The Sun Cove Chronicles: Praise for the Olive Woolybugger

I am a cook and my interest in fish is limited to whether they should be pan-seared or prepared sous vide.  But I was told to keep those kind of unpure thoughts to myself, if I wanted to come along on this fishing trip.  So I tried my best to do this, while observing and asking questions to try to improve my knowledge and understanding of this timeless sport.

Some observations:

One of Jack's Lahonton Cutthroats.  I think this would
taste good smoked.  I admit it. I'm only here for the food :)

1. Limits.  Although you are allowed to bring home some fish which you catch, no one ever did.  The reason: If you catch your limit (which ranged from one to five, depending on the lake), you must stop fishing and come in to shore. No one ever wants to stop fishing so it never made sense to keep any that you caught, in case you might catch your limit and have to stop.  Also sometimes the fish you catch aren't the kind that taste good. Lahontons, for example. They are big and impressive but they are not good-tasting.  (Now, Hans, don't go making any crude comments about that).

2. Woolyburgers.  These are not fuzzy hamburgers for fish.  Apparently the correct spelling is woolybugger, and on this trip there was much discussion at dinner about Olive Woolybuggers in particular.  From what I could gather, this type of fly is a good choice for use in generic situations if you don't have any flies that match the current hatch.  As for me, I was more interested in olive martinis, but I kept my mouth closed and pretended to be interested.

Paula prepares her line with a specially selected fly

3. Flies.  Fly-Fishing is not fishing while flying nor is it fishing for flies.  It is an artistic form of flicking your rod and string line back and forth with a fly on the end of the line to attract the fish. And flies are not really flies, they are little tied up knots of colored strings, feathers, and other stuff made to look like insects that might naturally appear on the lake or stream.  You want to MATCH the HATCH (don't I sound so official?) selecting a fly that resembles the insects hatching or living in the lake or stream you are fishing.  Apparently in some killjoy fashion, the regulators have decided real flies and insects would be illegal to use - too easy to catch the fish, and then what's the fun in that? The famous Ed (see my blog on Ode to Ed) gave Jack some pheasant feathers from a bird he hunted to use for fly-tying. Jack informs me that some people will even harvest road kill to get bits of fur and other treasures for their fly tying kits.  I think once I felt Jack tug out one of my longer hairs, although he denied this.  Now I know why he did it, and Jack, I forgive you.

German Brown.  Jack caught this one, which pleased me because
I was cooking an Octoberfest dinner that night and the stories went
nicely with my dinner theme.

4.  All trout are not the same.  On this trip, the team caught brook trout (the prettiest, in my opinion), rainbow trout, German brown trout, and the aforementioned Lahonton.  There might have been others too but those are the few that came with actual proof in the form of pictures.

Brook Trout

5.  Waders can be creepy.  The residents of Room 4 confessed that they were scared out of their wits one night when they exited their room to see these dead men hanging from the rafters outside Jack and Dad's rooms.

I swear Officer! He just leaped out of the brush at me!

6.  Fishing is action packed.  Really!  So much so that they even have a whole channel on TV devoted to it, if you buy the right kind of cable package.

Honest. He's not asleep! He's trolling!

Check out the whitewater as Paula knabs one!

 7.  Fishing is scenic.  This is very true, especially in the area of Washington where we were.  I have been sworn to secrecy not to mention the names of the lakes, where Hans purportedly caught 30 fish one day, and Jack snagged another 18 on a different day.

8. Fishing is competitive.  You never heard anyone at the dinner table say "I caught the least number of fish today!".  But we always knew who caught the most!  But that's the thing about fishing.  You could be in last place one day, and first place the next.  And everyone was always ready to offer advice on how to select better flies next time, or hold your line differently, or select a deeper pool or one closer to shore next time. 

She looks so beautiful, but all the while the wheels are turning....
"I am going to be #1 today! Even if I have to pop those float tubes!"

Hurry up and take the @#%*! picture so I can get back to it! Since Hans caught 30 fish yesterday, I think he is tied up to a tree somewhere today, explaining his absence from this picture.

9.  Fishing makes you hungry at the end of a long day.  Especially for wine.  14 bottles, to be exact. Plus a bottle of schnapps but who's counting?  

Bavarian soft pretzels and apple torte

Cioppino

Lemon Ricotta Cake and two types of
Foccacia Bread (but alas, no salami!)

So in closing, my advice to you is:  If  you want to relax, enjoy great company, bask in the beauty of the Great Outdoors, and come away with some great fish stories and pictures, then study up and when you're smarter than the average fish, befriend my brother Jack and beg your way onto the next Sun Cove trip!