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    September is a great time in Oregon. The salmon and steelhead are in the rivers, the trout are becoming more active, there is a crispness in the air and the food festivals are as abundant as the bounty.     The favorite fall getaway for wife and I is the Skamania Lodge Celebration of Beer, an intimate festival featuring local brewers and generous pours at the beautiful Skamania Lodge in Stevenson, Washington.    We stay at the lodge so we can enjoy ourselves at the festival and not have to worry about driving the 50 minutes back to Portland.      This is not a huge festival but instead one in which you can actually taste all the standard and seasonal brews offered the festival and then sit and enjoy a gorgeous view while drinking a glass or two of your favorite. You even get to keep the glass.     Afterwards, you can pile on more calories at the lavish dinner buffet, get some relaxing sleep an...

A fish rises during the early hours. Wild parr from the pond. The confluence of two small streams. Wild cutthroat from the pond. Labor Day weekend was spent driving around Washington visiting friends and honoring my wife's birthday wishes. Instead of a gift, she opted to get out of town and spend time on a friend's farm outside Sedro Woolley and another friend's land outside Cle Elum. The beauty about having friends with property is that on a busy weekend we have a place to camp. Of course the kayaks went along and so did our new springer spaniel, Nik. I had wanted to visit the farm for some time and it proved to be a wonderful experience. My buddy Chuck dug a 1/4 acre pond on the farm and stocked it with some trout several years ago. The goal was to provide entertainment and fresh fish. After a couple years, the fish disappeared despite his regular feeding. Recently,  resident cutthroat trout found the pond and are now reproducing. My new kay...

The blog has been neglected while I work on videos from my summer fishing adventures. Those inquisitive enough to check my YouTube channel and the video links on this blog have discovered some videos from Harriet Lake, a how-to on my custom rod holder and some teasers from my BC trip. More recently you may have seen my Netarts Bay Crabbin' video that I posted the other day. I was hoping to add some footage from a fly fishing Tuna trip and some salmon trips to the gorge but those ended up being cancelled or a bust. And, I still have footage from a two Trillium Lake trips that I haven't used but will hopefully show up later this year. Highlighting my summer was a trip to BC fly fishing for wild steelhead. The trip proved great for both weather and fish and the entire experience could only be described as a trip of a lifetime. I am choosing to keep the river nameless primarily as a way to protect it. I struggle with this because the river is quite remote, but certainly not out...

I rarely am ever satisfied with my hobbies and I am always trying to make things complex and interesting. When I first started kayak fishing, I took a very basic Old Town Otter and transformed it into a complex boat that helped me take third place in my first kayak fishing derby - which took place while the Willamette River was nearly at flood stage. Needless to say I was totally hooked and the next weekend I bought a real sit-in fishing kayak. I tricked it out, bought another, modified it (I still have it) for fly fishing and sold the sit-in. The Hobie Outback is proving to be my favorite ride so far and I keep modifying it as I continue to explore kayak fly angling. My current obsession involves shooting video while fishing on the kayak. Of course I started with one camera (an Olympus Stylus 1030), and shot some great video and stills. I then borrowed the GoPro Hero my wife had. I then decided I need to capture audio so I bought a Kodak PlaySport and added the wide angle lens....

For many years, I have wanted to fish the storied Deschutes River salmonfly hatch. Usually this occurs in mid to late May around the Memorial Day weekend, depending on the weather. This hasn't worked  for me because I avoid travel during long holiday weekends. When I was younger and had less vacation time at work, these were weekends when my wife and I would hit the road camping wherever we could. I have many memories of grabbing the last camping site in the campground or making due with very little space to pitch a tent. Back then we would spend most of the time hiking, fishing or traveling to our destination so sleeping wasn't critical. These days I am quite happy to do day excursions and enjoy a bottle of wine or beer at home visiting with family or friends who also avoid travel during the holiday weekends. When I was putting together one of these day excursion, my friend Jim and I decided to check in on Sunday to see how the various fisheries were shaping up. My str...

