This week of our senior project Kellen, Jed, and I began to learn some new skills to apply to what we learned the past two weeks. The main thing we worked on this week was learning how to tie flies, my dad had a bunch of old fly tying supplies, and Kellen's family had some as well. Using these supplies we spent Tuesday and Wednesday learning how to tie different flies using youtube and some helpful advice from my dad.
Over these two days, we spent a lot of time testing different things to make our flies look good, from using different hooks, to different strings for wrapping, to different feathers for the tufts on the ends of the flies. In the end, I had made two flies that I thought were really good flies, and Jed and Kellen each had their own flies that they tied so on Wednesday, we planned two fishing trips for the rest of the week. On Thursday we planned to go out to the Clackamas again in the same spot we fished on week one to try to catch fish with the flies we tied. On Friday we planned to go out on Hagg Lake with my dad to fish from my boat.
My Two Flies
Friday was a fun day but was overall pretty uneventful. A total of two fish were caught, the first one was by me and no one was entirely sure what type of fish it was and the second one was caught by my dad and was a 15-inch rainbow trout. Overall it was just a nice day to be out on the lake so even if we didn't catch too many fish we had a good time just hanging out.
Thursday was a different beast entirely. We got out to the park at about ten and got out on the river by 10:15. We slowly worked our way down the river until we found a spot where a few islands were formed, and decided to try to cross over to those islands. We got about halfway to the island we were aiming at when we hit a spot right in the super shallow middle. We stopped there because on the other side was a large pool that we saw some fish jumping from. We fished that spot for a while, catching a lot of five to six-inch fish but not much else. At this point, we continued onto the island and fished from the bank there for a while. While we were fishing there Jed noticed a large fish jumping on the other side of the river, so he decided to leave the island and go across to the bank we hadn't gone to yet. While he was doing this Kellen and I started to go back to the bank we had started on, and when we looked back we saw Jed on the other side of the river. We all fished in our new spots for a while when we decided to go get some lunch. Kellen and I, being on the bank that the car was on, were waiting for Jed to get back over when we see him take a step and go face-first into the water. Our first reaction was "haha Jed fell into the river again" because he had already fallen in once that day and a few times on previous days. That mood shifted when we saw him surface and let out a shout before struggling to keep his head above the water. At that moment, both Kellen and I realized that Jed was actually in trouble, and slowly floating down the river so we started to act. I dropped all of my stuff on the bank and started wading out into the river to try to catch Jed when he floated past us and Kellen started digging through his bag to find his phone in case we needed to call for help. Luckily, when Kellen finally got his phone and I had gotten into the middle of the river, Jed had recovered from the initial shock of falling in the river and had begun to try to swim to shore.
The Illusive Jed Fish
Kellen and I tried to tell him to swim to the shoreline closer to him, the one he had just come from, but he insisted on swimming across the whole river. About halfway through his swim, he began to yell frantically at us to take pictures of him swimming across the river "for the blogs." At this point, we realized that he was ok and not going to drown and so we obliged his request and took a number of pictures, immediately sending them to our friends. When Jed finally got back to shore he took off his waders to empty all of the water in them, and then put them back on to go back to fishing. Kellen and I shut that down quickly suggesting we go get lunch and dry off instead. Looking back it was probably only a span of one minute that Jed looked to actually be in trouble, but at the time it felt like an eternity, and it was terrifying.
No photo of the 15 inch trout? Your flies look great! I still don't understand the point of making one's own instead of buying premade flies. Is there a reason or is it just fun to make your own? I'm glad Jed's ok - trying to swim in waders full of freezing water sounds nigh on impossible.
ReplyDeleteIt's mostly just fun to make your own flies, but if you get good enough at it a lot of local fly fishing shops will buy flies that you make for a good amount of money. You have to be really good at it though so we were mostly just doing it for fun.
DeleteI'm so glad Jed was looking out for his audience when he demanded pictures "for the blogs." It's important to have even the most terrifying/embarrassing moments recorded for posterity! (I'm glad everyone is OK!)
ReplyDeleteYou are NOT ALLOWED to drown while fishing. Please. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteYour flies look great! And while it's nice to have at least one exciting story (complete with photos) to tell, I am grateful it only felt scary for a moment, and that you are all safe and sound. It looks like Jed was wearing a life jacket (yay)?
ReplyDelete