First off, I want to thank all KIAP members and supporters for everything they have done this year to help our Kinni restoration efforts. Through grants and your donations we donated $75,000 of the chapters money to this cause. The generous organizers of R4F then donated half of their proceeds to our chapter, close to $9000, to be used for the project.
Now our friends at TCTU have stepped in and are doing a tremendous job to increase fundraising efforts, so we can meet our goal of raising $200,000 by November of this year. We have teamed up and TCTU created a joint Kinni fundraising page for our chapters. What’s more, they have pledged to match donations up to $15,000. Let’s make sure we can get the full match!
Please check out the eloquent appeal from Bob Luck, TCTU president, the video by member Chris O’Brien, and the joint fundraising website below.
Shortly after moving to the Twin Cities some 30 years ago, my wife and I crossed the Kinnickinnic River at the Highway 35 bridge just north of River Falls. “I’ve heard of this river,” I said, “It’s one of the most famous trout streams in the country.” A few weeks later, she gave me a fly rod for my birthday, and her life hasn’t been the same since. In those days, I spent most of my time on the Upper Kinni, where the current flows deep and smooth. I could get onto the water within 5 minutes of parking my car—an important consideration given my young family and a full-time job.
Fish rose willingly to hatches of Caddis, Blue-wing Olives and Sulfurs, and sometimes they even took my fly. Recently, with more time on my hands, I’ve been hiking down into the gorge to fish the riffles and pools of the lower river. No road crosses the river for seven miles, and humans share the corridor with Osprey, Eagles, Fishers and even Black Bears. A river like this within an hour’s drive of 3 million people is nothing short of a miracle, and one of the reasons I boast that the Twin Cities is the best big metro area in the country for trout anglers.
In the next 12 months, we can make this amazing river even better. Two dams were built in River Falls in the early 1900s. The impoundments created by these dams raise summer water temperatures on the lower river as much as 5 degrees. Fish are unable to migrate between the lower and upper rivers. Since a severe rain event in June 2020 damaged the Powell Dam, silt built up over the past hundred years has been flowing into the lower river, threatening to smother the cobble stream bed, an important habitat for spawning and aquatic insects. In 2018, the City of River Falls voted to remove the dams and restore the river. Early this month, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission accepted the city’s request to cancel the power generation license for the Powell Falls Dam, clearing the way to remove the dam and begin restoring the streambed next winter.
After 100 years, there is a lot of restoration work to do! Public funds will pay for approximately 2/3 of the restoration, including removal of all structures and basic soil stabilization. However, private donations will be needed to fully restore the river and create a mile of publicly accessible trout water in the bed of the former impoundment. That water, by the way, has the bones to be one of the sweetest stretches of the river. Lots of riffle/pool sequences, and some deep runs for the monsters to lurk. The South Branch, a brook trout stream, flows into the Kinni here. Rumors are swirling of enormous brook trout being caught in this stretch last summer by some bold pioneers who didn’t wait around for the rest of us to discover it.
Twin Cities TU and our partners at the KIAP-TU-WISH chapter in Wisconsin are collaborating with a variety of organizations to raise funds, and we are asking for your help. Between now and May 20th, we plan to raise at least $15,000 in donations from our members to restore the Kinni. This will be matched by a $15,000 grant from our chapter account. The TCTU Board is deeply committed to this effort: Every single board member has pledged a contribution, and we have already raised over $5,000. We hope you will join us!
As a fly fishing enthusiast and novice fly tyer back when I earnestly began pursuing this sport some 25 years ago, I was surprised to learn that 90% of trout eat their meals subsurface. Wanting to catch these finny critters, it seemed only reasonable that I should fish a minimum of 90% of my time subsurface. Researching effective nymph patterns to do just this led me to legend- ary fly tyer Skip Morris’ book,
The Art of Tying the Nymph. Paging through it I was drawn to Skip’s description of his March Brown Spider pattern, especially the portion of his description where he referred to it as his favorite search pattern. From there, I was metaphorically hooked.
Over the years I have made some slight modifications to Skip’s recipe, and these have worked very well for me on the Kinni, the Rush, the Root, and the northern triangle streams of Iowa as well. This versatile pattern can be tied with or without a bead, with my preference being to tie it without the bead. The pattern is also well suited to being tied on a jig hook for those preferring a Euro nymph presentation as well. If so inclined, I would recommend still sticking with only two hook sizes – 16 and 14.
