Goldentroutdude – GOLDENTROUTDUDE

Mineral King Friends Trip 2022

October 23, 2022October 23, 2022
by Goldentroutdude

Any time spent in the Sierra is special but spending it Fly Fishing with friends makes it very special. This is my 4th year enjoying Mineral King with my very good friends. Along with Myself, Luong, Steve and William, Amanda Hoffner (@ladytenkarabum) joined us on this years trip.

Even with the 3rd year of extreme drought California is experiencing, conditions in Mineral King were very good with decent water flows (better than last year) and the fishing was once again amazing!

With 4 days to fish, we covered a lot of water and were able to catch many of the feisty fish in the Kaweah. Rainbows, Brookies, Little Kern Goldens and Golden-Rainbow hybrids made for another exciting trip.

A lot of happy face were seen this week!

Beautiful scenery and great friends!

and some interesting spectators watching us fish!

Luong brought prototypes of his new Headwaters Tenkara Rod and my Limited Edition Golden Trout Dude Rod!!!!! The GoldenTroutDude graphics were painted by my very talented daughter Jessica!. I of course, fished the prototype extensively during our excursions this week. It performed magnificently and I look forward to being able to offer a very limited quantities of this rod this year!

All in all, another great friends trip, we caught and released many a fish and took home with us memories to last us until our next friends trip….

Annual Golden Trout Friends Trip

July 5, 2020November 29, 2020
by Goldentroutdude

Another beautiful California Golden (O. Aguabonita) to start the year in the GTW

A beautiful day at Golden Trout Wilderness for the annual opening day trip with my friends. We started out with a short hike to the meadow and spread out for a day of fishing on the creek.

The water was perfect, the hatches started early in the day making for some fantastic Dry fly fishing with Ultralight rods and Tenkara as well.

Everyone caught many fish as they were very accommodating after a decent winter, snatching almost anything we threw at them. This year Blue Duns and Little Olives were working much better that the Caddis favorites in the past couple of years. Of course dunking a Scud or BHPT with the Tenkara was producing very well.

Carl has himself a nice little Golden on the Tenkara

It has been a challenging year with Covid-19 being forefront on all of our minds and getting out for a great day of fishing was very therapeutic for our whole group. Stress relief? Oh yeah! Everyone left with memories of pretty fish and the camaraderie of a day of fishing with friends.

As always I hated to see the day end and will be looking forward to my annual get-together next year, same time, same place!

First Golden Trout of 2020

May 5, 2020November 29, 2020
by Goldentroutdude

Our first Golden Trout excursion this year started out on a a pleasant Thursday morning in the end of April, weather was beautiful. I and three friends drove up in separate cars and maintained good social distancing, we didn’t see anyone else in a 10 mile radius! Arriving at our destination, we rigged up and headed down to the water. Conditions were pretty close to perfect and I had high hope this would be a perfect day of fishing!! (little did I know how perfect)

The fish were hungry!! and taking a variety of Dries and Tenkara Flies, I started out with my Snowbee Prestige G-XS 1wt rod (that I helped design!). For the first 3 hours I caught a fair amount of fish on just dry flies, everyone was having good luck with the dries.

After the sun got high in the sky and the fish were more hesitant to rise to the surface, I switched to a Tenkara Rod (Dragontail Tenkara wanted to me to try out one of their newer rods, the Mizuchi, this was my first chance to use it, it fished very nicely, I was impressed!). With a Utah Killer bug tied on I proceeded for the next 5 hours to bring in more fish (let alone Golden Trout!) than I ever have in one day.

We spent 8 hours or so fishing, it was a very productive day. Everyone caught many Goldens, I caught my all time best record, 251 Goldens in one day!!! The fish were all stunning! Nothing nicer than a California Golden in its full color glory. On a side note, many creeks in the Golden Trout Wilderness completely dried up in sections during the recent bad drought we had in California 4-5 years ago, it’s nice to see that some of them have completely recovered in the past 3 years.

We were all very happy with the great day of fishing and vowed to return soon. A very successful day of fishing indeed!!

IF you would like to catch your first (or 100th) Golden Trout, I do offer Golden Trout Excursions to different areas of Golden Trout Wilderness for all 3 species of Golden Trout in their native locals. If you’re working on your California Heritage Trout Award, I can help! Drop me a email at: frank@goldentroutdude.com if you would like more information. Cheers!!

Better Presentation with Ultralight Fly Fishing

April 7, 2020April 20, 2020
by Goldentroutdude

Want to improve your success while fly fishing? If you haven’t already, have you considered Ultralight Fly Fishing?

