sage one

char char char

male - male competition

Inspiration

Inspiration

fish taco DIY

spring creek brown trout

It's always fascinating to see spring creek fish. They are usually dark and very colorful. A typical dark type brown trout from a highly vegetated spring creek. Animal coloration/pigmentation originated from different mechanisms, the most common one would be the melanism from black melanin pigments. the second common one would be the orange color from the carotenoid pigmentation. For some brown trout from spring creeks, they are frequently showing the dark and deep orange belly coloration, particularly during the breeding season. I am not sure if someone have studied the skin coloration of those dark brown trout, but I am sure I would love to do it in the near future. One of the direction I am thinking would be linked the fish diet to the pigmentation. I suspect those fish eat a lot of fresh water crustacean shrimp and scuds which can contribute to the pink/orange coloration... but this is just my guess, of course.

a bull trout for a birthday celebration !

sage ONE spey

cutbow hybrid

Tongass old growth forest, AK

Ed Ward in SkagitMaster.com forum

Check out this forum if you are interested in Skagit casting techniques. LINK Riveraddict a.k.a. Ed Ward is one of the inventors of the skagit casting technique. He frequently teach casting techniques, answers questions, clarify misunderstandings in the skagitmaster.com forum. ------------------from Riveraddict - Ed Ward ----- LINK It is quite revealing to me to hear/read opinions that a Singlespey or Snakeroll produces the same or greater power than a Perry Poke IN REGARDS TO SKAGIT CASTING. Number one, technically speaking the SS (SingleSpey) and SR (SnakeRoll) casts are not Skagit-type casts as they use a T&G (Touch-and-Go) anchor. This does not mean that SS's and SR casts cannot be performed on an outfit setup for Skagit casting... it just means that those casts should not yield the same performance level as true SA (Sustained Anchor) casts. If an outfit setup for Skagit casting does not produce noticeably better results from SA based casts as opposed to T&G casts, then there is something wrong with either the weight relationship of the rod and line, or there is fault in the casting technique. The "wrong" that occurs in a rod and line relationship is an easy diagnosis... the line is too light for the system. The fault in casting technique is also usually of a common, easy to analyze nature... the Sweep is not being performed correctly. If there is a stage in SA (Sustained Anchor) casting that can be labeled as "most important" in the Skagit casting procedure, it is in fact the Sweep. The Sweep is where the majority of rod load - think casting energy - is formed for Skagit casting. This load is produced via effects of water tension on the line, combined with "centrifugal forces" (angular momentum). To capitalize on these two actions the Sweep of a Skagit cast entails actions that are quite different than those of other Spey-type casting styles. To begin with, a Skagit casting Sweep IS NOT about lifting the line OFF of the water. It is, instead, about SWINGING IT AROUND. This may sound like a trivial detail, but in actual implementation it makes a very major difference in results! Swinging the line around for the Sweep as opposed to lifting it up, is accomplished by manipulating the rod tip/line into an OUT-and-around arc or curve, while maintaining the rod in a perfectly a flat plane (remember that "flat plane" does NOT necessarily mean horizontal). I emphasized the "out" here because in order to achieve an actual "around" via an arc or curve, the rod tip must first travel AWAY from the caster. Now then, once one is able to conduct a true out-and-around arc in a flat plane, it takes one more action to then tie it all together and make it work... power application. The out-and-around, flat plane Sweep requires an INSTANTANEOUS application of power AT THE VERY BEGINNING of the Sweep in order to first, bend/load the rod IMMEDIATELY via water tension, and second, to project or prompt the line into an actual out-and-around, centrifugal, "rotational" status. This outward rotation of the line increases effects of rod loading via a process called angular momentum. The immediate application of power at the start of the Sweep is KEY to realizing the most potential from a Skagit cast. The immediate application of power at the beginning of the Sweep can almost be thought of as a small "pop" of acceleration, but bear in mind that this is then followed by keeping just enough speed on the rod through the remainder of the Sweep to retain the feel of that load that was produced from the initial pop... it can be though of as a "one-speed" Sweep! There is no massive acceleration into the D-loop because if an immediate start was correctly performed, the rod is in fact optimally loaded and any forceful acceleration afterward will only overload the whole system, usually incurring a very pronounced anchor blowout. This immediate-start-followed-by-one-speed Sweep is exactly what gives an accomplished Skagit caster the "effortless" aspect of casting! The unique aspects of a SA Sweep process are not easy to differentiate from other casting approaches, nor easy to learn, and that is a major reason many casters never realize the full potential of Skagit casting, especially casters trained in other Spey-type techniques as they have to deconstruct well-ingrained habits of lifting the line during the Sweep to make the "conversion". However, for students willing to put in the time and effort, the payoff is well worth the price. The sequence should be learned in stages - out-and-around first, followed by flat-plane movement, then concluded with immediate-start-followed-by-one-speed power application.