Hook: Standard nymph hook, size 16, 1x long Body: Waspi Awesome Possum Natural Nymph Dubbing Thread: UNI-Thread 8/0, wine color Rib: Gold UTC Ultra Wire, size small Hackle: Hungarian Partridge feather dyed dark brown and sized to hook
If adding a bead: Use a 16 2x or 14 1x long hook to maintain thorax body length, add a brass or tungsten bead, three turns of lead-free wire, continue with steps 2-8
Mount hook into vice.
Secure thread and lay down a thread base by wrapping along the hook shank to just above the barb of the hook.
Lay rib wire along the hook shank and wrap back towards the hook eyelet making sure to leave enough room to prevent “crowding” the head when the hackling step is completed.
Apply a thin noodle of dubbing, wrapping down the hook shank and taking one wrap behind the ribbing wire before wrapping forward. Continue this wrapping process striving to get that “carrot shape” thorax body look.
Wrap 4 to 6 turns of ribbing wire and tie off behind the hook eyelet.
Size, prepare, and tie in hackling feather. Take 2 to 3 wraps before securing the feather behind the hook eyelet. Skip intends his pattern to be heavily hackled. I prefer the same as well.
Check to see if any “gap” exists between the end of the dubbing and the hackling feather. If so, apply more dubbing to fill in that gap, again striving to maintain that “carrot shape” thorax body.
Whip finish to complete the tie. The result should be a “pronounced” thread wrapped head which also serves as a hot spot to the fly.
In a previous article, I wrote about the history of fly-design moving between poles of simplicity and complexity, with a funny story about salmon fishing in Scotland. Sometimes, and more frequently than not, simplicity wins.
Emergers are a class of immature insect in the act of ascending to the surface, attempting to split wingcases, or drying wings, or escaping the remains of a nymphal exoskeleton. Trout, being effi- cient predators by necessity, feed upon the most vulnerable insects, those that, because of a disability or handicap, will never fly away.
During a hatch, there are thousands of individuals in the process of becoming adults. If everything goes as nature intends, they will all look alike. The cripples have one thing in common: theylook different from the successful individuals.
The differences may vary, but there will be some trigger that lets the trout know which ones are vulnerable, so the fish can rise confidently and not waste precious calories in an unsuccessful effort. This is also nature’s way of eliminating less robust individ- uals from the breeding pool. After hatching, the birds take their share, again targeting those individuals that exhibit less than perfect flying ability.
Consider now the standard dry fly, with hackle, wings, body and tails, tied on a metal hook which often breaks the water surface. Can you see your fly on the water amid a hatch of insects? If you can, then your fly doesn’t look like the naturals. The trout will also notice these irregularities and perhaps eat your fly. Ironically, the take is precisely because all of your ingenuity to craft the right silhouette, match color and size, and simulate movement creates just the opposite impression to the fish. The fish recognizes that your fly is a fake, but sucks it in because it won’t fly away. I think it’s terribly humbling to consider this, but it leads to a clearer understanding about what makes a great emerger imitation.
If any irregularity in the natural causes it to be targeted by trout, the more general and simple we can make those irregularities, the better. With fewer elements in each fly, we can concentrate on getting the colors and size right. The goal is to convince the trout that our imitation is a member of the same species that’s hatching, but also that it is crippled.
Soft hackle flies do exactly that, provided the body is the same color as the natural’s underbody, and the hackle is soft and sparse enough to get wet and simply lie along it. Don’t worry about flota- tion. Even wet, most soft hackles will stay in the film, despite the hook point. By the way, make sure you tie them on light weight hooks. Are your soft hackles hard to see on the water? I hope so. You may not be able to see the fly, but you can watch your tippet for a tell-tale twitch, or lift your rod tip if you see a rise where you think your fly is.
Let’s begin by recognizing that Trout Unlimited is not a fly-fishing club, it’s a conservation organization dedicated to trout and cold water fisheries. It’s motto could be, “What’s good for the trout is good for the trout angler.” Founded in 1959, TU accepts any trout angler who wants to help conserve and protect trout and the cold-water habitat they rely on. Angling methods, whether bait, fly or spinner, are less important than your desire to protect and conserve.
Among Great Lakes steelhead anglers there’s a technique that calls for a fly rod fitted with a fly reel loaded with monofilament. The advantage of this rig is twofold: the fly rod, generally longer than a spinning rod, extends the anglers ability to lengthen the cast and control the drift, and the thinner mono allows the spawn sack, egg, or fly to sink deeper faster because it is less subject to the vagaries of the current.
