www.kellycreekflycasters.com    P.O. Box 2131 Lewiston, Idaho 83501

 

 

Upcoming Events

LIE~N~TIE	2/11/06	John Claassen (509) 243-8958
SPRING FISH OUT	3/06 or 4/06	John Claassen (509) 243-8958
SPRING BANQUET	4/22/06	Zach Funkhouser (208) 743-0435

 

 

February 9th Meeting at Clarkston Quality Inn

Dinner begins at 6:00 PM

Meeting/Presentation at 7:00 PM

 

President’s Message…….

The club has quite a few things beginning to happen, starting with our Lie-N-Tie in February.  We have an interesting schedule of activities for the event and John Claassen will have more details about the Lie-N-Tie at our upcoming meeting.  

 

I know many of our club members have some interesting trips planned this season.  Terry will in be in Alaska this summer, new members Tim and Laura are headed to Mexico in March, Saker and I will be flying down the Green River this spring and I'll bet Will Godfrey, Keith Stonebraker and Jerry Cebula have something up their sleeves as well.  No matter where you go this season or how successful you are, please remember to take some pictures and bring them in to share with the club.  We'd like to hear your fish stories whether they're just a couple photographs passed around the table or a full club presentation. 

 

We’ve revamped our newsletter a little.  Most of the thanks for this new look goes to extreme stream swimmer Ginny Foote.  So if you like what you see tell her thanks and if you have any suggestion or ideas of your own, please let either her or I know about them.  We are always open to suggestion.   Remember to support our raffle at the club meetings and to pick up a ticket or two for our bamboo rod raffle, that money goes a long way to supporting the clubs extra activities and our programs.  And don't forget to get your 2006 dues paid up so you'll be a part of our raffle.  That drawing will be held at the March club meeting

 

Take care and I look forward to seeing everyone next week.

 

Catch you on the fly......

Zach Funkhouser 

 

 

 

 

 

A Day on the Madison

John Claassen

In the years pre-dating my days at Asotin, I would load up my truck camper with food and fishing gear in mid-September and head for various fishing destinations located anywhere between Cody, Wyoming and Sequim, Washington. Although the trip appeared to be a fishing trip, the underlying motive was to find a northwestern community suitable for retirement. Admittedly researching communities for retirement potential was tedious work, fishing along the way certainly mitigated much of the pain. As a result of traveling for 6 to 8 weeks together, my truck and I established a very close relationship. We had a mutual understanding that the truck could stop at every gas station along the way as along as I could stop at every fly shop. Clinically speaking, you might say we had different addictions and were hopelessly codependent.

 

As the years progressed, my truck and I established a regular routine at the beginning of the trip. Our first fishing stops usually included the Greys River in Wyoming and select waters in Yellowstone Park. At these locations we would dry camp while I fished for Snake River and Yellowstone cutthroats, at the respective locations. After a week or more, we would head for West Yellowstone to my favorite RV park on the west edge of town, called the Rustic Wagon Wheel if I remember correctly. While at the park I would shower off the accumulated dust and grime and attempt to look civil once again. Even the truck and camper would get a shower.

 

While there I would check to see if Dick Blumershine and his wife, Bert, were in town. They too came to West Yellowstone on an annual basis to fish waters in and out of the Park. I had met Dick in our home town of Albuquerque where Dick, as a FFF master flycaster, taught me how to flycast. On days when Bert and Dick were not fishing together, Dick and I would come together to fish the Madison River either in the Park but more often out of the Park at a location called the Three Dollar Bridge. The Three Dollar Bridge is located below the famous Quake Lake. This location acquired its name because the resident rancher use to charge fishermen a fee to cross his bridge and fish from his property. The payment box for the fee is still located there but the money now goes to a conservancy group that had rescued the property from commercial pressures. Fishermen continue to volunteer contributions to support the conservancy group.

The Madison is a large free stone river known for its large trout populations all the way from Quake Lake up north to Ennis, MT. Even though the river experiences heavy fishing pressure and had been and continues to be subject to whirling disease, it continues to thrive. Unseasonably warm waters might cause whirling disease in some years to take its toll on yearly rainbows. However, the Madison has served as laboratory for studying whirling disease and as a result has become a model for managing rivers with this disease.

 

On one occasion Dick and I fished considerably downstream from the bridge. That year I had tied some new caddis larva creations made from glass beads. The pattern is simple to prepare by simply gluing a small black bead and three or four small pearl beads on a hook. I found that it helps to replace the bottom pearl bead with an even smaller translucent one to enhance the attraction of the pattern much as you might attach a tag to a steelhead pattern. Casting glass bead patterns can be hazardous if the pattern is thrown hard among rocks; but with accurate and gentle placements, glass bead patterns can generously reward the careful fly fisherman. I dead drifted the glass bead pattern through waters likely to hold trout and was frequently rewarded. 

