Dub the Thorax

sloppy casts, crappy flies, and a repeat of last weekend

2012-02-27T23:17:00.003-05:00

On Sunday, I decided to hit the same stretch of water I hit last weekend because I had so much fun with rising fish. I headed up solo, and to be honest, it was pretty much identical to last weekend, only about 5 degrees cooler.

I opted for the sloppy-tied CDC n' Elk Caddis I posted on here the other night. I found fish rising in the same stretch, but due to increased fishing pressure and a lot more people wading, they were really hugging the opposite bank. With the current moving fast about 6 feet out of the bank, the only shot I had at the consistent sippers was a long really sloppy roll cast with a lot of extra line stripped out, to give the fly a few extra seconds near the risers. I had my first fish on in about 10 minutes after I got there, and proceeded to land 4 more, and lose about 5, including a monster brown that slammed my caddis so hard that he broke off my 8x tippet after only having him hook for about 5 seconds. Nick joined me for about 15 minutes before I headed out, but I won't say how he did. (If you read this blog often...you can probably guess)

In all seriousness

2012-02-27T14:36:00.004-05:00

As a parent, today's incident at Chardon High School scares the hell out of me. I remember watching the Columbine incident on TV many years ago and while it was upsetting, it really hit home today when I think that my kids could have been at that school. My heart goes out to the children who were murdered and injured and their families. The reality is, this could happen anywhere and at any time.

What I think upset me the most is when I found out that the alleged shooter made posts and posted pictures on Twitter referencing what he was about to do, at some point last night. No one did anything about it. If one person would have spoken up and reported it, this could have all been avoided.

I know myself and the majority of my readers are very active in the social networking community and I think we all share a responsibility to report things like this. All I'm saying is, if you see something like this that might rub you the wrong way, it can't hurt to report it, whether they are a high school student or an adult.

RIP to the student that has passed away and I wish the rest of them a speedy recovery.

-Mike

Product Review - Sage 1830 Reel

2012-02-25T09:17:00.003-05:00

I got to talking to someone the other day that was new to fly fishing about buying a new small stream fly rod setup on a budget. I went over line sizes, action, etc, and I made a few suggestions in a rod and fly line. When we go to talking about reels, I realized that I've been beating the hell out of my Sage 1830 for almost two years now and it has never failed me.

I picked this reel up because I wanted a new small stream 4 weight setup, and at the time, I was a little strapped for cash. I was at Cabelas browsing through all the reels under $200 and I was considering a Ross or a Lamson. Then the sales guy said "How about a Sage?" I obviously know that Sage makes amazing rods, but reels? I was a little hesitant.

After taking a look at it, testing out the drag, and making some test casts in the parking lot, I decided to give it a go. It's really light for it's size, and has a nice titanium finish. I think I paid around $160 for it at the time, but you can now pick it up for under $140.

The drag on this reel is amazing. It's really sensitive and can be adjusted quick and easy with a turn on the knob. I'm not sure if Sage actually makes this or just had their name stamped on it, but it's definitely a workhorse.

The finish is great. I usually keep a rigged up rod in the car and this thing gets thrown around, dropped on rocks, dipped in water, and it's still looking almost new. On average, I fish about 3 times a week, and I have yet to run in to a problem with it. Only the handle is machined, but I don't think it really matters.

Here's the official specs that I pulled off the Cabelas website:

Sage's new 1800 series represents the ideal combination of incredible performance at an unbelievable price. Each features light, all-aluminum construction, large arbor, quick-release spool change and a premium sealed graphite drag system. The innovative "floating tripod" drag provides the kind of smooth startup, consistency and power you've come to expect from reels costing three times as much. A machined ergonomic handle makes for comfortable retrieves. The entire reel is protected by a tough, nonglare titanium finish for enduring good looks. Includes a padded neoprene case.

Diameter 3.37 inches
Weight 5.5 oz.
Capacity 100 yards 12lb w/WF4
Line weight 3-4

You can visit the Sage website for more info. I'm not sure they make this model anymore, but if you can find one, it's well worth the price. I've landed probably over 1000 fish on this thing and it hasn't failed me yet.

This product review was done on a reel that I personally purchased. Sage is in no way affiliated with this review and I did not receive anything for free.

Sloppy flies on a Friday night

2012-02-25T00:24:00.005-05:00

I had quite a few beers tonight while at the vise. The results aren't beautiful, but I'm still going to try and fish them.

Some size 20 generic micro nymphs

I picked up some barred olive CDC the other day and decided to whip up some CDC and Elk caddis. These are size 20 and really sloppy, but they look to be a perfect match for the bugs I saw last weekend. My experience last year with CDC on caddis patterns is that the longer and bushier the CDC, the better they fish (and float)

The ammonite nymph. I'm still out of nymph skin and scud back so I used ziplock bag. I didn't realize I had a tear in it until after I took the pic. I'm still gonna post it for the hell of it. I do really like this technique of folding a partridge feather over the thorax and pulling down the fibers for the legs.

And finally, Craven's Pigsticker. I picked up some Mustad 37160 hooks for dirt cheap this week and when I googled them, this was one of the first patterns that came up. Quick and easy to tie. (I will admit, I tied these earlier this week but they were still sitting at my vise so I took a pic.

If you'd like recipes or instructions for any of these patterns, feel free to let me know in the comments and I'll be happy to provide them. Back to drinking. Happy Friday!

Massive articulated streamers? Oh yes.

2012-02-23T22:34:00.003-05:00

Lots of material. Some fish skulls. Some 30 lb nylon coated wire. These things are fun as hell to twist up and I can't wait to chase some warmwater fish and maybe some big browns with them.

They are all size 6 2XL streamer hooks. The lower half of them are marabou, some flash, and some rubber legs. The upper halfs are a combination of more marabou, schlappen, craft fur, Senyo Laser Dub, and some more flash. I mixed up the fish skull sizes and eye colors. Click through for hi-res photos.

Want to win a few of these meaty monsters? Become a Dub The Thorax fan on Facebook and follow us on twitter, and keep your eyes peeled for more info soon.

I absolutely love dry fly fishing in February

2012-02-21T21:45:00.005-05:00

After a long week, I was looking forward to some time on the water on Sunday. What orginally looked like bad weather turned into an almost 50 degree sunny day. I spent Saturday night tying up a bunch of midge patterns, both weighted and dry, and I was hoping for the same rises we ran in to last weekend.

I had planned to fish with Matt, the Functioning Fishaholic. I had fished with him once before after the tying symposium, and unfortunately he got the skunk. I didn't want that to happen again. I told him we'd find rising fish and I was hoping it was true. I had remembered him saying he only caught one trout on a nymph before, and I thought it would be cool to have him get his first one on a dry fly.

We quickly rigged up, hiked about 150 yards upstream, and there was no need to walk anymore. There were risers spread up and down a 100 yard stretch of water, and as luck would have it, there were plenty of other fishermen, but not in this stretch.

The Little Lehigh used to have a no wading restriction in the heritage stretch, and since they lifted the restriction, this stretch of water has been plagued with people standing right in the middle of the stream, directly on top of some of the best holes. If you're one of those people, no offense, but c'mon man, you can roll cast to the opposite bank without getting your feet wet. Just because you can wade, doesn't mean you should.

Moving on, I started off with a size 20 Griffith's Gnat, and Matt opted for a Griffith's he tied, but with brown hackle. We instantly noticed bugs coming off and skating across the water. There was a variety of black and brown midges, a few BWOs, and believe it or not, a really nice dark tan caddis hatch, around a size 20. Matt's fly was a pretty damn close imitation. He ever pulled a black adult stonefly off his neck. It was like springtime; bugs everywhere, you were comfortable in only a hoodie, and I wasn't complaining.

It didn't take long before I was in to my first fish, a little wild brown trout with some nice coloring took my dry after about 10 minutes and like 40 casts over his head.

After landing him, the ducks and geese decided to go absolutely bonkers in the stretch of water we were in and all the rising stopped. They were splashing all over, diving under water, and all the trout darted.

I went another 50 yards upstream and I found where they went. About 15 to 20 fish were surrounding a fast chute, gorging on caddis as they came down the bubble line. Nick also showed up and started fishing just above me. I hooked in to another wild brown, this one about 14 inches and brought him to hand. Absolutely beautiful fish. I almost want to get this picture framed, even though he wasn't huge.

Matt was still fishing downstream from the geese and only had a few misses. I motioned him over and gave him my spot. It didn't take him long. I watched him land his first dry fly trout, a wild brownie, on his own fly. Doesn't get any better than that.

After those two were caught, the hole spooked a little and the rises were more sporadic. It also didn't help that other fisherman noticed us hooking into fish and were creeping up into the opposite bank, spooking them even more. I never understood why people have to do that.

We fished for about another 45 minutes, each of us missing a few, before calling it a day. Nick unfortunately got the LL skunk once again. I swear that stream hates him.

You can check out Matt's version of our trip here, and below is a video of his interview from this past weekend with Delaware Valley Outdoors.

The fishing was great, but I think my favorite part of the weekend was some time in front of the vise with Michael. He's started to get good at Honeybug Inchworms! I do have to whip finish for him though.

In other news, I'd like to give a shoutout to Morgan over at Tight Lined Tails of a Fly Fisherman for the flattering post he did about some of the bugs I've been twisting up. I met him through Instagram and he has a really great site which has something that my site has been lacking these days... Daily updates! Head on over, check out his blog, and follow him. Some good reading!

Also, I'd like to apologize for not posting up the stacked foam beetle tutorial I mentioned in my last post. My memory card got wiped out so all the pics were gone. I'll redo it shortly.

If you need me, I'll be counting down the minutes until spring...

When you run out of scud back...

2012-02-15T23:24:00.003-05:00

Ziplock bags will work in a pinch. Since I've started tying these back in the fall, they've outfished pheasant tail nymphs 2 to 1.

A new brown midge pattern

2012-02-13T23:34:00.007-05:00

This is my latest brown midge pattern. I've fished the Al's rat for the last year or so and it's been very effective. It opened my eyes to how well a basic tiny brown midge can be. I wanted to change it up and make it a lot more flashy. I took some wire ribbing, added a tiny bit of elk for the wing, and some flashy dubbing. After a few failed attempts and some minor tweaks, this pattern actually worked for me this past weekend, so I whipped up some more. It was the addition of the hair wing that actually had a fish take it. I fished a heavy anchor fly and had this trailing in the middle of the water column. Tying in hair on a size 22 fly is a little tough, so remember you only need a few fibers.

Size 22 Tiemco TMC2487 scud hook
Uni-Thread dark brown 8/0
Performance Flies Copper Wire (I'm done with Ultra-wire after using this stuff. It's awesome for small patterns)
Yearling Elk Hair - Put it in the stacker backwards and tie it in so the thickest butt section sticks out the back.
Jan Siman Peacock Bronze dubbing
Dark brown glass bead

Also, stop back tomorrow for a stacked foam beetle tutorial that's super easy and makes a great looking bug. More later.

February Dry Fly Fishing and Goodies in the Mail

2012-02-11T23:26:00.010-05:00

Nick and I decided late last night to sneak out to the stream today, going against the wishes of our wives. These things unfortunately happen sometimes, and there's not much that can be done about it. :) When we got there, we realized we had the entire stream to ourselves. We had an inch or two of snow last night, and that usually turns most people away. Although it was still snowing, it was almost 40 degrees around 2pm, and actually quite comfortable due to a lack of wind.

My experience on this stream in February over the last two years told me that I needed to have some dry midges, but I wasn't 100% sure that would be the case today. As we rigged up, I refused to put a fly on. If I don't see bug activity right when I get there (the parking lot is very close to the stream), it usually means nymphing, but something told me I needed to check upstream before I busted out the lead and tungsten. A short three minute walk put us on some rising fish. I quickly picked out a size 18 Griffith's Gnat. These fish were pretty reckless with their rising, and I didn't think size would matter that much. I was going for a midge cluster, and it worked.

Within about 5 minutes, I was in to my first fish, a wild brown trout, about 10 inches, who was coming up every 15 seconds from behind a big rock. He took my fly on my second cast. As I brought him to hand, he did a quick head jerk and swam off. Not-so-long release, and I can live with that.

