Monthly Archives: September 2016

The strangest spey casting lesson I’ve ever had

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Louis Cahill Photography

How silly is this?   photo by Louis Cahill Photography

I learned to spey cast in the 90s, back in the days when spey rods were a relatively new tool in the steelheaders arsenal in the PNW.   Lines were long belly mid-spey lines back then and my initial instruction consisted of about 10 minutes of my friend showing me a single and double spey and off I went.   I watched videos on spey casting and the one I remember the most had this basic formula of Lift-Loop-Pause-Fire.   This is how I learned to cast and after some time was able to put out a lot of line and actually caught some steelhead.

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Lira’s First Hunt

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img_2316After five months of training I finally was able to get Lira out into the field today for her first controlled but real pheasant hunt.   Chris and I loaded her up this morning and did the long drive to Ellensburg where we hunted at Cooke Canyon Hunt Club, a private reserve where we would have an entire area to ourselves.  I ordered us up some hens figuring they would be easier for Lira to deal with than roosters on her first real outing, she got her first hen when she was only five months old on a training day.

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Deschutes/Yakima Trip 2016

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Last year Jeff and I had a ton of fun on our September trip to the Deschutes and Yakima Rivers so we decided to do it again this year.   Once again the trip was hosted by Louis Cahill of Gink & Gasoline and guided by Jeff and Barrett of Fish the Swing.

img_2249We departed on Monday morning for the fairly long drive down to the Deschutes, leaving a bit later and deciding not to fish along the way this year.   We ran into The Dalles to get a license and arrived at Heritage Landing just in time for the 2 p.m. pick-up.   Of course, everyone else was late due to a flight delay so we got to sit around the landing a bit and chat with Jeff and Barrett.    Once the gang arrived we jetted about 4 miles upriver to our camp at Wagonblast, one of the better steelhead runs on the lower river.

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