Fly Fishing for Roughfish on the Ottertail River

Join me and Doug Harthan of Front 20 Outfitters, LLC to learn some of the finer points of Fly Fishing the Ottertail River. We are offering a guided fly fishing trip on July 26 for 6 anglers. We will be fishing the Ottertail River for rough fish and anything else that may come our way. That is a great opportunity and price for an opportunity to learn some techniques for fishing for our abundant rough fish, these fish are great fun on a fly rod and challenging as well. The Ottertail River is a great fishery and is definitely underutilized by fly anglers. Don't miss out, give Doug a call or email or use the contact form to reserve your spot! We have 6 spots and the cost is only $50.00 per angler for a day of fishing & learning.

Cost: $50.00 per Angler
Date(s): July 26, 2013

Dawg Dayz

The dog days of summer and it's hot. Damn hot, real hot....


The Air Cav strikes again with a victory courtesy of Colonel Kilgore.


When the temps are up, bass just love to crush big meaty flies like the Landing Strip, Mustahce Ride, or the Colonel Kilgore. Always fun to see some tail walking.

Of course it's always time for some Carp Crack...


Son!

Rough and Tumble

Just another hard-nosed carp from the backwaters of the Minnesota River.

Spring Sucker Nymphing Tactics

Fly selection when working the spring spawning run can be critical. Hatches are very sporadic and light when they do occur and the pickings are slim, as there just isn't the diversity of emerging insects during early spring as you find later on in the season. Caddis and midge nymphs are always a safe bet to fish through out the year as they are always present. With early spring, however, I often think of the other March Madness, the stonefly hatch.


Staging fish aren't always interested in feeding, as they have one thing on their minds, spawning. And rarely do I find suckers feeding on the surface due to their subterminal mouths. So I fish low and slow. I like fishing tungsten weighted stonefly and drake nymph patterns like my Thunderbird, Boreal Bomber, and Fresh Pimp nymphs and bounce them along the bottom. Every so often a fish may take an emerging fly on the rise, at the end of the drift, but this is not typical during the prespawn phase. If you need more weight to reach bottom, throw on some extra lead. Suckers will hold tight to the bottom and will only feed if a fly is easy pickings. I like to utilize tightline nymphing during this time of year, as I can better detect the subtle takes. Bouncing the fly on the bottom using your rod tip will also add to the detection as well as help give your fly the appearance of a dislodged nymph tumbling along the bottom of the stream bed.



This isn't bobber fishing or fishing for stockers, this is a numbers game. Getting your fly in the zone is crucial, as are the repeated runs and drifts of your nymph. Fish may spook and get lined, but they'll quickly roll back into their hold in the current seam, jockeying for precious spawning gravel real estate. It is to your advantage that you can keep drifting your fly through the zone in the hopes of an eventual hook up.



Your ROI (return on investment) may be low but if your put your time in, you will rack up the numbers of caught fish.

Sprung

Spring is running well ahead of schedule here in the Great White North, with the second earliest ice out on Big Detroit Lake, just barely missing the earliest ice out ever recorder in 1910 by one day. For a little perspective, the average ice out date for Big Detroit Lakes is April 19. To say that spring came a little early this year is an understatement.



The arrival of warm temps and early ice out threw a little curve in my game. The key to spring fishing is water temperature, though the photo period does play a role in fish activity and spawning. Water temps have of coursed risen earlier than the normal and so begins the chase of running fish. A few early scouting runs didn't produce any results, though I was only off by a couple of days. Diligence this time of year pays off as a single day can bring in hordes of fish staging for the spawn. As is the case around here, seasonal stream closures in a few areas that are designed to protect vulnerable spawning game fish throw a wrench in my fishing hot spots, as these spots are sanctuaries for many sucker species in addition to northern pike and walleye. That's where being adept at using a Delorme Atlas & Gazetteer, Google maps and aerial photos can make the difference between being on fish and being shut out.



My timing was perfect; schools of suckers and no crowds. The advantage to being on the ball when scouting is beating the crowds to the punch. By the time the local brigade arrives, I've already had my fun playing out these staging suckers. The bonus of these stream closures is that since the suckers spawn after the walleyes, the closed areas provide a haven for these spawning suckers until the fishing opener arrives. A little relief from the spear chuckers and bowfishing crowd never hurt anything.


Trying not to foul hook a sucker when they are stacked up like cordwood can be a challenge. Every once in a while, even while I'm trying to be careful, you hook up with a trash fish... the bottom-feeding walleye.

the buff

Shadow dancers of the prairies, you intrigue me. You captivate me. You move me.




I'll be back for more.

Party With Sluts

Winter seemingly lasted only a couple weeks around here this year, an odd departure from last year's season of doom and gloom and record snowfall. I'll take it.