First a quick update on the boat. The fix worked and boat is not leaking. I am fairly certain it will hold since I have spent more than 30 hours in the kayak since I fixed it. Regarding the rash, I switched to my breathable waders and the rash is no longer and issue. When the cold weather returns, I should have calluses. Now to the important topics. I have spend many hours since my last post fishing for spring salmon in the Willamette River. With the water visibility at less than 20 inches I spent significant time trolling herring with a flasher. In the main river, the closest I got was when I reeled up my line and the herring had bite marks. A couple of my boating buddies landed fish so I spent a day in my sled trolling herring and spinners but that proved pointless as well. On every trip, my 12 weight, the Deep Water express tips, and a variety of large flies accompanied me and were tried in rotation with the bait. One day, that included a short incoming tide (I always try to f...

I have fished for 40 years but I still keep discovering I have much more to learn about fishing, especially kayak fishing. Last week while salmon fishing from my Hobie on the Willamette, I noticed that the kayak was acting unstable. Instead of remaining flat in the water, it was wobbling as I moved side to side. I opened the hatch in front of my seat and discovered the Hobie had about four inches of water. I would later discover I had a tear in one of my scupper holes (click here to see a video of the tear on the kayakflyangler Youtube Channel). What I guessed happened was that the cart slipped down while I was unloading the kayak and got bound up in the scupper hole. I did some research and found out that Hobie's current cart has a pin system that keeps the cart in the scupper hole until the cart needs to be removed from the scupper holes. This was not something that was part of my original design. My new design includes this design element. And, with the reinforced scuppe...

This week I left the kayak at home and enjoyed a special treat when I drifted the McKenzie River outside Springfield, Oregon. An added bonus was fishing with my friend Philippe and well-known McKenzie River guide Aaron Helfrich. The trip was one Philippe and I had tried to make for three weeks, but the record rainfall in March postponed the trip twice. When the rain finally subsided in April, we found a weekday that worked for everyone and scheduled the trip. The weather was threatening on the drive down and most of the drift. By early afternoon, the temperature started to rise and so did the fish as the March browns and caddis flies did their own drifting on the river. The entire trip was a learning experience because in addition to fishing the river for the first time, it was the first time I had ever fly fished from a moving boat.  Aaron did a fabulous job keeping the boat in the holes or moving at a perfect speed to create a drag free drift of the fly. Many times I was shocke...

Spring break meant a couple days off and after waiting for the storms to pass, I headed to Tillamook with my son to do some "research."  It's always great to do fishing research and the coast offers many opportunities. Primarily, I wanted to check out some kayak launching areas that I had scoped out on Google Maps, but wanted to see first-hand, especially at low tide. I also hoped to do a little fishing in Cape Meares Lake with the Hobie Outback. I brought along the Redfish 10 hoping to talk Sam into some kayaking. Click here to see the video. Driving down the Wilson River canyon, the river looked like chocolate milk in a blender - brown and frothy. Although the river was wild, the canyon was spectacular with little waterfalls dotting the canyon walls, adding to the existing torrent. Rain splattered the windshield during the hour drive to Tillamook, letting up only when we reached the west side of the bay. There we were met with stiff winds creating white caps on Cape ...

One of my quests this spring is to catch a spring chinook on a fly from my Hobie Outback kayak. In this quest, I have my Okuma Guide Select 12 weight, Okuma 10/11 Integrity fly reel loaded with 300 yards of PowerPro braided line, a Rio T20 sinking head, an 850 grain SA deep water express sinking head and, arriving today, a set of salmon trolling flies. I posted the details of my quest on the Northwest Kayak Anglers with a mention that I would even use "gravy" if the opportunity arrived. That comment generated the most posts and a good discussion of what constitutes fly fishing. With the arrival of these flies I expect the use of any "gravy" will be limited and likely not necessary. I am excited to see how these flies react in the water. They are designed to run behind a flasher or dodger that would create more movement of the fly. Since I will be running them without  such hardware, I am hoping that the fly will at least spin, especially since I plan on using ...