So I can toss these flesh flies I knocked out tonight. Preparation for the Salmon and Steelhead trip continues...
I also tied a bunch of BFBs (Big *#@%king Bunnies)
Now it's time to clean up..Either that or drink more. I haven't decided yet.
P.S. Fellow bloggers, I finally took time tonight to update my blog roll, especially for all the people that took the time to leave some comments, and those who are sending me traffic (Greatly appreciated btw). If you'd like your blog added, just drop me a line.
I've mentioned before that I take a fly tying class every Tuesday night. I don't usually post the pattern that I learned at class because I like to take the time to perfect it first. This one was so cool, that I have to share it.
I watched Bruce Corwin tie spinners with Wally Wings before at Somerset and it amazed me. Basically, you pull back on the barbs of a wood duck feather, tie it in, and split it. This lets you use one feather, and have extremely detailed wings.
George actually showed us how to tie this in class tonight and it was easier than I thought. Check out the detail in those wings and keep in mind that it was just a single feather for both of them! (Full disclosure - the tail and body are sloppy as hell on this fly because my vise was mounted to a table that doesn't like C-clamps, and it was in the middle of an LL Bean store with really awful light. The wings still kick ass though).This is my first attempt at ever trying to tie this, so the wings aren't' perfect, but I'll get there.
I'm going to miss fishing dry flies. I've really fallen in love with it this summer and after the BWOs start to taper off, I can only hope to get lucky with some occasional surface action on midges.
That being said, I know it's time to start getting ready for a long winter of nymphing. I've had some major luck on pheasant tails with hot spots (mostly orange) and I've caught quite a few fish on jig patterns over the winter so making pheasant tail jigs is a no-brainer.
Incorporating some orange to your PTs can be done a few ways. Here are 3 different variations.
All flies are tied using: Dohiku barbless jig hook, size 16 Ringneck Pheasant Tail UTC Ultra Wire Jan Siman Peacock Broze dubbing Tungsten Bead
First up, the easiest way to do it. Add a colored tungsten bead and call it a day.
Next up, try adding a collar. Finish your fly with the natural colored thread, and have another bobbin waiting with some neon thread to add a color. For this, I used Glo-Brite hot orange floss. I like to size down the bead when adding collars, I just think it looks cleaner.
Finally, here's a variation where I swapped out the gold ribbing for some orange UTC.
It's also time to chase Salmon and Steelhead again. I'll be heading to SRNY in 14 days. Here's a sneak peak of an upcoming steelhead stonefly post.
With everything looking like chocolate milk out here from 2-3 inches of rain yesterday, I headed an hour north to a tailwater that wasn't too blown out. We nymphed some deep pools, and threw CDC Caddis at sporadic risers until dark. Shane landed the only fish of the day, a small wild brown. I walked away with the skunk. No fish, but I love trout streams in early fall.
If you look down below the bridge in this shot, you'll see the where the creek leads into the Lehigh River which was absolute white water.
I lost this fly today to a bad tangle, a hot spot pheasant tail jig. It was my last one and I just whipped up a dozen more. Post shortly.
There was also one hell of a sunset.
Speaking of blowouts, this popped up on the iPhone shuffle rotation today. I miss the 90s.
I remember the first time I went to the Salmon River and I saw these guys with like 13 foot rods, and giant fly reels totally spooled with mono. I first thought they were crazy but after watching them, I found it to be pretty damn intriguing.
Turns out they were pinning. You suspend a fly, bead, or lure under a float, and these centerpin reels would peel off line as current pulled the float downstream. This allowed you to get a drag free drift pretty much as far as you could see downstream. With typical chuck n' duck steelheading on a fly rod, you might get a proper presentation for about 10 feet. With pinning, you get a fly properly presented for about half a football field.
I have a co-worker that frequents the SR and pins whenever he can, and he's shown me some pics of some monster fish he's landed using this method. Turns out that he actually makes and sells centerpin rods and has an instructional video for using them. You can check them out at Troutpin.com.
Here's the video, which gives you a great overview in case you've never seen this method before.
My exposure to trout fishing while growing up was mostly with a small hand me down rod, snelled hooks, a Folgers can full of worms I dug up the night before, and a zip lock baggie full of corn. I would get dropped off early in the morning at the stream on opening day by my parents and meet up with some friends from school to fish a tiny little stream that got so warm by the first week of June that all the trout would die. They would jam this little 150 yard section full of fish, and people would just be lined up, pulling them out left and right. It was the definition of put n' take.