Years ago, there was a debate in the Fly Shop about what actually defined fly fishing. At that time a veritable hoard of guys would crowd the shop every Wednesday to drink coffee, trade the same old stories, and debate various issues, one of which was what defined fly fishing. We called them “the Lost Boys.” Gordy was the one member of this unofficial club whose life had purpose; he fished every day, no excep- tions. While he had explored every method of catching trout on a fly and was an excellent caster, his favored method of trout fishing was with mono because he recognized its advantages. With a weighted nymph or two, split shot, and a wood strike indicator, Gordy relied on the weight of his rig to make the cast. The Lost Boys rejected this method as “spin fishing” with a fly. And therein lies the debate.
If you want to practice your spin casting you need your rod, reel spooled with mono, and a lure or plug because it’s the weight of the lure that pulls line from the reel. If you want to practice your fly casting you need your rod, reel, fly line (which supplies the weight), and something that could pass as a leader. You wouldn’t need a fly because a fly weighs nothing. So, what defines fly casting, as well as fly fishing, is the fly line.
Bruce Maher and Bob Trevis wrote an excellent article in the January RIPRAP about Tenkara and Euro Nymphing as trout fishing techniques. Tenkara relies on rods that are long and willowy and a short “line.” What they describe is either level fluorocarbon or braided or furled nylon. Both are described as roughly the length of the rod, 10′ to over 14′. Approximately 3′ of tippet is attached to the end and a fly attached to that. I’ve frequently thought that Tenkara, because the rods telescope to 20″, would be an ideal lightweight outfit for backpacking into those small mountain streams I love. But to make a point, the authors admit that the “line” rarely touches the water and in fact is not cast in the traditional sense. Likewise, in their description of Euro Nymphing, they explain that the fly line, usually only a foot or two beyond the tip top, also rarely touches the water. With a 20′ leader and heavily weighted nymphs the angler is actually casting the weighted nymphs, not the fly line, copying Gordy’s tech- nique. If you think a 20′ leader is kinda long, brace yourself; I found a leader formula that was 45′.
Both of these methods, Tenkara and Euro Nymphing, are legiti- mate and excellent fish catching techniques. Maher and Trevis should be applauded for introducing us to these techniques, and we could all stand to adapt some of these ideas into our fishing repertoire. Absent a fly line, however, is it fly fishing or is it spin fishing with a fly? Therein lies the debate.
I would like to start off with a HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who participated in our 4 x 100 drawing and on-line auction. The auction brought in $9,104, the drawings $4,670, and with a donation of $300 from TCTU , the total gross amount donated is $14,074!
This was our most successful fund raiser ever and discounting expenses, we netted $11,871 for the chapter. Thanks so much to everyone that donated items for the drawing and auction. Special thanks to Tom Schnadt for once again doing an incredible job on the drawing and thanks to the auction committee that included: Tom, Scott Wagner, Ken Hanson, Ed Constantini, Dave Johnson , and Matt Janquart.
This issue of RipRap kicks off an incredibly active spring for the chapter! R4F, the River Falls Film Fishing Festival, starts things off on March 4th at Tattersall in River Falls, which we will be helping out with. Get your tickets now! The Great Waters Fly Fishing Expo will be March 18-20 in St. Paul and we will have a booth there. Covid kept us out of the schools for the past couple of years, but Dean Hanson and Bugs in the Classroom will be back in April! Fingers are crossed with hopes we can help out with the trout release days for Trout in the Classroom as well. Rocky Branch Elementary will be collecting aquatic insects from the Kinni for their ECO Day and we will have our booth set up at the River Falls Earth Day celebration at Glen Park.
We are looking forward to launching our Stream Girls program for the Girl Scouts in May and will be helping to launch a fly fishing class at UW-RF. Hopefully, the city of River Falls fly fishing clinic will be back on too.
Of course, Randy Arnold is continuing to host brushing days every Saturday and is organizing some youth service days around this activity as well. Fundraising for the Kinni restoration is on-going too. Whew!!! We are an active chapter, and we are able to take all this on, because of your involvement. If any of these activities sound like something you would like to help out with, please reach out to me at: driftless23@gmail.com.
Oh yeah, the fishing should be heating up too! Hoping that BWOs will be on the menu soon!
Join us on Friday, March 4th at Tattersall Distilling in River Falls for a fun night of food, drink, and amazing outdoor/fly fishing films. As usual, this event will sell out so don’t wait to buy your tickets. All proceeds from the 2022 R4F fly fishing film festival will support the Rhinos Cancer Foundation (https://rhinosfoundation.org/) and the Kiap-Tu-Wish Chapter of Trout Unlimited (http://www.kiaptuwish.org/)