I have been fishing with ultralight fishing gear since I was a kid. Going out on the weekends, fishing for Trout, fishing for Bluegills, I had much more success than most of the other fisherman I ran into while fishing and I attribute that to using ultralight gear.

Fishing success is closely related to how good of a presentation you can achieve when offering your fly to the fish. In many situations, especially in heavily fished waters where fish are under a lot of fishing pressure, a bad presentation will spook the fish resulting in a slow fishing day for you. I have had many days when I caught many more fish than my friends I was fishing with, perhaps that was from developed skill, perhaps just from luck but most of the time I was always fishing with lighter fishing gear than anglers I was fishing with or near.

California Golden – Snowbee Prestige G-XS 1wt

With Ultralight gear, it’s easier to make a better presentation than with much heavier gear that most anglers fish with. When I say heavier gear I am talking about outfits that most anglers already consider light, such as a 5wt fly fishing outfit which most anglers have as their first set that they purchased when getting started in fly fishing. I have had many fishing days where even a 4wt or 5wt outfit is much more than you need to use and is more likely to spook fish. Consider using a lighter outfit, perhaps a 3wt outfit or if you’re like me, a 1wt or 2wt outfit.

Now some of you will say, ‘that’s too light, I like catching BIG fish!’. With the new technologies used in fly rod manufacturing, such as the Snowbee Prestige G-XS 7’6” 1wt and 7’ 2wt fly rods (which I helped design!) are strong enough to handle bringing in a BIG fish in minimal time without stressing out the fish. While fishing Hot Creek in California a while back using the Snowbee 1wt rod, I hooked into a 22” Brown Trout and managed to land that fish in only 7 minutes! The fish was not in any way stressed out and was released quickly to be caught another day.

So if you want to increase your success in catching more fish on your trips, consider using a Ultralight Fly outfit, you won’t be disappointed!

If you would like more information, don’t hesitate to contact me and I will be happy to discuss options and methods with you!

Cheers and tight lines!

Frank Burr
@goldentroutdude

Native Pennsylvania Brookie
Snowbee Prestige G-SX 1wt

Late Summer in Mineral King

August 31, 2019October 23, 2022
by Goldentroutdude

Annual trip to Mineral King, I like to get up here at least once a year, usually more often. This area is just amazing and probably my favorite area in the Western Sierra. As usual we stayed at Silver City Lodge (which has really upgraded their facilities!!) for 2 nights and fished 3 days in Mineral King.

Fishing was amazing as usual, caught lots of fish. Brookies, Rainbows and Goldens were abundant (and of course catch and release).

William with the Snowbee Backpack outfit

I caught all my fish on Dries, my favorite method. Fish were easily spooked but we used 1wt and 2wt rods and Tenkara so that wasn’t really a problem. Fishing was great all 3 days and I look forward to the next trip to Mineral King!!

Golden Trout Camp

July 30, 2019April 20, 2020
by Goldentroutdude

Wednesday morning July 17^th, my good friend Steve Schalla and I hit the trailhead to backpack into the Golden Trout Wilderness for four days as guest instructors to teach OBA youths how to fly fish. This was my 3^rdyear volunteering at Golden Trout Camp, I look forward to the trip each and every year I’m invited to go.

After a nice leisurely hike up to the camp, we managed to arrive ahead of the kids and got ourselves setup in our tent cabin, which was our home for the next three nights. After settling in we spent some time checking out the environment and the nearby fishing possibilities. About an hour later the youths and OBA instructors arrived in camp, it looked like we had a great group to work with, very enthusiastic and ready to experience the outdoors!

The next three nights were familiar, after a great dinner cooked by Thatcher School Alumni; we had the nightly campfire circle, then off to sleep.

The next two days we had the opportunity to give the youths a crash course in fly-fishing. After a brief casting lesson to get them proficient enough to fish, we headed out for the meadow below camp for some on the water instruction. Half the kids used traditional fly-fishing equipment and the other half, Tenkara rods. The second day the two groups switched equipment so everyone had a chance to fish both methods.

California Golden – Snowbee Prestige G-SX 1wt Outfit

The kids all caught and released beautiful specimens of Golden Trout, for most, the first fish they had ever caught. A lot of smiling faces made it all worthwhile!

After breakfast on day four, the kids headed up into higher country for five days of wilderness backpacking, Steve and I headed back to civilization, looking forward to next years adventure.

Author: Goldentroutdude