Teva Games / Green River Trip

A few weeks ago, Thad and I did a little road trip through the Rocky Mountains. After leaving Thad's house in SLC, Utah, we headed to Vail, CO - home of the Teva Mountain Games. We had been invited by the crew at Costa Del Mar, who was sponsoring the Fly Fishing Competition and also showing free fishing movies all day during the event. The weather was awesome and the turnout for the competition and films was great too.

On Friday evening, Costa held a little gathering and had great food and drinks for all.

Costa Del Mar neck ties for everyone.

The Costa AirStream

On Saturday, Thad and I competed in the fly fishing competition, which consisted of distance and accuracy casting.

Preparing for round 2...the bridge of destiny.

We had left Sunday open in case one of us made it to the final round of the competition, it didn't happen. So what were we to do? Gather up our newly made friends from the Gore Creek Fly Fisherman and head to the upper Colorado, where news of gigantic, orange, flying bugs had made it all the way back to Vail.

The reports were true, Salmon Flies were around.

Jonathan Heard wanted to see what they tasted like.

And we even found a few fish...

An Olive 'Heavy Metal Sculpin' did the trick as well in the dirty water.

After the float, we spent one more night in town. At 6am, the alarm went off and we were on our way to Steamboat Springs, CO to meet up with John St. John from Hog Island Boat Works. John showed us around their facility and had invited us to fish the Green River below Flaming George for two days. So we hopped back in Thad's rig and kept driving...another 4 hours.

Mr. St John and friends inside the Hog Island Boats corporate headquarters.

Launching the new 16' Hog Island LTD.

We could hear the Cicada's buzzing in the trees, and the parking lots were relatively empty...time for our first float down the 'A' section.

Thad selecting his weapon of choice.

A brown that chomped a big dry.

That evening we crashed in Dutch John, a town with a lot going on. John St. John's buddy, Bomar Tipton, from Green River Drifters, lent us his couches and provided some excellent entertainment for the evening. Sorry no photos.

On day two, we awoke to warmer weather and blue skies, perfect for Cicada's.

Thad hoisting a dry fly caught Green River brown trout.

The fish were there and we had a number of eats on top, another great day. Near the end of our float, I convinced St. John to throw something big and meaty, he was a little skeptical about my fly choice, but was convinced when the fish below slammed his offering.

After the float, Thad and I hit the road back to SLC, where we watched the temp drop over 40 degrees. We woke up the next morning to fresh snow on the hills surrounding SLC. Thanks to everyone who made the trip a lot of fun!

New addition to the arsenal

There is just something about a drift boat. Whether it be the sexy lines, dry feet, the built in cooler for beer storage or just the fact that it gets you to where those hard to reach fish like to hang out that make us bank waders take our lives into our own hands.

We had a chance to float down the Bitterroot this past winter in a Hog Island boat for the first time while we had an off day during the film tour. I don't even know who's boat it was but It was at that moment I began to lust for one of these boats.

We heard a rumor that one of these boats was sitting idle along side a shed in Wyoming. A few phone calls were made and then a mad dash up to Hoback Junction to pick up the boat and it was in the water in less than 12 hrs.

Warning: Shameless plug ahead;
This boat is making a reputation for itself as the 4x4 of drift boats and our future mission, put this boat through the numbers and see what it can do. To break it down plainly, we are going to have a lot of fun punishing this boat in ways that would leave others lying on the bottom of a river. It was designed to take a blast from a 12 gage and still keep gunning down the river which could come in handy.

One thing is for sure, the crew at Hog Island are passionate about what they do and rumor has it that there is a Hog Island skiff design in the works.

MacRowdy christening the bow Captain Morgan style with "Rolls Royce" on the oars.

Idaho Cut Bow a.k.a Idaho red neck.

On the way through Ashton Idaho I also stopped in at Premier Fly Shop. It's been a little while since I was up in that area and it was the first time I had been in their store. These guys not only run a killer shop right on the door step of of the North Fork on the way into Island Park but they also turn what has to be the sickest hand made drift boat oars on the planet. I got a chance to check out their operation and to see how they craft their oars. Before I left I had a new pair of their oars in the boat. Their oars and blades are worth checking out, especially their Shallow Draft Diamond.

