New snow and dry fly fishing in March. With steelhead just starting and the Big Wood and Lost fishing well and others simply thinking about skiing there are plenty of great options... The flow on the Lost was bumped up almost 100 cfs to 218 cfs.
The bottom image is a 3 frame pano.
"Winter Wheel Line Pano"
The above image is a seven frame pano looking toward Picabo, Idaho. I used NIK's Color Effex Pro 2 for the black and white conversion and Photoshop CS5 for the photomerge process. The Queen's Crown is the prominent hill way in the background.
On a fishing note, the Lost and Big Wood are both fishing very well. Baetis and midges on the Lost and midges and a few small stones on the Wood. This is arguably one of the best weeks of the year on the Lost and Wood. Keep in mind the Lower Lost now is open year round.
As far as steelhead go on the Salmon I have been up to the upper river--Stanley area--quite a bit lately and while there are a few fish around it seems like it's going to be a waiting game until more fish start moving up. The water temp yesterday morning at 11 AM around mile marker 206 on the Salmon was 36 degrees!
Salmon River Bull Trout from nick price on Vimeo.
I just received my GoPro Video Camera and Eye Of Mine Housing and gave it a go for the first time yesterday. Right after I turned it on for the first time we hooked a nice Bull Trout. It was trying to eat a small white fish we had hooked... Much more to come.
The image above was taken on the Lost River yesterday. We were on the river by 10:15 and nothing was happening. The nothingness lasted about 3 full hours and then the full on midge and baetis madness erupted. There were almost too many bugs. A little technical but lots of fun.
I have been playing around with trying to get the reel blurry and other parts of the image in focus. Think strong fish ripping line from a reel and better yet a little water on the line spraying in different directions.
Image taken with the Nikon 35 f2 lens at 1/30 of a second.
"Lost River Rainbow"
The above image was taken today on the Lost River. Lots of baetis and midges to be had! The color on the fish right now is extrodinary.
Image taken with the Nikon 35 f2 lens.
"Sawtooths After A Storm"
I drove up to Stanley today and poked around looking for steelhead. There are fish in the upper river--Torrey's and upstream to Redfish-- but there does not appear to be that many from what I saw today. In about a week there should be substantially more fish in the upper river to make the trek to the Salmon River worthwhile. While the recent storm produced lots of rain at lower elevations, that was not the case at higher elevation. New snow on Titus was reported to be 14" with storm totals in the Sawtooths up to 30".
The above pano was taken handheld with the Nikon 50 1.8 lens.
"Red Winged Blackbird"
So...here's one just edited on NIK's new Silver Effex Pro 2. The selective color control point--essentially lets you decide where to restore color to a monochrome image-- is MUCH easier to use/work with than Photoshop and can yield some unique results. If you don't use any of NIK's plug-ins you can try them out for free for 15 days... Be advised, you will want to purchase after trying them out. They are pretty amazing!
I am off to Stanley tomorrow to look for and hopefully find some early season steelhead before the hordes show up in mid-April.
Every once in awhile I will be sharing another fly fishing photographer's website that really, in my opinion, stands out. Here's one by Matt Jones: http://theflyphoto.com/
In particular his underwater shots are phenomenal and his desire and willingness to share photography insight is exemplary... Anyway, check out his site.
It's his site, after all, that led me, yesterday, to purchase a Go Pro. I have not received it yet , but I am really looking forward to getting underwater video footage. If you have not been to the Go Pro website it's worth checking out the video that immediately pops up: http://gopro.com/
"Callibaetis Color"
Here's another image I skipped over last summer. It's of a callibaetis on Silver Creek and the focus is on the body rather than the head. This particular callibaetis had probably just molted which can explain the more vibrant body color. Image taken with the Nikon 105 2.8 and extension tubes.
I am in the process of going through my entire photo library and keywording just about all of my images. While this is a major pain to accomplish it really taught me a lesson: When uploading images--in my case into Aperture--ALWAYS add keywords, copyright and other pertinent info. It is far easier to do when uploading than years later with over 100,000 images to sort through.
Wet weather here today... Snowing. Wet snow.
I am still adding to my galleries and this one above just made the cut. It was taken early last fall and like many others didn't grab my attention when I originally uploaded it from my camera...
While the image above makes me think of warm summer nights, today was a real blast of spring with highs around 46! More precipitation forecast for tomorrow and tomorrow night. We'll see...
Girdle bug... "The Gird's The Word."
Spent Midge
Some images taken today on the Big Wood. Sunny and mid-forties today. Looks like highs in the forties through the week with clouds too. We couldn't ask for much more...
Images taken with the Nikon 105 2.8 and extension tubes.
Lots and lots of midges on the Big Wood right now and the dry fly fishing is really good at the moment and probably will only get better unless we see drastic changes in our weather. I was on the Wood in Hailey and north of Ketchum today and while there were certainly more bugs North Valley, there was still plenty of good stuff as far downstream as Hailey. The last two weeks of March really are some of the best weeks of the year for dries on the Wood.
Lots of bugs on the Big Wood these days. Rained hard last night with a strong wind event and it is now about 20. Think ice. Otherwise it's warming and fishing really well. The three images above are of small winter stoneflies we get on the Wood starting around the end of February. They are called neumoras. The last image is to give you an idea of scale. They are small. Smaller than many of the super abundant midges crawling around on the snowy banks.
Here's a 5 frame pano I took and put together this evenning. I used NIK's new Silver Efex Pro 2 for the black and white conversion. It's leaps and bounds more versatile than Silver Efex Pro and worth every penny ($99) for the upgrade. If you have never heard of NIK check out thier site. They have many great free videos on editing which are extremely helpful. I have found NIK's plug-ins to be my go-to source for editing beyond what Lightroom or Aperture can accomplish.
Believe it or not, long before my passion for photography was born I was an aspiring writer. After my freshman year at the University of Washington where I was on the crew team I decided I wanted something a little different. I had heard about this writing program at the University Of Montana in Missoula and off I went where I eventually graduated. During and immediately after school, I had a keen interest in fiction and fly fishing with one caveat:
It was at Missoula's Grizzly Hackle, where my fly fishing work started. I am no longer in Missoula and have stopped writing. Completely stopped. I don't even lie to myself that some sort of long-term brain freeze or perennial writer's block will cease and out will pour, with ease and grace, onto paper a fabulous story... I used to believe that by virtue of being awake and conscious that something magical in me just might find, if I was aware of it and noticed these full eloquent pages floating around in my head, a written gem. I was foolish. I was not practicing the writing equivalent of what the photographer, Jay Maisel refers to every day shooting as, "visual push-ups." I was trying to "will" something to happen that simply was not going to happen.
My father-in-law just spent a quick weekend with my family recently and left two books with me, both of which by the same author, Robert Olen Butler. One of them, From Where You Dream, is on the process of writing fiction. Now, what does this have to do with anything?
These are impromptu thoughts:
"Butler's writing 'zone' is instead a place of meditation on the sense experience of the characters, requiring both patience and a depth of concentration that must be surrendered to and cannot be willed."
To close, that's my long-winded, out-of-the-blue stab at what I unconsciously think about with regards to photography, which may mean I have not been thinking at all...
Well, the Store/Purchase section on this website has been a long time in the making and tedious as well. I just added the Store page to this site moments ago! You can now purchase prints from me via a secure connection with Paypal. Many people have contacted me wanting to have the ability to buy prints with a credit card on this site and that is now possible. While I only have a fraction of my images in the purchase galleries at the moment, I will be adding to them daily. I also have the ability to email a secure invoice using Paypal should you want a print that has yet to make it to the purchase galleries.
Yesterday's clouds on Silver Creek East. Steel grey and warmish. Highs were in the low forties and midges were plastered to the melting snow banks. Fishing is now closed on Silver Creek except for a small portion downstream of Highway 93. This is a 43 megapixel, 8 image pano taken with the Nikon 35 f2 lens.
Unknown fly fisherman on the Big Wood River. I took these two images today. It was a brooding, warmish, snowy day. Moody. Midge weather and this guy had it figured out. One more month left on the Big Wood prior to the annual two month closure. March is arguably one of the best months of the year on the Wood. It's staying light noticeably longer and the window of very good dry fly activity is getting longer as well.
A winter view from Gannett Road. Two wheel lines and rolling hills. This is a 3 image pano taken on a tripod. Each image was composed with the Nikon 14-24 2.8 at 24mm.
I took a walk along the Big Wood today and found MANY midges along the banks. There were quite a few heads up and an abundance of bugs despite the 22 degrees... I was hoping to find a few small stone flies but did not see one.
Images taken with the Nikon Micro 105 2.8 & Extension Tubes
Above are two images of opposite ends of the Lamar Valley. I am often reviewing and tinkering with past images of mine that at the time of uploading didn't catch my eye. These two fit that bill.