Got up to Diamond Lake last week for three days with my folks.  The fishing wasn’t quite as fast and furious as it was the last couple of weeks.  Full moon?  Maybe.  Wednesday afternoon I trolled a wooly bugger, prospecting to locate fish, for a while with no action, not even a strike.  Then I noticed lots of chironomid pupa shucks in the water and set up in ten feet of water with a zebra midge and and a flashback bead head pheasant tail for weight instead of a splitshot.  It didn’t take long for the fish to find them.  Landed 8 in a couple of hours with at least that many more hooked and lost.  Most of the trout were about 12 to 14 inches, none of the monsters cooperated.  Thursday and Friday were about carbon copies of Wednesday with 5 and 11 respectfully (less fishing time however).

We had a good time.  The weather was very nice, even the wind was reasonable all three days.  Can’t wait to go back.

This week started out with an encore of a previous ‘Open Seat Monday’ with Bob Shuck on the Upper Rogue.  Bob wasn’t able to join us on the ;Salmon Fly Rondi’ float, so I invited him to join me this Monday.  Dave Roberts came along in his boat with DJ MacDonald of Southern Fly.

                                          Bob with 17 Incher

Non stop rises of trout to stone fly imitations made for aother amazing day on our home waters.  DJ’s wrist was sore from landing fish and Bob Shuck highlighted his very productive day with a steelhead on the dry.

                         DJ and Dave Roberts

After hanging around home on Tuesday and some tying in Dave’s man cave with Morris, Dale, and Ron from the Souhern Oregon Fly Tyers (SOFT) on Wednesday I met up with Danny Rehm for an afternoon float from the hachery to his house at Trail Creek.  Again non-stop action all he way down.  Ran into Dave again (I’m not sure who’s on the river more, him or me!) with a friend.

                     Danny Rehm and his Clackacraft

I needed to see what was happening first hand on the Klamath below Irongate yesterday so Danny and I trailed his boat down there.  Had heard that the Golden Stones were thick as spots on a trout’s back.  The day started out promising with some of the big salmon flies in the air and very few goldens around.  We couldn’t raise any but the smallest trout to the dries.  We did catch a handful of nice trout on streamer patterns.  One large white clouser did draw the attention of a large steelhead (Dave, same spot you hooked your steely down there, that’s three within fifty feet out of that run in three trips!)  It managed to self release just as Danny was diving for the net.  I was glad to get the hookup.

Today back on the Upper with a friend of the Jefferson board, Dan Hayes.  Dan moderates the ‘Piscatorial Bibliophile’ forum.  He is also another bamboo collector and does a very nice job casing them, too!  We worked the shoreline under the bushes primarily, which requires some accurate casting and delicate mending.  There were some what less willing fish than the last week but the average fish was larger.  Dan hooked several fish that were in the teens including one we would have had to tag to keep.

           Dan Hayes with Big Trout 

Well, that’s it for this week.  I’ll close with a picture of the character that made the last two weeks possible.