-TR

The Loop AEG Series

The Loop AEG Series 9' 5wt fly rod.

AEG was formed by a group of fisherman who sought to make change in the world of fly fishing entertainment. AEG’s first film was shot during a 5 month trip throughout the Argentine region known as Patagonia. The 4 man crew hop-scotched from river to river, lake to lake, and just about every piece of fishable water they could find. 3 months into their trip, they found themselves at the doorsteps of Estancia Las Buitraras, a fishing lodge operated by Christer Sjöberg of Loop. The crew was welcomed into the lodge and Christer listened to the stories of the road and river. He loved the idea of the project, and from that point forward, made a commitment to support AEG.

Here is a short video clip of Christer, shot this January in Argentina, talking about how we met.
http://tv.aegmedia.com//view_video.php?viewkey=70fd093ee8a9bf8ae7d0

Fast forward 4 years to the fall of 2007. AEG has now filmed in Iceland, New Zealand, and Mongolia, all using the rods and reels from Loop. Christer came to us and asked us to develop a rod that we would put our name on. We said we would love to!

The fall of 2007 and early winter of 2008 was spent testing different rod tapers, durability, and trying to come up with the perfect balance of important elements.

'Product Testing' - A first generation AEG Series 5wt, Argentina

One the most important things we kept coming back to was a rod that could stand up to months and months of fishing abuse. On long trips, fly rods see the elements every day, sometimes avoiding the security and protection of a rod tube for weeks. The combination of sun and water, wet and then dry, can often lead to a traditional cork rod handle falling apart.

The Result : A blend of cork and composite material which only gets better with time.

We ended up using a process that blended cork pieces with composite and synthetic materials. The final product is one of the most consistent, durable, and sensitive handles on the the market! After months of testing, particularly the past month in British Columbia, where we encountered non-stop rain, the handle is only getting better, smoother, and best of all there isn't any cork filler to pop out and expose the imperfections in cork that are so common in fly rod handles today.

Aside from durability, we wanted a series of rods that worked for each situation. Have you ever noticed how certain rods in a series are 'sweet' while other are just 'ok'? Instead of making rods that all share the same feel and compromising on the ups and downs, we wanted to make a series where each is considered 'best in their class', where every rod feels a little different, but is specifically tailored to a fishing situation.

The 9'6" 6wt & 9' 5wt rod tubes.

Here is what we came up with...(in product description form)

9’ 5wt 3pc - $370

The AEG Series 9’ #5 3 piece is the result of countless days of on river testing and tweaking to the existing rods in the ultra-specialized Loop lineup. Dry flies, nymphing, streamer fishing, this rod can do it all. We call the action, Fast with love, meaning the rod has the stiffness to effortlessly handle big fish and throw a long line, but it is also easy loading for the ‘normal’ fishing conditions that we are faced with 95% of the time. We are convinced this rod offers the best combination of performance value on the market and many have commented that is feels as good or better than many $600 rod . Give it a cast and see for yourself.

9’6” 6wt 4 pc - $390

The AEG Series 9’6” #6 4 piece is a big trout, summer steelhead, and bass machine! It loves to throw streamers, sink tips, and indicator rigs. It’s Medium/Fast action is a pleasure to cast, even when weighted down from the sub surface techniques often required to pull the largest trout. Lake and estuary bound anglers will love this rod for it’s ability to cast an intermediate line nearly a mile, and bass anglers will see right away that no bug is too big. If you’re only going to own one rod for medium sized fish, this is your stick.

The finished rod. Graphite finish, green wraps.

Each piece has rod info and rod alignment dots.

If you are interested in testing out a Loop AEG Series rod, shoot me an email - justin@aegmedia.com and I will get you in touch with the boys at Loop for a demo. You will be hard pressed to find a better rod out there!

If you would like to purchase one of the rods, or any Loop products, please visit the Loop Tackle Online Store Here.

