Eddie Rivard Fly Fishing: Sunny Side Up

Taylor and I had planned on fishing southern Minnesota on Wednesday and on Monday he had already started plotting. While fishing on bright sunny days is not ideal conditions for catching trout there are ways to tilt the odds in your favor if you have a positive mind.

One way to tilt the odds in your favor is to fish with the right flies. Recently an event was held in Wisconsin called Cozad's Driftless 1Fly competition and when the the dust settled my friend Ger Moua and his team AZN came out on top. I knew that if I was going to have success on Wednesday I should find a way to get my hands on Ger's fly pattern.

I was only able to find one photo on the internet of Ger's fly and it wasn't very clear. Here is that photo. I inserted a red arrow to indicate what fly was Ger's.

I knew I was going to have to have a little more to go on than that photo so I worked up the courage to send Ger a text.

Here is a better look at the photo Ger sent.

And a little zoomed in.

At this point I felt like I had enough to go on so I made the trip up to the Fly Angler in Blaine where I was relieved to find they had the hooks I needed. I don't know if size 8 was the right size but 8 rhymes with great so whatever. They also had these special slotted tungsten beads because I remembered from the past that Ger likes his flies heavy. It looked liked the abdomen had some blue as well as some green so for that I picked up some blue and green Flashabou.

Well needless to say I tied my ass off Tuesday night. I felt pretty good about my flies and I was ready for Wednesday morning. Since Ger mentioned that he hadn't come up with a name for them yet I decided that for now I am call them GerOneImos .

Wednesday morning came quick and Taylor picked me up as the sun was making it's appearance for the day. While I am always excited for a day of fishing I was really looking forward to meeting up and fishing with Driftless Fly Fishing Legend Ryan Frick. There are few people more familiar with the streams and rivers of the Minnesota Driftless than Ryan. I always think its cool when super awesome people decide to be my friend.

Ryan decided that our chances for good fishing would be best on a larger river with slightly stained water. The last place you want to be fishing on a sunny day is a crystal clear spring creek. He also thought we would score some nice shade because the river that we went to had high cliffs. High cliffs near the river = shade deliver. Well it seems like Ryan was right because I caught my first trout of the day on my 7th cast.