A near and dear friend spent some time in southern CO recently. He’s the kind of guy that would travel from Dallas to wherever you needed help building a guest house, as long as you promised him some fishing. In this case he was in southern CO visiting a friend that, well, needed help building a guest house. Being that he is a friend of the Hatchless bunch, a very good friend, more like a brother of mine, I promised I’d share his reports from while he was there.

First couple of days… Built a guest house… BlAhBlaHblAH.

Here’s his reports, daily as requested, since we’re too lazy to get off the Au Sable and go elsewhere regardless of when and where else we’re invited.

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 I saw this article and could only think this can’t be good in the long run. Sure, there won’t be as many trucks (see, Megaloads) hauling stuff from way up north and that’s kinda cool. What scares me is that these things will make mining and access a whole lot easier. Read the article. Probably not good.

This post from the guys at Old Au Sable pretty much sums it up.

Here’s the soundtrack for those days when you are ready to settle in and commit to sticking with it.

Clean up weekend is here! Well, next weekend anyway. September 10th is THE day. Saturday after Labor Day. Its that weekend that no one but everyone looks forward to. Its the perfect kind of a weekend to introduce new folks to the resource that we love. Come one come all! This year we are taking a group of 8 down the river in search of trash. Some new folks, some trash collectin’ vets. The good thing is that all are excited to purge the river of the filth that has accumulated over the long, hot summer. If you are interested you can sign up here. Just send an email and get your “beat”. Great raffle and door prizes await those that participate! The ASBWPA runs a killer event! Come on out and get some!

Afterwards… we will all fish.

Via The Chum. Looks like fun to me. Where do I sign up? …and who’s paying for it?

Didn’t get to fish today. All the “locals” are still pretty much blown. Bummer. Wifey is away so I got control of the “pooter” and listened to some punk rock tonight instead of our usual stuff. I’m enjoying it so much I figured I’d share.

Might fish in the morning if the river has potential. We’ll see.

I will apologize in advance for the lack of video footage. Just enjoy the music (if you’re punk enough), if not, go here instead.

Prize Country

I just discovered this band last weekend. Its all my favorite late 80′s and early 90′s hardcore bands rolled in to one. Good stuff.They just broke up but check more out HERE. These guys re-kindled a lot of old music flames in me.

Drive Like Jehu

Underfuckinrated! These guys killed it in the early to mid 90′s. It would probably go well with that bluefish slaughter video you’ve been hiding from the purists.

Kerosene 454

All time favorite. Well worth a few songs.

7″s of goodness.

Metroschifter

Ummmmmm… J. Cash!

Texas is the Reason

This past Saturday I was at Mike’s for dinner and he reminded me of a funny time we had on the Huron this winter searching for random steelhead. We were in the boat and I was in the back of the boat which is a rare occurrence since I am a whiny drift boat owner that doesn’t like to fish from the back of my own boat. Whatever…

Anyway, being the whiny bitch that I am, I also don’t like to have the anchor “kerplunked” in the water when approaching a pool that may hold fish. I suspect that from the fishes perspective you may as well just do a cannonball off the boat. It would probably end in the same result. So here’s the basics:

Anchor: Kersploosh!

Me (to Mike): Hey plunky. Splash that anchor again and I’m gonna hop over this brace and punch you in the face!

Mike (to me): I was trying to get you wet.

Me (to Mike, head shaking): Yeah? Well next time try rubbing the inside of my thigh.

We got skunked that day as we have every other day we have fished that river for steel.

Check back. This post could be added to in the future.

This is strictly our fucking opinion, so don’t go getting your panties all in a bunch over what a couple of douche bags from Ohio had to say about what is what when it comes to beer drinking. But in response to a recent post by the American Homebrewers Assoc., we decided that list was missing some essential shit and needed to be worked over to match our Midwesterner’s sense for what we believe is good fucking beer. And to make it even more difficult we are shooting for 100. So here it goes. We will make no apologies if this list seems to have a genuine Midwest/Michigan bias.