Problems and Solutions

Sorry for the delay. After our last blog post we had hoped to have arrived in a steelhead shangra la. A place rumored to be full of unpressured, unwary, and extremely large fish.

But...

We never made it to the steelhead water of our dreams. Instead, other complications with the trip prevented us from ever leaving the dock. Every morning we woke up anticipating the high tide, ready for the all day ride to the secret stream, but to our dismay, there was always something preventing the trip. This lack of fishing opened the door to one of the best parts of the trip.

During our extended stay in 'base camp' we were awarded the opportunity to speak with two amazing men, Gerald Amos and Bruce Hill. Gerald and Bruce run the Headwaters Initiate, based out of Terrace, BC. One of their missions is to connect local community leaders with one another in an attempt to stop some of the destruction that is taking place in their area. One of the stories they told us about is about a place called the Sacred Headwaters, which is at the headwaters of the Skeena, the Nass, and the Stikine Rivers. Royal Dutch Shell wants to drill for coal-bed methane gas in the Sacred Headwaters. They explained that a group of First Nations people have been blockading the road into the area for the last three years and just a few days ago, there was announcement made that there would not be any drilling this summer. Read about the story here via The Cleanest Line. It is amazing to think that such a small group of people can stop such a large, and potentially dangerous project from ever taking place.

These types of stories continued about different watersheds, and different communities, all banding together to make a difference. This was the most inspiring part of the last month.

Now we are back in Oregon, and all I can think about is how to have the same impact on my home waters as the folks up north are having on theirs.

Our next film project is going to be unlike anything we have attempted in the past. We are still hoping to produce a fun and exciting film about steelhead fishing, and we are taking almost a year to do it. But this time we are also going to be making an additional, stand alone, film about the current state of wild steelhead. The second film will look at specific regions around the west and show the viewer what is happening to each. We will touch on the historic run sizes, current run sizes, and the things that are happening now that are helping and harming wild steelhead. Our goal is to inspire people to make a difference on their home waters, because if we don't start making some changes, we won't have steelhead to enjoy in the future.

Over the next several months we will be interviewing steelhead experts to get their take on the current state of steelhead. As we learn more and more, we will be posting to the blog. Stay tuned.

Photos from the last few weeks. by Erik Argotti

Casting for spring steelhead, early May. Notice the fresh show.

Fishing in and around old growth forest is an amazing thing.

Bruce Hill.
Gerald Amos.

So this is the place?

This last week we were dropped off in the middle of nowhere. We didn't know what we would find, we had heard rumors of fresh steelhead, untouched, unfished. We arrived to a river, low like the previous stream we had fished. But we couldn't get picked up for another week, so we had to make the best of our stay. We explored all of the water we could, bounced our way up and down the creek, and even had the sense to bring a crab trap. Here are photos from the week.

The crew.

Part 1.

Part 2.

And we managed to catch a few of these...

Owens cracking the 20lb mark.

Brian, showing us how to do it.

- We are back out again tomorrow...reports to follow.

-Justin

Stuck!

Here is a short summary of last week. We launched our boat into the saltwater to do some recon on a few creeks and rivers that are rumored to have steelhead. We made it to our first , found low, cold water, and made camp. The next day we planned to leave and explore another, we were met with severe wind and pounding waves which made us head back to our little creek...we were 'stuck' there for 6 days, too windy to leave. It also rained, and snowed, and was generally miserable from dawn to dusk..we did find a few fish though. Here are a few pictures from the trip, all photos by Erik Argotti.





We are back out to the wilderness again tomorrow...I will post an update on our return.

-Justin

The search has begun

After 25 hours of driving, three road side camping stops, and nearly 90 gallons of special veggie fuel we have made it to where we start our trip. Here are a couple photos from the last few days.

Our one and only day with blue sky...river side base camp.

A typical day, mid 30's, rain, wind, and the occasional snow shower.

Fishing the clean water line.

Argotti, the 'photographer' scores...

We are off in a few days to a week of exploration, we are following a few hopeful leads, but nothing is ever for sure in steelhead land. We will post updates when we get back.