peacock bass study

it's a relaxing sat. morning. listen some classic music and blending some color... have a great peaceful morning!

Paul just sent me this image! What a honor to have the painting framed and displayed in a wonderful home! This image just made my day! : ) Thank you Paul!

bluegill

paint this bluegill this morning... for the good memories for everyone's childhood...

Murmuration from Islands & Rivers on Vimeo.

back to the drawing board

casting pond - Travis, Bob and Donna

think big, and connected

Astrophysicist Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson was asked in an interview with TIME magazine, "What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the Universe?" This is his answer.

birdmen

Hugh Falkus salmon and seatrout BBC Tales

reading through some historical documents about spey casting and found some interesting videos on the youtubes. It's wonderful! enjoy it!

owls in vacation!

hackle works

good hackles are hard to come by, if you get the chance to encounter good hackles, don't let go...!

fair means

The siege tactic used on Cerro Torre’s Compressor Route is perhaps the most egregious example of alpinism’s egoistic “manifest destiny” philosophy, one that calls for conquering the mountain by any means, then leaving in place the pitons, bolts, ropes and cables... keep reading link and more...link

think like a fish

ELWHA RIVER: DYLAN TOMINE

bc crisis

mr. lefty kreh talk about gear...

the big pull

peaceful man

rick's dark steelhead

my friend Rick caught this magnificent steelhead several years ago. For some reasons, this unfinished painting just sit and wait in the closet for many years until last week I took it out and think.... "it might be a good time to put up some finish makeup...". although it seems unfinished still, I think it show some spirits of this fish already...

Kamchatka Kunzha

one day, I will be there birding and fishing - the Kamchatka!

madison brown

it finally strikes me to finish this fall color brown trout from Madison... attending Wynton Marsalis concert last night in Harvard. It was an amazing performance! LINK

Wynton Marsalis - Career Sizzle Reel from Wynton Marsalis on Vimeo.

live in the golden era - GO PATS!

Fish taco - check, beers - check, chips - check, ice cream - check, french fruit tart - check, attitude - check!

artsy saturday

VOTE NOW! a kid need a fiberglass rod~

Go here LINK Vote for NOVEMBER - JOSHUA MILLS, the kid need a fiberglass rod! : )

a day with Mom

it's always nice to be home with Mom and Dad and Leroy and Sabrina and Yuki! Thank you! : )

fiberglass rod!

rock your soul!

owlet never get stressed

they laugh at it and keep on dreaming...

a wader for a friend's departure

best wishes! my friend for another stage of life! as good as a wader!

classic

met a vikin blacksmith in the FF show, he makes his own hooks and his ring! Also he tie flies with traditional way... that is without a vice... amazing!

LOOP

winter, snow and painting

2nd snow of this winter last night... finally get the feel of winter, the peace, the atmosphere of painting... here we go again, I am excited to do more indoor exercise, reading and painting! Hot chocolate please! : )

green butt...

