Catching up on the summer catch.

I'll be the first to admit it. I've done a bad job at writing this summer. I could throw all the usual excuses out there, I've just been busy, I had to much work, my dog ate my computer. But none of them are true.  I mean don't get me wrong I have been very busy. And July is one of two really busy times of the year for  me with wheat harvest and all. I don't own a dog so that one is Right Out. The truth is I've just not sat down and written. And that's not good cause I have tons to write about. So lets get to it. I'm sorry I've been bad and it won't happen again. OK June was amazing. Fishing at least twice a week. Nothing but flies. Big flies. Clouser minnows, Deceivers, and my own pattern called a Muppet Mullet (picture to come). Its big, and heavy and ugly, and it catches big heavy ugly bass.  As well as a few crappie, and two channel catfish. Yea catfish caught on a fly. I had heard of it but it had never happened to me. July was more of the same. Minus about two weeks where I had wheat harvest and was unable to fish. On two separate occasions I took a bass well into the 6-7 lb range (pictures to come). And let me tell you those are fun. So how does all this tie into the whole DIY thing. Well for starters all my flies are tied by myself personally. This comes from the fact that 1) we don't have any fly shops anywhere near Wray Colorado. And 2) It allows me to fashion flies based on the bait fish and crayfish we have in our lake and river system. I also make my own leaders. Again lack of any kind of local fly shop forced me to learn this process. But it also allows me to build leaders at a specific length and weight for the flies I tie. The Muppet Mullet is a large cone nosed fly with a two inch rabbit strip hanging off the back. I use a 9ft 8wt rod to throw this large fly but it also takes a pretty short and ridged leader to turn this big fly over correctly. That coupled with the fact that I am targeting a large and hard fighting deep cover fish so I want a leader that will hold up to those standards. Building your own leaders may seem intimidating but its actually quite simple. Starting with the butt end of the leader ( the end tied to the actual fly line ) you begin with a piece of 20 - 30 lb mono or floro fishing line. I make my first piece about 3 feet long. Then using a very simple double surgeons knot I tie on a 3 foot long piece of 15 lb fishing line.  Now with that you can throw some really big flies and catch some large warm water species. Most warm water fish are not leader shy like trout tend to be. For me though I like to tie on a 2 foot section of 12 lb fishing line. Its on this last 2 feet that I tie on my flies. Now when I go to the lake I  carry a small spool of 12 lb line with me to use as tippet. You can build these leaders really quickly and they are tough. The truth is I have never been concerned with losing a fish because of my leaders. Now you can buy tapered leaders and they work great. But when your leader starts to get short due to use you will need to start adding tippet using this same process or buy new tapered leaders all the time. I can a large spool of 20lb, a spool of 15lb, and a spool of 12 lb for less than $20 and they will last for years. Even at the rate at which I fish. So give it a try, there is a pond or stream or lake near you right now that is full of bass and perch, catfish, crappie. Some sort of warm water fish. They all eat and they will all take a fly if its put in front of their face. I have been down on the river a few times and have made it to about the 3/4 mark of completing my quest. No brown trout. I had on a fish that I was sure was a small trout but it threw my size 16 adams and I never actually saw the fish. I have caught a few small bass, some sun fish and more bug bites than I can count. Land permission has been an issue. Its a neat little river though. And even without the brownies it  been a real joy to fish on that stream. And I'm not done yet. If I don't get one this year I will just keep going and going until I do. Go fishing. Take a kid. And get ready. Cause I've started seeing ducks. The early teal season is now down to the one month countdown. Its almost time to make it rain. Rain Ducks that is.

To hell with April, I'll hit it hard in May!

