I don't get to flyfish as much as I'd like to these days, but last week
I took the family over to the eastern sierras and June Lake Loop for a
little vacation... which means I get to play some guitar and do some
fishing (some of it with the flypole).

The first day I had about an hour, so I just did a little bait
fishing... which really means I brought out the guitar and played while
I waited for the bite that never came. No problem... it was good.

Second day I had a couple of hours, so I made my way over to Rush Creek.
Good, the waders still fit. Cool, the reel still works, the flypole
is still willing. I made my way over to the stream. I made one
critical mistake... forgot the Deet, and the mosquitos were out in full
force. Eh. Well, didn't have any in the car either, probably left all
of it in the camping bag at home anyway. Grin and bear it. Well, the
gods were smiling on me a little, as a slight drizzle seemed to knock
the majority of them out off the air, at least for a little while. A
couple of casts, a couple of line tangles, and a couple of lost dry
flies later... what's that? A strike! Ahh... too slow. Well,
unfortunately that would be it for the day. One strike, me too slow on
the uptake, too many lost flies and tangled leaders to count.

Ahh, but it was good!

Went again on day 3. Had my Deet, and my hat. Spent a few minutes with
the guy at the local flyfishing shop, bought some new flies (forgot,
that crap is expensive). Well, this day was just about as good as it
could get. Yea, still lost too many damn flies in the brush around me,
but my drift was looking pretty good, my casting length was really
great... and I caught a couple of nice rainbows. I finally had to quit
when it was getting too dark to see the river bottom (I'm not a
confident wader anyway).

What a beautiful place. The surrounding mountains provided quite a
backdrop to the fishing. If there's any negative to the trip, it's all
the crumpled up beer cans and bait containers along the side of the
creek. WTF?!?! I couldn't carry much out unfortunately. I just don't
understand why someone would leave their crap like that.

- mark