First deer with a bow and...

I (david) shot my first deer with a bow this past week. I was on Lake Hartwell in a climber stand. It was a clean shot and she didn't run far. She weighed in at 110 lbs. She came up with two other does and was directly behind me. I climbed the tree at around 5:15 and I shot her at 6:00 pm.


Later that week my wife and i went to the low country on the Combahee River to a friends place and I shot another doe. I hunted 3 days. The first day was with my bow, I saw a spike and 3 does, but the stand was not the best for bow hunting and all of those deer were out of range. So I went back the next morning with my rifle and i must have seen 15 deer. No bucks that were big enough to take, so I shot the biggest doe which was about 115 lbs. A buddy of mine also shot a doe that morning. The number of deer at this place was amazing. No trophy bucks were seen that weekend, but there were many 8 points and under that were just a little smaller than a wall hanger.

Last Day in Montana

For our last day in Montana we fished the channels again. We just liked it so much and there was still a lot to explore. Today was the first day without full sun. The clouds spit on us a little bit here and there and it was down right windy. We didn't have much luck with the fish today but it was fun nonetheless. Just something about being in the river.
We left the river a little earlier than usual today so we could spend some time with the locals. Our first stop was the Dairy Queen. This guy, Moses, might have been the slowest Dairy Queen employee on earth, but boy did he take pride in his work. His goal was to fill our Blizzards as high above the rim of the cup as he could before it fell over. And that he did. Genesis ch. 3, v. 25 - "And then Moses raised his cup and said before all who had an ear to hear, 'I will make this Blizzard 8 inches tall. And it might fall over, but it'll be sweet.'"
After Dairy Queen we headed back to the cabin to clean up and go ahead and pack our bags. We had an early morning coming and wanted to enjoy the last night in town without worries.
Once we got back to town we hit up the Silver Dollar Saloon and the Longbranch Saloon. A little video poker and some pool and we were ready for dinner. We hit up Sportsman's Lodge and all got steaks. Luke flirted with our 14 year old waitress, Jessica. Nah, just kidding. She was at least 17. And then back to town for a little while to top off the night with some drinks.
Ennis is a good town. I'm going to miss that place.

Click here for pictures of Ennis.

Fish Fry

Today we fished The Channels of the Madison down near Ennis. The Channels is a section of the river where it splits multiple times into many various sized channels. The channels are separated by grassy and rocky islands (with some trees). David saw a deer and Luke saw grizzly tracks. We enjoyed this section of the river much more than others, as evidenced by our staying there for several hours. I had a pretty big brown trout on as soon as I got in the river, but he got off when TR attempted to grab him (my error, not his). Other than that one, I didn't get much more than a few canardlies. As for the other fellas, they caught a mixed bag of biggies and smallies. The good news is that we went home with three decent sized brown trout perfect for eating.
We weren't sure those 3 would be enough for dinner so we stopped by the local butcher shop and picked up a salmon fillet on the way home. It wasn't quite dinner time yet, though, so we headed back to the mountain lakes for a little while. TR and I started at the upper lake to catch some more Grayling, which we did. We caught about 11 or 12 in thirty minutes. David and Luke were clear across the lower lake by the time we got back down there. On our way to meet them, TR and I fished where we could. It was quite windy so it wasn't easy. But that's when it happened. That's when TR hooked one of those monsters that he saw the day before. I believe this was the biggest fish of the week and certainly the biggest rainbow. And he was some nice eating too.
And just when we thought we'd had enough fun, Luke and David found a rope swing. Only the Yoders can go all the way to Montana and find a rope swing. It was a nice, high swing and would have been perfect for gainers if it was a little warmer.
We trekked our way all the way around the lake and back to the car - hungry and ready to eat our catch. We all felt like we could live off the land if we had to. Just give us a car, some nice carbonite fishing rods and fancy reels, all the sweet gear we love, and you could call us true grizzly men.
Once we got home we immediately started cooking up the fish. TR and Luke concentrated on grilling the brown sugar salmon while David and I worked on the trout. David filet TRs big rainbow and we prepared the brown with skin on. We covered all four in seasoned bread crumbs with salt, pepper and other goodies, then fried them in an iron skillet with garlic olive oil. With sides of rice and beans, it was awesome. And I'll tell you what. Give us a propane grill, a stove top, some nice pans, and lots of spices, and we are true mountain men.

Click here for river pictures.
Click here for lake pictures.

Canardly

kuh-nard-lee - noun 1. Any type of fish that, when raised out of the water, the nearest redneck hollars "whoo doggie, I can-hardly see it!"