1. North Peak Brewing – Diabolical
2. Bell’s – Two Hearted Ale
3. New Belgium – Ranger
4. New Holland – Mad Hatter
5. Dogfish – Head 60 Minute IPA
6. Dark Horse – Crooked Tree IPA
7. Sierra Nevada – Torpedo
8. Great Lakes – Lake Erie Monster
9. 21st Amendment – Back in Black IPA
10. Sierra Nevada – Pale Ale
11. Rogue – Dead Guy Ale
12. Bell’s – Oberon
13. New Holland – Ichabod
14. Stone – Arrogant Bastard
15. Yuengling – Traditional Lager
16. Great Lakes – Commodore Perry
17. North Peak Brewing – Wanderer
18. High fucking Life – duh…
19. Brooklyn – Lager
20. Victory Brewing – Prima Pils
21. Bell’s – Third Coast Ale
22. Genesee – Bock
23. North Peak Brewing – Vicious
23. Arcadia – Witsun
24. New Belgium – Fat Tire (but only on tap, in cans this shit sucks)
25. BrewDog – Punk IPA
26. Avery – White Rascal
27. The Brew kettle – Red Eye
28. Maumee Bay – MB IPA
29. Red Hook – Long Hammer
30. Great Divide – Yeti
31. Southern Tier – Unearthly
32. Bell’s Hopslam
33…..Sparks?

ok ok as you can see we could not make it to 100….big deal. But you get the point. We like good fucking beer and if it ain’t good we like it cheap.

Hey have a happy 4th of July! Tight lines and all that good shit.

Its no big secret that we are streamer junkies. For the past several years all of us here at Hatchless have done nothing (at least as far as I can remember) but talk about how awesome streamer fishing is and how much we love to do it. All true but the fact is, we are flyfishers and with that it is also our duty, as flyfishers, to chase bugs. There is no escaping it. I have tried for years to be against the bug but the fact remains that deep down, I love that shit. I love the science of the hatch. I’m starting to think that my cohorts here at Hatchless do too. And while that’s all well and good lets not forget, lets NOT forget, the name, Hatchless, well… that ain’t exactly conducive to scoring the big one on a dry fly.

Case(s) in point.

Early May last year, Hennie season… bugs hatch, no fish rising. Bugs come out to do the dance, wind picks up, bugs go back to trees. No spinner fall. This year same time, hatches all screwed up based on weather. Timing was odd, water was off color (which should have meant great streamer fishing… but not) bugs hatched, few fish rose, no spinners.I honestly can’t remember what happened for Drakes, Hex, and Iso’s last year but I can say with confidence that it didn’t happen for us. I did catch a nice fish on an Iso last July but it wasn’t because they were out in force. It was dumb luck. Nice. But dumb luck.

The point of this is that as disappointing as it can be to drive 4 hours north just knowing that you are going to hit the magic moment. when it doesn’t happen, there is a good lesson to be learned there. The lesson is patience. Fine tuning your ears to hunt for the big rises no matter how few and far between they are. We chased Hennies in May this year and it was a good lesson in what I just mentioned. The hatch was not exactly stellar but there were a few good fish looking. We found a few, parked, pitched and struck out. Maybe we put them down… whatever. Bottom line is that it was a whole hell of a lot of fun for the short time that it lasted and it put an even finer point on something that we never thought we’d care too much about. Actually hunting rises. I think it actually started last year with the whole stonefly/”stoned hopper” thing. The fact is, there is now an even bigger place in our hearts for the potential of disappointment. So much that we are going to go up after brown drakes next weekend for one night. Brown drakes are noted as being a pain in the ass and the disappointment will surely bring us back for more with the next big hatch. Maybe hex. Maybe white flies. Who knows.

Here’s a few shots from the Hennie trip this May.

Streamer potential at the launch. “What color today?”

“Cotton Candy was no good. Now what”?

Good fit.

Hard to complain about putting a good fish down with this view.

ditto…

Million dollar dinner.

Best fish of the trip. Not the biggest, but the best… by far.

Has this gone too far? Not yet! I can’t wait to see what’s next. Is it possible that we will see KBarton’s new “greatest freakin’ nymph dubbing the world has ever freakin’ seen” showing up dubbed on people’s hair as dreads? I should figure out how to plant that seed. That would be a riot.

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