Thursday, July 30, 2009

P.O.A.C.H. Part One

Yep oh yep.
This the first of many.
Went to do a short recon scope of this little beauty.
Right Wing Paradise.
Locked deep away in the gated communities and sheltered lives of those that control the world around us.
Put on a nicer-ish shirt and talked to my buddy who works at the golf course.
He's got a computer that tells him where all the carts are, marshalls and dickheads.
He called me today to let me know the coast was clear from 4 pm on.
I walked down not expecting much, with 3 flies and a 7wt., and the temperature being near or over 100 for the last month.
3rd cast= Bazooka
A small largemouth. In 100 degree heat.

Even had the maintenance guy snap this shot, after he snuck up on me and I thought it was mission over.
Baby bitch

My buddy says that one is small. Yes I agree. He also said that there are some twice that size. I hope he's telling the truth.

More to come as the summer rolls on.

29 inch wheels, what you got on that rap game?

Yeah, let's get ready for SSWC!
Thanks Noah Silverman, this is the raddest beast ever.
Suck it dirt.

Saturday, July 25, 2009

HELLOWEEN RACE




I'm throwing this race here in Reno.

It's gonna be like a super-cylocross-alleycat.

You're gonna puke.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Gilligan

Is the world's laziest man.

Dude's a fine fly tosser, one of my best friends, and even catches some retarded trout.

Sample of some of our drifts and stupid road trips.

Gilligan's Guide Service

Gilligans Gay Service

Truckee River

Chris and Matt

Matt "Gilligan Thumbs Up His Ass" Koles

P4270267

Thanks man.

You've been the best teacher I've ever had, and you've taught me so goddamn much about this life we live through our passion, I'm forever in debt to you for showing me what this is really all about.

P4130288

Cheers to you, Mr. Beckman.

Monday, July 20, 2009

Koper

Scott Koper is like the little brother I never wanted. Second time carper, first time winner.
Not bad for a dirty Reno backwater.
Not bad for a first carp!
Carp even gave him a mud pie face with a smack of it's tale in the shit mud.
Koper's Carp
You can bag on carp all you want, but when the river is 70 degrees, I'd rather go tangle with a few double digit garbage loving beasts than go stand in the river pulling in discolored trout that are gonna die because of the heat wave.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Kayla's First fish on a fly.

Kayla's first fish on a fly

Man oh man look at that smile!

Saturday, July 18, 2009

The Truth.



Puck Febble. This is the real deal.

All you should peep This.

Do you want this to happen to the last great salmon run on Earth?
Fuck No!

Check out savebristolbay.org, and Trout Unlimited Alaska to get more info and get involved.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

The Holy Grail




And from Florida to the California Delta, many tears were shed, much gnashing of teeth, and the Pride of the Bible Belt has been destroyed.

Japan is always leading us into the future.

Friday, July 10, 2009

And than there was One.

First true strain Lahontan Cutthroat in it's native drainage.

The Truckee River Drainage used to be home to the largest cutthroat trout in the world.
When John C. Fremont first came to Pyramid Lake, the terminus of the Truckee, his starving men feasted on Lahontan Cutthroat trout given to them by the Paiutes. He remarked that they looked like Columbia River Salmon, "from two to four feet in length" and because of their size, he even originally named the river "The Salmon Trout River."

I'd love to be on the river 160 years ago with a 10 wt. Chinook stick throwing God knows what at the Lahontans lurking in there.

Due to a combination of overfishing, habitat loss, introduced species, pollution, the construction of Derby Dam, and several other factors, the Lahontan's that used to thrive in the hundreds of streams and lakes in it's 1,940 miles of stream flow drainage are now limited to two small areas. Aside from the hatchery planted Lahontan's in the Truckee in Nevada and obviously Pyramid Lake, there are two areas with a wild self-sustaining population. One is Independence Lake, which drains into Independence Creek, the Little Truckee, and the Truckee. These fish are battling for their survival against non-native rainbows, browns, and brook trout.
The other section where you can find wild populations of native Cutts is the Upper Truckee River, which is more of a tiny creek flowing just over the north ridge of Carson Pass, and it gains water and momentum as it descends into Lake Tahoe. Years of management and restoration have removed the Brook trout that were taking over the Upper Truckee in Meiss Meadow, and now that meadow is a miracle.
A few short miles of trusting, hungry, beautiful native fish doing there thing in a stream that evolved them. It's really a beautiful fucking thing.
First LCT in the Upper Truckee
Kayla and I headed up there to camp and fish. We stayed at Showers Lake, and shared some Beam and watched the Cutts rise to mosquito emergers. I was throwing a 26 and it was too big. Fuck that. We had an awesome night camping under a full moon at the lake.
Showers Lake
Kayla Warming up the Buns.
Matty Hargrave and the Upper Truckee
My boy Matty Hargrave met us on the stream the next morning and we walked through the freezing water and willow tunnels all day.
All I could think about when I was cradling these 6-10 inch fish was Fremont eating their 40 lb ancestors, and how lucky I am to even have this last stand, this last best place. I hope I can take my kids there someday and they can enjoy nature as it was intended.
PCT and Meiss Meadows

