Fishing at Gouzon!

What a nice day today, the skies were clear all day and the day couldn’t have been more beautiful.  It was crisp but beautiful, you know those days, where you look outside and say to yourself, it’s so nice I will put something light on and then you walk outside.  You only get as far as the first step, so you can pivot, use the door handle or knob to turn back inside to grab something a little warmer. This happened to me today, but it was ok because I went fly fishing.  The assistant vice principal at the main school where I teach is quite an avid fly fisherman and promised to take me fly fishing with him.  So on our random weekday off, he took me to a private reservoir to fish, leaving at promptly 7am.  I was prepared as I could have been for a day of fishing a wildly crowded fly fishing-only reservoir; it seemed to go against everything I think of about fly fishing.  Normally, I think of a fishing buddy, maybe one other and the river or lake, that’s it.  What do you think of? 

We arrived just after 8:30am to see a group of five people already fishing on the banks of the reservoir. It was an awesome sight seeing a few people flinging line while the thick haze of fog lifted off of the reservoirs surface.  You will have to imagine this sight, as I was not camera ready when driving into the reservoir area.  This reservoir is called Gouzon, named after the town it sits right outside of.  After seeing the pamphlet I got, I thought the fishing would be a wild experience, just look at the different types of fish that are in there:

Starting our day of fishing, my new friend Emmanuel left me to learn to “attaque ces poissons a la nymphe a vue” which literally means “attack these fish with a nymph you can see.”  It actually means: go for it, throw your nymph and see if you can get one.  

Have you ever been caught in a situation where you either can’t understand the language being spoken or you can’t understand how people arrived at the argument they’re having?  That was me, about 25 minutes into “attacking” the fish I could see cruising the surface with my visible nymph, I stopped fishing to sit on the bank for a bit.  I was just sitting there, jaw dropped in the sheer beauty of the sun coming over the hill and my inability to fish this new technique.  I would cast my size 18 nymph, (about ½ a centimeter long) about a meter in front of a cruising fish then losing about 2 seconds after it landed in the water.  I was just hoping that the fish I was tracking would turn a bit towards it, but I was having no luck.  Since the water doesn’t move, I was getting fairly bored even after attaching a clear thingamabobber about a meter up my leader from the fly so I could spot it move.  I tried this technique for about one more hour then switched to what I know best in lakes, streamers. After one hour and countless changing of my fly, I couldn’t even find a bump and was starting to feel my stomach grumble.  I thought it would be good to take a picture then find my friend fishing elsewhere.

Of course he had caught 2 fish while we were fishing apart and I told him that I should have been with him, so that he could teach me.  He told me that we should eat lunch and stick together after, so we ate a nice lunch in the sunshine, just chatting about our next adventure around the reservoir. We walked around and switched flies, tailing the aquabonitas or Golden trout, as you can imagine they are the easiest to spot and usually led us to cruising rainbows or blue back cutthroat.  He finally cast a whole 10 feet, and lifted his fly rod to entice a cruising rainbow that crushed his size 18 pheasant tail.  It was the most bizarre fly fishing experience I have had next to being 6 in a fish farm and putting the bait in front of the fish’s noses.  He had the fish on for all of 5 seconds then lost it.  We tried for about 20 more minutes and climbed out of the branches where we were roll casting.  We started toward a dock where Emmanuel said there were lots of fish.  It was about 4pm when the action finally picked up, for me at least.  I caught my first fish in France, a whole 3 inches long Roach fish, cute name.  Emmanuel said “battle time” with a laugh then told me to fight it towards middle of the dock, as I moved from beach on the side of the dock, I climbed on to the dock and fought the monster (dragged it a bit) towards the middle of the dock.  Bam, a monster rainbow came out from under the dock and crushed it.  I know what you’re thinking; awesome way to catch a fish, but this rainbow was lucky and took everything but the fly.  This forever makes me love fly fishing and not lure fishing.  What a thrill.  It took not two minutes for me to tie on a pattern that I bought for Pike that resembled the cute Roach fish and I was chucking my streamer to the end of the dock and retrieving in quick strips along the dockside.  For ten minutes, I had two fish come out to look at it and a big one chase then stop.  It’s even more frustrating when you can see these fish, but I still love it, the thrill of the chase is unbeatable.  Then I looked to my right and about 15 feet off the dock, four feet from shore and five feet away from me this fish is just hanging out as if to say, “Hey Moron, I am over here!”  So I picked my line up, walked backwards slowly about ten feet. With my 12 foot leader, I chucked only the leader and fly behind this fish.  I scooted my fly about six inches to the right of this beautiful specimen and when it was visible to the fish, boom she gave chase, I stripped once more and BAM crushed it. 

What a nice Brook trout!

Some have told me they think it is a Dolly Varden, what is your professional opinion?