So what! I skipped my post in April. And do you know why? Cause April sucked!! It sucked, and blowed, and snowed, and snowed, and then it snowed some more. Every other damn day it would snow. It would hit the mid 60s in between but then more snow. Awful month. Just awful. Not that I didn't do anything in april. Cause I did. Oh I went fishing at least two times a week (weather permitting), and I snuck in an opening morning spring turkey kill. But that doesn't change the fact that the month was terrible. But on to May. It is now almost the end of the month and I have been waiting to write because this is a month worth detailing. For those who pursue black, largemouth, smallmouth and all other species of the bass family know, may is the month of the spawn. And for those who don't know what  the spawn is, well how do I put this?  "It's just that when a mommy bass and a daddy bass really love each other" ok ok you get the point. They get down, sweet lovin time, ya know. They spawn. And in order for this to happen they must first build some energy. So they do what most do on a date. They eat. Gorge themselves is more like it. Pre spawn bass are like garbage disposals. They eat everything, and anything and then some. And for catch and release bass fishing you just about can't get much better. Except for "The Big Feed" but we will get to that subject in the fall. I say catch and release because these fish are trying to carry on the family tree so to speak and it does no good to take them kill them when you think of the fact that you are not just eating one fish but killing the possability of thousands more that would never be born. So we just catch'em, pat them on the head and put them gently back in the water. I don't look down on taking home a ( legal ) fish now and again just not before or during the spawn.  Anyway this pre spawn was amazing. On one day alone while playing hookie from work and school, my son kevin, my friend justin, and I caught 52 fish, 39 of which were largemouth pre spawn bass. Kevin ( who is only 8) ended up with the grandprize of catching a 21 inch 9 pounder.  I have actually lost count at this point of the total numbers but between myself, justin, and my full time fishing partner Brandon. I would say that the month of May has yielded over 200 lbs of bass and somewhere in the neighbor hood of 300+ fish. Now don't get me wrong we caught more than our share of ones, and two pounders. But the point is if you want to catch that story of a life time bucketmouth this is the time to try and do it. It does take a little dedication though. Brandon and I start our days at 3:50 am so we can be on the water by 4. And then its off to work at 7:30. But that is what it takes to catch the big ones. You can be a weekend warrior and compete with everyone else for water, or you can go out and fish when the fish are eating and catch multiple trophys every day. And now its on to june, just a couple days away. Back to chasing mythical wild browns on the republican. Which I have yet to catch by the way. And there are lots of post spawn bass still lurking in dark waters waiting to be caught. Plus it won't be long before those duck calls come down off their peg in the gear room so I can start practicing up for another duck season. Only three months and one week to go.

I GOT A FEVER!!!!!

This is a hard time of year for me. Oh its nothing personal or anything, but March can bring out some of the worst of me. Winter has been dragging on and on for what seems like forever. There hasn't been any waterfowl hunting for awhile now.  The days are getting a little longer, but that only makes it worse. Sure, sure there are some really nice days. Temps sometimes hit the high fiftys, low sixtys but again that  just makes it harder. For what you say? Well if you have spent any time in the outdoors you know exactly what I am talking about. You won't find it mentioned in any medical journal. And you can't take any"magic" pills to make it go away. But it's real. And it's nasty! CABIN FEVER! Oh yeah, I said it. CABIN FEVER. It's one of the worst diseases in the known world. Well ok that might be a bit of an exaggeration. I mean sure you can't die from it. But it sure feels like it sometimes. Now I don't live in the great white north. So for me here in eastern Colorado, the winters are fairly mild. But when cabin fever sets in, it can feel like I live in Antartica. I mean it never fails--Monday thru Friday it will feel like spring, it will look like spring, it will smell like spring. SATURDAY and SUNDAY snow, wind, cold temps, and well you get it. But today was different. It's a Friday, and you guessed it - the weather outside was amazing. But the best part was that by some strange series of events I was able to get off work early by nearly half an hour. Now I know that doesn't seem like much. It's not much. But that very small window of time gave me something I desperatly needed. A miracle. A magic pill, if you will. There were hundreds of ducks to be seen, canada geese, snow geese. Thousands of sand hill cranes flying overhead. All preparing for something us humans can barley even comprehend, something that has been  ingrained in them for millions of years. Change! And as I stood there, hands still dripping 50 degree lakewater softly pinching a size 16 elk hair caddis fly between two fingers and gently  holding on to a 10 inch rainbow trout in the other hand, I knew I was cured. I was going to be ok. And after returning the fish to the water and packing up my things a sense of calm I haven't felt in what seems like a millenia (or at least the last month) swept over me. Then it was off to pick up the kids at daycare, grab a sixer of cold ones, and head home to be with my family. A perfect and successful fishing trip all within 5 minutes of my front door. That's happiness you can't buy. Oh and by the way, there is snow in the forcast tonight. F@$%ing March.