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Know your Heritage.

My brother, sisters, and cousins on the Dotta side @ Grandma's Memorial in 2007.
Damn I've lost some weight.


I was born and raised a half-hour north of Truckee in the Sierra Valley. My family, Dotta, was one of the first European families to settle there, along with several other families from the Ticino canton of Switzerland, including the Martinetti's, Roberti's, Fillipini's, Vanetti's, Madalena's, and Genasci's. Before us, the Maidu and Washoe Indians hunted and fished in the Valley. I'm 4th generation in the Valley, and I'm proud to say I know the routes my Great Grandparents took from Switzerland, only to cross paths in Vinton, and create my lineage.
My Great Grandfather, Lodovico Dotta, a native of Ticino, took a ship across the Atlantic to Panama and road a donkey across the Isthmus of Panama in the early days of the Gold Rush. He took a steam ship to San Francisco and worked in a dairy, saving his money to open up a supply store for the Gold Rushers. He made a killing, and made his way to Sierra Valley. I can't imagine what California looked like in his day, millions of salmon and steelhead making their way up river next to him as he ascended the Sierra Nevada range.
He bought a large piece of land that encompassed most of the north eastern Sierra Valley, and included the land that's flooded by Frenchman's Reservoir.
He owned and operated the train station in Vinton as well as operating a large dairy ranch, which still remains today.
My Great Grandmother, Claudina Dotta, boarded passage from France after leaving Ticino.
She was in the bowels of the ship as a Third Class Passenger. Disease was ramapant, and by the hand of God she was plucked from the belly of the ship by a First Class family, whose nanny had died on the voyage. She assumed her duties and went through Ellis Island with the family. They stayed in Chicago for a short time, and than headed to San Francisco. En route, the train stopped in Vinton. She met my GG and fell in love. She stayed there with him and had seven children, my beloved grandmother Thelma being the youngest. She stayed and went to school at the old Vinton School house until graduation, which than was the Eighth Grade. She loved the ranch life and stayed there helping the family. She fell in love with the Standard Oil gas truck driver, my grandfather Stormy Weathers. They moved, she, reluctantly till her dying day, to Loyalton. They had three children, Jim, Robert, and my mother, Barbara. Stormy died when my mom was 3. My grandmother was a tough SOB. She drove school bus for years, worked for the Forest Service, as well as on the ranch, and put the three kids into a better life. My mom even had her own horse when she was a girl.
My father's family came from Lithuania. They settled in Illinois and my namesake, my grandfather Lawrence, and my grandmother Winnifred, moved to Sierra Valley in the mid 1950's. My mom and pop went to school together and were married in 1973 in Sierra City. My sister Micah came first, my brother Seth next, than Andrea, and finally me in 1983. My parents are still together and hold on to one of the most naturally stunning properties in the Valley, overlooking the Turner Ranch just below the intersection of highways 89 and 49 a mile north of Sattley. I grew up there, fishing my own creek, Turner Creek, for browns, rainbows and brookies, hunting quail, biking, and loving my Huck Finn childhood. I still do the same things today, as I haven't managed to move past my childhood at the age of 25.

I say these things out of pride. I speak of this history because it is my lineage.
I speak mainly out of fear.

The new age is upon us, I can't wave to half the people I see because I don't know them. The outsiders are slowly weeding out the old families, the lumber industry is dead, and the farming industry is on it's way out as I type.

I feel like I have the last fingers on this heritage, the last bit of sinew that binds me with my ancestors and their ways. All of my friends, save the Martinetti boys, have long abandoned the Valley, leaving a void of native sons that cannot be replaced.
I don't blame them, prosperity lies elsewhere.

But my fear lies in the future of my children.