This is what fly fishing is about for me, patience, enjoyment of natural surroundings and no feeling that catching a fish is necessary for a good day.  When all of that sets in I can focus on the surroundings and the fish are that cherry on top. 

Later around 6 we took off to the other side of the reservoir to a shallow beach like area, where Emmanuel said the big rainbows go to feast on the small Roaches.  There, my first cast was struck as soon as my streamer hit the water.  Plop, strip, BAM!  Big rainbow flying out of the water, then dead weight…  I thought, dang this fish is smart and wrapped me up around something.  As I lifted I found a rope coming out of the water, apparently the fish wrapped around the rope, the hook popped out and slipped right into the rope.  I found another fly attached in the rope, so I called it a win with an additional fly now in the box.  It was getting dark, so in a feverish attempt to catch one last fish and of course cast as far as I could, I flung my line along the, shallow foot deep shoreline at a cruising shadow.  Four strips, a flash and it was off to the races. 

Keep em wet!

Day done and some fish caught. I can’t ask for anything better.  Merci Emmanuel for taking me fishing, it was awesome!  Hopefully we will go again. 

Riding horses is next on the agenda, we will see about that. 

    

Le Petit Soubère, the wall, sheep and goats!

NOTE:  This was about 2 weeks ago, I have been trying to make sure my blog entries are decent enough to read.  

After a nice day out on the farm building a wall here at Petit Soubère, I sit down to write this blog entry about my adventures during the two week Toussaints holiday in France.  My friend Libby is nice enough to house and feed me while we work on a wall she wants to build in front of her property.  Surprisingly for me, I did not get mortar all over my self, just some on my hands and some of the dust got in my hair.   Now, that I am all done rinsing off all of the mortar dust out of my hair and off of my hands, I can write this.  We were trying to figure out how to be the most efficient in laying these big cement bricks down, unfortunately, in the process we might have compromised our hands by using them to mold the mortar.  We were trying to be accurate and not wasteful with our mortar placement, tomorrow I will try with the tools we have, which aren't very many, but with some patience, they may save my hands. 

      

 Here is a photo of our progress on the wall, I think it's awesome!

Out here in the countryside everything moves at a different speed.  We wake up have a bit of coffee and go and check on the new group of sheep and goats at the Petit Soubère.  This group of sheep and goats belongs to Alain, a wonderful farmer who seeks to provide a natural and organic land clearing operation with his group of animals.  These sheep and goats have only been on the Petit Soubère for over a week, clearing most of the long grasses, weeds and other unnecessary vegetation.  Think of the goat man in Seattle.  Alain said though that you need to be careful, because they will slowly eat everything, so be mindful and watch their progress day by day.  Here is a picture of the farm and the posse:

Alain and Libby watching over the herd, heads are a bit cutoff.

Panorama of the entrance to the Petit Soubère, 

Praying Mantis, in the little Gite where we were getting our water to mix with the mortar

Fun shot, taken with my phone, I was impressed with the quality!

Another shot of the herd in the morning!

Good morning from Cazaubon, France!

Grenoble...Family feeling, kebabs and beer.

I started out my two week vacation in Grenoble, France where I had spent 6 months with a host family back in 2011.  I had a great time; I was able to help out around the house, by cooking dinner, which was a huge help to my host sister and mother.  During the days, most of my time was spent perusing the town, eating Kebab, hiking up the bastille, and drinking my favorite French brewery’s beer.  Here are some pictures; they do most of the explaining.  Of course, my host family had to dress me up in a proper chef’s outfit. 

Nothing like a Fajita Chef in France!  They weren't spicy enough for host Grandpa Jacques.  Had to be careful of the kids with the spices.

 At the top of the Bastille after climbing it with a family friend Danielle from Alsace.  Now I have a place to stay in Alsace..SCORE!

 What a beautiful days in the Alps of France, looking at the Alps in Italy.  It's hard to see, but even though it was 65F, it snowed in the mountains the night before.  

At my favorite brewery, Brasserie Mandrin.  They are the only brewery that has a triple houblons or triple hops, which really means just hoppy enough to be an IPA ;), snobby from Seattle.  Lucille is coming everywhere with me.

 So clear, leaving the brewery and looking back at where I need to get back to, at the foot of those cliffs.  I took the tram and walked. Unfortunately the town has limited public transportation and especially while school is on vacation.

At the end of my visit, I was able to meet up again with my buddy Manish from Nepal to see his friend’s Nepalese restaurant in Grenoble.  I was surprised to see how many French people were eating there when we entered the restaurant at 10:30pm.  There were only 6 tables and each one was packed with people and the smell of curry met me right at the entrance.  His friend was kind enough to feed us for free after most of the patrons left at 11:20pm, this would be the 2^nd time I have eaten in the Nepalese traditional style, only with hands.  The food and ambiance was really cool. Here are some pictures: