Trout Lake

The 15th of June is really when our "big fish drought" officially ends. There's Yellowstone Lake, with its monster cutthroat and chance at lake trout to help the cutts and fill the smoker, but the better bet is Trout Lake. There are a lot of 16-20 inch fish in this lake, and a few in the 24-30" class. In the 1980s an angler brought a 10lb rainbow he caught from Trout Lake into our shop to be weighed. He caught it using a Popeil Pocket Fisherman rod.

Okay, we'll be honest here. This blog entry is mostly an excuse for me to brag about the 24" rainbow I got from Trout on 6/25. It ate a #18 BLM nymph trailing a #14 Adams Parachute. The first run was 100 or more feet, way into the backing. That's it above.

We are running guide trips on Trout now. With the Gardner in great nymphing shape and Trout fishing well in the morning, combining these two makes a lot of sense for anglers who don't want to attempt the joke show down on the Firehole.

New pages about our custom flies, request for Youtube video suggestions.

Two items today. First, I've updated our Custom Flies page to have a photo and description of ALL of our currently-available custom and local fly patterns. Some of these are both tied and designed in-house, some are stock patterns we tie locally, and some are patterns we designed that have either been picked up by wholesaler Montana Fly Company or that we have MFC do since we struggle to keep up with demand.

Here's the main page: www.parksflyshop.com/flies.htm.

Here's the special page I made for our 2009 new patterns, both custom and "standards." We have A LOT of new flies this year, and I just gave Doug a new order for several beyond what we have pictured... and I have a lot of ideas percolating in my brain for when I finally finish the main fly order. www.parksflyshop.com/newflies.htm.

Finally, I have a request: please comment below on what sort of videos you'd like to see posted to the new Parksflyshop Youtube channel. I am planning to do some fly tying videos, videos of rising fish, videos of spawning trout, and of course promotional videos. What in particular would you like to see? Requests for particular flies to do full how-to videos for would certainly be welcome, based on the links above.