In the next hour hour I have two more bigger rainbows do the exact same thing, spitting my fly as I'm beaching them. I then finally realize that I had crimped the barbs when I tied these gnats. That explains it! It also reminds that I shouldn't leave for the stream without my net. Lesson learned.

I obviously didn't get pictures of these fish, but Nick actually took some video footage. I just got my hands on Adobe Premiere, so it will be a good way to get my feet wet with some advanced video editing. More on that later.

Nick unfortunately didn't have any small dries on him, so he had a tougher time. I gave him one of mine and he lost it in a tree. He headed out after that. I continued upstream and found another pod of fish rising. I brought a small brown to hand, and popped the fly without touching him. When they are only the size of your finger, it's better not to even get them out of the water.

Then it started to get cold, very very cold. Wind picked up. Snow picked up. The rises eventually stopped and I switched over to a smattering of midges, eggs, nymphs, and worm patterns. I covered a lot of water and threw a variety of flies at every feeding lane and holding spot. I picked up two fat rainbows, both of which I let go without snapping a pic because my hands were too cold. Not only did I forget my net, but also my half gloves.

So although this post isn't too photo-heavy with fish porn, I did snap a couple shots of Nick to test out Instagram's new filtering options with. I dig how they turned out. (see above as well)

When I got home, I was greeted with an envelope stuffed with stickers from The Fiberglass Manifesto. My ride is going to be covered with them. The new round pumped fist sticker is amazing. Thanks Cameron.

I've also been meaning to share a shot or two of the net I won from Tenkara Talk. This thing is beautiful and I almost don't want to use it. It might hang on the wall at the bar in the man cave until I get the balls to get it wet. Being a dumbass on Youtube can pay off once in a while.

Also as a reminder, if you are in to fly tying and want to join a terrestrial swap, head on over to OwlJones.com and sign up. Now, back to the beer. It's IPA nation tonight!

Feel like joining a fly swap?

2012-02-11T11:56:00.004-05:00

Owl didn't name it, but I'm going to be a smartass and call it "MONSTERS OF FLY TYING". We're doing a swap with 25 people. The only rule is it has to be a terrestrial pattern with at least one part of the fly using foam. If you'd like to join, head over to owljones.com to register.

I'm off to chase fish on midges in the snow. More later.

Some flashy stonefly and nymph patterns

2012-02-09T22:41:00.005-05:00

I started experimenting with some materials I haven't touched in ages tonight. I got mixed results, but here they are. Feedback welcome.

Someone asked me about stoneflies for the Salmon River yesterday. I realized I hadn't tied some in a while so I sat down tonight with some thick UV wing material I picked up at some fly shop in a clearance bin early last year. It's kind of a bitch to tie with because it's really thick, but it made a cool looking wing case on this stone. The pictures don't really do it justice. This material really flashes. I also came across some Partridge Klinkhammer hooks that I never touched. Even though they should be a dry fly hook, I liked the curve of them and tried them for this stone. I need to work on it some more. The back is too slim and the front is too fat. Maybe I'll post a more perfected one later.

Hook - Partridge of Redditch Flash Point Klinkhammer, size 12
8/0 Uni Thread - Black
Tail and Legs - Black goose biots
Body - Pearl Fly D&K UV Quill body, and UTC ultrawire in black
Thorax - Jan Siman peacock dubbing in black
Wingcase - UV wing material (sorry, forget the exact name and the bag wasn't labeled)

I also played around with some basic thread body nymphs. These are both on Dohiku size 14 wet barbless fly hooks, have Montana colored tungsten beads, CDL tail, and double ribbed. The ribbing on the green is Lagartun non-tarnishing french tinsel, and UTC copper. The tan is UV Quill body and Performance Flies .10mm colored copper wire in brown. Both dubbed with Jan Siman peacock in different colors.

Czech Nymphs...in High Definition

2012-02-07T22:08:00.008-05:00

I finally got a chance to really mess around with the Hends Shellback tonight.

It's not very flexible, but still makes a sweet looking Czech Nymph. I did the last bug in the photos below with regular scud back from Hareline so you could see the difference in materials. I knocked out like 20 of these things in various color, thickness, and weight. I busted out the macro lens tonight so click on the images for super hi-res.

Size 12 Scud Hook
Various natural and synthetic Dubbing (Jan Siman, Hareline Ice Dub, Natural Hare Dubbing)
.25 lead underbody
Hends Shellback (various colors)
Cortland Fairplay 3X Tippet (I get this stuff at Walmart and I like tying with it because it's got a smokey grey color to it)
Black Prismacolor marker (color top front of shellback)

Also, I'd like to give a shoutout to Joshua Binkley. Joshua won our Facebook wall photo contest and I shipped him out a dozen flies. He dropped by the wall tonight to share a photo of a nice fish he caught one on of my midges. He said he went on to pull in about a dozen fish. Nice going and I'm glad the patterns are working for you!

You know you fish too much when...

2012-02-07T16:42:00.001-05:00

The walls of your quasi-office at work are covered with beat up flies you've found in your pockets from over the last year.

Amateur Hour

2012-02-05T22:44:00.005-05:00

I was really excited today. I haven't really fished in two weeks (unless you count a quick late night run to the local creek in search of stockies. Lost one, but that's a whole other story).

Nick, Bob, Jack, and I decided to hit the Pohopoco, a tailwater at the foot of the Pocono Mountains. I checked the gauges, and I knew it was going to be tough fishing. The water level was the lowest it's been in weeks, and it was only 34 degrees. We were going to have to work for them.

The spot that Becker had shown me last fall was now posted, so that lead us to another spot we had success at before, although it was all with small fish and somewhat boring water.

Did you ever have those days where you just suck at fishing? It happened to me today. It was cold and windy. My hands were freezing, even with my half gloves on. The fish were holding tight against the far bank under lots of mountain laurel and low hanging branches so it required some casting skills and proper presentation to avoid getting caught up. The wind kept fouling my cast and I'd wind up stuck in the tree about every 4 to 5 minutes. After checking my fly box, I lost two Czech nymphs, three Vladi worms, a Copper John, three San Juan worms, a CDC n' Elk Caddis, a Griffith's Gnat, and two Baetis nymphs. Yep, it sucked. It was amateur hour all day, at least for me.

None of us had any luck all morning, besides a few hit and misses. Nick and I decided to hike up this small trib to check it out. It was really beautiful and I did see a few fish, but they were spooking when you got within 20 feet of them.

We decided to head back upstream to the starting point and fish for another half hour. We saw some greyish-tan midges coming off but rises were extremely sporadic. I missed two in a row on a Griffith's gnat, only to get it stuck in a tree a few casts later. I was about to give up and I heard Nick holler from upstream. Someone finally got a fish. Nick landed a wild brown on a size 14 Czech nymph. He then caught a wild rainbow a few minutes later. That would be the only action we saw all day.

Congrats on the fish, Nick. I dig his new Columbia chest pack, but with the yellow fishing license in the front, he kinda reminds me of Plex from Yo Gabba Gabba. (Sorry, but he caught the only damn fish all day and needs his balls busted)

Well, I have to get my fly boxes restocked with some of these. Goodnight.

It's Saturday night and I'm going to drop some science on you.

2012-02-04T23:01:00.006-05:00

There was recently a post over at PA Fly Fish with some guy ~~complaining~~ voicing his opinion about how they stock too far ahead of the season opener. I for one like when this happens because the fish get more spread out.

A little way into the thread, someone posted a link to a study done by the PFBC regarding movement of trout after they were stocked. I just found this to be a really interesting read and I thought I'd share it. I can't believe one rainbow traveled over 120 miles.

I'm going to paste the article(sorry if the formatting is a little off), but you can view the original PDF here.

"Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission

Harrisburg PA www.fish.state.pa.us

Factors Influencing the Post-Stocking Movement of Hatchery Trout in Streams By PFBC Staff

The Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission stocks more than 2 million hatchery trout annually in waterways throughout Pennsylvania before the start of the trout season. These trout provide some great recreation for anglers in the spring and early summer. Many anglers will have good success in most waterways, particularly on opening day. But some anglers, like those from the northeastern part of the state, have reported poor luck in the past few years. We’ve heard many explanations, including poaching, poor weather, poor fishing technique and moon phases. Most anglers believed that the trout were just not there anymore.

The Commission had suspicions that these anglers could be right. We decided to look at the problem by investigating a stream in which anglers reported poor success. In 2003, fish were stocked into the East and West branches of Dyberry Creek, Wayne County. Our fisheries biologists then went back and used electrofishing gear two days later to capture the trout. Indeed, the trout were not there! These results along with waterways conservation officer observations and angler complaints about other streams suggested that this problem could be widespread in northeastern Pennsylvania.

Where did the trout go and why did they leave? Some blamed high spring flows, but studies show that trout stay put during floods. They take up positions behind boulders, logs and eddies away from strong currents. Others blamed our hatcheries. It is true that the freestone streams in northeast Pennsylvania are stocked with trout raised in limestone facilities from the central part of the state. Could it be possible that trout raised in a fertile limestone facility would want to seek those conditions when stocked into a freestone stream environment? We found this not to be the case. The Dyberry Creek electrofishing study included fish that were stocked from limestone and freestone hatcheries. The fish that remained after the stocking were evenly split between the two sources. Another Commission study showed that limestoneraised fish actually outperformed freestone-raised fish when placed into an acidic freestone stream.

The hatchery water source did not appear to be the problem in this case. Water temperature could be a factor. Some studies have shown that hatchery trout move downstream when stocked into water colder than 10°C (50°F). Water temperature is usually below 50°F in many of the streams we stock in northeastern Pennsylvania during the preseason. Cold water could be the problem, but it doesn’t explain why we were successful with trout stockings in past years. Temperature acclimation could be a piece of the puzzle. Scientific studies have shown that trout will adjust their metabolism based on the temperature they routinely experience. Trout accustomed to cold water will perform better than those accustomed to warm water when suddenly exposed to very cold temperatures in the laboratory. The trout acclimated to cold water will have lower activity rates and lower mortality.

In the spring of 2005, fisheries biologists decided to test the effects of temperature acclimation on stocked trout movement. We wanted to find out where trout go and if trout acclimated to colder water temperatures show less movement out of stocked areas than trout acclimated to warmer water temperatures. The study took place on Wysox Creek in Bradford County and Tunkhannock Creek in Susquehanna County. Hatchery trout movement was measured using several techniques, including tagging, radio telemetry, electrofishing and a creel survey. Over 4,000 hatchery trout were anesthetized and then tagged before they were stocked into either stream during the preseason. The tags consisted of a piece of colored laminated plastic. They were attached to the trout just below the dorsal fin. Tagging mortality was minimal. Each tag had a small unique identification code and a telephone number. The public was then informed about the project. Anglers were asked to call the telephone number if they caught any tagged trout. Information was collected, including the species of trout caught (brook, brown, rainbow or golden rainbow), date of catch, stream where caught, tag color, tag number and whether the fish was kept or released. The color of each tag told us which stream the trout was stocked in and whether it was acclimated to cold or warm water temperatures. The tag number told us the species of the trout that was stocked.

The trout came from one of two Commission hatcheries, Benner Spring (control fish), Centre County, and Oswayo (treatment fish), Potter County. The mean water temperature was 9.9°C (50°F) for Benner Spring and 7.65°C (46°F) for Oswayo. This might seem like a small difference in temperature, but laboratory studies have shown that a few degrees are enough to alter fish behavior. The stocking temperatures in both streams were significantly lower than the water temperatures from both hatcheries. Fish were stocked in Wysox Creek on March 7th, which had a water temperature of 1.7°C (35.1°F). Tunkhannock Creek had a water temperature of 0.3°C (32.5°F) on March 8thwhen the fish were stocked there.