Winter time! tying time!

she is cute and she is my niece

Introducing my lovely niece Yuki! she is amazing! : ) and Yes, I am a true, proud Uncle Mark! : )

BG & Ian strikes again

Detonation Studio

Santa say: Oops, one more gift...

just received this amazing tea book from the other side of the pacific ocean. WOW... Santa say to me: "Oops... like all the good stuff... it doesn't come early!" : ) well... thank you! Santa... this is really a amazing book, a lot of lovely stories about tea and about the mountains! The music CD is just... incredible!! After reading it for couple days, I feel the tea power now... one more cup please! : )

Degas in MFA

spent a wonderful afternoon with paul and isabelle in the Museum of Fine Art. It is really an amazing experience to see the Degas's works again. The "feel" of the nudes series is just incredible! To me, the most beautiful thing in nature has to be the human figures, although birds and fish trailing close, there are nothing like the pure art form of ourselves! I am always in awe that how beautiful and astonishing those paintings actually are! just amazing!

just ...fishing ...

quality in life

My recent internet posts on several flyfishing forums really got me thinking? why the good thoughts went wrong? a lot of good intentions but did not end well because of my lack of communication skills, or lack of writing skills. It felt horrible that the good intentions turned into the flame of hell... I laughed at myself, overall, too much time spent on the internet, too little time spent with good friends... lessons learned! Time to go back to mind my own business... My heart always has a sweet spot for elderly people, particularly for hunters and craftsmen; a pair of seasoned old hands, and a witty mind that shed the words of wisdom are always make me excited to be in the moment. In the past, I have really enjoyed the time spent with some of my "grandpa friends". I would listen carefully, take a note, or video taped about all the amazing stories from the mountains, hunting, trapping and tracking... those are the treasure of our society. I think it is about time for me to go back and visit those people. Jerry in the photo is a great spey caster I recent met, his humorous mind and witty talking are always make my day shine! I am really looking forward to do more spey casting and experimenting with him again! : )

time to focus on another business

bouldering!

photoshop + Imagination = fantastic!

http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1072588 check out the link above... photoshop + imagination = fantastic

Wishes for my 2012

Wish one: Live Healthy all the way: Physically and Mentally.Go Bike! Go Gym! Wish Two: Less computer time, more paper time! I mean REAL book! Wish Three: Family first, want to spend as much time as possible with my family! Wish Four: Be skillful in my career, too many thing to learn, too little time... so I want to be skillful and be alert and be smart! Wish Five: Be outdoors; more route, hike longer and spent more time in the woods and creeks! Wish Six: Be Artsy: Paint/Draw/Fly Tying/ Fly Casting/Photography/Music/Cooking Wish Six - 1: Photography: read more history and do more readings on bibliography of several interested photographers. Wish Six - 2: Music: Read more about music history; play piano Wish Six - 3: Cooking: focus on Spice. try new ways of using spices. Weeee, seems I will have a ton of things to go through... Be happy to be alive! and be exploratory! Here I come 2012!

Happy New Year!

Best wishes to all of you! Wish a 2012 is smooth and flavorful like this fabulous rice bowl!

trout year

apparently,2012 will be a trout year! thank you Santa! : )

Merry Christmas!

cook some good food, watch classic movie and drink some wine, what a great Christmas! now, hot tea, aromatic coffee and awesome music will energize me again! : )

the real master - real style

skagit casting is the style that continue amazing me in different ways... if you have friends are into spey fishing, this is the best gift you can find on the market. Order now! : )

this is fly!?

Holiday Gift!

Just received this wonderful gift from a good friend Mills Thank You Brother!

