Driven to Fish

I live in what some call "Trout Hell." Good trout fishing is literally hundreds of miles away. My drive to the Eastern Sierras to fish Hot Creek and the Owens River is over 400 miles, taking over 7 hours, including pitstops for food, gas and bladder relief. Over the years I  have learned which towns have a McDonalds or gas stations that I have credit cards for. I enjoy the drive, the scenery is really diverse, ranging from farmlands to desert to mountains to the windmill turbines near Mojave. During my most recent drive up, a severe storm had passed through California the day before and the clouds were spectacular. A couple of particularly interesting looking formations were made up of wispy, fluffy, lacy and turbulent clouds.

Had they been a part of a movie, they would have been warnings that the end of the world or something very evil was coming. For this fishing trip it was a sign that the fishing was going to be tough. On the other hand, fishing is almost always difficult for me. Sometimes I wonder why I enjoy it so much....

Sushiboy

 

Ironically enough, I'm not a big fish-eater. I love to go fishing and I'm Japanese-American but fish is just not a food I crave. Sure, when in the right mood, I like sushi...real sushi, not fake sushi like California Rolls. I've never really developed the taste for sashimi either - raw fish. Put some ribs or Santa Maria-style barbeque in front of me and I'm happy...very happy.

I do spend a ton of time drawing fish, though. This rainbow trout illustration is my most recent, and possibly best to date. Rainbows can be really beautiful creatures.

Point & Shoot

 

There used to be an element of uncertainly when taking pictures...at least for me. I would take the photos, then wait for a week or two for the film to be processed and prints made. There was a combination of fear and excitement when tearing open that yellow-orange envelope from Kodak. Masterpiece or a dark, blurry  waste of paper? 

 

You could choose your film to suit the subject matter - warm Kodachrome, cool Ektachrome, green Fuji, fast black & white Tri-X. With digital photography, you can manipulate the image with your computer. There are even Photoshop filters to make your digital photos look like they were shot on Kodachrome or Fuji! I take so many more pictures with my digital cameras than I ever did before...but I'm afraid that I probably was a better photographer when I had to think more about what I was doing.

Classic Salmon Flies

 

I have to admit that I really don't understand classic salmon flies. Many of them are beautiful and tying them can truly be called an art form. I am a trout fisherman - trout flies at least suggest some prey item...insects, crustaceans, other fish. At least to my eyes, salmon flies resemble very little in nature, not anything that a fish would normally eat. Do they just piss salmon off to the point that they bite them? Or are there things like color combinations that "trigger" feeding? I have absolutely no idea. Trout fishing is puzzling enough for me!

Cutthroat

 

The largest fish that I have caught was a 21" Cutthroat trout at Flat Creek, near Jackson, Wyoming. It was in late August of 1992 and there were few fishermen on the water. Like most fly fishermen, I don't like it when there are too many other people around, and I almost always fish alone. That way, no one has to see how badly I cast or how few fish I catch. But when I caught that fish, I wanted someone to see it. As I released it, I looked around...I was alone. There was no one to share my excitement, no one slap me on my back and say, "Great fish!" It was just me standing there with a stupid grin on my face. The only sound was the breeze blowing through the streamside grass and my heart pounding in my chest.

Hot Off the Grill

 

There are a lot of people on the Central Coast who are car nuts...rather, car enthusiasts. A car show in Pismo Beach regularly draws more than 300 entries and tens of thousands of attendees from all over California. Recently, there was a much smaller show in the little town of Orcutt. I was surprised that there were so many really beautiful and cool cars there.

Fit to be Tied....

I hope go fishing soon, so I've started to tie some flies. I am neither a particularly fast, nor skillful fly tyer. Some people will sit down and tie a dozen flies of a certain pattern, then tie another dozen of a different size. Not me. I get bored tying the same thing over and over again. After a while I start to change things and experiment. It's kind of like my cooking - I tend not to follow recipes very closely. So after an hour or so, my flies tend to take on a mutated, pieced-together, Frankenstein's monster resemblance to the original fly pattern. These changes just might catch fish...but I usually don't fish often enough to have the chance to give them a try.

Something's Fishy

 

Went to a Japanese restaurant this weekend with relatives. Didn't get sushi...although I do like it alot. Lately, I've been opting for the meatier dinner combination plates. I am always impressed by how creative and artistic the chefs can be with their food presentation. Even at little hole-in-the-wall, mom-and-pop restaurants the dishes are prepared to feed the eyes, as well as the stomach. When I cook, I'm lucky if the meal still resembles food!

Does Not Play Well With Others

 

I've never fished for pike. They are pretty intimidating looking fish - basically alligators with fins. Aggressive, toothy beasts with an appetite for anything that they think they can swallow.  I've seen a photo of a pike that died attempting to eat another pike that was about the same size that it was....

This illustration was a bit of a change in style for me, but I liked the way it came out.

Cookies, Cookies, Cookies!

What can be better than Oreo, chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies? Oreo, chocolate chip, peanut butter cookies and milk! I thought it might be fun to draw a chocolate chip cookie, but it looked kind of lonely by itself. Having three is always better than having just one....

What's that Dork doing with a Classic Reel?

Many old, classic fly reels are like little jewels. Small, shiny, precious objects that are admired and lusted over. Many worth thousands of dollars. I own a replica of one, which I haven't used in a while. I was a little self-conscious fishing with it because I am not a good enough fisherman to justify such a nice reel...or at least such a classy looking reel. My friend from West Yellowstone, Steve Takata, told me not to worry about that - he said that if I like the reel, I should use it. I shouldn't care what other people think. He's right. Now I need to buy a new flyline for it...... I think that this is my favorite fly reel illustration so far.

Copper John, classic nymph pattern

Drawing of John Barr's famous Copper John nymph. I was really happy with the way the peacock thorax and the copper wire turned out. Actually, it looks better than the Copper John flies that I have tied! This drawing, like the majority of my fly fishing illustrations, was done in a vector format, using Adobe Illustrator. A vector drawing can be enlarged to basically any size without any image quality loss, so this image will look the same whether it's small or rendered poster size.