Twenty five trout were also surgically implanted with a small radio transmitter. The trout came from either Benner Spring hatchery (control) or Oswayo hatchery (treatment). Two fish of each species (one from Benner Spring and one from Oswayo) were then released at each stocking point on Wysox Creek and Tunkhannock Creek. Wysox Creek received four rainbow, four brown and four brook trout. Tunkhannock Creek received five rainbow, four brown and four brook trout. The signal from the transmitters was then tracked using a receiver. In the spring of 2005, fisheries biologists monitored the movement of the radio-tagged preseason stocked trout in both streams with radio telemetry equipment. The radio-tagged fish showed little movement for the first few days of the study. Most of the rainbow trout from both creeks left their stocking points and headed downstream after the third day. Several rainbows were never found again. One rainbow trout from Tunkhannock Creek was found nearly 13 miles downstream from its stocking point. And one rainbow from Wysox Creek was found 123 miles downstream in the North Branch of the Susquehanna River.

Brown trout movement varied more. Most brown trout stayed at their stocking points for at least seven days. When they did move, they usually didn’t travel that far. The longest traveler was a brown trout that moved 6 miles. Only one brown trout found its way to the Susquehanna River. And one brown trout moved slightly less than a mile upstream. Brook trout stayed at their stocking points for the longest time. Almost all the brookies remained in place for a minimum of 10 days. The exception was a Tunkhannock Creek brookie that began moving after a week. Brook trout movement ranged between 0.5- mile and 11.6 miles with the greatest movement occurring in Tunkhannock Creek. One Tunkhannock brookie moved about 7.5 miles downstream before ascending another creek. It was the only time during this study that a trout entered a tributary stream. By the end of the preseason period, three of the 12 radio-tagged trout (two browns and a brook) remained in the stocking limits of Wysox Creek and three of the 13 radio-tagged trout (two browns and a rainbow) remained in the stocking limits of Tunkhannock Creek.

Statistical analysis of the radio-tagged trout showed that initial movement away from a stocking point was associated with species instead of hatchery. Rainbow trout left first (three days), followed by brown trout (seven days) and then brook trout (10 days). This movement pattern seemed to coincide with visual observation of large groups of trout disappearing from stocking points after seven to 10 days. It was predicted that control trout (Benner Spring) would choose warmer water temperatures than the treatment trout (Oswayo), but this did not happen. In one case, a rainbow acclimated to the cold Oswayo hatchery water actually chose warmer temperatures than the other trout acclimated to the warmer Benner Spring hatchery water. Tracking demonstrated that there was no immediate downstream movement in response to cold stocking temperatures. Only six tags out of over 4,000 tagged trout were returned during the tagging part of this study (a 0.001% return rate). A formal creel survey at Wysox Creek recorded only three trout caught from a preseason stocking of 2,000 trout.

The number of trout present in the streams during the electrofishing study and the number of angler tag returns (0.001%) were too low to permit statistical analysis on the performance of cold acclimated trout. Nevertheless, it was still apparent that most of the hatchery trout either perished or left the stream section after they were stocked. The results of this study suggest that temperature acclimation was not a factor in hatchery trout movement. Control and treatment trout did not exhibit immediate downstream movement in response to cold stocking temperatures, although they eventually did move downstream. The control and treatment trout did not choose different temperatures. Finally, the treatment trout were not expected to move because they were acclimated to colder water temperatures. This was not the case because they moved just as often as did the control trout, which were acclimated to warmer water temperatures. It is apparent that other factors or a combination of factors could be involved in movement of hatchery trout. Two factors that might come to mind are water chemistry and high flows. Water chemistry and flooding did not cause trout movement in this particular study. The worst pH we found during the entire preseason period was 6.8 following heavy rains and snowmelt. The radio-tagged trout also did not move during the two floods we experienced in the spring of 2005.

This study did not help us discover the cause of the trout movement problem, but it did give biologists some ideas on how to prevent it. In 2006, we stocked streams in northeastern Pennsylvania as close to opening day as possible, particularly problem waterways like Wysox and Tunkhannock creeks. We also changed the species composition of trout that were stocked during the preseason. Many streams in the

Northeast did not receive rainbow trout during preseason stockings. In 2006, we also decided to take a more extensive look at the trout movement problem. Biologists from across the state completed electrofishing studies on as many preseason stocked streams as possible. Electrofishing took place between 10 and 20 days after stocking and before opening day. Biologists shocked at two direct stocking points on each stream and estimated the percentage of trout that remained at the location. We measured as many variables as possible and correlated them to hatchery trout residency. The variables we considered were associated with the hatchery environment, the trout, the stocking process and the stream environment.

We considered more than 20 different variables, but none showed a strong correlation with trout residency (the number of trout remaining at a stocking point). There was a trend for better trout residency in waters with better physical habitat such as undercut banks, log jams and boulders. Some other factors that influenced residency were stream pH, bank stability, bank vegetation, stream width, stream velocity and stream depth. But all of these factors do not statistically explain why trout were not staying at their stocking points. We did learn that the problem of trout movement was not just limited to the northeast. Streams with poor trout residency existed statewide. However, there were concentrations of streams with poor residency in the northeast and northcentral portions of the state. Acidic water chemistry may have explained some of the movement problems in the northcentral part of the state. The full report is available at the Commission’s website, http://sites.state.pa.us/ PA_Exec/Fish_Boat/afm.htm

All of these studies have not really explained why trout leave their stocking points. We know they are Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission Harrisburg PA www.fish.state.pa.us leaving, but we just don’t know why yet. Research on the problem will continue in 2007. In the meantime, we are addressing the problem in several different ways. As mentioned above, some streams will not receive rainbow trout in their preseason allocation. We are also trying to stock as many streams as close to opening day as possible. Part of this effort includes the new regional opening day concept that has been implemented in 2007. Select counties in southcentral and southeastern Pennsylvania will now have an opening day two weeks earlier than the rest of the state, March 31 in 2007. Other areas of the state will remain the same with the mid-April trout opener. "

So that's where all your stocked fish go. You can't argue with science!

I'd post some of the new bugs I'm working on, but I'm too busy getting the fly boxes ready for an all day trip to a tailwater stream tomorrow. Full report when I return. Who needs football when you have wild brown trout?

Real or photoshopped?

2012-02-01T08:49:00.001-05:00

A couple of bugs, and please let me clarify....

2012-01-30T22:50:00.009-05:00

So, I didn't realize the Somerset post would draw so much traffic. I checked my stats Sunday morning and realized the post made it on to Trout Underground's twitter feed, which had the place jumping with unique visitors all day. (Thank you Mr. Chandler) If you're stopping by for the first time, welcome to the site. Take some time to dig through the older posts. There's usually more tying photos but I've been lazy.

I'd also like to apologize if my show recap came off as negative. To clarify, the Fly Fishing Show is enormous and I'm sure Mr. Furimsky and crew put in tons of work to pull it off. If you've never been there before, it's definitely worth checking out. Don't let my negativity hold you back. It's full of materials, people who are amazing at twisting up bugs, sweet gear, and seminars. I think I was just expecting some better deals. I didn't find them but after reading other recaps, some people did. Dave Kile over at PA Fly Fish put together a nice video recap of the show.

So anyway, if you're not on Instagram, I posted a few pics tonight of some stuff I've been tying. After watching some streamers being tied at the show, I came to the realization that less is more. I've been loading my streamers up recently, attaching a ton of feathers. Sure, they look pretty, but I noticed that short of using a heavy sink tip, they don't fish as well. After seeing more of a minimalist approach from the few guys at the show, I decided to back off on the bird parts. Here's a simple Fish Skull streamer that can be tied in about 5 minutes. I call it the Vitamin C and I can't wait to try it this weekend.

Size 6 Streamer Hook
6/0 UNI in brown
Orange Marabou
Brown Craft Fur
Oversized skull eyes fastened with a little epoxy
Orange crystal flash

1.Tie in the marabou just in front of the hook point. Palmer to about 3/4 the way up the shank. Tie off.
2.Make a dubbing loop, wrap to the eye, and half hitch.
3.Cut off some craft fur, and pull out the short fibers just like you would with some deer hair.
4.Add the fur to the dubbing loop, give it about 10-12 spins (keep it semi-loose) and wrap forward. Tie it off and comb it back.
5.Add about 4-5 strands of flash for the lateral line on each side and then whip finish.
6.Slip on the skull, and epoxy on the eyes.

I also saw Howard's blog post over at Wind Knots and Tangled Lines and he got me on a terrestrial kick. I whipped up half a dozen Hopper Juans tonight. These things have a lot of steps but once you get into tying them, it goes fast and you get better at making them with each fly. I'm not going to post the steps and recipe, you can head over to The Hopper Juan to check it out. They sit well on a bottle of Bell's Two Hearted Ale.

Also, I came across a pretty nice new blog today. It's called Fumbling the Fly and the guy ties a mean Circus Peanut. Head on over and become a follow and tell him I sent ya. :)

Also, wanna laugh? Gfen breaks down his thoughts on Tenkara. (Watch the F bombs if you're at work)

Somerset Fly Fishing Show - Recap

2012-01-29T00:26:00.007-05:00

It feels like it was just yesterday that I was at the 2011 show. I can't believe a year flew by already. After a long night with the kids having sleeping issues, I didn't get to bed until 2am, and was woke up by Michael at 6:55am telling me he wanted to watch the sun come up with me. So much for getting some rest last night.

That slowed me down and I didn't wind up getting to the show until about 9:45am. Needless to say, parking sucked and I got in some exercise walking to the place. I passed through masses of cars and SUVs covered with bumper stickers; old Cadillacs covered in TU and Hardy stickers, and the younger crowd vehicles with Jettas rocking 20 inch rims, covered with Simms, Sage, and "Insert hip fly fishing website here" stickers. Quite the generation gap.

I was surprised when I got inside. It really was not that crowded at all like it was in the last two years. I thought that was a plus. To be perfectly honest, I didn't find the show to really be that great. Almost half of the floor booths were lodges and guide/charter services, or some fly fishing magazine with jacked up subscription prices (But wait! You get a free LED flashlight and cooler with purchase!) There's a reason why the "free issue" they give you when you sign up has the price removed from the front - it's because they are charging you more than the cover price for a year!

There were a decent amount of vendors, much more than the fly tying symposium had a few months back. But, the great deals were not there. At least I didn't find them. I look at it this way. If I'm driving 1.5 hours and paying a $15 admission fee and have to pay $5 for a slightly-colder-than-room-temperature beer, there better be some damn good discounted gear. I just wasn't seeing it. I think the economy is still taking a hold on the fishing industry and the vendors that are left don't have much wiggle room.

Yeah, there were the 100 hooks for $7 deals, and if you don't tie flies you could pick up a dozen at The Fly Shack for $10, but I didn't come across much else. At the end of the day, you could order that stuff online, pay shipping, and still come out cheaper in the end than driving to the show. The best deal of the day was the waste collector that clips on your vise that catches all your clippings while tying. After shopping around at 5 different vendors who had prices ranging from $21 to $40 for the same damn thing, I finally found a place that had one for $12. SCORE!

Where I did get my money's worth was just watching the flies being tied. I saw some great patterns, got some great ideas, and many of the guys were more than willing to allow you to pick their brain for 20 minutes. The only downside was that a lot of the guys just weren't at their booth. There were quite a few empty seats as I was walking through.

I also probably could have attended a show or two to get the most of my money, but when I finally was ready to check out a seminar or film, it was either Bahamas or Alaska. I was hoping for something a little more local. Oh well. There's always next year.

At the end of the day, I guess it was worth going. It got me out of the house. I got to see some old friends, and meet a few cool people. Here's some highlights:

1.The Tenkara Booth
I got to meet Daniel from Tenkara USA and he was a really cool guy. I also got to check out a Tenkara rod for the first time and I have to say, it's got me intrigued. I might have to bite the bullet and buy one.

2.Pat Cohen from Superfly
Three of us just stood there and watch Pat stack some deer hair onto this massive fly for about 15 minutes. It was impressive. Plus he was a really nice guy, and gave my bro-in-law the fly after he was done tying it. If you get a chance, make sure you watch him tie. His sculpins are sick. (The flies at the top of this post were all his.)

3.Lefty Kreh not getting beat up by the Tenkara posse
But seriously, it's always cool to watch a legend cast a fly rod. Sorry for the blurred pic, there was a mob surrounding him and I had to lift my phone in the air to snap a shot.

