Famous trout dogs

These are two of my all-time favorite dogs...the little white one, called Cokie, could say my name when I came home after work or from fishing...she'd go, "Huuuuuuu" and wag and wiggle until I thought she would fall apart. I had her about 14 years or so. One day she walked out into the road, laid down and just died.
The other dog is my trout dog, Bo, who is mostly border collie but some other stuff also. He actually brought a trout to the front porch last summer...it was stiff and long dead, so I doubt if he caught it with his flea rod. He greets me by tossing his massive tail around the living room until he knocks one of Mrs. Koontz's lamps and she screams at him.
The really strange thing is I had a vivid dream about these two dogs last week. In the dream I was in a field of flowers, like one of those Andrew Weyth paintings, and the dogs had me on the ground licking my face.
Not entirely an unpleasant scene.
But when I was a young man I never dreamed of dogs......I dreamed of, well, you know.

Mountain trout fishing picks up

Trout fishing in the mountains has picked up with the warmer temperatures. Water levels are not too bad, considering we're still behind last year's rainfall by about 5 inches. I had been fishing a CDC/Elk hair caddis, floating it on the surface before skitting it across the surface before letting it float just below the surface...an added attraction that makes the one fly fish like three different offerings. For two weekends, I nailed a ton of hatchery, stocked fish, mostly rainbows. They were fun, jumped a lot and some were even big.

This last weekend brought out the hatches. Toward evening with the sun disappearing behind the hills, the light cahills began their aerial dance, up and down, up and down.

Around 7 p.m. it looked like a miled snowstorm, though the flakes fluttered in all directions not just down.

The stockers, still used to eating trout feed at the hatchery I guess, ignored the dry flies for the most part.

I tied on a light cahill..a little cream colored fly...in a No. 14 and casts to rise rings. I'd spot a feed feeding, wait a few seconds and then put the fly in the middle of where the rise was. Bam...got 'im.

Mostly, I caught brown trout on the cream colored fly. The best fish came when I was almost ready to quit and head for the cabin. I hadn't seen Mrs. Koontz for a week.

The fish hit the fly on the surface, hard. He smacked that fly like it was a bad dog, then took off running in the other directions, making the reel sing as he took out more line.

It was a fine looking brown, full of gold and silver with ruby red spots on its flanks.

The new lightweight waders held up well. They are easy to get into and are comfortable to hike on the trail to get to faraway pools. They feel like a pair of khakis.

But for one of those days earlier this month, I fished in just boots and shorts. The water is warming up.

Wild turkey out of the bottle

I almost ran over this fellow when coming to work two weeks ago. He was with a bunch of other turkeys trying to find their way to Cleveland County, where they planned on harassing the residents and teasing ignorant cats on Country Club Road.

I was hoping they would take to the air, for they are graceful in flight, they merely ran off into the woods to hide.

Wild dry fly for trout

This CDC and elk hair dry fly is rapidly becoming my favorite go-to fly for mountain trout. I found it on a blog not long ago, tied up some and went out to the French Broad River and slayed 'em two Sundays in a row. The fly was fashioned by Hans Weilenmann of the Netherlands. You can find the instructions and more flies by Hans at www.danica.com/

The really neat thing about the fly is that you use only two bits of material, one CDC feather and a small clump of elk or deer hair and there are only two steps to tie it.

And, here's the kicker, you can fish it part of the float as a dry and then give it a little jerk to pull it under the water and fish it as a wet fly emerger.

Wild thoughts on Earth Day

Earth Day 2008 came and went, but not without some wild thoughts and strong language around the Koontz cabin in the mountains of Transylvania County. I had just watched a short, 5-minute

YouTube video that got me all worked up about saving the planet.

What? New Zealand has lost 90 percent of its wetlands? Ouch. They have some fine brown trout fishing down there.

What? By the year 2030 Glacier National Park will have no ... glaciers.

What? By 2015 about 450 bird types will be extinct.

What? Our coral reefs, home to 60 percent of the world's fish stocks, could be 60 percent lost in just 30 years.

What? By the end of this century, one-third of all species on the planet could be extinct.

What? In the time it took me to watch the video, 57 hectares of rainforest disappeared from Earth.

I got so fired up I went outside to try and save at least a portion of the planet but only got as far as the other side of the road, where I found trash tossed along the bank of my favorite river, The French Broad.

Then, I went fishing. One never knows how much longer the trout will survive.

wild winter fly fishing

Click the image to watch video. Winter fly fishing can be a treat or a trick, depending on a lot of factors like the wind, cold, snow, ice, etc. I tried to get some of the neighborhood trout to cooperate but managed to break most of them off last weekend. I did, however, catch a few with a black marabou streamer I tied the previous night.

Wild white Christmas

I was working Christmas Day, not dreaming of a white Christmas at all. I just wanted to finish up and drive back up the mountain to our cabin by the river. About 10 miles from home, I noticed that the light rain had change in consistency and my rear tires began to spin a little on Hwy. 64.

It got better. The road became white and the light drizzle became a pretty good snowstorm.

It was white knuckle driving all the way...10 very long and twisty miles ... up the mountain.

A little late for mos t folks up there, but I had about an hour of white Christmas. There was still some on the ground in the morning, enough to make it pretty.

I caught a bunch of trout and was having quite a time until Mrs. Koontz suggested I drive to town for her.

By nightfall, the snow was gone.