Day 3

I hooked up with my friend Chris and found the fish pretty tough to catch to say the least, tossed all of my top 5 flies at them and only one streamer was consistent,... The Montreal Whore.
This fly is the most deadly fly I use on this particular river, it is my searching pattern.
Chris is fishing the main pool and I go to the riffles in the lower pool, out goes the floozy in orange and white first short cast brings up nothing,I cast out where they have been the past couple days,strip strip WHACK!!!! and off comes the fly!  A savage strike so typical in the spot, they seem to hit it like a pike for some reason, the fish continues to jump completely out of the water as if were still hooked for over a half hour, for that I feel badly, I prefer not to leave my hooks inside a fish's mouth for this reason.
No more fish in this run for me,....
Mid morning even that old standby was being laughed at by my finny friends.
Chris was having similar results with his roster.
We had the occasional chase and did land a few at pool 2 but then they just shut down.
So I started thumbing through my bench warmers and eventually found a couple that seemed to interest them, first was a goof fly from a few years back, an olive ersatz wolly bugger thing is flashy and bright as heck, first pass through the pool and WHAM!,,,,,,nice little 19 inch fish.
Second run through and a big boil and stung the fish, he wasn't coming back today.
It was raining hard on us at this point so I give Chris a copy of the fly and head upstream to a nice little cut on a bend, 3 fish rise up on the bugger but no solid takers.
Chris has similar results in the main pool, he switches to a nymph rig and goes into my spot above, I switch to a small Wardens worry that is old and ratty, run through the entire pool and just as I am wondering what any warden has to worry about with this fly hook an 18 inch buck at the tailout...I land him and go to the pools head and instantly stick another fish and lose him.

One of Chris' fish from yesterday, a nice little 18-19 inch buckaroo

Chris is drifting nymphs above and hooks up to a nice little fish that puts on a hell of a show, but loses him, then a few mins later hooks the bigger fish in this hold that also goes airborne before breaking him off...We are both soaked to the bone and getting a bit tired(roll casting all day is tough work believe me) so we quit for the day....overall it was a tough days fishing on this tough river to fish, but it was a very fun day to say the least,...I love a challenge!  I am taking today off to go visit my Mother and rest up for Friday's marathon.   Tomorrow will be meeting up with Blackghost ( Big Brookie Steve) and see what he has up his sleeve.
One of Chris' fish from yesterday

October salmon

Fall salmon season is here finally!
After the endless pursuit of the stripe ones this fall I was looking forward to a little freshwater fishing with a dry flyline again, like night and day compared to heavy sinking lines used for stripers.
Day one was OK 5 fish hooked 2 landed, not bad for this little river.

Day two has been epic, fish in every pool and they were in a striking mood for sure,...10 fish landed, many more hooked or stuck, very exciting fishing!  Cool air,fall colors, and salmon!  Doesn't get much better than that.

Long weekend this week and felt motivated by the crap weather , wanting to do a different subject for a change in watercolor, so it was a Leopard hunting Thompson's Gazelle for this one, bit of a challenge and lots of color, but my new Kolinsky sable brushes seemed to be up to the task,...they rock!

Big weekend of finishing up a few projects I had sitting on the wall for weeks,...

First up was my Striped Bass Painting , pretty happy with this one used a lot of silver oil for scale reflective flashes, liking the effect.

Next painting is 3 Bluefin tuna eating squid on 18X24 canvas, this is based on a Stanley Meltzoff original, my girlfriend saw it as we were browsing online she liked it quite a lot and I don't have $10,000+ for the original so I painted one for her for a fraction of the cost,... not even close to the quality/talent of Stanley's but not too bad, his painting has the big fish hunting baitish, mine are ravaging a school of squid. Stan Meltzoff is a now deceased artist that did fantastic works for Nat Geo/ Sports Illustrated magazine, as well as many others, his big game fishing works are top notch.

 Finally a Hummingbird with flowers, with lots of color and copper oil for the throat feather highlights.

It's been a while since I posted a new page here, not really too much going on fishing or painting wise due to the holidays, and have been in a bit of a slump oil painting wise. 
While surfing the net, particularly Facebook I came across a very inspiring watercolor artist who lives out on the west coast Dianne Michelin, just amazing stuff, I had a small kit of watercolors and some paper I purchased last summer however was afraid to try them out knowing how difficult he watercolor process was.
So I broke them out to try something new and sure enough my first attempt was a complete bust, tossing that aside I sketched out another, put on the masking, and started the background, this time I liked what I saw a bit better, enough to save it from the trash anyhow...and used a different approach on the fish which at least looked like a swimming fish and not a childs painting.  (the 3 d effect is mandatory for my paintings if I don't kind of see that I trash it).   The first one is tail unshaded, something didn't look right so I added shadow on the lower part because that is where the light wouldn't be hitting it as directly. 

 This one is after a bit more shading in the tail area, I like it better.  Water surface still needs tobe completed I am missing sky blue (cerulean blue) to complete that, which I will hit the art store today to pick up.

I kind of like it, much brighter than my oil work.

Another oil painting, this one in progress on 16"x20" canvas,...striped bass rolling on a streamer fly close to the waters surface, background in various shades of Pthalo green which is close to the color of inshore Atlantic ocean as viewed from below.

Hello again, just an update on my painting "The release" ,....Did a bit of airbrushing today for the spots on the trout and a few light ripples on its back as well as red spots painted inside the blue halos...and brushed the highlighting on the grass, didn't do much to the fisherman's hands and think I will leave them as is...not my best work to date, but it's kinda cool.