Way Down South.

A little tune to get ya in the mood.

This last week my buddy Trevor and I rolled on down to Charleston, SC to fish with our good friend Garret. The mission was to catch a redfish on fly while poling the flats in and  around Chucktown, along with a few Speckled Trout and Black Drum mixed in.

Garret’s Dad was even kind enough to let the three of us roll in his sweet flats skiff for the week.

 The first day had a bit of a rough start. Trevor woke up looking a little sick, turns out he had the Flu. He decided to sleep it off while Garret and I fished the morning tide. After finding little on the flats we spent some time pitching shrimp to some docks in deeper water.

Our guide.

A lost hat early in the day led to what some have called my “Shocktop hair.” I feel it was good luck and led to our first double.

First red and a double!
-Photo by Garret

Later we headed back to the house to check on Trevor. He looked a bit better and joined us for the afternoon. We found some trout…

Trevor with a nice trout.
-Photo by Garret

Black Drum gave it up.
-Photo by Trevor

Charleston sunset.

 

The next day we headed up the intercoastal about an hour to the town of McClellanville, and gave the flats of Cape Romain a shot.  This turned out to be a bust so we headed back to Charleston for the afternoon where Garret got a break from the poling platform and found some success…

Red, white, and black.

The next day the fishing really lit up. With three days of weather in the mid 70’s we saw good numbers of fish on the flats. After a little looking around we found a nice school and went to work.

Guide man Garret.
-Photo by Trevor

After bumping a nice school of reds around a flat for a few hours Trevor hooked up with our first red on the fly.

We kept working the school until I hooked up with my first fish. Unfortunately, I pulled the hook about half way from the boat. Rough life.

Our next and final day was beautiful with temps in the upper 70’s. With the warm weather, the fish were tailing in the grass flats. A rarity in January.

After a few attempts at tailing fish by Trevor, we changed flies and I got up front. Made a cast….thought I spooked him…fish on!

Photographs by Garret.

We finished out the day poling a few more flats….made casts at some fish with no success. With slower fishing in the afternoon Garret gave Trevor and myself a chance to get on the poling platform.

“I can see my house from here.”
-Photo by Trevor

A huge THANK YOU to Garret’s parents for welcoming us into their beautiful home and treating us like family. And of course many thanks to Garret for working his ass off to put us on the fish each day!

 

Drought Over.

This past week I got out a few days for a little fishing and hunting.

Wednesday:

Got out for my first California duck hunt on public land. In an effort to avoid pissing off the hunters at the more popular refuges, I chose a marginal piece of local marsh and started scouting. With warm and windless weather,  and not many birds flying the hunt was slow. Though I did get a few birds to respond to my spread and feeble efforts at calling. One was a Bull Canvasback, which I proceeded to miss…still a sore subject. I did however end up shooting a hen Bufflehead that flew over going about mach 5. While not an amazing hunt by any means, I consider it a true success for this neophyte duck hunter.

Thursday:

The next day I headed fishing to an old favorite. A classic small bug tailwater fishery. Set deep in a canyon and stuffed with Rainbows like this…

This used to be one of my favorite fisheries, it seems like there are many more anglers on it each time and the fish seem to be suffering as a result. It seemed the average size of fish has decreased and the few larger fish I caught seemed to be unhealthy and beat up. I have a feeling much of this is due to poaching in the closed season.

Still a favorite and  I got my once a year fix.

Sunday:

I joined friends Aram and Steve for our first trip to a new Central Valley stream. Considered a secret by locals, I can disclose little to no information on this fishery.

Aram, Signature tier at Idylwilde Flies, did some R&D on his newest generation of ever evolving streamers. We all found success after changing up our games.

All I can say is that we will be returning.

THE DROUGHT IS OVER.

On Thursday I’ll be heading to South Carolina with Trevor of Fly Fishing West. We’ll meet up with our buddy Garret for a week of fishing the flats for redfish.

Drought.

I’ve been home for about two weeks now…and I have not touched a fish. Not by choice of course, Northern California has been hit pretty hard by winter storms and just about every waterway in the state has looked like chocolate milk for the past week. Luckily we’ve seen a break in the weather and fishing opportunities are quickly becoming available.

With little available in terms of fishing, I’ve spent most of my time casting, scouting for some local duck hunting, and shooting some photos with a new lens I received for christmas.

Geese coming in for a look.

A local marsh, hopefully it will give it up tomorrow.

The Casting ponds are just about my second home.

For the new year we travelled to the Oregon Coast to visit my Grandmother.

California’s north coast.

Who said California wasn’t wild?

With some smaller coastal rivers in Oregon coming into shape, I was allowed a morning of swinging. With little access I spent most of the outing exploring for future trips…though i did fish a few runs.

This is about as close as I came to a fish this trip. The classic coastal experience.

 

And once we saw this, we got the hell out of dodge…

 

 

 

 

Tomorrow I  hunt. Thursday I fish.

Have a great week.

 

 

Done.

After the long and arduous journey that is finals week, we are finally done! Its been a long week of no fishing and hunting, but the next two days hold big plans. After that I’m headed back to Oaktown for 6 weeks of warm weather, steelhead fishing, and a little duck hunting. As much as i’ll miss Missoula, i’m pretty damn excited to get back home.