I'll take anything I can get, in fact. I am a whore. A fly fishing whore to be exact. I love spending countless hours down at the river brothel, diddling away my time and getting my flies wet. I like to make sure I have enough lead in the pencil to get my flies down and dirty. I like riding them deep. That's where all the fun is.



I spent some time the previous weekend concocting up a wicked brew of dubbing batches, Hot Craw and Pumpkin. Similar to my burnt orange dubbing variety, I used a base of squirrel, hare and rabbit. I added some Finn raccoon to the base fibers as well. Along with a medley of antron, floss/rayon, and other polyamide fiber goodies, I added a few extra trade secret ingredients. I also mixed up some of the highlight colors to lend to two complements that I hadn't previously utilized, hot orange to the Hot Craw dub, and highlander green and chartreuse to the pumpkin dub. As per the usual, the true essence of a spectral blend of translucent fiber based dubbing is difficult to capture on film. You'll have to trust my judgement and my word for it when I say that it is awesome.


I can tell you that black crappies know how to party. This playah loved him some Critter Gitter. I hope the carp come to party too. Looks like I'll need to make a booty call and pay a visit to their crib.

Tatonka

A bruiser caught a few weeks back during our "January thaw", when daily high temps topped 50 degrees for a couple of days.




To be honest, it's not really a thaw when there was no snow on the ground, daily temps were ranging in the mid to upper 30s and overnight lows were in the upper 20s. This non winter has been a joke, but at least I was able to take advantage of it and fly fish in the dead of January. Never thought I'd be able to pull that off in the Great Brown North.


Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get a good release shot since this fish still held some vigor and wouldn't sit still for me. For scale, that is a Ross F1 #4 reel, 4" diameter spool. This fish is in the 30" plus class. It always fascinates me that without a good reference, it is difficult on film to capture scale on a large specimen. The typical fish porn grip and grin photo is so overdone it's lost most of its cachet, however, aside from the super-extendo arm thrust pose, it does serve as a decent reference for scale and proportion.

Either way you cut it, it's still a nice fish!

The Mustache Ride Strikes Again

Another poor victim who went on a Mustache Ride.


Believe it or not, I've made it out fishing twice this past week. Almost unbelievable considering the summer I've had back at the Roughfisher Command Post. And as much as I'd like to contribute fishing stories and adventures with you all, I've had a couple of cameras snafus this past week, one involving accidentally deleted photos which were immediately overwritten by Android OS, the other involving mystery photos that never showed up on my SD card. Maybe it was operator error, who knows, but the bottom line is I won't put up a fishing story without photos simply because then it becomes just that, a story. You know what they say, pics or it didn't happen. Words to live by....


So I met up with a Facebook friend of mine the past two weekends. Last weekend was on his home turf near southeastern Minnesota. This weekend was on my home turf up on the Otter Tail in northwestern Minnesota. Kind of like a home and home series. Flows in both regions have been somewhat stable, something that has been in short supply this season. Even the Otter Tail was low, having finally dropped to 543 cfs, the lowest it's been in two years. Of course normal flows for this time of year is 206 cfs, but I'll take what I can get. We'll see how long this lasts.



It was ungodly hot this weekend with highs around 90 both days. Fine for you southern folk, but not for us northerners, and especially not in mid September. Hell that's above average for us even in the peak of summer in July. Regardless, the bass were soaking it up. I watched countless numbers of smallies expolode towards my fly as I skittered it across the rocky shoreline. There was tail dancing involved. I know it's just a bass, but it provided for some quick entertainment between searching for pods of carp.


With the lower flows and water levels in the reservoirs above Orwell, I was expecting to find a bunch of congregated carp feeding. No dice. This has been the summer of where's the fish? I can see fish being dispersed off the flats during high water and on to the floodplain, but now that the water's dropped, those flats are barren and the floodplains dry. Where have they gone? I have no idea, but I'm curious to see if these fish will work their way upstream this fall IF the flows stay somewhat reasonable for awhile. At least that's what I can hope...



Finally got my first Minnesota carp to take a Mustache Ride. I had pondered whether or not this fly would be too big for the Minnesota variety carp, but I was pleasantly surprised when this fish hit it. I watched a pod of two fish turn out off a flat and enter the main channel. I was at a high vantage point and dropped the fly right into their feeding lane. I had wondered if my fly was going to be coming in hot and way too high for those fish until I watched one of them roll up off the bottom and rise to the fly. It quickly inhaled it and turned downstream. Any shred of doubt about whether or not this fly would be effective on Minnesota carp was immediately thrown out the window. Now that's what I'm talking about! Not the biggest carp by any means, not even average sized really, but this little guy helped turn the worm and proved to me that the Mustache Ride can hang wherever it's fished. Good to know.


