USGS Stream Data

Kenai Rvr @ CooperLndg

  • Water Temp: 34.16 ° F
  • Flow: 511 ft³/s
  • Water Level: 5.20 ft
USGS

Middle Kenai @ Skilak

  • Flow: 929 ft³/s
  • Water Level: 6.14 ft
USGS

Talkeetna Rvr

  • Water Temp: 32 ° F
  • Water Level: 4.23 ft
USGS

Situk Rvr

  • Water Temp: 35.06 ° F
  • Flow: 768 ft³/s
  • Water Level: 67.27 ft
USGS
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Archive for the ‘Instructions’ Category

A New Way to Plan a Fishing Trip on Your IOS Device

We’re always looking for a little bit of an advantage over our pea-sized brained adversaries so we’re willing to try the high-tech approach to try to gain a little over the millions of years of instinct (and a REALLY good nose) that the trout has. So recently I ran across this app called Ryple. (Yes, pronounced like ripple – the water, not the wine…) It purports to give us an edge up to 7 days in advance for choosing the best spots to go fishing (US data only at this time.) Sort of a high-tech take on the Farmer’s Almanac. Well, since it’s an app for my iPhone, I’m game to try it. $2.99 in the iTunes store. I download it, open it with great expectations, run through the short tutorial and… bust! There’s no data for Alaska! Only the lower 48! I am totally bummed…
Read more blah, blah here

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Lots of new Fly Patterns available!

HankinsSelect-a-Bead-2up

A Select-A-Bead fly developed by Lance and Rich

Rich has been working like a mad man trying to get the Fly Patterns section of our site up and loaded. Go there and take a look! These are all great patterns and specifically are the ones WE use! I’m sure you can find something there worth trying. Many of these are available commercially in local Fly Shops if you don’t tie. And if you happen to run into us on the river, we’ll be happy to share a couple with you…

Sharp Hooks and Tight Lines!

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New Catch Magazine available!

One of our favorite e-magazines – Catch Magazine  – has a new issue available online!  Some of the best Fly Fishing, photography, and videos available! Worth every penny of the subscription cost!

Catch Magazine Issue #33From the album: Timeline Photos
By CATCH MAGAZINE
CATCH MAGAZINE ISSUE #33 IS LIVE!
This is a BIG issue. Really, really packed with great photography and video. Get it here!!!!
www.CatchMagazine.net

Photo by Pasi Visakivi
Contact: pasivisakivi@gmail.com

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Photography – Enhancing Details

Make no mistake; I am not a Photoshop guru. Not even close! I can manage some basic retouching, and a few techniques that will spiff up your face, but for the most part I’m a kindergartner when it comes to massaging an image. This is one of the reasons I originally joined NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals); to figure out how to use Adobe’s massive software program.  Associated with NAPP is Kelby Training, an online source of video tutorials that cover a wide range of subjects. It was from one of the latest Kelby Training videos that I found this technique for enhancing detail. The video was from Tim Wallace, a commercial photographer that specializes in automobiles. He was lighting a car in a garage with a single strobe. (I was interested in the single strobe concept, not cars.) The back half of the video was Tim’s work flow on layering individual shots into a finished image. And at the end of that process he discusses enhancing details in the final image. He mentioned a couple of outside plug-ins, specifically Topaz (which I have) and Nik Color Efex (which I would like to have), but goes on to say that there’s a PS technique that works fairly well. Although I could not really tell how good it worked in the video, I thought I’d give a test as I often wish I could bring out the texture and detail in an image. I had just shot some close-up flower images last week from our garden and grabbed a wild columbine flower as a test subject. It had lots of fuzz hanging on it and had only basic sharpening done on the jpeg.Columbine_2up

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Talkeetna River Musings…

Hevi-Beads

This Spring at the Great Alaska Sportsman’s Show I watched a demo for a product being sold through Mountain View Sports called Hevi-Beads. Back too them in a minute…