4.Derek Deyoung of CanvasFish
This was one of the coolest things I saw all day. My jaw dropped when I turned the corner and saw his big original canvases on display. Seeing his designs on a shirt or water bottle do not do them any justice. They look so good up close. He was even working on a painting at the show. I would have loved to buy a print, but even the small ones were a $105. Hell, the bumper stickers were $10. Like I've said before, slap a Simms logo on it, sell it for thousands!

5.Al Ritt's sculpin
This guy tied a sweet articulated streamer and it was the best use of the sculpin helmet I've seen so far. This pic really doesn't do the fly justice. I appreciated him taking the time to show me the pattern

Although I didn't get pics, I also really liked the streamers tied by Mike Schmidt from Angler's Choice, and I always enjoy stopping by to chat and see flies from George Maciag, Bruce Corwin, and Kevin Compton.

Also, I have to be honest. My favorite part of the day had nothing to do with fishing. It was my stop on the way home at the Porterhouse outside of New Hope PA. They have the best freaking burgers ever! It was also nice to wash it down with an Avery IPA.

EDIT - 2/8/12
Before I get any more comments about how this post is harsh, please read my follow up post before you pull the comment trigger and begin to bash me. This post was not meant to be offensive. I have nothing but respect for everyone involved with pulling off such a big event. I just didn't have much fun there.

Somerset Fly Fishing Show - Blogger meetup anyone?

2012-01-27T00:32:00.005-05:00

So, the entire fly fishing interwebs are buzzing about the show this weekend. It's going to be a really fun time and you'll get the chance to see all the Tenkara worshipers beat up Lefty Kreh. So far I know that Shane the bug flinger will be there, and I think Mr. Troutrageous, and the Functioning Fishaholic will be in attendance, but are there any other fellow bloggers planning on making the trip? I was thinking we could all maybe set up a meeting point and grab a beer somewhere.

let me know if you're interested and we can come up with something. It would be great to put some faces to all the names.

I don't have much else right now. I'm feeling a little better, and tying a ton of flies for some swaps, which I'll post once completed. Also got a nice package of wet flies in the mail today from the PAFF soft hackle swap. Expect pics of those coming soon as well.

Besides that, enjoy these wicked Pigeons.

Snowy Sunday

2012-01-23T23:22:00.005-05:00

Nick asked if I wanted to fish on Sunday. We had gotten about 4-5 inches of snow on Saturday. It was brutally cold. I'm still really bummed the hell out over Jake's passing. But, I went anyway, thinking it would take my mind off things for a short while.

Well, it didn't really help. I miserably stomped around in the snow for an hour to catch one brown trout before packing it in due to depression and the lack of feeling in my fingers. I lost a fly box a few weeks back on the LL and I was hoping that at least the fly shop would be open so I could see if someone dropped it off. Nope, of course not. Lady luck has not been on my side recently. Sorry for the poor pictures. I just wasn't in the mood.

We had the stream to ourselves.

Here's a half-assed photo of Nick gearing up.

The anti-skunk savior who took a small flashabou midge

The only redeeming part of the afternoon was a few cold Lagunitas Maximus IPAs, and this little goofball waiting for me when I got home. I can't believe how big he got. He's almost a month old already.

Also, in case you missed it, thanks to Jason over at Tenkara Talk! Making that embarrassing video was worth it because I won the Tenkara USA net! This thing looks so nice that I don't even want to use it. I might just have to hang it on the wall of my bar.

And keep an eye out for a post about the first official Instagram fly swap once I receive my bugs! Gin Clear did a great post about it, so you should just head over there to check it out. I really need to get tying. I'm also involved in a fatty streamer swap over at PaFlyFish that I need to get going on!

That's about all I got. I have to speak at the funeral tomorrow and I could really use a good night's sleep. Maybe I'll catch up with some of you at the Fly Fishing Show this weekend?

Saying goodbye

2012-01-22T10:00:00.003-05:00

Jake and I became friends 18 years ago, during our senior year of high school. Over the years, girls came and went, addresses changed, our hairlines backed up, and our waist sizes increased, but we always stayed in touch. He gave the best man speech at my wedding in 2006, and I returned the favor at his wedding in 2008. He was my brother from another mother, and the only person I've known for that long that I've never gotten into a single arguement with. Jake, you were the best friend I could possibly have asked for and I truly miss you. Rest in peace.

Jacob Lee Burkett
10/10/1975 - 1/19/2012

Whoring myself out in an attempt to win

2012-01-18T23:46:00.003-05:00

So, in case you missed it, there was a contest over at Tenkara Talk. There's a sweet net up for grabs that I'm in love with. Basically, you get a sticker mailed to you and you have to put it somewhere creative and then send them a pic of where it ends up. I haven't really been able to get out of the house with a new baby around, so I decided to stick it on a record and dust off my turntables. As a disclaimer, I'm about five beers deep (8.2% beers!), if that justifies this at all :)

On a somber note, stop over to Mike's gone fishing and offer your condolences if you get some spare time. He just lost a family member. Our thoughts and prayers are with you and your family, Mike. Sorry for your loss.

Somewhere, a chicken is crying.

2012-01-14T14:21:00.001-05:00

Ghoti

2012-01-13T12:56:00.001-05:00

Happy Friday.

It was a good day

2012-01-11T22:56:00.003-05:00

I started out by going here:

And I left with this:

Then I went out to lunch with him:

and then for a nature walk.

I came home and tied up a bunch of these:

Also, there's only two days left in our Facebook fly giveaway contest. Looks like we have a three way tie so far! Share the link, post a pic, like some pics.

Scouting new water, a small milestone, and did someone say fly giveaway?!

2012-01-10T00:32:00.003-05:00

I found a new shortcut back to my house the other day and slammed on my brakes when I saw this stream. When I found it, it was 25 degrees outside and it was NOT frozen over. This means it most likely has some spring influence with consistent water temps and could possibly hold trout. I took a pic of it so I didn't forget to go back and explore it. My god, it's taunting me. I want to fish it.

I might try to check it out tomorrow. I'll post my findings. In other news, we hit 100 followers today. I was pretty suprised by that, and pretty damn happy! Thanks to everyone for stopping by. You might also want to swing by and become a fan of Dub The Thorax on Facebook. Rumor has it that there might be a fly giveaway going on....

A small amount of time

2012-01-08T22:46:00.006-05:00

I was on my way home and I only had a small amount of time to wet a line. The sun would be gone in half an hour so I had to act fast. I picked a spot closest to my house out of convenience and to save time, although I knew from scouting it on a regular basis that there were only 4 or 5 trout left in the 100 yard section I would have access to. They were rainbows that were still holding over from the stocking three months ago.

There was no time for waders, and I chose a small tan bugger. Stockies are stupid and will typically chase them across the stream.

I slid down a steep bank and hopscotched across some wet rocks to a spot where low hanging branches wouldn't annoy me. My feet got a little wet but there was no time to think about that. I stripped line as fast as possible and rocketed a cast. The bugger had a splashly landing about an inch from the opposite bank.

I started to strip line and I noticed a dimple. Then another. Then another. There were at least two, maybe three fish in the back corner of the pool, sipping on size 20 tan midges in slack water. I pulled the bugger in and started to string up some 7x tippet. As soon as I got a fly tied on, my phone rang. My son was sick and fatherhood waits for no one. I sulked away, back to my car, sadly watching those fish continue to sip. There's always tomorrow. Maybe.

Fly Fishing Film Tour? Yes please.

2012-01-08T08:59:00.001-05:00

I'm pretty psyched. There is actually a date this year within driving distance of my house in Media PA! Any fellow bloggers wanna do a road trip?

Fly Fishing Film Tour 2012 | thef3t.com from The Fly Fishing Film Tour on Vimeo.

Black, white, and 59 degrees

2012-01-07T22:50:00.009-05:00

You couldn't ask for a better day in January in Pennsylvania. It was crowded so the typical great holes all had idiots wading in the middle of the stream, but the trout I came across today absolutely loved that red midge from my last post. Now if only I would have noticed the trash stuck in the bushes before that last shot...

The Midge Parade

2012-01-07T09:03:00.000-05:00

The older one wore himself out with tantrums. The younger one is in a bottle-induced coma. My wife is sleeping. As soon as the lights went out upstairs, the basement lights when on, the beer was cracked, and the Xbox started to hum. I got sick of dying 10 million times in Modern Warfare 3, so here's some midges I've been working on. Before you say "wow, those suck", keep in mind that you could fit a dozen of them on your finger nail. All size 22 and 24 (with a few 20s in the box just in case).First up is a variation of Al's Rat that I simply call "The Rubber Rat". This has been my most successful midge pattern so far this winter and it started from scrap material. I had some rubber leg scraps left over from hoppers this past fall. They were Orvis Sexy Legs which are a little thicker than regular rubber legs. They were a dark brown and orange mottled color and are pretty pricey, so I didnt want to waste them. The extra strength allows you to wrap tight and create a better taper. I kept the head just like the original rat with Muskrat dubbing.

Next, a basic thread midge with Flashabou ribbing. This stuff works great to rib, and definitely gives the midge a sparkle. I tie these with and without beads, depending on where I want to fish them in the water column. Jan Siman dubbing for the thorax. Feel free to try different types of flash.

Here's a variation of the Poison Tung. I tie these with a glass bead because I think it makes them pop a little more under the water, plus I don't like my midges to have tungsten. I kept the profile very slim, and I oversized the rib just a bit (Small vs. X-Small) just to have it sink every so slightly faster in the water column.

Finally, here's the midge that slayed them for me earlier this week. It's a cross between a Zebra and a Disco midge. Red thread, oversized UTC wire rib (same color as thread), and a peacock herl thorax. When tying flies this pattern, I like to whip finish behind the peacock so the red isn't sticking out like a sore thumb near the eye. It also helps keep your eye cleaner when trying to thread 8x tippet through it.

Also, here are a couple of newer blogs you might want to keep on your radar. Beertrout is anothing blog out of PA (Gotta represent the homeland!). I love the name so much that I won't make fun of him for having a can of PBR in a couple shots.

Another is Penn Sportsman. This one was just started by my neighbor and good buddy, Rick. This guy catches some huge fish from Stripers, to Steelhead, to lunker bass, so I'm sure this will be a good one to watch in 2012. He also has some nice patterns posted already. Tell him I sent ya!

Midges

2012-01-05T23:54:00.002-05:00

Still going..... Detailed pattern post coming soon.

Braving the cold and getting my first fish of the year

2012-01-04T07:21:00.006-05:00

When my wife said that I had some free time from babyville and that I should go fishing yesterday, I packed my gear and was out the door in ten minutes. I immediately ran back inside and put on another layer of clothes. I didn't realize how cold it got. It was 16 degrees when I left the house, and 18 degrees with 25 MPH winds when I got to the stream. It was probably a dumb idea to fish, but it was over two weeks since I wet a line and my cabin fever was setting in big time. Thank got for my Orvis fleece gloves. I highly suggest getting a pair of these things. Your hands stay toasty, and they have the finger covers which fold back when you need to tie a knot or strip line.

I was very happy to see not a single other person on the stream. I figured that would be the case, because my nose started to run and was freezing on my home-from-work-for-2-weeks beard within a few minutes. After about a dozen casts, I remembered how much winter fishing can suck. The guide ice was awful, especially with the bad winds. The only good thing was that the areas that are usually a muddy mess were nice and solid.

I already had a bugger on so I started off with that but a I quickly realized it was a bad idea since the thing turned into an icicle pretty darn quick.

Switching over to midges, I no longer minded the cold. Fish came to hand one after another on a new red midge pattern I tied up the other night. I must have landed 5 or 6 fish in about an hour. My hands were too cold to keep taking pictures, but I did snap one of my first fish of 2012, a nice wild brown.

I didn't last too long in the cold weather, so I headed home to down a few beers and playing with my new Christmas present I finally picked up with all my gift cards, an Acer Android Tablet. After a few days of use, I can say that I do prefer the Apple interface better on my iPhone, but I'm still learning this and I look forward to all the open sourced tweaking goodness. Now I just need some new fly fishing apps for it (Hint Hint Orvis - I'd be happy to do an app review!)

