The 2011 season; Leftovers

**Satoshi** · 12-16-2011, 09:11 PM

It is close to 3 months since the end of 2011 trout season in Japan. It seems fishing reports have been less frequent in this forum as trout fishing became slower in the northern hemisphere.
In the 2011 season, I posted reports of some of my fishing trips, but there were of course more fishing days; in particular, iwana fishing in the central mountain region. So I thought it might be a good idea to crowd the forum a bit by posting photos of fishing that I haven’t shown here during the season.

In April, which is the best season here, fishing was excellent in one particular stream. I posted a day trip to this stream. Here are photos in another occasion.

April 24. The pale pink trees are wild cherry trees. The flowers are at their best, which tells the amago fishing is also at its best in this region.

Fishing was slow in May and June in my area…. Well, fishing is always slow here after April, anyway.

May 3. Although we had mostly good weather during April, the rest of the season was cursed with rain.

May 3. Rain usually activates trout, but too much rain puts fish down.

May 26. I went fishing to the central mountain region with a friend. We stayed at “Re-Rise”, which is our regular inn in this region. This trip has been an annual ritual for us for almost 10 years. The lodge owner also provides fishing guide service with himself being the guide. We asked him for a guided fishing, which is included in the ritual. The lodge is small and the lodge owner himself cooks dinner and breakfast, though he hires someone temporarily when the business is busy. When we are the only guests, He often takes us to restaurants after guided fishing trips and we have supper together so that we can fish as long as possible.

May 26. He took us to a stream, which was new to me, but filled with iwana as usual.

May 26. The season was a little too early for iwana fishing and it rained intermittently. At first fish didn’t respond to our dry flies at all, but they started to feed on the surface from around 11:00. The surface activity continued to 14:00, and we caught a lot of fish in this short time window.

May 27. ….fishin’ in the rain,…just fishin’ in the rain… What a glorious feelin’…

May 27. Still staying at Re-rise.

May 28. The last day of the trip, still drizzling. He lost a big one here.

June 5. My home water.

June5. This amago took my fly on the run shown in the picture above. This was the one of only two fish I caught on this rainy day.

June 11. Rain again. I fished the stream where I had done very well in April, but this was the only amago I caught.

July 1. I went on an overnight trip to the central mountain region with a different friend. This time, there was no vacancy in Re-rise, and we stayed at a different hotel.

July 1. It drizzled on and off all day long, but iwana were extremely active and fishing was great. I experienced the best fishing in the season. The biggest fish of the season for me was also caught (not this one) on this day.

July 1. You can see rings of water by raindrops falling from the edge of the visor of my cap.

July 29. I went fishing solo to the central mountain region for the third time, staying at Re-Rise again. Unfortunately, just the day before, it had poured heavily and many rivers were blown out. Nevertheless, I fished a small stream that wasn’t much affected by the rain, thanks to the advice of the lodge owner.

July 29. He said I couldn’t expect much because this stream was heavily fished. I caught some small amago and iwana here. The orange spots of iwana in this stream were very bright.

July 30. It was raining hard when I woke up. Other guests and I spent the morning, looking out through windows of the dining, hoping it would stop raining.

Nahuji-san, the lodge owner, told me he had had groups of guests from some European countries or from the U.S. for the last few years. Those people asked him for guided fishing trips for iwana or amago. He thinks it’s a little odd because he had never had clients from foreign countries before, and there didn’t seem to be any relations among those foreign guests. Besides, they have apparently far much better (in terms of size and number) trout fishing in their home. I wonder if I had contributed to the appearances of the foreign guests a little, since I joined this forum and began posting about fly fishing for amago and iwana in 2008.

July 30. Later that morning, rain subsided finally and I went fishing to a nearby stream. Fish responded to dry flies occasionally.

July 30. In the afternoon, the sun came out.

July 30. This chubby iwana dashed and snatched BrkTrt’s Ausable Bomber in the shallow run shown in the bottom of the previous picture. I caught several decent iwana on this day.

July 31. I learned about this tiny stream also from Nahuji-san.

July 31. This section of the stream, which is only about 100m, separated from the other part of the creek by dams on its upper and lower end, is stocked with rainbow trout and I enjoyed the fight of some rainbows very much. As you know, the rainbow trout is a very good fighter. Even a hatchery-reared rainbow with worn-out fins fights much harder than wild amago or iwana.

July 31. I also caught this nice iwana.

I didn’t go fishing in August. In September, I went to Tohoku region as I posted previously, and that was the end of the season for me. In total, I had 25 fishing days in the season. Among them, there were only 10 days without rain, 6 of which occurred in April. So, it really was a wet season.
Now I hope my home waters haven’t been much damaged by the strong typhoon that directly hit our area in the end of summer.

I wish all of you a Merry Christmas and a wonderful season in 2012.

The biggest and the smallest trout I caught in the season.

**ksbioteacher** · 12-16-2011, 09:59 PM

Leftovers can be so deeply satisfying. Thanks Satoshi, I enjoyed your post a great deal.

**mems** · 12-17-2011, 02:17 AM

Aloha Satoshi, nice pictures and story as usual. Have you looked into fishing Kamchatka in Russia? I have had clients who raved about that place. Imagine a 30+ inch rainbow eating a mouse fly! It should be pretty reasonable to fly there from Japan. Have a nice X-mas, Don.

**ofuros** · 12-17-2011, 02:52 AM

Satoshi, a nice round up of yet another spent season....they seem to drift by quicker & quicker.
A very merry Christmas to one & all.

**BrkTrt** · 12-17-2011, 08:30 PM

Such beautiful fish, in equally beautiful surroundings.
Thank you for posting.
Merry Christmas.

Brk Trt

**Satoshi** · 12-17-2011, 11:18 PM

Thank you very much for your comments guys!

mems,
I have checked fly fishing in Kamchatka. Rainbows around 30 inches on a mouse fly seems indeed true, and with a very high possibility. The rate of the whole trip (3 full fishing days) from Tokyo is about 350000 yens, which equals 4400 USD. I cannot say it's very reasonable, though I may want to do it once in my life.

Satoshi