Tuesday 207: Spring Salmon, Grand Lake Stream

Jessica Ives April 24, 2018

Spring Salmon, Grand Lake Stream / 4" x 4" / 2018

$300.00

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Land-locked salmon have been swimming in the waters of Grand Lake Stream since the last ice age. It is home to one of the four native pools of land-locked salmon in the United States.

- from Fly Fishers Guide To New England

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207 Paintings post everyish Tuesday around 5:30am EST on both The Maine and jessicaleeives.com. Save thirty percent on any 4x4 inch oil on panel painting by making your purchase within the first week of its posting. Instead of $300 pay just $207, a number which just happens to be the Maine state area code.

Tuesday 207 Paintings are exclusive to The Maine. They depict the land, the light and the people that make this state a state of wonder. Jessica is editor of The Maine and writes occasionally as The Outsider.

Thank you!

Jessica Ives April 15, 2018

What a fantastic turn out at the opening of my two-person show with Thomas McDonald during Bend's First Friday Art Walk! Hands-down it was the most enthusiastic and energetic art event I've had the pleasure of attending! Many thanks to Ken Roth of Peterson Roth Gallery and to all the art lovers in Bend!

While out west, Jonathan and I also made time to fish and explore in both new locations (Upper Owens River in the Eastern Sierras, below right) and old favorites (Steelhead Falls on the Deschutes River, below left).

Homecoming

Jessica Ives November 20, 2017

“What stirs awe and wonder in people today is a sense of belonging and of participation in the great cycles of Nature, an awareness of oneness with life that does not shrink in terror from life’s natural completion in death. What inspires them is not the hope of a final separation from the realities of nature, life history and time, but a conscious and delighted participation in these realities — not the promise of salvation, but the reality of the homecoming.”

— John Michael Greer

Tuesday 207: Magalloway

Jessica Ives October 31, 2017

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Magalloway / 4" x 4" / 2017

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Fall fishing at its finest.

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Tuesday 207: Shadow Of The Bridge

Jessica Ives July 18, 2017

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Shadow Of The Bridge / 4" x 4" / 2017

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The Palermo Fish Hatchery sits along the banks of the Sheepscott River. Inside its buildings, small brown and brook trout are raised to be released in various lakes and rivers around Maine in the spring and fall when water temperatures are still cool. The fish raised here will never have a chance to swim in the river just outside the walls of the place where they're raised because this portion of the Sheepscott River is now a natural reproduction area for wild fish. The catch and release rule along this this stretch of water has led to healthy populations of fish for the last seven years.

Most of the fish caught along the Upper Sheepscott are small brook trout between 5 and 7 inches. Despite their size they fight like a swordfish as you reel them in. In a deep pool just below the bridge to the fish hatchery, however, large brown trout lie deep in the shadows. With the right fly and the perfect cast, you might be lucky enough to hold something wild before letting it slip back into the darkness.

text, photo, and fish by Jonathan Ives

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Tuesday 207: Wading For Spring

Jessica Ives April 18, 2017

Wading For Spring / 4" x 4" / 2017

Now available through Courthouse Gallery Fine Art

The Sheepscot River is one of eight rivers in Maine that have Atlantic Salmon. These fish need the river’s clean gravel bottom to lay their eggs, and its rapids to aerate the water for their young. Because October is the month that these fish spawn, the Sheepscot and other rivers or streams with wild Brook Trout and Atlantic Salmon are closed to fishing after September. This prevents fisherman from accidentally crushing eggs as they wade through the river.

Smolt are the young, six-inch salmon that swim from these Maine rivers all the way to Northern Greenland, two thousand miles away! Over the course of two to three years these fish will wait in the Northern Atlantic Ocean growing in size up to ten and fifteen pounds. Then they will migrate back to the same river where they were once a small egg and begin the cycle again. If these fish can wait three years to return to the Sheepscot then surely we can wait until April, when fishing season opens and we can wade into the waters once again.

text by Jonathan Ives

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Tuesday 207: Come Hellgrammite Or High Water

Jessica Ives January 17, 2017

The winter is the hardest time of the year for fly fisherman. Freezing temperatures mean frozen fingers while handling wet line. Since there are no insect hatches, trout feed on bugs like hellgrammites that are always swimming in the deep waters year round. These large black fly patterns can produce fish even in the coldest winter months because, like the die hard fisherman who use them, they are always there.

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Tuesday 207: Fly Guys

Jessica Ives October 25, 2016

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Fly Guys / 4" x 4" / 2016

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I look into my fly box, and think about all the elements I should consider in choosing the perfect fly: water temperature, what stage of development the bugs are in, what the fish are eating right now. Then I remember what a guide told me: "Ninety percent of what a trout eats is brown and fuzzy and about five-eighths of an inch long."

- Allison Moir, A Different Angle: Fly Fishing Stories by Women

There he stands, draped in more equipment than a telephone lineman, trying to outwit an organism with a brain no bigger than a breadcrumb, and getting licked in the process.

- Paul O'Neil

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Tuesday 207: Many Men Go Fishing

Jessica Ives September 13, 2016

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Many Men Go Fishing / 4x4 / 2016

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Many men go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.

- Henry David Thoreau

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Tuesday 207: Cast

Jessica Ives August 2, 2016

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Cast / 4" x 4" / 2016

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There is no such thing as the perfect cast. There are only casts that catch fish and casts that do not.

- Kirk Deeter in The Little Red Book Of Fly Fishing

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Tuesday 207: Shaded Riffles

Jessica Ives June 14, 2016

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Shaded Riffles / 4" x 4" / 2016

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Riffle: A riffle is a rocky, shallow area in a stream where water cascading over rocks creates a noticeable surface disturbance. To identify a riffle, look for a choppy surface or whitewater spilling over shallow rocks into deeper water. A good riffle will fulfill all of the basic needs of a trout. The shallow, highly oxygenated water is a perfect environment for the aquatic insects trout eat. Boulders and rocks create plentiful hiding and resting spots. Deeper water downstream gives trout rest and security. All of these aspects make a riffle a great starting point when looking for trout.

From "Where's That Trout"

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Tuesday 207: Year Round

Jessica Ives December 29, 2015

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Year Round / 4" x 4" / 2015

$300.00

It's 120 miles from Popham Beach to Moosehead Lake as the crow flies. The Kennebec River, however, is not a crow. Nor is it all "long quiet waters" as the translation of its Abenaki name or as its placid appearance from Augusta oceanward would have us believe. As Maine was settled by Europeans, nine dams and miles of rapids and riffles were created between Moosehead Lake and Augusta. The East Outlet, the first three-mile stretch of water after the dam at the river's source, is managed for fly fishing year round and offers some of the best landlocked salmon and brook trout fishing in the state. When we fished there in November we were sure to wear our blaze orange.

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Tuesday 207: Decisive

Jessica Ives October 13, 2015

Decisive / 4" x 4" / 2015

Now available through G lesason Fine Art

Streams running, air crisping, lines looping.
Leaves starting to change, light more direct.
A fisherman selects from his fly box and I from my palette.
By rod and by brush, we both make a cast to see what’s below the surface.

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Focus

Jessica Ives August 17, 2015

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things I haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”

— Steve Jobs