Will they have the opportunities I did growing up? Hopping fences on the neighbor's ranch to sneak up on some giant browns that don't look like they fit in the tiny creeks? Will they be able to spend summers roaming free in the fields and forests, climbing the mountains that I did and still do? Will they live in a place where you don't lock your doors, where the biggest crimes are committed far away from our consciousness?

I speak of these things in fear. In fear that we are headed down the wrong path, and virtues and natural instincts are set aside in the name of progress and greed.

This is why I want to protect the last, best places.

So what about you?

KG is the Man.



Dude catches some gnarly fish.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Makin your bench time count.


My clients raped me boxes this weekend. I went through about 40+ flies in 2 days. I should be tying up caddis pupas, stonefly nymphs, PMD nymphs, and some hoppers.
But I tied 2 dozen comparaduns, with gray adams bodies and zelon tails cause I can't find any of my goddamm microfibbet shit. They're an experiment, since the Adam's has always been one of my favorite dry flies. 2 dozen is a bit overboard, but I can always give them to somebody.
It was between that and tying up some Zoo Cougars in orange. I didn't have any orange mallard flank.
I can't tell the difference between my chest hair and the deer hair, next time it's shirt's on or no scalping.


I went carping yesterday with Scotty JR, and we had a few takes and both boned the sets. At least I was still drunk from a night of cops, fireworks, illegal boxing, drinking too much and running barefoot hopping fences because of a combination of two of the things above.

I tied up some of Mr. P's Carp Carrots, and had some good looks and 2 takes. I've found that the carps in Reno love orange flies as well.

Mr. P's recipe is excellent.

Tomorrow it's streamer chuck time on a little farm stream with some hung ass browns and bows.

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Born on the 4th of July, like Christ the Phoenix.





"Today is a day for Americans."
Fuck it.
I'm over the constant rattle of cold hands shaking shaded by the chins of a bowed pate, deliberating the inevitable cost of our lack of virtue, the reluctant kiss of a tyrant crown.
The silent nods signaling defeat in a battle never induced because of fear, self loathing, and a mirrored image that never has given back what was portrayed.
These are times for men, for the inclined and disadvantaged to strike out and lash back for all that was wrongly given and taken, a burning of the social treatise that has confined us to the bidding of the monetary masters and play writes of our own meager means. This redundant social contract holds only the weight of our own labors, the toils of our fathers, and the blood that separates ours from theirs.
That blood, the blood that binds us, is spat upon and given no quarter.
What will it take to turn the tides again? Among us the spilling of it, and our ideal of a true freedom, as we stare upon the crimson pool made up of us and them, than we can see a true reflection of our worth.
Less talk and more action.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Gilligan took the words outta my mouth.. and file this under the FREEDOM SECTION.


I just chatted with an ex-girlfriend.
We're still friends, she's a great girl, but there were irreconcilable differences. Example A:
Tonight she invited me to go to the crowded, disgusting, tourist filled, loud, blood pressure boiling, couldn't-pay-me-to-go-there-ever-on-a-summer-weekend Donner Lake on the 4th of fucking July for a party at her house, in the thick of said douche shenanigans..
My 4th is already planned, with my ideas of great times.
My whole family is going to a reunion(YES!) and I'm staying at my parents house with my dog, drinking whiskey and fishing my own creek with my dog. I will see 0 People. I will unplug the phone. I will shoot a shotgun naked off my back lawn. I will answer to no one. I want to stay as far away from Donner Lake as the Great PWNER and reason will allow.
It's simple:
I hate crowds, festivals, giant concerts, rallies, large gatherings, anything where I feel like I can't escape at anytime into oblivion. I hate being controlled on any level, and I hate the dip shits that come up to Tahoe, even though they sign my checks.
You gotta be bitter for something, if you disagree you're a fucking liar.
Why am I the grumpy ass?

I just want my Pabst in peace. A few shots of Jack.
I just want to speak no words except what I think my lab Rosie needs to hear, and cast dry flies to wild browns and a few carp here on the ranch.
I absolutely love freedom. Personal freedom. Freedom from the mechanical hands that justify orgies of control and confinement in the name of Freedom.
Nobody is going to keep me down, or tell me what to do. This is not entirely selfish, but it's 99 percent selfish. Live with resolve, die without regret.
I made up my mind a long time ago.
And every day my mind drifts deeper into a house in Alaska, with a float plane parked out front and my beard back to it's full glory.
Self isolationism.
I only have one qualm. I do like to be social. I do love my friends. I like girls.
You just have to find the right girl...