Though I didn’t get to fish this week, it wasn’t all studying. We moved our second batch of homebrew into secondary fermentation. We are really excited to taste this one.

Cam and Riley transferring the brew.

Also took a little break to explore in the Rattlesnake after our first taste of winter.

Rattlesnake Panorama

We created a classic Montana snowman.

And invited a rather effective stress relief game. Meet BATTLE BALL. Its spreading quickly with leagues popping up across the west.

It’s done. Time to go fishing.

 

 

 

 

 

Study Break

With a busy schedule of finals upon us, everyone is scrambling to get their…well for lack of a better term…shit together. Needless to say everyone is a little stressed. I joined Trevor and Undie, who claimed he would not fish this week, for a afternoon session on the Bitterroot.

It was cold and a little rainy, but a welcome sanctuary from the terrors of our studies.

 

Fishing was decent with a half dozen or so for each of us.

 

As the studying ramps up I’m sure we’ll have the opportunity to get out a few more times. Tomorrow we have plans to exercise our 2nd Amendment rights. America.

 

 

Back in Business.

With a busy summer and fall I’ve managed to seriously neglect the blog, but Oakfish is back in the blogging business.

Even with a heavy workload in the summer, and plenty of schoolwork in the fall we managed to escape for some amazing adventures throughout the state and even into Canada.

Craig was home for the summer.

Undie with one of the first fish of the summer.

An unexpected, yet delicious, catch.

After a long summer in Craig, I was more than happy to get back to Missoula for school, friends, as well as some late summer fishing. I was greeted by excellent dry fly fishing on the Blackfoot and Bitterroot.

Garret with a nice rainbow.

After a few weeks of school we made a run for Canada! Where the fish are large and the rivers wild.

The trip was interesting from the start.

Undie with the trips first fish.

The crew…minus myself and Ben.

The crew at the end of the trip.

We thought it was all downhill after Canada, though fall treated us well.

 

Trevor’s Black Lab Ben joined the crew for our fall duck season.

 

 

I’ve missed much of our amazing fall in this post…but you get the idea. And now that winter is here, I will have more time to report our adventures here in Missoula.

 

Enjoy,

Cody

 

Back to Work

 

The past two weeks have been a blur. School let out and I high tailed it back Oakland for some R&R…or so I thought. Lots of visiting, work, and even some fishing.

Expensive water.

Went after some stripers…

All we caught were a few of these…

Meet Bubba.

Tomorrow I’ll be back in MT…starting my summer on the Missouri. Stay tuned for weekly write ups!

 

Summertime

…and the living is easy. Montana has been giving us a little taste of summer for the past week with temps in the 80’s. Pretty much everything in Missoula is blown out, so we’ve been focusing on the Missouri.

When the shop tells you to take a brand new skiff out, you do not argue.

The whip.

Look at these cool kids with their buffs.

I spent most of my day rowing, but i did get around to catching a few fish on streamers and dries.

Did I mention dries? It got a little buggy.

The master at work…

We met some rather unsavory characters at the ramp…

Undie spent his life savings…

And the word of the day…

I’ve been pretty bogged down with school, fishing, and life so i’ve been a little short on blog updates. Expect a few more entries in the coming week.

I know…its only tuesday. But have a stellar week.

The Good Life

 

Life has been good in these parts…so has the fishing. Today was downright hot with temps in the upper 70’s…unfortunately I didn’t get to fish this afternoon. But I did get to watch a pair of big rainbows slurping baetis on the Clark Fork. I was working on a Bio project at the time…next time i’ll come prepared.

This is what the past few days has looked like…

Lotsa brownies…

Carnivore.

Later in the week we found some dries. Oh yea…

Have a great week!

Spring Break Part 1: The Missouri

Undie, Chris, and myself headed up to the Missouri for five days of fishing. We slept, ate, and fished out of our cars. I also spent some time hangin around The Trout Shop, getting to know my new employers. Fishing overall was average, with some periods of outstanding fishing.

The characters:

Undie is one cool cat.

Pretty much he only thing Chris caught.

Your's truly.

Despite the stupidity, we were all business when it came to the fishing.

Some colors…

 

Undie on the hunt.

Success!

Yeah, the view sucks.

Catch.

And release.

I’ve heard about the Walleye fishery on the Missouri for a while now, I finally saw it with my own eyes. After fishing near the damn one morning, I stumbled into a gentleman with a tasty looking stringer…

He's gonna eat good tonight.

On our last day of fishing Chris and I fished a set of islands close to Craig. We found lots of midges and lots of rising fish. We caught lots of wild juvenile browns and rainbows. It was great to see so many year-classes of fish on a river that seems to hold so many large fish. Though they were small, it was nice to get away from the hatchery born finless wonders that plague the dam section of the missouri.

After 5 days on the mo’, I was running out of food and a herd of flies seemed to follow me everywhere. Must have smelled like roses. It was time to go.

But wait. Theres more! Expect a little something from the Bitterroot, Beaverhead, and Rock Creek.