After breakfast we headed up the Madison just above Lyons Bridge. This was pretty hard fishing. It was windy and the current was fast. We didn't stay long and headed over to the West Fork. The West Fork is a smaller stream more like what we're used to in North Carolina. We didn't have much luck here either. Just a couple canardlies.
We headed back to the cabin for a simple turkey sandwich dinner before heading up to the mountain lakes that David and TR discovered. There were two lakes: the lower lake and the upper lake. The lower lake was larger than the upper lake and had some pretty dense evergreen growth on one side. We fished the lower lake for a while with no luck, although David and TR both said they saw some monster rainbows in there. We headed up to the upper lake and soon discovered it was loaded with Arctic Grayling. The Grayling is a unique cousin of the trout with a sail-like, colorful dorsal fin. These are a prized catch. After catching about 20 of these (and releasing them, of course) we headed back to the cabin. By now it was getting dark and the guys were itching to win their money back from me at the poker table.

Click here for river pictures.
Click here for lake pictures.

Look out Buzzy, here comes Chef Luke

Today we got to sleep in and relax without being rushed out the door. Of course, I was up at 7:30. It was like Christmas. TR and I took off up the hillside behind our cabin to check out the views; David was not far behind. I stayed on the hill to take a few pictures while TR and David took off in the Commander to find the hidden mountain lakes. Not only did they find the lakes, but they also stumbled upon a bull moose. By the time we all got back to the cabin, Luke had already started cooking up a big, cowboy breakfast. Scrambled eggs with cheese, bacon, pancakes, some fruit, milk, and OJ. That was awesome. And to top it all off, the temp was in the upper 60s and sunshine everywhere so we had breakfast on the porch.

Click here for pictures in and around the cabin.
Click here for pictures of the surrounding territory.

Trout Stalkers

We woke up this morning with antelope grazing in our back yard. And in our front yard was a spectacular view of mountains and the valley.
After a quick breakfast we headed into town to meet up with our guides from Montana Trout Stalkers, Joe and Charlie. TR and I were in a boat with Joe while David and Luke were in a boat with Charlie. Charlie gave Luke a quick lesson in fly fishing and then we were off. We floated about 12 or 13 miles down the Madison. The views were amazing. One section of cliffs, called the Palisades, is where native Americans herded buffalo off the cliff. We fished nymphs and streamers, typically trailed by a small bug such as a lady bug or Copper John. The weather was ideal - 70s and 80s and sunshine all the way. Not bad for October in Montana! We ended up catching 11 trout per boat (David: 4; Luke: 7; TR: 5; Chris: 6), plus a handful of Mountain Whitefish. David had the big fish of the day at about 18 inches.

After a long day of fishing (around 8 or 9 hours) we headed into town to check out the dinner spots. We settled on the Roadmaster Grill at the Claim Jumper Saloon. We saw some of the local cowboys and chowed down on some good eatin'. Once we got back to the cabin we turned on the baseball playoffs and started playing poker. I must say I was pretty dang good (or I could be bluffing).

Click here for Trout Stalkers pictures.

Hello Montana

After a quick layover in Memphis and another quick layover in Minneapolis, we made it to Bozeman, Montana, with all of our gear. Luke, who came from San Diego (and spent the last 6 hours in Bozeman getting groceries and mingling with the locals in Hub Pub) had the rental car ready for us. We made the 1 hour, 1 A.M., trip to Ennis (pronounced Innis) where our cabin was waiting for us. Our cabin is pretty sweet. Since we arrived under the cover of darkness we're not really sure what our surroundings look like but we'll find out soon enough when we meet up with our river guide at around 8:30 in the morning.

Click here for pictures.

Video Preview

After next week's trip to Montana, we hope to post some nice videos. In the meantime, check out some of our existing videos on YouTube.
Videos from Chris. Videos from David.

Good News About The Dam

Well it appears things are looking good with the damn dam. Some kind of last ditch effort fixed the flow and things are getting back to normal. In fact, it could work to our advantage. There has been less pressure on the fish the past few weeks and hopefully they've gotten dumb and careless. Just the kind of fish I need if I'm going to catch anything. Here's to big fish!

The Dang Dam

Well it appears there are some problems in Montana. One of the dams on the Madison is malfunctioning and letting too much water through, increasing the water level to spring run-off levels. Efforts are being made to repair the dam, but the latest report indicates that more damage was done to the dam while trying to fix it. We are scheduled to take a guided trip down the Madison on Wednesday. I'm not sure how the dam problems will affect us, but reports are that the fishing is still good.
See the latest report here.