The Quest

I grew up on the north eastern plains of Colorado. Not the western slope. Not Estes Park, Not Rocky Moutain National Forrest. THE EASTERN PLAINS! That means that I live in a place that is technically considered high dessert. And that meant at least for me growing up out here that my dreams of fly fishing grand rivers and catching big colorful trout on tiny hand tied dry flys would be mostly just that. DREAMS! But I manged somehow as a teen to teach myself the basics of fly fishing using an old rod and reel I found in my grandfather's garage. I would stand in the drive way in front of our house and practice roll casts, overhand casts, and would spend countless hours practicing tying 10lb mono fishing line to the end of my very worn out fly line ( I didn't have any real leader). And even though I didn't have bubbling crystal clear trout streams flowing through my back yard, I did some how manage to learn to fly fish. In high school I was able to make it up to the moutains a few times a year with friends and fish on the Blue River outside Silverthorn. Then, during my time in the service, I finally got to do some serious fly fishing in the Cascades of Central Washington and even the Black Horn River near Missoula, MT. Well now I am back in eastern Colorado, high dessert, no trout streams flowing in my backyard! So I thought.  Wray, Colorado is a tiny town that is literaly split in two by the north fork of the Republican River.  That is its name, but to actually call it a river is a huge overstatement. Its quite simply a very very small stream. At its deepest darkest pools, it may be 6 feet deep. And in the really shallow spots, it's not over 6 inches. It flows through pastures, past corn, and wheat fields east through Wray over the Colorado-Nebraska state line. From there it meets the Arickaree River which flows past the Beecher Island battleground and the south fork of the Republican river that once filled the great Bonny State reservoir. The tiny stream grows into a small river, and eventually that water dumps into the mississippi river and makes it all the way to the gulf of mexico. But here in eastern colorado its still just a stream. And all my life I never paid much attention to that stream. Until two years ago when I started hunting ducks on that stream. Now I had always seen kids fishing in the water that flows here through town. And they even caught some fish. Sunfish, bluegill, creek chubs. But two years ago somewhere around the end of December, I was standing in that stream throwing out mallard decoys, when the water to my left suddenly rippled the way only a decent sized fish has the ablility to make it do. Now I never saw that fish, but I know it was there. Sometime after that I was talking to a friend at work who swears that he used to fly fish that very section of creek for brown trout. WHAT? Brown trout? Yep he said" Wild Brown Trout". After that conversation I began hearing other stories, from good sources, of people catching wild brownies in our little stream. One very reliable story was of a man catching a 24 inch brownie on his property. But they were all just stories. I never saw a picture, or a live fish to prove anything. That was until this last year. Again while standing in the stream while placing plastic duck decoys out the water around me started moving. Only this time it wasn't some phantom fish. It was real live fish. Several of them swam out from the weedy banks and quite literally between my feet. "Look at the trout" my good friend and hunting partner Justin yelled from the high bank above me. They were there, and then they were gone. But we had seen them. Small, maybe 8 to 10 inchs in length. But they were trout. Brown trout, here in eastern Colorado. So now my quest. As part of my project this year, I have laid out a plan to pursue these little aquatic creatures. My plan is to start at the head of the stream which as chance would have it is only about 10 miles southeast of town, and to fly fish it all the way from its head waters to the state line. It's going to take me most of the year because of that whole work thing, but I plan to be done by September. I will most likely have to skip some sections of the river due to land owners not allowing any fishing on their property, but for the most part I hope to be able to cover the majority of the river (about 20 miles) between now and then. So that's that. My quest. I want to do this before the drought that has plauged our country and over irragation drains dry the small spring that forms our steam. Wish me luck. Hopefully there will be some great stories and pictures to come.

Hello, my name is John, and I'm a Duckaholic

Ok, today is January 13, 2013. My name is John Doddridge and I live in Wray, Colorado. Wray is a very very small town in Northeastern Colorado, a farm town about 10 miles from the Nebraska state line and 20 miles from the Kansas state line. I work for a grain company called CHS.  I am a father of 3. One boy and two girls ages 8, 4, and 13 months. And I am married to a wonderful woman named Jocelyn.  So why am I at the age of 31 writing a blog? I'm not sure. I grew up not far from Wray on a small farm. We raised corn, wheat, and cattle. Or I should say my father did. And growing up on a farm I learned the importance of guns and gun safety at a very early age. I have been hunting most of my life. Minus a ten year span were I lived abroad while being enlisted in the US Navy and studying culinary arts in Florida. But since my return to Colorado in 2009, I have spent a good portion of my time either hunting or fishing. And that is what my blog is going to be about. For the next year I am going to have a written account of my sporting adventures. Lets start with a little about how I do things.  I don't make a huge amount of money. We do just fine living wise but I don't have much play money for my outdoor expense account. So I have to be very Do It Yourself when it comes to my hobbies. And in many ways that has made for interesting adventures in itself. I don't have the resources to go out and just buy anything I want. So I must do my best with what I have either making or finding what I need. For instance, when it comes to hunting geese in a cornfield, I do not have a layout blind. What I do have is an old yoga mat and some burlap to lay on and cover up with. And it works. I don't have money to spend on private hunting leases or guided hunts, so I must do my best with public land and land owner permision for locations. These are just a couple examples of what I mean by being a DIY sportsman. I know that I am by far not the only one out there doing this kind of stuff. Now onto the things I like to do. First and formost I am a self proclaimed Duckaholic. My wife would call it a drastically over ridiculous obsession. But lets stick to duckaholic. I love hunting waterfowl. Ducks and geese occupy a huge part of my brain. I literally think about waterfowl hunting 90% of the year. There is other hunting as well -  Coyote, pheasant, elk, deer, wild boar -  I think about these things as well throughout the year but not as much as waterfowl. And fishing. I love to fish. I actually fish more than I hunt. But while I am fishing I am usually thinking about duck hunting. Can't help it. As of today, though, Jan 13th my hunting seasons are about to come to a close. There is only a couple weeks of duck season left and a few more weeks for geese. And so it is now fishing that I have on the brain. Well I guess that will do it for now. I am sure I will be the only person who even reads this blog. And I don't plan to write every day, but hopefully it will be a fruitful year and I will have lots of stories and experiences to write about.