I know the bass love a Mustache Ride. Thanks for the bass thumb little fella...

Running and Gunning

Took a client out this afternoon, Mustache Ride ready and prepared to deal with the onslaught of high water and heavy flows. When we arrived streamside, we were met with cloudy skies and water outside of the stream banks. Not ideal carping conditions by any means. Inundated flood plains can typically be a productive piece of water, unfortunately, with the water as high as it is, the river is deep and many of these flooded reaches are unreachable by foot. After busting through some heavy bank cover, we managed to pull up some micro slabs, including a few juvenile smallies and a small freshwater drum. Some carp, redhorse, and buffalo were spotted but there weren't there in their usual numbers and there weren't many takers. My guess is that these fish are spread out throughout the river system out on the flats and flooded fields, far downstream.One big carp was hooked, by eventually lost after heading downstream into the heavy current of the main channel. Bummer. Carp Crack once again saved the day. A long but lean smallie was brought to hand, providing some salve to the day. After moving around to a few different spots, we settled upon a small outlet feeding a backwater slough. I spotted a few carp clooping just outside the outlet and set the client right up on the spot. After some coaching and a few missed tries, we got hooked up with a small male carp. Maybe not the biggest fish, but rewarding nonetheless to sight fish to a few cloopers. We'll be back at it again tomorrow. There'll definitely be a bit more investigation of those backwaters, and we'll come armed to the teeth with an entire arsenal of Carp Crack. Game on.

GreenFish News Release

July 19, 2011


GreenFish Ambassador Team and GreenFish Gives Expansion
GreenFish, the first apparel brand completely dedicated to promoting a lifestyle of sustainable fishing, today announced a significant expansion to its Ambassador team , adding over 20 new ambassadors with multiple backgrounds and from all over the globe.

Since its launch in 2010, GreenFish has received tremendous support from the fishing community regarding its cause. The GreenFish Ambassador team is made up of freshwater and saltwater professional anglers and guides, TV personalities, marine biologists, artists, photographers and leaders of the non-profit community.

GreenFish founder Bryan Godber explains, "We now have a team of over 50 high profile individuals in the industry, all helping to promote our brand and sustainable fishing message on a volunteer basis. These individuals should be seen as role models to the fishing community not only for their career achievements as industry icons, but also for their efforts to promote a lifestyle of sustainable fishing for future generations to enjoy. It's a great to know how many high profile individuals out there want to help push our brand and our mission forward and represent our clothing brand."


Also - GreenFish has recently added the Bonefish and Tarpon Trust to its GreenFish Gives program, so our customers can select BTT when shopping on www.greenfishmovement.com and we will donate 5% of their purchase to BTT. We are very excited to have them join our program of 501c3 organizations helping promote a cause that is aligned with our mission.



About GreenFish
GreenFish is the first brand promoting a lifestyle of sustainable fishing. Through its line of apparel, the company's goal is to build awareness and shift attitudes toward sustainable fishing and promote the sport for future generations to enjoy. GreenFish recently launched a new program called "GreenFish Gives," in which GreenFish donates 5% of all revenues to a handful of non-profit organizations they work with to promote sustainable fishing practices. To learn more about GreenFish, the GreenFish Gives Program, their ambassador team and their new line of apparel - visit www.greenfishmovement.com.

panache

Giving the bass a Mustache Ride, boy was that fun! So far Peacock Black has been the hot color, picking up countless numbers of smallmouth, largemouth, bluegills, pumpkinseeds, green sunfish, and their associated hybrids. Hell even the small pike and muskie love it, as they nabbed a few of my flies from the confines of their elodea camouflaged hideouts.



Even picked up a scratch whitey the other day, a surprise to me, since most of them have since headed to the deep confines of a coolwater basin now that stream temps on the Otter Tail have risen to about 27°C. One first I observed the other day, a large Plecoptera species. I've seen small winter stones on this reach before in later March/early April, but never a large stonefly in July. This thing was in the size range of a Pteronarcyid (salmonfly) as it was around three to four centimeters long, but lacked the orange coloration around the thorax of a salmonfly. I'm a bit perplexed as to the ID, as the insect flew off before I could photograph it, but yet intrigued as this could be the reason why my larger prince nymph, Fresh Pimp nymph, and Thunderbird patterns have always fished so well here.


By the way, the rivers are still way blown here. I've resorted to fishing the upper reaches of the Otter Tail, which I typically abandon in late spring once the water temps begin to rise. Fortunately, the high flows have kept some spring spawning fish in a few deep holes through this summer yet. So maybe there is still hope after all...