Its been a few days...

This is what I want to be doing come Monday- Photo: Matt Koles

Id like to say Ive been "Busy" and that's why I have strayed from posting but its actually the opposite. I have had nothing but time on my hands...No work, shitty weather (when the rivers are closed...) and the fact that I completely trashed my knee a week ago has made for days of nothing but hope that I can walk and that the flows will drop into place so I can go on my trip...if there is a higher power out there..HELP!!... I have been planning on heading up to Oregon now for a month or more and I was supposed to be on the road today...after talking to my friend up there its looking like the river is way too high to be on the water tomorrow...Fingers crossed that the flows drop (cue higher power) to fish able levels and I can squeeze a few days on the water with the guru of deeply sunk swung flies.

So you might be asking.."Jack..how did you hurt your knee?"..well because it has to do with a fly rod I will go ahead and tell you...I am going to go ahead and break it down...all the way back to the big bang- So It all started when I drove up from Santa Cruz last Tuesday to check out the Fly Fishing Film Tour (F3T), so I came up and decided that Id just stay until it came time for me to head north...well finally I was less than a week away from my trip and so stoked...Because I was going to have a shot at some days on the water I and had nothing to do here in Marin...I went crazy trying to make sure I was all prepped for the trip...so I started by re-waterproofing a bunch of my shells and jackets with Nik-wax...normally id be doing this outside but it had been raining for the better part of a week and was still raining.. so I was forced to waterproof them in my room, I didn't think about the combination of the wax and the hardwood floor...so I went ahead and waterproofed all my shit and went off to do something else... a few hours later my mom then told me that sage sent me a rod and its in my room... I took off running in excitement to open it up and see what it was, of course I ended up slipping on the waterproofing residue that had gotten on the floor, my knee went into the door hinge with all 170lbs of me behind it...I went down immediately and couldn't move my leg, here I am 4 days away from my trip and Im on the ground in the most physical pain ive ever experienced...FUCK...that's all I could think and say...I knew I fucked my knee up bad and my world collapsed around me quick..so here I am... ive been laid up ever since with an icepack and my computer..if you know me at all, you ll know Im horrible at being injured...all I can do is hope that my leg heals and that I get a phone call Tomorrow morning from Scott saying.. "Jack..its on! Get up here!"...cause this morning I had my car packed and got the call that said "river isn't looking good for Sunday..."...normal people would probably be ok with this...But again my world collapsed around me, like a junkie stuck in jail... I am loosing my mind, I need my fix and Steel head fishing has become my life in a matter of 6 months...it went from "Ill fish for it all" to "Steelhead....steelhead....steelhead.."...for me its steelhead 24/7..

Steelhead Withdrawl...

Its been over two weeks now since my last steelhead and I am starting to feel the withdrawl symptoms...Its an addiction..to say the least, its one of the few things in life that can shut the little voice inside my head up...Its a high, not always a consistent one but its a high...sure its not all butterflies and fairy's when I am on the river....I do get pissed off while I'm fishing, but its the kind of anger that makes you work harder, not the kind that makes you feel hopelessly stuck with time to kill, I guess that's the withdrawl...the feeling of "What the fuck am I doing..." or just waking up with no drive because you know that you cant get to the river that day and even if you could, the chances of running into a fish are slim (at least where I am at the moment). I hate the idea of wasted time and in an effort to build upon my skills as an angler every day in some way, shape or form, with that being said- my recent days have been spent in preparation for my trip to Oregon...and when I break it down in my head (the- what will limit my experience that I have control over at this moment..)I think of presentation and what goes hand in hand with presentation...Casting... The cast is one of the few things you have control over when it comes to fishing...sure bad casts catch fish but so do good casts, You tell me...what feels better..a big loop less pile of line flying through the air to coil on the surface or a precisely timed cast that can send you deep into your running line..so in an effort to battle my withdrawl and steelhead depression I've been spending hours of casting practice on a local lake...perfection is my goal and with that in mind its all hard work and every cast that does no straighten out makes that little voice in my head get louder and louder...while every cast that feels right leaves me with the muted silence of perfection and the feeling of purpose...its a bi-polar experience to say the least..this whole casting practice thing...all I can hope is that is will fill in the gaps and hopefully all of the frustration and anger from a bad cast will motivate me to step back and slow down and examine what just happened....  to figure it all out... everything from the anchor, the tear to the stroke..its all equally important and with any weakness in the package you ll feel it...shit you ll see it laid out in front of you.

