O is for Olive Dun

The mayfly and its life cycle provides a good bit of flyfishing's raison d'etre as well as a good bit of its vocabulary.

Egg, nymph, subimago, and imago are the four stages that a mayfly goes through. "Dun" is another word for subimago. This mayfly, at the dun stage of its life, can fly, which it does from the water surface to a sheltered spot along the stream where its wings can dry and harden a bit. The wings sometimes have an olive tint to them at this stage. It is now an adult, but thought to be sexually immature. At some point shortly after surviving this flight from water to shelter, it sheds its skin one last time. This mayfly is now fully mature and is known as a spinner.

And there you have it, the sex life of bugs and the fish that eat them. It's a tough life.

D is for Black Drum

A few years back Quietwater went on a deep south adventure involving shallow salt water, fly rods, and kayaks. One day we met up with Gary Taylor at a marina near Slidell, Louisiana. With some kayaks added to his mother ship we went out the Rigolets Trestle in the midst of some fog bound for points unseen. We emerged into a big, shallow, open chunk of empty. I still call it the Lousiana Marsh. It was incredible.

This marsh is a place unlike anything I've ever seen. If you get a chance to get to Louisiana look up Gary Taylor and have him take you out for a day of fishing. He's a great guide, with a memory full of cool places to go in the marsh. The goal was redfish. We found a few, but the fish of the day was this enormous black drum that Gary caught and Jimbo landed. This fish story is brought to you by the always truthful, non-exaggerating letter "D".

Season ending musky from Hayward Fly Fishing

The big one that didn't get away

Larry and Wendy, our guide friends from Hayward Fly Fishing Company, sent us this today. It is their season ending musky. 52+ inches, 35+ pounds, on a fly, out of a drift boat, on the same stretch of the Chippewa River that we floated this summer making our movie. 5 degrees when they left their shop, 20 degrees at the put-in. I suspect the adrenaline they ingested catching this fish more than made up for the temperature!

"inland waters kayak fishing" has been released

After a few months of virtual heavy lifting as well as watching some very talented people do their own heavy lifting while filming and editing, we would like to announce that Quietwater Films' fourth movie, "inland waters kayak fishing" is now available.

Jimbo Meador (front) and John Reinders (back) navigating a stream while poling their Native Watercraft Ultimate kayaks

Jimbo Meador, John Reinders, Wendy Williamson, and Larry Mann provided the paddling, poling, and fishing while we were out on the water. Damon Hennessey and Christina Smith did a wonderful job behind the scenes working the camera and editing our footage. And of course there are the boats. Even though they are inanimate pieces of plastic, those Ultimate kayaks are worthy of thanks for the wonderful job they did floating everyone around on the lakes, rivers and streams of the Chippewa Flowage, a slice of paradise in northern Wisconsin. The two muskies, numerous smallmouth bass, northern pike, along with "all the ones that got away" also made for some nice days fishing as well!

muskie - fly rod - kayak

June in the Midwest finally arrived, and we went fishing for our fourth movie - "inland waters kayak fishing". In Hayward, WI. For muskies. Using fly rods. And kayaks. Larry and Wendy from Hayward Fly Fishing company were kind enough to guide us.

John Reinders on only his 200th cast catching his first muskie

John, in the picture above, was onto this muskie - day one, hour four, location two. Nowhere near the mythical 10,000 casts. Lucky or good, we'll never know, but the muskie gods smiled on him that afternoon. I felt pretty lucky as well, having camera in hand capturing the tail dance of an extremely elusive fish. Location two, by the way, was too shallow for traditional boats. Kayaks were perfect and we had the entire stretch to ourselves. Wendy floats this stretch in her drift boat, which also works well. On this particular day, she traded her drift boat in for one of our kayaks and left her boat in my hands to carry our camera guy, while she tried out fly fishing from a kayak.