 

We continued to work upstream toward the bridge. As the day progressed the glass bead pattern lost its effectiveness and I was sequencing through a set of patterns ranging from midge larva to stonefly nymphs with an occasional take. As I got closer to the bridge I switched over to a rubber legged stonefly pattern that I had bought at Arrick’s Fly Shop in West Yellowstone (Arrick is a former Albuquerquean). I added weight to the tippet to deep drift the pattern through submerged canyons created by what appeared to be almost parallel rows of boulders on the bottom. As the fly dredged through one of the deep holes, the line abruptly stopped. Pulling up on the rod suggested to me that the large pattern or split shot had lodged between rocks. As I kept pressure on the hook while walking to and fro hoping to dislodge it, the line rose very slowly. It was so slow I thought I had hooked a log. Suddenly a large silvery fish shimmered briefly near the surface as it rolled out of the hole. The fight was on! He was now moving at NASCAR speeds to the center of the river. I was glad that I was using my six weight steelhead rod that had a fighting butt. I retreated to the bank hoping to raise the line high enough to keep it from entangling on an occasional boulder that stuck out of the middle of the river. With the fish out thirty or more yards and in the middle of rapidly moving water, I slowly moved downstream to let the high flow rates wear him out. I repeatedly put pressure on him testing as to whether he was tiring. Each time he would relocate downstream of me. On one test I was able to move him to within 15 yards of where I was standing. Suddenly the fish turned away once again quickly running back to the middle. Once there the leader broke and the line went limp. I hadn’t felt so helpless on the end of a rod since I had a 6 foot sailfish on light rental gear while charter fishing off the coast of Florida. I had been totally out of control and the fish went wherever he wanted to. Upon reeling the line in, I noticed that the 7 ½ foot leader had broken within a few feet of the nail knot. The line apparently had become the casualty of a rock. To this day I can only speculate as to what kind of fish this was. Some say it may have been a large bull trout that is occasionally found in the Madison.

 

After that adrenalin rush, I was happy to return to Dick’s cabin that evening to enjoy a wonderful dinner which Bert had prepared. To Bert’s delight I expressed my appreciation for the dinner by gifting her a bottle of Pinot Grigio, her favorite wine. It was good to reflect on the fishing activities of the day among friends while sipping wine.

 

IDFG Response to No Bait Initiative

The Department was very pleased with the amount of public feedback from the web based survey of fishing proposals. However, responses generally generated high approval ratings for all proposals across the board. This suggests that this method may generate a bias toward agreement. Although the proposal to restrict bait generated “approval” through the web survey it represented the lowest rate of approval among all the Clearwater Region proposals.  The approval/disapproval rates were 67%/33% for the statewide web survey and 64%/36% for the Clearwater Region survey and 74%/26% at regional public meetings. This compares to many other proposals that carried a 90%/10% ratio. However, the lower relative rate of approval was not the defining factor.

 

The current C&R season has both social and biological rationale. During the C& R season, later arriving hatchery B-run steelhead are allowed to accumulate in higher numbers and distribute throughout the lower Clearwater River. This allows for increasing population size, creating better catch rates as the C&R season progresses and stockpiles hatchery fish to create an opening day event for the start of consumptive fishing on October 15. From the standpoint of angler management, the C&R steelhead season generally falls under the umbrella of “diversity of fishing opportunity” and provides for a fishery that offers an expectation of relatively high catch rates and low angler densities.

 

As you are aware, all wild steelhead in Idaho are continuously protected with a no harvest (C&R) rule. The use of bait is allowed throughout the range of steelhead fisheries in Idaho, including all areas where there is mandatory release of wild fish. The Department is convinced that the use of bait is not a population level mortality risk when releasing adult steelhead. The 2006-07 regulation proposal to prohibit the use of bait during the C&R steelhead season was defined by the Department as a social mechanism to reduce angler density and purported conflicts during the C&R season. The proposal was specifically designed to significantly reduce one segment of the anglers using the Clearwater River during the C&R fishery.

 

After reading the comments attached with the responses from the web survey, public meetings, unsolicited emails, and a petition, it was apparent to the Department that the public perception was that this proposal was addressing fish mortality associated with bait as much, if not more, than angling experience. Furthermore, many comments were received alluding to the perception that this proposal would not effectively deal with the root of the conflict, the use of large motorized boats.

 

These survey results and comments were openly reviewed by the Commission. As a result of the combination of these factors the Department did not recommend this rule change for consideration by the Commission and no Commission action was taken counter to the Department’s recommendation.

 

The Department is in the process of developing an updated Fish Management Plan that will cover the period from 2006-2012.  One of the issues that the Department recognizes has been changing recently is the increasing importance of social based regulations, relative to biological based regulations designed to produce an impact in fish populations.  Due to the importance of the no-bait issue on the Clearwater, and questions in interpreting survey results, the Commission and Department decided to look at this question more extensively via public input through a randomized survey associated with the Fish Management planning process.   

 

As a result of the discussion generated at the Commission meeting, the Department also agreed to conduct a creel survey during the C&R season to better define the issue and relative use patterns. Please feel free to call me if you have further questions or I can be of further help.

 

Ed Schriever

Fishery Manager

Clearwater Region

 

 

 

Kelly Creek Flycaster’s Board of Directors

Member & Term	E-Mail Address	Phone Number
Zach Funkhouser, Pres. 2007	Zach84@cableone.net	743-0435
Terry Nab, 2008	oregrange@aol.com	746-4810
Fred Smith, Treasurer           2006		743-2390
Bruce Young, Secretary        2005	grizzlyhackle@hotmail.com	746-7079
Bill Lillibridge,     2007	blillibridge@cableone.net	743-8970
Ginny Foote, 2008	ginny@vfooteconsult.com	751-1750
Jeanie Centenari, 2008	jcentenari@fbnw.com	791-5474
Fred Trevey VP     2007	trigby@cableone.net	743-5405
John Claassen,.  2008	steelheadjohn@tds.net	243-8958