Two Weeks to Montana

Exactly two weeks from today we'll be in the air heading to Montana. Luke will arrive a few hours before us and is planning on getting the rental car and picking up the initial groceries. I've compiled a list of trout recipes and I'm ready for some good eatin'. The 10-day forecast shows anywhere in the 60s and 70s during the day to 30s and 40s at night. Assuming we get to Montana on time, we hope to make our first post from Montana on Wednesday night with a full description of all of our trophy catches!

New Trail Cam Pictures

I just retrieved my first pictures from my trail camera that I put out at our hunt club. There were over 450 images from just over ten days. I set it to take pictures watching over 100 pounds of corn that I also put out. The first picture is of the only buck that visited over the 10 days, it looks like a 6 point, as you can see he is in full velvet still. This buck came back two days later for another meal. He is a healthy looking 6 point, notice how his rack spreads a few inches beyond his ears. If this dude passes in front of me while I am bow hunting, he will be toast, if he decides to come by while I have my rifle in the stand, I will probably let him go. The second picture is of one of the turkeys that decided to smile for the camera, there were groups of 15 turkeys at a time that showed up in the pictures.
In the next picture you can see two does and a racoon that came to grab a bite to eat. In the last picture I think that is a coyote at the base of the tree on the left.

We've got a fourth!

We've drafted our fourth fisherman - Luke! Luke is the older brother of David and TR. We're very excited to have him with us on the trip. He lives out in San Diego so we don't get to hang out with him very much. This should be good!

Rolling Hills

The Cabin is reserved, the tickets are booked, and we are headed to Montana. We will be flying into Bozeman, MT on September 30th and driving into the Madison River Valley for 4 days of monster trout fishing. Chris, great job on the blog!

Going to Montana

It's official. We're going to Bozeman, Montana. We booked a trip for this October to fish underneath the great, wide-open skies of the big country. We found a sweet cabin to stay in and we've bought our plane tickets, so now it's time to get excited.

If anyone out there has suggestions about fishing in and around Bozeman, Montana, please let us know. We're looking forward to catching trout on different types of streams and would love any suggestions about locations and flies.

TR Catches a Striper on the W

TR and the W have been bonded by the thrill of the catch. Today TR caught his first striper on the W. We applied the techniques we learned from John and from my outing with David earlier in the year and were once again successful. Maybe not in terms of the amount of fish, but definitely in terms of gaining confidence and knowledge. We trolled and fished cut bait, catching one striper with each method. We also caught a few large mouth bass along the way.I also managed to hook a turtle. I believe it was a Spiny Softshell based on its pointed snout. Don't worry, I got the hook out.

An Evening on the Lake

TR and I went out for some evening fishing. Our target fish was, of course, the striper but all we caught this night were large mouth. Nothing to complain about, of course. Pulling in a fish feels good no matter what kind it is. Sometimes we even caught more than one at a time.

The W Gets Her First Striper

The W (pronounced dubb-yah) got her first Striper today.

TR and David have a sweet Boston Whaler so David and I took her out to see if we could apply the techniques we learned from John and catch our own stripers - and catch our own stripers we did. I wouldn't say it was the best day ever, but it was a great day for learning how to handle live bait and the logistics of multiple lines in the water while trolling. Check out our catch.

Once we got back to the dock I saw a few large mouth bass hangin' out so I decided to throw a line in and see if I'd get lucky.

North Carolina Trout 4-20-08

This particular river has been good to Carolina Guys and Flies so we will not mention its name. If you have fished it before you may recognize it from the video and pictures. April 20th was another good day for us. We caught each of the three species the river holds: Brown, Rainbow and the native Brookie. Chris caught the first fish of the day, it was a 12 inch bow. TR got into a hole above the bridge you see in the pictures that produced 3 fish in a row in only around 7 to 8 casts. You can see TR in the back ground of the second picture with a fish he hooked into shortly after Chris caught his first one. I caught one of the bigger brookies i have seen in the blue ridge mountains, you can see the fish in the net. This has quickly become our favorite trout steam in the area. This time of year the fish love anything underwater. Most of our fish are caught on extremely bright patterns or very dark steamers.

Inaugural Striper Trip

Today was my first striped bass trip. TR and I boarded the Old Yeller with John. John is a local striper legend (and neighbor of ours) and was gracious enough to take us out. The morning started out kind of cold but warmed up enough throughout the day. We fished with live bait and spent most of the day trolling and part of the day anchored down with cut bait. Although some would have called it a slow day, I was quite pleased being my first trip and all. We reeled in two fish that were about 8 lbs. and two that were a little smaller.