This was in the late 80s and back then, they only stocked 1 or 2 Palominos in the entire stretch of stream. I remember that everyone coveted those things and you were the hero in school the following Monday if it was you that got lucky enough to snag one get your giant gob of nightcrawler close enough to it's face.
But usually, it was the serious guy that caught it. You know the guy I'm talking about. The one that took a half day at work the day before opening day, got to the stream at 1pm on a Friday (even though season didn't start until 8am on Saturday), set up his tent right in front of the hole that had the golden monster, had every single piece of gear imaginable, and would be standing in the middle of the 15 foot wide stream at 4am in chest waders (even though the stream was literally 2 feet deep), 4 hours before the whistle sounded to cast in your line. His sole purpose in life was to get that fish every year, and piss off every single little kid who had a dream of catching the big Pally.
Needless to say, I never caught one, and after a while, I just gave up. I got more into bass fishing and all but forgot about trout. I'd catch a rainbow on occasion while fishing for other species, but never paid any attention to it. I still admit though, part of me has always been pissed off that I've never caught one when I was younger.
As I got more into fly fishing I've come to realize that, like all of you, I prefer to catch wild fish. They are much more beautiful, usually put up a better fight, and are much more challenging to hook. When I see a Pally now, I don't even cast at it. I honestly feel bad for them. They are born and bred to be tortured. They are a moving target for the Powerbait crew and spend their days dodging chunks of Velveeta wedged onto a monster Eagle Claw hook.
Well, my time has come. I noticed a pair of really nice rainbows, probably about 17-18 inches, picking up nymphs behind some fallen branches. I chucked a size 18 Pheasant Tail with an egg trailer towards them. I watched the bigger of the two bows turn around and starting to rush the egg. I'm ready to set the hook the second he hits and I feel my line shoot out before the bow takes it. I set the hook and SPLASH!!! A Palomino comes out of nowhere, takes the egg, and shoots about a foot out of the water trying to throw the hook. After that though, he gave up and came in with ease. After 30 years of fishing, I finally landed my first Palomino. It was honestly pretty anticlimactic, and not at all what I had envisioned 25 years ago, but that was probably because he was only 12 inches long! :)
Oh well, I guess it's something to cross off the bucket list. After that fish, I actually continued to have a very successful night. A nice Caddis hatch came off right as the fog was rolling in and the sun was disappearing, and my size 18 CDC + Elk Caddis absolutely slayed the fish.(Mental note - make a post about that pattern because it works very well.) It was one of those nights where I was in a zen-like state. You could hear fish rising, but you couldn't see anything so it was all blind casting and setting the hook by feel. I wound up with another 3 or 4 in the pitch black darkness before the rises finally stopped.
Overall, a hell of a night. And I do admit, I feel like I conquered something while walking back to the car in the dark. It might only have been 12 inches of something, but I'll take it.
It's definitely getting colder outside. I think it hit 42 degrees here the other night. I tried to make the most of this nice weekend with temps in the 60s by getting out as much as possible. This is a long post. You probably won't read it all. :)
I set my alarm for 6:30 on Saturday morning and I was on the stream at the Little Lehigh by 7:30. Unfortunately, it was either too cold, too early, or the hurricane/flooding just messed up the tricos, because nothing was rising. That didn't really matter though. The fish were going stupid over those size 18 egg patterns I posted a video for in my last post. If you'd like to try a few of them out next time you're on the stream, Dave has some of my eggs for sale now at the Heritage Fly Shop. Orange and Light Cream were the best producers for me.
I bought a total of 5 bows to hand. Three were stocked and two were wild. I also tested out a new version of my rubber legged copper john that I tied using longer legs and tail in a smaller diameter, which produced this fat mutant stocked bow.
While walking upstream towards the "lunker hole" as I heard it called on Saturday, I noticed the tree that got knocked down by Irene wasn't totally removed. It was cut in half, and pushed a little downstream. This created a massive deep pool with a zillion fish podded up under it. Unfortunately, some idiot decides to wade right into it and spook them all right when I got there. (I hate the fact that you can wade this stream now. There's no need for it)
I also was messing around with my camera and did another quick release video of one of the bows.
It was a fun morning of fishing, but the most fulfilling part was when I saw a local guide walking by with a kid that couldn't have been more than 10, looking to get him into his first fish. The hole I was in was full of easy fish and I offered to let them fish it. Well, that kid caught his first trout ever. Trading off the 2 or 3 more fish I could have pulled out of that hole was well worth it.