Now anyone who knows me very well knows that Rich and I have not been great fans of the practice of using beads for trout despite their undeniable effectiveness. They just didn’t seem to be flies to us. So a couple of years ago we set out on a quest to come up with a way to fish beads – with the ability to make quick changes – and we came up with the Select-A-Bead system. A fly with a plastic tag that could be threaded through the bead (or two) and allow you to fish it like a bead head. We’ve tried them in a variety of patterns from standard eggs through Wooly Buggers and Bunny flies to Sculpins. Sometimes they work sometimes they don’t. We had days where they outfished everything else in the box and days where they didn’t catch a thing but regular beads on the line above a bare hook caught many. It was very frustrating.  Read the rest of this entry »

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Jack’s Knot – A simple Tippet to Hook Strong Knot

A simple to tie strong knot for tippet to hook eye connections. Try it! You’ll Like iT!

 

Jack’s Knot – line to hook knot used primarily to tie tippet to a hook for fishing. from Jonathan Palmer on Vimeo.

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Hook Removal Video

From our friends at Southern Culture On the Fly – Safe Hook Removal. Not a pleasant thought but invaluable when it happens to you or your friend.

These folks also provide another exceptional internet based magazine. Take a look here.

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Tubular Smolt – Tying instrucions

The Tubular Smolt came from my desire to have a fly that imitated the young fish I grew up seeing in the shallows of lakes. In my younger days we had small Flatfish and Rapalas for our ultra-light spinning rods. Once I started fly fishing I missed that basic minnow shape, and the desire to imitate it never really left the part of my brain that fishes. When I began learning more about bait fish, I kept thinking that there had to be a way to create a pattern that would mimic the head down attitude of a crippled fish. I also reasoned that a pattern that floated head down could be twitched back to horizontal creating an impression of struggling to stay alive. I wasn’t so concerned about movement, there are plenty of flies for that, I was mostly focused on size, color, and shape.

Although I had played with a few different patterns over the years, it was the thermometer probe cover that finally got my creative juices flowing. Here was the shell for an underbody. I knew I wanted to use Mylar tubing as an outer cover; all I had to do is figure out a way to get this long, thin walled tube onto a hook. After a few failed attempts at prototypes I became frustrated in that I just could not come up with a way to create a solid enough union to a hook to tie materials onto and over the tube. So the probe covers sat in my material box for almost a year. Then, while looking at some tube fly materials, I noticed cone heads designed for small tubes. “Tube flies” I thought, (mentally smacking myself on the side of the head) that’s the answer! I had toyed tying tube flies in the past, but being a bit of a traditionalist, I had failed to think past the shanked hook school of design when working on this baitfish imitation.

It took three attempts to create a tube fly that suspended head down, looked like a small fish, and did not have the disadvantage of an extra-long hook shank. The material sizes listed in the instructional PDF are based on getting the fly to suspend with neutral density. I’ve since subsisted foam for the head, for a high floating fly, and I’ve been stuffing the front part of the probe cover with fluorescent glo-bug yarn and/or Everglow fibers. You can alter the length of the body to create a shorter or longer baitfish and color the body to match any local baitfish. It is important that the body (Mylar tubing) be sealed. I’ve used regular epoxy, rod wrapping epoxy, and am currently playing with a couple different UV cured coatings. All seem to have their pros and cons. I use nail polish, especially ones with sparkle, to add color and extra bling to the body. Once you have the basic pattern, variations are endless.

Rainbow that took Tubular Smolt on the Agulawok River

Rainbow that took Tubular Smolt on the Agulawok River

The pattern’s name come from the fact that I now fish areas where salmon smolts are a prime baitfish; and the fly has proven itself on a couple of different river fisheries for rainbows. The interesting point is that I’ve yet to get the chance to fish one in a lake, where the process started years ago. But then, life is still young!

For a PDF of the Tying Instructions for this pattern, go to our Patterns page.

If you have questions or other comments, please feel free to post them here or email me at Rich@2GuysFlyFishing.net.

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