Thank you everybody for braving the weather and either helping to collect the Christmas trees or bringing us your Christmas trees.  From the 2 days of collection and from the 2 sites where the trees were being collected from we collected a total of 553!  All of those trees will be places in the rivers to create wonderful habitats for the baby fish.  We couldn't have done it without Mike Gentry organizing the event and his group of volunteers that worked very hard making sure we collected every tree we could and moved the trees from the collection sites to the staging area before the go into the river.

We are beginning to plan, and in conjunction with the Clackamas River Basin Council are exploring some ideas.  CRBC has grabbed three days to develop some tree placement plans but the Clackamas area sites and plan details have not been formulated yet.  However, if you want to make some notes, the target days are April 16, May 2 and June 6.  As plans develop, I will send an email to all with details and seeking volunteers.
                         

Chicken Creek is in the Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge and a work day is scheduled for February 22  to do some revegetation work on the creek.  Natalie Balkam, Habitat Restoration Specialist with Friends of the Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge, emailed me recently and invited me to recruit up to 30 volunteers for the project that day.  I am happy to do that.  Here is the background information Natalie gave me.

“The plantings are a part of a huge Chicken Creek restoration project.  This past summer we broke ground and excavated a channel to restore this tributary stream back to its natural route.  This change will allow us to connect several of the wetlands on the refuge and reduce the number of water control structures and human management of the wetlands.  The return to its natural route has increased its length, and the meandering shape allows for diversity in habitats available for wildlife and macroinvertebrates.  The planting events will provide important vegetation along the new Chicken Creek, which will be vital in restoring a riparian habitat.”

                         

Written by Mike Gentry
 

I am a chironomid devotee (hence my license plate “MIDGER”) and have used many patterns for many years  in a variety of lakes.  But until I was looking through the Washington County Fly Fishers collation book of fly patterns recently, I’d never run across this pattern that represents a related branch of the family I was not familiar with.  The WCFF book attributed that pattern (or at least the article) to David Eisenhauer (could it be???  one wonders) who reports that lakes in the Pacific Northwest are teeming with this Chaoboridae family of chironomids.  So with due attribution to David, I’ve provided his pattern as follows.

 
Hook:                               Light wire, 2x, #8-10
Thread:                            6/0 (8/0 also works), clear or light green
Underbody:                    Gold flashibou
Overbody:                       Clear hollow tubing such as Larva Lace
 

1.  Tie down a couple of strands of gold flashibou and the end of a three to four inch long Larva Lace strip just behind the hook eye.  Wrap the materials onto the hook shank in loose winds to the hook bend and back to the eye.  Tie off with a couple of half hitches to keep the thread in place.
2. Wrap the strands of flashibou in close touching turns to just behind the hook eye.  Tie down with three or four thread turns and clip the excess.
3. Wrap the tubing in touching turns with just enough pressure to retain the round shape and cause some air to remain in the tubing.  Tie off with five or six tight turns and trim the excess.
4. Wrap a small head, tie off and seal with a small drop of head cement.
5. OPTIONAL:  use a black panatone pen to “spot” twin air sacs at each end of the body, if desired.

David suggests fishing either on a floating line and 15 foot leader of a 10 foot sink tip with a 7-8 foot leader.  Allow the fly to sink to the desired depth (he suggests that most action occurs at the six to twelve foot depth) and retrieve very slowly or even static.  And he notes that the natural tends to be positioned horizontally, so suggests that floatant applied to the bend of the hook may achieve that.  I’m eager to try this kissing cousin of the chironomid patterns that have worked so well for me.