classic moments of "Hold my fhttp://youtu.be/wF_bqoCb-e8lyrod".

http://youtu.be/wF_bqoCb-e8

Happy fishing!

 

New Design: Red Oak, Hard Maple, Zebra Wood, and Wenge.

New design

I had a request to build a net for someone’s son. The net is going to be a birthday gift, so I wanted to do something a little different. After a few emails back and forth I had an idea of what the person was looking for, and I got to work. A clear rubber Brodin Ghost bag was requested. I bent the hoop out of Red Oak, and put a middle lamination of hard Maple. The handle is made from an African hardwood called Zebra Wood. The laminations on the side of the handle are made from another African hardwood called Wenge. It’s neat to see this net finished, and to think that 4 different hardwoods grew on four different trees, and 2 different continents only to find themselves glued together for the purpose of landing fish. As my friend, and recipient of this net would say: “Blue skies to your fishing”.

Tip: When bending small laminations of hardwood simply soak them over night, and then put them in the microwave for 2 minutes. They bend just like they would if you steamed them.