What have I learned from this withdrawl...what do we as anglers have control over in like (the young guys like me who have no family to take care of and no job to be at.)..we have the ability to move, to change our surroundings to better suit what we do..this is a big reason that I am moving at the end of the summer...so I can fish every day...and hopefully where I am going in OR is just that, sure I'm fine with spending many fish-less days challenged to the brink of insanity..that beats boredom and not fishing....Ive done my time working hard to get to my fish, now I'm ready to live on the river...to challenge myself in new ways..Ill drive...Ill hike..even if its for a small trout, as long as the possibility is out there..that's enough to keep the serotonin in my head flowing.

Circus left town- with a major mess

Well folks, party’s over...season ended last Wednesday on my local river down here in Santa Cruz. If you read any of the local reports down here you’ll hear about a bullshit season or "This year was a bust"...well, if you’ve got any brains at all you’ll get out there and see for yourself...This season in my opinion was good, fish were caught...big fish at that...and many days were spent on the water trying to figure out what the hell was going on, what fly…color..water is too low…river is blown...fish are up-stream..downstream…who gives a shit. I was fishing, swinging flies and having a blast, not to mention I learned more this year about steelhead than any other year of my life…sure I got up north and got out to the coast (even though my local river is about a 30 minute drive from the ocean at its head waters)...and when I look back and re-cap the season I find that my favorite days were the ones spent on the little river behind my house…some of those days I spent looking for fish…not to cast to...but just to watch. I had a blast and I have to say I am a little sad I won’t be around next season to expand on my knowledge down here...I will be up on a river somewhere in northern CA or southern OR. The season here was fun but its short and crowded, I don’t think I will ever experience the challenge and frustration that I did down in Santa Cruz, as a fly fisherman you are outnumbered 10-1…not with lure guys but with bait guys, bouncing roe…these guys seem to have so little respect for the animal they are hunting…I have now counted 10 fish that I have found dead due to poor handling (witnessed 5 of those), on a river that gets a run of no more than 300 adult fish you’d think the government would intervene and make it a fly only or at least Single barbless Artificial lures only…sure its barbless hooks but I only saw DFG on the last day of the season (way to do your job douchebags)...I called cal-tip to inform them that fish were being killed and laws were being broken but it seems as if steelhead have few friends down here...and its the Anglers who have the choice to make a difference...sure fly fishing is expensive but where is the fun and challenge in suspending scented bait under a bobber, maybe I am an arrogant fly fisherman but shit...Id rather drink a few beers and watch the fish than have one swallow my hook and die...enough of my "Hating", all I ask is if you are going to fish for endangered fish…educate yourself and bring a net or handle them properly, every fish counts. So the last day ended with a skunk, and a zoo of bait guys. My girlfriend and I went down to the river yesterday with some garbage bags to clean up after the pigs and maybe get a chance to see some spawning fish (that were not getting slammed with bait)...we did clean up alot of hooks, mono, roe sacks, Styrofoam eggs and general litter...fresh litter…fisherman kind of litter...Not only did we go and fill our bags, pockets and backpacks with garbage but we also found some dead fish. I wish I had my camera because one of those fish had a treble hook stuck in its gills...and this was a trophy hen, a fish that could have reared many more...the line was not broken but cut cleanly with about 8 feet of line left hanging off the hook...A sad sight…and a very big message, one that I don’t feel personally comfortable talking about in my blog…Ive got enough opinions. We went out and cleaned up, I wish that I could do more to help the fish...and to a point even my barbless small gape hooked flies are definitely not HELPING the fish. These fish need friends and I’ll be down on the river for the next couple weeks just cleaning up after the circus...too bad I wont be around next year because this river has taught me more than any other, the fish need more friends...something needs to happen, I am not sure what the "Santa Cruz Fly Fisherman Club" does but they sure as shit don't take care of their watersheds.....




Im sorry for the rant...I had to get it out. Not all gear guys are bad, we are all in this together and it sucks when you feel like there is no we down here...just a bunch of lazy workers killing wild fish. Ive seen it first hand, and ive done shit about it. All I ask is if any of you out there fish the San Lorenzo...please, take care of her...if you do that, she will pay you back with more than you could ever ask for.