Happy Holiday - kid's smile

A good friend - Paul just sent me this WONDERFUL photo. He mentioned it's such a wonderful day to fish with a kid. Indeed! It's a wonderful photo, great fish and great smile! Happy Holiday! : )

the spirit of traveling and fishing

amazing MCZ

It's an amazing MCZ museum, I have learned new things everyday! There are many reasons to have a good museum around, scientific research has been the most important one, but over years, I have learned that people and the visitors are the central element in the museum. This place have presented the wonderful nature in a series of time frame. the more people appreciate about it, the more power we will going to have to preserve the wild.

glimpse of the light

every now and then we seems lost in those technical view of flyfishing... but really... bamboo, fiberglass, graphite, large arbor or whatsoever... it's all boil down to the essence of flyfishing... the river... the flow and the outdoors... it's like a river run through your life... let it come, let it go and if you will, capture a glimpse of the beautiful light when you encounter during the journey.

great demo!

great work! Tobbe you are the best!

more work is waiting

more works are piling up QQ... got to speed up... art and science BOTH!

art and science in fly casting

Fly casting is a great combination of art and science! seeing the line goes out effortlessly and wonder around the science behind the beautiful loop. I just love them all! working out some physics this morning and felt I am a competed angler now... : ) more physics please!!

"Am I disaster prone?" asks Ryan Peterson. After nine days on the river, the search for the Ghost Run isn't going well.

New York Times - Harvard MCZ

Check the link out... we were doing some touring for the Nutuall Ornithological Club the other day , and fortunate for us to ride with their fame. It's on the report of New York Times LINK so I guess I am officially famous now! : ) HA...

wonderful documentary

thanksgiving gathering

grateful to have my american family take care of me on the thanksgiving... I can hear my stomach is saying Thank You! still : )

fiber alignment

It's amazing how the rod building tech have evolved into this level! I want a 7 weight rod for my streamer fishing!