I headed home early, around 11:30 because my wife wanted to take Michael apple picking over at Solebury Orchards in New Hope PA. This place is full of stuck-up, rich people who wear Prada to hike through a field picking apples very eccentric people, but besides that it's a blast. You go there, jump on a tractor, drive out about a quarter mile, pick a ton of apples, ride back, pay for them, and then finish it off with a homemade cider ice (think italian water ice, but made with unfiltered apple liquid) and an apple donut. There's also some hay stacks and flower gardens for the kids to play in.
We then headed over to Peddler's Village, which is a huge outdoor mall-ish type place with outlets and artsy shops. Michael got an awesome Duck hat from the Balloon dude.
There's a brew pub restaurant there called The Porterhouse that we hit up for dinner. I wasn't feeling their in-house brew on tap (They only had a porter!) so I opted for a cold delicious Dale's Pale Ale. Their burgers rock. I was highly suggest hitting up this place if you're in the area.
Today I decided to spend some quality time with the little guy, so we did some shopping. We hit up a local flea market in search of some old fishing gear to hang in the man cave bar. No luck, but I did take him to race some RC cars. He freaking loved it.
I got him home and when he passed out for a nap, my wife took over watching him and I darted to the local stream for two hours. The fishing wasn't that great. The largies and smallies weren't budging for streamers. I did get a tiny smallie and about a dozen gills on a hopper. I also decided to practice czech nymphing through a run full of 8-10 inch shiners, just for the hell of it. I was picking up two fish on every cast, which was fun for about 10 minutes.
I capped off the day by installing 4 new outdoor lights around the house, putting in a new garage door opener keypad, and mowing the lawn. There's something to be said about a well manicured yard. Enjoy what's left of your weekend.
Put this together really quick last night because I've had a few people ask how to tie them so small. Here's a quick video on tying size 18 eggs. I slaughtered the bows on these this morning. (More on that later..)
You can't rule out little sunfish like this that are full blaze in their fall coloring. He wasn't big, but I took a few seconds to really admire him. Gorgeous fish.
I realized today that I usually only hit the local stream just out of convenience when I don't have time to make the 45 minute drive to water cold enough to hold trout year round. That made me think about how much I'm going to miss having a fun little fishery that's less than 2 minutes away.
The leaves are starting to drop and the fish are slowing down. Yeah, I caught a few small panfish and a dink largemouth this evening, but the big ones are down deep and not wanting to budge. Seeing all the plant life starting to die off is depressing. On the upside, at least the stretch that runs behind my house is one of the only places in my county that's getting a big fall trout stocking this year. The good news is that barely anyone fishes it in the fall and the fish tend to not spread out as much as they do in the spring. That will get me through from October-January, and then the kids will be playing ice hockey on it until March.
I was checking my google alerts last night and I came across this article about a new movie called Salmon Fishing in the Yemen starring Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt. We all know Obiwan Kenobi, but if you're unfamiliar with Emily Blunt, she looks a little something like this.
Not too shabby. Anyway, it's a Hollywood, Baliwood, London, Lolliwood film written by the guy who did Slumdog Millionare. That was a good movie, but I don't think it will be anywhere close to being true to our sport as, say, A River Runs Through it. Honestly, it's about a sheikh who wants to introduce Salmon to the Yemen River. From the sound of it, I'd probably be more comfortable sitting through Divine Yaya Secrets of the Traveling Pants Sisterhood with my wife. (Or whatever the hell that movie is called)
After reading some poor reviews of the film after it's recent premiere, I've came up with some thoughts on what they could have done differently.
First off. You have a f*cking jedi in your cast. Go with it. The double handed grip on a jedi sword equates to Spey Casting. I could just imagine two jedis battling it out with two 14 foot spey rods chucking tunghead sex dungeon streamers at each other in a fight to the death.
Next up, Emily Blunt. Actually, no. Don't change that. Just have her in every scene, wearing this. It would be much more attractive than a flannel and hip waders.
Finally, we all know sure as sh*t who should be playing the sheikh.
This post was powered by Adobe Photoshop, and Rogue Morimoto Soba Ale. (probably a little too much of it)
EDIT! I found a Youtube clip, and it's even worse than I thought it would be.
We've had so much flooding in the past few days. It actually took me 3 hours to get to work today. After watching this on Vimeo, I'm dying for the water levels to stabilize. These are some beautiful browns. Plus, I have nothing but love for people who decide that their fly fishing vid should have some Beastie Boys in the background.