last strong hold

need Christmas gift list without break the bank? salmon jerky

Salmon are more than just fish. The immense spawning runs that once filled rivers from Southern California to the Alaskan Arctic formed the lifeblood of coastal ecosystems, nature’s conduit for moving nutrients from the bountiful Pacific to the sterile interior. Ocean elements have been discovered thousands of miles inland, brought there by salmon, and carried deep into the forest and mountains in the bellies of bears, wolves and human beings. Salmon’s former abundance created a thriving human population, with great centers of culture and trade springing up wherever people gathered for the harvest. To the original inhabitants of our coastlines, salmon meant life itself. And today, these fish still carry deep meaning. They are symbols of wild, clean water, a connection to the ancient rhythms of tide and season. Wild Pacific salmon have fed us—in both body and spirit—for 10,000 years. We have always found comfort in knowing they will return from the sea next season, and the one after that. But unless we can change destructive practices within the salmon industry, their return grows more doubtful with each passing year. All Salmon Are Not Created Equal It’s getting tough to decide which seafood is okay to eat anymore, and salmon are no exception. While we know they taste great and come loaded with protein and heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids, there are serious problems within the salmon industry. Industrial net-pen salmon farms, with their vast quantities of waste pollution, disease, parasites and chemicals exact a terrible toll on wild salmon populations. Fish produced in these ocean feedlots require dye-enhanced feed to make their gray flesh appear a more natural pinkish color. If that’s not unappealing enough, farmed salmon frequently contain antibiotics, concentrated PCBs and other chemicals. Off the coast, wild salmon stocks mix and mingle all along their migration routes. Commercial fishers in the open ocean cannot truly know were the fish they are catching originated. While sustainable populations may be targeted, the actual harvest can—and often does—include fish from endangered stocks. The large-river gillnet fisheries kill a majority of the fish they encounter, unable to discriminate between robust populations and those struggling for survival. In the Skeena River, for example, sockeye and pink salmon return in great abundance, but harvesting by gillnet means unacceptable numbers of coho and steelhead perish as by-catch. Thankfully, there are still healthy, sustainable runs of wild salmon available. These are fish we can harvest, eat and enjoy; food that makes us feel good in more ways than one. We just have to know our fish and harvest selectively. What Does A Clothing Company Know About Fish? Strange as it might sound, our fish story starts with the cotton industry. In the early 90s, workers at some of our stores were getting sick when new shipments of cotton t-shirts arrived. Air quality analysis identified formaldehyde and other chemicals in the shirts as the culprit. It was suggested that better ventilation would end the problem, but that felt like ducking the real issue. With a little research, we discovered that conventionally produced cotton is one of the most harmful industries on earth. It requires extensive use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and chemical defoliants, not to mention staggering amounts of chlorine bleach, toxic dyes and formaldehyde for processing. Our immediate reaction was to simply stop using cotton in our products, but we realized a boycott wouldn’t change anything. The “bad” cotton would still be grown and processed, and somebody else would make clothes out of it. The only solution, then, was to start working with select growers and processors to create an organic cotton supply for our products. By 1996, we had converted our entire sportswear line to 100% organically grown cotton. Sure, it cost more. But this decision kept thousands of pounds of toxic chemicals out of the environment, and our customers quickly discovered the new organic cotton products felt better and lasted longer. It’s been one of our greatest success stories. Now we’d like to make the same kind of changes in the salmon industry. Go To The Source In order to succeed, we understand Patagonia Provisions salmon products must be the finest in the world. Period. To this end, we’ve teamed up with Harald Kossler, the legendary smokehouse guru of Terrace, B.C. Based on extensive testing—and the fact that we can’t stop eating Harald’s delicacies ourselves—we’re confident these are the most delicious, healthiest salmon products on the market. To meet our higher goals, though, we needed to develop an entirely new sourcing system for our fish. Working with Skeena Wild, a Canadian fish conservation organization, we’ve identified sustainable, in-river fisheries that use tangle-tooth nets, beach seines and traditional First Nations fish wheels and dip nets. These selective-harvest techniques produce higher quality fish and, most importantly, allow non-target species to survive and spawn. Our sourcing process has also made Patagonia Provisions the first fish-industry business working in active partnership with conservation NGOs. Our state-of-the-art fish processing plant in Northern British Columbia provides local employment and keeps the “value” in “value-added products” within the community. The all-metal, fully recyclable facility runs under spotless health standards and has achieved the top ISO 22000 certification. We are now working toward a zero-waste operation with complete repurposing of all fish byproducts. The Future of Wild Salmon The salmon industry today is a broken model. Too many endangered stocks are dwindling under the pressures of indiscriminate harvest and unsustainable fish-farming techniques. Something has to change. We believe a market-based solution is the best way to effect that change. Our goal, then, is to create a new model, one which demonstrates that adding value to selectively harvested salmon is not only possible, but good business. With your help, our success can create opportunities to reform current fisheries and protect the future of wild salmon. What do we know about the fish business? Maybe just enough to change it for the better. Thank you for your support. The Patagonia Mission Statement Make the best product. Cause no unnecessary harm. Inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis. “Have A Snack, Save A Species” Read the essay by Yvon Chouinard Wild Salmon Jerky Coming soon LINK from Patagonia

dog, boat and fishermen = great time!

This warm video just reminded me how much fun I have with my brothers in the summer time. dog, boat and fishermen = great time! : )

on the way to the office

wonderful bikeway everyday! hope the snow will come a little bit late this year... : )

taming the wind

I have posted this video before, but the technique is so good, worth my extra attention...

we love Mel Krieger!

marabou love

I love marabou, it a feather material come from turkey butt, yes, the turkey we are going to eat on the Thanksgiving! Particularly, it come with endless wonderful dyed colors... why mess around with endangered species?! This marabou material is so good and so cheap, they catch as many fish as you wish, in addition, they are soooo easy to cast!! : )

Martha Argerich - amazing!

few wonderful clips from metalheads

check out METALHEADS. give you a good dose of metalic spirit.

color matters

scored!

good hackles are hard to come by...but sometimes you just get lucky!! scored an awesome hackle cape from bear den! so happy! : )

Niclas - the man - My friend!

check this out! Imperial woodpecker film from 1956

how exciting! a film from 1956! the first and ever, found... continue read Here.