A couple of beers later, the vise came out......

and eggs were tied with a quickness. (I always run out of hot pink and orange for some reason)

Filling a fly box

2011-12-31T00:19:00.002-05:00

So, I have three weeks off work to help with the newborn. I've been taking first night shift with the baby, which pretty much means sitting with him and just waiting for him to wake up to do a diaper and a bottle. There's a whole lot of waiting in between feedings.

I came across an empty fly box today and decided that I'm going to try and fill it with 200-300 flies in the next few weeks, tying while the baby sleeps.

I brought the bare essentials upstairs and set up at the kitchen table.

Up first, the rubber rat midge. I'll post clearer pictures of this pattern later because it works amazingly well but as for now, I'm posting from my iPhone with a baby on my lap. I knocked out a dozen tonight.

Some free time on my hands, so here's a blog update

2011-12-29T22:44:00.005-05:00

Fatherhood is not an easy thing. The newborn is a piece of cake. He sleeps most of the day, takes a few poops, and wants the occasional bottle. The tough part is my 2 year old having a tough time adjusting to the new addition. I've survived about 18 temper tantrums today, the last one over an hour long. He's finally asleep, and I can finally crack a beer and do a good old blog update.

I saw a post on a forum today about micro buggers and I realized that I used to use them all the time, and then just kinda stopped for some reason. I whipped up a few tonight. These are size 14, and besides the head of the fly, the body is palmered ostrich herl. I like to fish these in the late spring and early summer because they just seem to work better. I feel that the winter time is tough fishing small streamers because if trout are gonna waste the energy to chase some food, the bigger the better. They usually ignore these once the air temp hits 40.

Hopefully I'll get some fishing time in this week. I might try to get the older boy out of the house tomorrow to burn some Christmas gift cards at Cabelas.

Speaking of Christmas, it all seems like a blur. It came and went with a vengeance. Little did we know that in 24 hours, we'd be parents again. We hit the in-laws on Christmas eve, then they came over in the morning after Michael ripped apart his presents. We then hit my dads, and then my moms. I did not sit down to relax until 9pm. What a day! Michael got super-spoiled this year but I think his favorite thing was his bike.

He also got about 5 Lego sets, some mega-blocks, Kinex building sets, stuffed animals, books, puzzles, DVDs, a Leapfrog laptop, clothes, Calliou/Muppets/Sesame Street/Yo Gabba/Thomas stuff, etc etc etc. The house was totally destroyed, but it was worth it.

And finally, here's an onslaught of artsy-fartsy baby pics, just because I'm a lame mushy dad.

Today, we welcome a new fisherman

2011-12-26T16:49:00.001-05:00

Ethan Jack was born at 1:43pm. 8 lbs 13 oz. Mom and baby are good. No fishing for me for a while.

Water broke!

2011-12-26T09:34:00.001-05:00

About to be a dad again!

Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T04:36:00.001-05:00

Presents

2011-12-23T22:28:00.006-05:00

Well, I just got done putting this together for Michael. I can't wait to see his face on Sunday morning.

I also got the wife a new present today. Brand spankin' new Town and Country Touring Limited Edition. Bucket leather seats (heated), 3 total LCD screens including the front nav screen, two DVD players, 30 GB hard drive, two sets of bluetooth headphones, automatic everything from high beams to wipers.

Of course, the first DVD I put in was "Eastern Rises".

I'm off to drink more beer and wrap more presents. Merry Christmas.

So, it's the holiday season

2011-12-23T09:15:00.013-05:00

I have 4 days off work, well that is, unless my wife gives birth and then I'll be off 3 weeks. She's 3 cm dilated and 58% affaced (whatever the hell that means) so she'll most likely be going any day now. Between that and all the other things going on with work and holiday gatherings, I haven't had time to post much, although I have been able to fit in a few quick fishing trips.

Here's a quick recap of the past couple of weeks with as few words as possible.

Slaying trout last weekend on a new midge pattern I came up with called the Rubber Rat on the Little Lehigh with a couple guys from the EPFR forum

Still running in to trout late night on the stream behind my house

I got my winning package from The Fiberglass Manifesto. I look like a dumbass in a buff.

Is anyone else on Instagram? If you have an iPhone, you should jump on it! Take amazing photography, add a watered down version of Facebook, and a dash of Twitter mentions and hashtags, you have a pretty amazing app. Some great fishing photography. Here's a link to my profile. Feel free to link up with me. I've uploaded a few nice pics in the last week or so.

I'm lobbying to make Bell's Two Hearted Ale it's own food group

The best Youtube video of the year, hands down (I'M MAKING PANCAAAYKES!)

We lost another dictator. Boohoo.

That's about it. Happy Holidays to you and yours. Time to start drinking.

Latest issue of Kype Magazine

2011-12-18T20:32:00.002-05:00

I've been MIA due to I.T. releases, holiday parties, an entire family with a cold, etc etc etc. More later but for now, check out the newest issue of Kype.
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It is December, right? Also, I actually won something.

2011-12-07T22:40:00.010-05:00

I didn't get to fish Saturday because my son was very sick, so Cabin fever was at an all time high. Sunday was spent taking care of my wife's Honey-do list, which consisted of shampooing carpets, various shopping destinations, and finding a Christmas tree. A little before dark, I finally had a small window of fishing opportunity. With holiday consumerism causing gridlock traffic, I knew I wouldn't be able to get to a good trout stream before dark. My only hope was to hit the local stream, and look for some carp, or a few leftover stockies from two months ago before the sun went down.

It was cold enough to see your breath outside, a far cry from what it was a few days earlier, when I was catching pickerel in shorts and sandals. As I got to the stream, I saw some movement in a back eddy. Rings were sporadically forming in front of a downed tree in some slack water.

Upon closer inspection, it was a school of bluegills, cautiously sipping very slowly on some size 20 black midges that were bouncing on the surface. They were moving at half speed, almost as if I was watching a video in slow motion. This surprised me because the creek has ice forming on the edges earlier in the morning when I drove over it with the family. Usually by this time of year these fish are hunkered down, and will refuse to move.

I still had on the white woolly bugger from the other night so I decided to throw it about 10 yards behind them and slowly strip my way up from behind them. As I got to the tail of the pod, they all started to spook, one by one, until I finally realized I was stripping too fast and brought my fly to almost a standstill. By this time, there were only two left, and one of them went for it. I stopped dead in front of him as he started to pursue. He circled it about 4 times, and then slowly inhaled it.

I think I can safely say that this is the first sunfish I've ever caught in the month of December. I'm still a little suprised over it. As soon as I released him, I saw some baitfish busting all over the surface in the shallows of the main stream. I ran out onto the bridge to see a group of juvenile bass pinning some shiners up against the bank, and gorging themselves. This again surprised me and from experience, these "mini-blitzes" only ever lasted about 20 seconds. I quickly stripped as much line out as I could and made one quick double haul to the middle of the commotion. Of course it's just my luck that the smallest of the bunch took the bugger.

I admired the fish for a second, and felt bad for him because he had a sore on his face. He swam away just fine though. The sun started to set and the fishing slowed down so I packed up and headed on home to decorate the tree. Didn't turn out too bad.

The weather was quite a different story 24 hours later. The cold spell went away as quickly as it arrived, and it was 60 degrees at 10pm on Monday night. I couldn't help it. I grabbed my gear and ran back to the same hole, crossing my fingers that Lucky the dog wouldn't show up again. This time, I could see quite a few fish, and they were more willing to come out of the shadows.
Believe it or not, the same white bugger yielded this poorly photographed stocked rainbow on my first cast, although I did get a nice pic of him being released.

Unfortunately, the beast didn't show his face, but his younger brothers did. I lost one that was a few lbs after trying to get him to take a fly for about 15 minutes. He finally settled on a san juan worm, but broke me off. Damn carp.

I figured maybe going back to trout might be more fun, so a tandem rig with an egg and a Mono-worm were drifted down along a pitch black run, about 30 yards down from the street lights. After my third cast I was about to call it a night when my rod got hit by a freight train. It was a fun fight, especially since I had no idea what it was at first, but after the 3 aerial moves, I knew it was a rainbow. This fish was ugly, fat, and a nice chunky 16+ inches.

Two quick trips, 3 different species, in PA, in December. That's almost unheard of on a fly rod around here unless you're talking brook, brown, and bow. I'll take it.

Before I go, I'd like to say a big THANK YOU! to Cameron over at The Fiberglass Manifesto for randomly selecting me as one of the winners in his 12 days of Christmas giveaway(which shocked me because I never win anything). I picked up the Buff/Bugslinger package and it came just in time. I could really use a new hat. If you've never read that blog (although judging by the 500+ entries he's been getting every day, most of you have..or maybe people just love free stuff), I highly suggest checking it out. Thanks Cameron!

Happy Saturday

2011-12-03T12:27:00.001-05:00

I'm going fishing.

Fright night ramblings - beer and fly boxes

2011-12-03T00:17:00.007-05:00

It's Friday night. I've had a long week. I've been unwinding with my hoppy friends. This post is brought to you by the following beers. The Big Eye is by far my favorite. Not quite as good as their Sculpin, but pretty damn close.

I realized this week that I have too many fly boxes. I'm up to a total of 10! I have Umpqua, Morell, Redington, Orvis, Plano, Cortland, and I still felt like I had to pick up a new one this week.

I got the C&F Designs CF1506. It's a small swing-leaf midge box that holds up to 564 flies. It's designed for sizes 16 and smaller. Typically, I would never spend $40-50 on a fly box, but I got a hookup at a certain outfitter and I managed to pick it up for $20. Not a bad deal. I actually picked one up for a Christmas present and I liked it so much I went back and got one for myself.

I bought this box because I think it can allow me to cut down to two boxes for winter fly fishing, especially since the streams I fish rarely require flies bigger than a 16. For trout in the cold weather, I typically carry a nymph box, a junk flies box (eggs and worms),a midge box, a streamer box, and a box for dries and terrestrials. (Other boxes are for steelhead/salmon, bass, carp, panfish, and saltwater). Well, I'm hoping this fly box will allow me to cover midges, nymphs, junk, and dries, which will just leave me with a big box of streamers. I'll start posting pictures as I fill it up over the next week.

I christened it tonight with some Infamous Pink Worms I've been constantly reading about. It seems like about 90% of the pictures of fish I've seen online in the past two weeks have this big worm puncturing their jaw, so I finally broke down and decided to whip up half a dozen. I'm gonna try them out tomorrow to see how well they do vs. a regular old San Juan. One thing's for sure, they are much bigger.

Also, I had my Steelhead and Salmon flies in a big Plano box, which I think is more well suited for streamers. Since my nymphs are gonna head into the new C&F, the Steelhead flies are getting a new home in the Orvis Posi-Grip.

No, Rainbow Bright did not throw up in my fly box, but it sure looks like it.

So, I'm curious to see what everyone else has to say. How many flies boxes do you own? How many do you typically carry? What type? I'm open to suggestions because this tying addiction isn't making fly organization any easier.

DIY fly box for mailing flies, and holy cow, we turned one!

2011-11-30T22:35:00.010-05:00

I didn't even realize it until this morning, but a year has passed since I started this blog. Hard to believe. I'm quite surprised at how many of you actually stop by to read and comment on my half-assed flies and sub-par fishing experiences. I started this thing to pretty much chronicle my fishing and tying, and it still surprises me every week that there are more followers, and I see my name pop up on more and more blog rolls. Thanks to everyone for following, stopping by to read, and adding a link on your site. Special shoutout to Mike @ Troutrageous. He was the first blogger to comment, and link to me and the traffic started flowing in as soon as that happened. I'm really surprised I made it this far. It seems like there are more and more new blogs out there every day and I'm honored that all of you stop by to browse and comment. Thanks again.

Speaking of Troutrageous, I got the mail last night and there was an envelope with a return address that simply said "T!". I opened it up and now I have some new stickers for my car and tying bench. Thanks man.

I also got something else interesting sent to me today from one of our readers via text message. He wrote a rap about my "Damn Lucky" post. (seriously, I can't make this shit up.) I'll keep his name out of this save him the embarrassment, but here's the message, exactly as I received it.

It was a cool black night and a clean white moon
Dub the T was on the stream, tryin' to pursue
Some trout for his blog or maybe a big carp
tying on his fly...headlamp in the dark

Just hit the east branch up in Perkasie
and his mission is the find that one big trophy
Seen a pool full of trout aint no need to tweak
all ya dudes know whats up with Dub the T.

So he hooks some fish on streamers and midges...
He casting on the banks and underneath the bridges
He lays down the line and say what's up
Then Lucky jumps in and now he's stuck.

I got this message while at work and I laughed so hard that I literally spit coffee on my desk. He said to sing it to the beat from Regulators by Warren G.

Anyway, here's something actually fishing related. I've been joining a few fly swaps, and mailing out some flies I sold and I came up with a good idea.

Remember all those cassettes from the 90s? You know you still have that Nirvana Cas-single, and House of Pain's first album on cassette. Now you can put them to good use.

1.Get yourself a empty cassette case. I would take out the Debbie Gibson sleeve, unless you're mailing the flies to Owl Jones. He loves Debbie Gibson.

2.Grab a pair of pliers and rip out the little plastic points that were used to go into the cassette holes. This is so they don't press down on the flies that will be on the other side of the cassette.

3.Measure and cut a piece of craft foam (yes the stuff you use for tying, and the same stuff you get at Michaels for .99 a sheet) so it fits where the sleeve used to be. Just coat the back of it with some superglue, and press it into the inside of the case.

4.Fill it up with the flies you were supposed to mail Cofisher for winning that contest two weeks ago. (Co- as an added bonus, I included one of the woven stoneflies tied by the author of the rap song above. I'm curious to see how it works out west...Oops, did I just give everyone a clue on how to figure out who our rapper is?!)

5.Close it and you're ready to mail it. These actually fit in regular letter envelopes.

Damn Lucky

2011-11-28T22:37:00.004-05:00

My son is finally asleep after a long tantrum. It's still 58 degrees outside at 9pm. I know the beast will be out tonight in search of food, quickly sucking mud into his mouth like my son rocking a McDonald's milkshake. He's a solid 10 lbs, and I've had two run-ins with him that left my leader frayed.

I throw on a hoodie and some sandals and head out the door in shorts. I have to keep reminding myself that it's almost December.

The park is closed, but that's never stopped me. There's an old footbridge that crosses the stream, and it's surrounded by street lights for the nearby walking path. The sight fishing is excellent. Even if the football-shaped monster doesn't appear, there's always this.

I stood in the middle of the bridge, stringing up my six weight and tying on the only fly I know I'll need, a heavily weighted size 10 white bugger. They say to throw black in the night, but that rule doesn't apply to a stretch of water with some artificial illumination.

The fish are holding the edges of the shadows tonight, afraid to come out in to the light for some reason. I can see long shapes with tails moving around skittishly; knowing they aren't carp, but not quite sure what species I'll be casting at. I'm going to have to work for them.

I position myself in front of a pricker bush, but high enough on the bank to cast over it. I chose this spot because backcasting is easy and there are no branches waiting to eat my fly. After a dozen long casts and slow strips, a man and his dog appear above me on the bridge. He asks what I'm fishing for and tells me that he's sure I won't catch anything. Before he could finish his sentence, I feel the pull. Keeping my rod high and reeling quickly, the fish came to the bank. He was a small pickerel and I think I was about as suprised by him as he was of me. His teeth sawed through the 3x tippet with ease after about 5 seconds of flopping in the shallows. So much for only needing one fly. He got to escape, and I got to avoid having my skin bleed from the bush in front of me. It's a win/win, besides getting a photo.

The man and his dog walk off. I re-tie and start stripping. I fish for 15 minutes without another hit, running the banks, bouncing the fly off structure, hitting the middle channel. I then hear the footsteps again. The man is coming back with his dog. I think to myself "This guy is good luck, I'm going to get a hit if he stops again." He stops to ask if I caught anything else. Just then, I connect again, this time to a stocked rainbow trout that was about 11 inches. He fought like his life depending on it and spit the hook on his 2nd jump.

The man then yells like a little girl and points about 15-20 yards downstream. He tells me to look. I turn my head and there he his, the beast. He was coming right at me and frantically feeding. I knew I'd get him. It was a perfect setup. I check my knot and cast. Then it happened.
In his amazement over the size of the carp, he stopped paying attention to his dog. It was a young golden retriever who decided to greet me, and then take a bath. I watched in agony as my fly swung right where the carp was.

The man said "Oh he's gone. Something must have scared him." I didn't have the energy to say anything. He then started walking away and said "C'mon Lucky, let's go home", and the dog went running back to his master. Ironic name, huh?

Nice way to end a day of shopping.

2011-11-26T14:33:00.001-05:00

Green Flash Imperial IPA on draft. Ballast Point Big Eye IPA to go. Doesn't get much better than this.

Saturday Morning Midges

2011-11-26T07:59:00.003-05:00

I put together a few different midge patterns last night and this AM. Pretty happy with them. All size 20-22. I really dig the black bead one. I think I'm going to call it a Flying Zebra.

Now I just need to find some water that's not chocolate milk..

Happy Saturday.

The Gobbler

2011-11-24T10:23:00.003-05:00

A little Sculpin tying before feasting. Happy Turkey Day!

Weekend recap, and bugs, man....lots of bugs.

2011-11-24T00:01:00.009-05:00

Ah...Four day weekend is on and it feels damn good. I just wish the stream wasn't so blown out. Oh well. I'm still going to try and fish somewhere this weekend. It feels good to finally get some time for a big blog post.

I'll start off with a recap of the Fly Tying Symposium. We decided to do a blogger carpool so Mike from Troutrageous and Matt from Functioning Fishaholics showed up at my house around 7:30am to ride out to NJ with me. We nerded out on the way there talking about blogger jargon and fishing and the 1+ hour drive felt like 20 minutes.

We got there just after the doors opened so it was nice to be able to make the rounds before the crowds showed up to check out the flies, catch up with some old friends, and meet a few people who I previously only met online.

One of the craziest flies I saw all day was from a guy named Mike Williams. He throws giant duckling flies for Musky! After some googling, turns out he's a fellow blogger with a blog called Big Fly Chucker. Head on over there and follow him. He ties some crazy big streamers as well.

I also got to check out bugs from Gaeron from My Life on the Fly. He had some sweet patterns. I also spent a lot of time watching Aaron Jasper, George Maciag (Watch out for a Featured Fly Tier post on here shortly about him..I'm going to make sure the woven stonefly is included. It's sick!), and Bruce Corwin was showing me how to tie stonefly bodies by hand and a really sweet October Caddis made from Organza.(Bruce, thanks for the fly and material).

I'd like to give a shoutout to the Swedish guys. They have skills! Ulf Hagström absolutely amazed me with his big mayflies tied on Partridge Klinkhammer hooks. They were beautiful. I wish I got a better picture of his bugs. They looked great.

One thing I was disappointed in was the amount of vendors there. There wasn't much competition, which meant not many good deals. No 100 hooks for $10, or cheap grizzly saddles. The cheapest was a grade 2 for $70! I did spend way too much at Kevin Compton's booth. I stocked up on UV Quill Body, Jan Siman dubbing, Hend's Shellback, Dohiku and Patridge hooks,and some Performance Flies wire. If you're looking for really small wire for ribbing, Kevin's stuff is actually more narrow than the X-small UTC ultra-wire. I highly suggest checking it out. Great deal. I also picked up a pack of Sculpin helmets, just because they looked funny.

After the show, I offered to take those guys fishing since they've never fished the Little Lehigh. I figured it should be pretty easy to get them on some fish with some midges and eggs. It actually turned out to be pretty tough. There were a few hits, but I was the only one that pulled in a few. This bow was pretty. I love when they have a lot of spots around their head.

Mike and Matt, I'm sorry guys! I suck at guiding. Maybe next time...

So, on to the bugs. I sat down the last two nights and tied about two dozen micro nymphs. All size 18, all tungsten beads, but in various colored bodies and dubbing. I also knocked out a few more Czech nymphs to test out the Hend's shellback and I love it!(I kept the resolution high on these shots so you can click for detail)

Not looking good

2011-11-23T14:34:00.001-05:00

4 day weekend, and every damn body of water looks like this. So much for fishing this weekend.

And the winner is...

2011-11-21T23:42:00.003-05:00

I said I'd give it a week to announce a winner from the "name that worm pattern" contest. Well, it's been a week and with all pun intended, the early bird got the worm. I'm going to go with Monoworm! That was the first reply, and I think it just fits. The winner is Cofisher, author of Wing Knots and Tangled Lines. Shoot me your address and I'll twist up some bugs to send your way. I'm also happy to say that the worm did kind of work on Saturday. I had a bow take it but he spit the hook when I got him close.

A bigger post will be coming tomorrow, including a tying show and fellow blogger road trip recap, my first shot at pseudo-guiding people on my home water (which resulted in failure), and bugs. Lots and lots and lots of bugs. Stay tuned.

Pink vs. Pink, Fly Tying Symposium, and Fly Giveaway Reminder

2011-11-17T23:06:00.004-05:00

New Bugs

Continuing on the European style fly kick I've been on, the czech nymphs are starting to take up some more space in one of my nymph boxes. I came across a cool Davie McPhail pattern that uses floss instead of dubbing but has a similar feeling to a czech nymph. He uses a razor blade to lightly cut through the bottom, giving the appears of brushed out legs come off the belly of the fly. here it is compared to a fairly basic pink-hot-spotted czech nymph (with too big of a thread head because I'm a bit tipsy). I like to tie my czechs with a few strands of shaggy dub at the head. I think it just gives the fly a tiny bit more movement and I've found that they outfish the ones I tie without it. Sometimes it's the little things...

Which do you think will fish better?

Fly Tying Symposium
Just a reminder, the Fly Tying Symposium is this weekend in Somerset NJ. I'll be heading there early Saturday morning to try and find some hackle before the hairdressers wipe it out! It actually turned into a blogger road trip because I'll be carpooling with Mr. Troutrageous and the Functioning Fishaholic. We might even attempt some fishing after the show if the water levels drop from all the rain we've just had.

If you're going, drop a line here if you want to meet up with us, grab a beer, and get 5 minutes of fame on a blog or two. Also sounds like it will be quite a meetup with the guys that ~~troll~~ frequent the forums over at PA Fly Fish. (Although stay away from that SBecker guy...Every time I fish with him I get skunked. He's cursed!)

Fly Giveway
If you missed the post from a few days ago, I'm going to give away a nice assortment of flies to the person who comes up with the best name for the worm pattern I created. I have a favorite so far, but I'm going to let this run for a week so there's still time to make a suggestion.

That's about all I got. I'll see some of you on Saturday!

first post from....

2011-11-17T11:52:00.001-05:00

My new iPhone 4S. I'm in love with Siri.

Realistic Worm Pattern and a fly giveaway contest

2011-11-15T23:18:00.007-05:00

The idea for this pattern came to me on Sunday. I was fishing for some SUPER SPOOKY stocked rainbows in the creek behind my house. There's about 4 of them left and they dart under a bridge into slack water that's impossible to catch a drift though as soon as they see you.

I crept up and waited the 15 minutes for them to get unspooked and then started drifting eggs and san juans in front of them. I hooked in to a couple on eggs, but didn't get solid hook sets. After that, I was literally bouncing flies off their lips and they weren't taking them. I then tried caddis larva, mayfly nymphs, midges, and even some buggers with no luck.

I was about to pack it in when some guy sets up immediately across from me with a spinning rod and a container of drift worms. First cast and SMACK!, a rainbow takes the worm. He lands the fish (and kudos to him for releasing it) and casts again. Second cast, same thing. He hooks and lands the biggest of the 4 fish, also released.

This made me realize that maybe coming up with a realistic worm wouldnt be such a bad idea. I was at Dave's in Doylestown earlier in the day digging through their clearance bin, and I found a pack of Orvis bright red nymph skin with glitter flakes in it for $1. I bought it thinking I could maybe use it on some steelhead patterns.

Well, something made me try it tonight. I took a 4X streamer hook and bent it, Vladi worm-style. I made a fat clitelum with some .30 lead wire and built the body with some 3/0 monocord. I tied in a strip of the nymph skin and some 5X mono tippet. I made loose wraps with the nymph skin, and then ribbed it with the mono. After whip finishing, I colored it up with a brown Prismacolor marker, and hit the fattest part with some bright orange. Then I slapped on a coat of Hard as Nails and that's it. I think I need to find maybe a lighter colored tan marker instead of the dark brown, but I think this fly is gonna work.

Now I just need a name for it, so here's the deal. Post your name suggestions in the comments and I'll mail out 3 of these patterns (and some bonus surprise flies) to the person who came up with my favorite suggestion. I'll let this run for a week before announcing the winner.

So yeah, back to Sunday. I didn't catch anything, but my god, it was a gorgeous day on the water. I walked away with some nice pictures.

Hot off the vise

2011-11-11T00:13:00.006-05:00

With winter approaching, I've been trying to fill the box with nymphs and midges. I started doing some reading on mayfly nymph(particularly Baetis) imitations that people are using overseas, mostly because tying PTs and HE nymphs bore the hell out of me these days. I found some cool ones from Czech Republic and Poland. It seems like a common trend over there is some sort of shell back, thin thread ribbing, and a coat of epoxy, and also keeping the fly very narrow so it sinks fast in the water column. I was messing around and came up with these. I'm going to tweak them and clean them up a little. Then of course I'll need to see if they work!

Size 16 standard nymph hook
Tail -Coq De Leon or Pheasant rump feathers
Hareline scud back material (clear for the body, brown for the wingcase)
12/0 black thread (ribbing)
A mix of various color Hare dubbing
Legs - I tried Hungarian Partridge and Pheasant feathers
A coating of epoxy, and then a coating of Hard as Nails

I also had good luck on red zebra midges over the weekend so I decided to try the Rojo Midge pattern I found online. The one I found had the red bead but that pearl glass bead did so well on those zebra midges last weekend that I decided to stick with that.

Size 20 curved nymph hook
Red 8/0 Uni-thread
UTC silver x-small ultrawire
peacock herl
glass bead (craft store)
white Antron (wing sprouts)

Also, I had mentioned earlier in the week that I was knocking out some flies for a few customers. Here's a big batch of rubber leg copper johns. I left the legs extra long figuring that the guy could cut them down to whatever size he wants. Below that, a bunch of custom woolly buggers that were ordered. These are all in the mail.

In other news, It's been such a busy week and I realized that I'd be a crappy parent if I didn't post up Michael's Halloween picture. Not sure if I mentioned it before, but my son is absolutely obsessed with cows. Not sure why. It started about a year ago and now my house is full of cow print everything.

He was actually super exciting on our way to drop him off before work this morning because some cows were right up along the road. You should have seen the look on his face. Priceless. He was talking about it all night.

Going bananas

2011-11-10T14:34:00.001-05:00

One of my co-workers just showed me his artwork. Epic!

Czeching it up

2011-11-09T22:37:00.004-05:00

Simple tungsten nymphs. Short leaders. Stupid fish with crazy spotting. Success.

I've got some catching up to do...

2011-11-08T00:26:00.005-05:00

Time has been flying by, and I just realized it's been well over a week since my last blog update. In all honesty, I've been busy as hell at work, painting the nursery for the upcoming addition, and doing a lot of commercial tying for a few people.

I'd love to post up some pictures of the bugs, but unfortunately I lost my camera. Yes, that camera. I really liked it so I do hope it shows up somewhere. I don't think I've ever tied up so many rubber legged copper johns in my whole life!

The camera also has pics of some fish I got in to on Sunday. After the bad storm last week, I haven't been able to get out fishing. I finally decided to take 4 hours on Sunday and hit the Little Lehigh. I was pretty disappointed when I got there. First off, it was packed with people. Also, since they lifted the no wading restrictions you now see yokels standing in the middle of the stream, walking through the best runs to fish, and kicking up the spawning beds for the brown trout. It's really depressing to see. After watching some guy fishing for two big spawning browns without luck and deciding to just walk out to where they are and cast over them, I said "hey man, you're kicking up some spawning beds. Can't you see that?" He replied with "Who cares? These fish can't reproduce here!". I've caught 3 inch fish from this stream so I know that's not true. I decided to be the better person by picking up a big rock, chucking it into the lane he was fishing, waving at him and walking away. Sorry dude. Show some respect.

This stream isn't that wide and I can literally roll cast across the whole thing in the widest stretch with a 7'6 four weight rod. Why are you wearing chest waders?! Anyway, everyone I talked to seemed to be complaining about a tough bite, most managing only one or two fish. I felt that way for the first half hour, but about 6 fly changes later, I found the golden ticket. Red size 18 zebra midges with a white glass bead head. I went on to land 4 nice fish and fight about half a dozen more. The fish weren't huge, but definitely had some deep, dark fall coloring. I think the run off from all the snow caused some colder water temps which darkened them up. If I ever do find my camera, I'll post the pictures.

In other news, there's a couple of events I'm pretty excited about. First off is the upcoming Fly Tying Symposium in Somerset NJ.

The lineup looks great for this and it should be a good day. I'm definitely bringing some cash to stock up on tying supplies. If anyone else is heading there, feel free to drop me a line and let me know if you'd like to meet up and grab a beer.

Also, on 12/17 the guys over at PA Fly Fish are hosting a fly tying jam. Looks like I'm going to be tying there, and actually doing a demo. I'm looking forward to it. It's also close to the Pohopoco, so I can hopefully sneak in some good fishing before and after it!

In closing, I'd just like to say that Daylight Savings Time officially sucks. It really smacked me in the face tonight when I left work at 5:30pm and it was pitch black when I walked out the door. I think the worst part of it is those little quick fishing trips you can sneak in on the way home from work while stuck in traffic can no longer happen. Spring can't get here fast enough already!

Cabin fever

2011-10-29T19:10:00.001-04:00

7 inches and counting. I just wanna fish. This sucks. At least I had fun with the fam. We headed out early before the weather got bad and took Michael to see Puss in Boots at the movies. He passed out 25 minutes in to it, leaving my wife and I to sit through 1.5 hours of a crappy animated movie.

We also got outside and made a giant snowman. I'm currently keeping my fingers crossed that we don't lose power.

This cant be right!

2011-10-28T13:44:00.002-04:00

2-4inches tomorrow?! What the...

Some new meaty monsters

2011-10-25T23:05:00.005-04:00

I got to hit a trout stream for a little over an hour on Sunday and I was having a tough time. I did pick up one small rainbow on an egg, but besides that the fish were hugging bottom and bouncing nymphs off their noses wasn't having any success.

One my way back to the car out of frustration, I tied on the giant poorly tied Sex Dungeon I tried to make like a year ago. I had my 4 weight on me so it took me like 5 sloppy roll casts to get the damn fly out more than 20 yards but when I did, a MONSTER brown came after it. He struck the hell out of it and I somehow didn't get a hook set. I had to get home or I would have kept working him, but it showed me that maybe I should be tossing some bigger bugs.

First, I decided to revisit the Sex Dungeon and knock some of them out. Yes, that's a purple one. I actually own purple deer hair. I found it in a bargain bin at a fly shop for a quarter.
Although I still suck at deer hair heads, the rest of the flies turned out gorgeous. Lots of rubber legs and schlappen.

Next up, the Conga. This is a Craven pattern that I read about in the most recent issue of Fly Fisherman magazine. It's a pretty sweet sculpin imitation that has a faux fur (polar fiber) head. Save yourself some money and buy a huge pelt of this stuff at Michaels for $4 instead of paying double that for a smaller patch of it in the fly shops. The only downside is they only sell it in brown, black, and white. I tried dying some of the white with RIT dye but it didn't turn out so well. If anyone has any suggestions on a dye that will hold, let me know.

Last up, I'm not really sure what this is. I was looking at some other Galloup patterns and just went freestyle. Marabou tail, Zonker body over some Siman Peacock Bronze dubbing, red hare hair for the throat, and believe it or not, my first time ever using wool on a fly for the head. I think it looks pretty cool, but it might fish like garbage.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Here's the little bow from my Sunday trip. Far cry from the fish I was catching a week ago, huh?

Now its just getting rediculous

2011-10-22T11:45:00.002-04:00

Seriously Mattel, seriously?

Chasing the toothy critters

2011-10-19T00:39:00.003-04:00

I've decided to hunt for pickerel and pike this weekend. I'd also say Musky, but I don't have a few spare years to catch one.

The lake I fish for pickerel contains a ton of small bass that are a bright emerald green color, so that's where I started. I call this one the Wes Mantooth.

Size 4 3XL streamer hook

Marabou - olive (tail and collar)
Orvis crystal dumbbell eyes
Sili-Legs - chartreuse
Crystal Flash (tail)
Grizzle neck hackle (sides)
Hare Ice Dub - olive green (body)
Schlappen - olive (palmered over body)
Cut up zonker fur wrapped in a dubbing loop (head)

Also, I checked out Whitakers.com today and noticed that they uploaded one of my king salmon photos that I submitted the other day. Pretty cool.

By the way, don't get Wes started on his mom, or he'll kick your ass.

NY Trip Recap, Getting Revenge, and My first Salmon

2011-10-15T22:46:00.006-04:00

Jack and I just returned from a long 3.5 days on the Salmon River in New York. Unlike the last 3 times I've gone up there, we finally had some luck. I picked up 4 kings (admittedly - one was foul hooked right at sundown and we didn't realize it until he was in the net), and interestingly enough, a monster chub, and a sucker who both loved a red Estaz egg. Jack unfortunately walked away with two small trout on a woolly bugger, but he did hook in to quite a few.

I'm not going to post a giant play by play of the trip, but here's a quick top 5 list of how it went down and some observations.

1. The Salmon - It's truly amazing to watch these things jump. The Kings kind of porpoise, doing a slight raise of their back fin out of the water, while the Cohos go crazy and shoot straight out of the water, sometimes up to 4 feet in the air. Think of someone throwing the biggest log they can pick up into the water, every 20 seconds, all day long. That's what it looks and sounds like. Unfortunately, a lot of the fish we saw and hooked up with were at the end of their journey and not looking too great. I don't get how people want to eat these things with how they are looking. You also spend the day ankle deep in rotting salmon carcass. My car smells so awful right now.

2.Even though they are close to dying off, King Salmon are hands down the strongest fish I've ever fought on a fly rod. I battled one as the sun was setting on Thursday night for over 20 minutes until he finally did a big run and broke me off. My arm was killing me.

3. Two-Handed Rod - I am 100% absolutely in love with my new switch rod. It is so much more efficient than a single handed rod. You can shoot 75 yards with ease. I'd highly suggest it to anyone who fishes big water. Much easier on the arms and shoulders as well after 12 straight hours of fishing without a break.

4. The Ugly Stick Posse - People are scumbags. Seriously. I've never seen so much blatant disregard for the law in my whole life. These guys get Ugly Sticks with bass spinning reels, 50 lb test, big hooks, and just put a tiny cube from a sponge on the hook to call it a fly. They add like 5 oz of weight, and just zip their hook through the water until they hook a fish in the fin, and then reel like hell. It's a shame that law enforcement doesn't crack down on it. They keep every damn fish they snag too.

5. Weird stuff - On Thursday, I think I was the most unlucky person on the face of the Earth. I was walking up the hill from staircase hole to meet up with John, and two guys walked by me and said hi. One had a cigar lit. When he ashed his cigar, the wind literally blew a hot ember right towards me, up under my glasses, and right into my eyeball! What the hell are the odds of that? It finally feels better today but I did have a littled blurred vision. Creepy.

An hour later, came within 12 inches of getting hit head on by a drunk driver flying through a stop sign to take a piss at a Porta-a-potty. Serious bad luck.

Well, that's about it. Here's some not-so-great pics of the trip. No amazing artsy farty shots though, I was too busy fishing. Enjoy. I know I did.

Rotted Salmon

Me getting my ass kicked by a Salmon at the Staircase

John Ryan choosing a fly before the evening bite at Staircase

The snagging crew was already hard at work at 7am in the Unemployment hole

My biggest fish of the trip on a size 4 purple Estaz egg. He was pretty spawned out.

Jack working a run in the Schoolhouse pool on Wednesday night

John Ryan hooked up into this beautiful colored up Coho in the lower fly stretch right before we headed back to PA.

Drift boats getting ready to launch at first light

Another king

Thanks again to the Lutz family over at Little Salmon Tackle for the accommodations. If you ever need lake fishing gear, this is the place to go!

Combat fishing

2011-10-13T19:23:00.001-04:00

No thank you. Snaggers everywhere.

The desk calendar at work

2011-10-11T09:42:00.001-04:00

I'm getting psyched.

It's almost time...

2011-10-10T23:11:00.003-04:00

Sorry I haven't been posting much. I'm leaving on Wed AM for the Salmon River in NY to chase after Steelhead, Browns, and what's left of the salmon. I've been spending my nights intensively trying to fill the fly boxes. I've been knocking out bunnies, buggers, leeches, stoneflies, and eggs like a madman.

I'm actually really excited because I just picked up an 8 weight 11'6 LSI switch rod with a Lamson Reel.

With the Rio switch line, it came out to $420 after all the discounts. Ouch. I'm pretty psyched to try it out for the first time although I'm guessing I'll spend the first few days just getting the hang of a two-handed cast.

I'll try to get a blog post in tomorrow night before I go showing some of the new bugs, and maybe some pics from our weekend trout hunt, but for now, here's an amazing video I picked up off the Drake's website.

So, I have to edit my "About Me" section

2011-10-04T23:01:00.006-04:00

I turned 36 today. 35 is ancient history. I don't really get depressed about it like some people. But I guess it's officially upper 30s now so that's kinda creepy. Here's the cake that Michael picked out for me. I doesn't really make much sense because I want nothing to do with Basketball or Football, but he got it for me so I loved it.

Anyway, here's a recap of my day that I took off from work:

1.I took my 2 year old son to get a flu shot. He didn't even flinch. On the way out he said "Dad, why did that lady give me a needle? It didn't hurt." He took it like a champion. I then proceeded to get him ice cream at McDonalds at 10:30am because that's the kind of dad I am. (don't judge, it's my birthday)

2.I got a ton of cash and gift cards so I went to Cabelas to get a new switch rod. They didn't have it in stock and are ordering it. I have a 12 foot 8 weight coming my way on Friday. Watch out Salmon River. I'm going to make you my bitch.

3.I made a quick 25 minute stop at the Little Lehigh on my way home. I bagged one 15 inch bow and I didn't feel like taking a picture of it. The rest of the fish were assholes and wouldn't take anything. I did see some olives though, which was encouraging.

4.I headed back home to assist with stocking the local creek behind my house. They barely put any fish in, they skipped half of the holes that would be best suited for trout, and they were almost all 8-10 inch rainbows. There goes my local winter fishery. I must say, it pissed me off because that stream has pretty much been DEVOID of other fisherman all summer, and now I see idiots with snelled hooks and powerbait littering up the place. I did pick up a few mutants on a black bugger one my way home at a spot that was stocked two hours previously, but again, I didn't feel like taking pictures.

5.THIS GUY IS MY HERO TODAY.

6.My iPhone died not once, but TWICE, from the 80+ Facebook notifcations telling me that people posted "Happy Birthday" on my wall. I appreciated it, but I think that some people ONLY use Facebook to say Happy Bday to others. Speaking of iPhone, well played Apple. You lost me as a customer. I held off on getting a new phone for 6 months in hopes of a new amazing phone and you release a 4S?!?! I'm going Android!

Anyway, it's been a long day, I have quite a few beers in me, and I'm off to bed. Night.

Dreary day

2011-10-02T13:18:00.001-04:00

Is the rain ever gonna stop? Muddy water, no bugs, no rises. This is getting old.

A change of pace

2011-10-02T08:31:00.004-04:00

We have a spot at the big local lake that full of giant channel catfish, some over 3 feet long. The only way to catch these things (at least that we've found) is to go out there on a cold Autumn night with heavy spinning rods, steel leaders, big circle hooks, and a gob of chicken liver the size of a golf ball. They fight like hell and are a blast to try and land, because they are constantly trying to tangle you up in structure (that's where the steel leader comes into play).

We headed out on Thursday around 8pm hoping for some constant action. It was actually very slow, and we spent the time BSing and polishing off a few six packs. The only hit of the night came when this 2 footer grabbed my line and started running like hell. He put up a good, albeit short, fight.

Also, I finally set up a Facebook page, so feel free to stop by and like us.

I hope some Salmon are starting to rot....

2011-09-28T23:32:00.005-04:00

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.

My new favorite way to tie a spinner: Wally Wing Style!!!

2011-09-27T23:10:00.007-04:00

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.

Size 16 dry fly hook
Wood Duck feather (wings)
microfibbets (tail)
stripped brown hackle feather (body)
Superfine dubbing (thorax)

Pheasant Tail Jig Flies - Adding hot spots

2011-09-26T23:44:00.003-04:00

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.

Warm water hike

2011-09-26T09:02:00.002-04:00

Yep, this one is getting framed

2011-09-25T13:50:00.001-04:00

All I did was cast out the 4 weight and hand him the rod. He did the rest.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Trying to get around the blowout

2011-09-24T23:55:00.007-04:00

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.

Breakfast

2011-09-24T10:38:00.001-04:00

When your stream is blown out, it's the only way to go.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Centerpin anyone?

2011-09-22T23:45:00.004-04:00

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.

There's a first time for everything (and damn...it took a while)

2011-09-20T23:03:00.006-04:00

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.

A great weekend to kick off Autumn

2011-09-18T22:28:00.011-04:00

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.

DubTV: Micro Egg Video Tutorial

2011-09-17T13:12:00.002-04:00

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..)

Brook trout are beautiful and all, but...

2011-09-13T23:39:00.005-04:00

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.

Farewell summer.

Obiwan's jedi spey casting skills

2011-09-12T22:23:00.010-04:00

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.

As soon as I get home

2011-09-09T13:39:00.001-04:00

This is happening.

Some sweet browns on midges

2011-09-08T21:35:00.004-04:00

Water Under The Midge from Findependent Film on Vimeo.

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.

Here comes the spawn

2011-09-07T23:17:00.003-04:00

Well, it's almost spawning season again. The browns (and some freaky rainbows in the state of PA) are getting full of eggs and getting ready to do the deed. I don't condone chasing fish on spawning beds at all. I think you should leave them alone. That being said, as soon as the fish are spawned out, you have two months of amazing fishing with egg patterns.

I've shared my success on egg patterns on here quite a few times and I think the trick to success is smaller eggs. Way too often I see someone throwing a size 8 or 10 egg at the smaller trout in the streams around here, with limited success. I really think those are more suited for Steelhead and monster lake run trout. Drop that egg down to an 18 or 20 and you have a better representation of the actual food the fish are feeding on, and you'll have constant action.

I'm currently knocking out an order of eggs for a fly shop, and for two personal orders from people I know. If anyone is interested in purchasing some, please drop me a line via email or in the comments section with your contact information. Prices are $15 per dozen shipped, or two dozen for $25. That's much cheaper than you'll find in a fly shop! All are tied on either Orvis or Tiemco hooks, using Mcfly Foam.

Sizes 18-20
Colors:
White
Pink
Cherise (dark pink/muave)
Oregon Cheese
Chartreuse
Cream
Peach
White
Red
Baby Blue

You can mix and match colors/sizes.

In other news, I've been wanting to get the picture of Michael's first trout blown up to hang in my tying room. I was actually looking at some of the places that turn your picture into a canvas, and as luck would have it, I was approached by Brendan at EasyCanvasPrints.com with a great offer for getting a canvas done. I ordered it yesterday and I was pretty amazed at how easy it was to set up the whole thing. I uploaded the pic and was done and checked out in two minutes. I chose an 8x10. The true test will be the fact that the pic I uploaded was taken on the iphone. I'll post the final product once it arrives, but here's the original photo. My god I had fun that day :)

Random Web Goodness

2011-09-04T20:37:00.005-04:00

I really wanted to get out and fish today, but I wound up driving all the way from the Jersey shore to South Philly last night to meet up with some old friends. Long story short, I wound up driving back to the shore at 7am this morning with a pounding headache and not a wink of sleep. I did get in a few hours in a nap, but I'm still too wiped out to chase some small fish.

Since fishing was out of the question, I was pretty much a vegetable in front of the laptop, stealing some neighbor's unprotected WIFI. I spent a good amount of time browsing various fishing blogs, posts, sites, etc. Here's the best of the best from what I've read today.

First up is the John Gierach web invasion. From what I've heard, this guy has historically been pretty elusive as far as interviews and video footage goes, but all of a sudden there's a ton of stuff out there on him. If you didn't catch Tom Chandler's interview with Gierach the other day on Trout Underground, you need to get over there. I then came across a post on Orvis News mentioning Tom's post, but they also had a cool short on Gierach (minus the awful audio editing).

I also stumbled upon Pat Cohen's blog titled "Superfly". I watched this guy at Somerset earlier this year tying these amazing spun hair bluegill patterns. He's got a ton of pattern photos on his site, and it's definitely worth a read.

Image courtesy of gotbronze.blogspot.com

Up next, we have Up The Poudre. Sanders has been sending me traffic and commenting on my posts, and I feel bad about not returning the favor (I really gotta update that blog roll). I finally took the time to really read his blog today, and it's great. The writing is phenomenal, and every post tells a story. Plus, his logo kicks ass.

Image Courtesy of upthepoudre.com

I'd post more, but I'm about to pass out. Time to finish the beer and hit the sack. Tomorrow holds the challenge of driving home in labor day traffic, unpacking, and getting the lawn mowed. Plus, I have a feeling there's a few smallies that need some sore lips now that the water flows are back to normal. Happy Labor Day.

Blogging from the shore post #4 always carry a wading staff edition

2011-09-03T13:53:00.001-04:00

I decided to hike out to the bay over the sod banks at high tide because I saw fish blitzing. I was totally fine for the first 30 yards and then I took a step and didn't feel ground under me. Yep. I went chest deep. Shoutout to Orvis for making their slingbag pockets water resistant or I wouldn't have had an iPhone to post this from. I'm going to carry a wading stick from now on.

It was worth it though. I had constant action on small stripers and blues for about 45 min on white buggers and small gurglers.

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Cutthroat with two mouths!

2011-09-03T12:12:00.001-04:00

Via TDN.com

Pretty crazy.

Blogging from the shore part 2

2011-09-02T23:48:00.002-04:00

It's just about midnight. I'm standing on a dock on the bay shooting an 8 weight with a minnow pattern, constantly getting my line chewed off by small snapper bluefish. Drunk guy and his wife walk out on the dock. He says to his wife "oh yeah, fly fishing! I used to do that all the time before we were married." He then walks up to me and says "now the whole point of this is to just use a hook and snag the fish when you throw out your line. I like bait fishing, it's more sporting." I just said "yep, I guess so.". I then said "what kind of fly rod did you used to use?". He said "oh, um.... I had a Berkley size 13 stiff. Best rod ever made. Look it up. "

Party on, drunk guy.

It all started with a breakfast beer

2011-09-02T13:46:00.001-04:00

The beer

The bait

The results

I stopped counting at 15 (Thanks Irene!)

2011-09-01T23:16:00.001-04:00

Had three hours to fish late this afternoon. Flows were up from hurricane runoff, water was only slightly discolored, and fish were ACTIVE. One of the best days I had this year, and there weren't even any hatches coming off. I caught bows, browns, and brookies. Looped San Juan worm in pink was the big winner on the brookies, while the bows and browns smashed eggs, nymphs, and streamers.

I stopped counting at 15 fish around the two hour mark, but I know I left with over 20 to hand, all released. I'd say about 60% were stocked, but I'm not complaining. :)

I want to say I wish all days on the water were like this, but on second thought, I think I would miss the challenge of tough fish.

Heres some shots of beauties from all three species.

FRESH MEAT.

2011-08-31T23:32:00.002-04:00

Nuff Said.

This is what happens

2011-08-31T07:39:00.001-04:00

When you have three cats and forget to clean up your hackle after knocking out some buggers the night before.

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Tricos, Trout, and Tornado Warnings

2011-08-29T22:45:00.007-04:00

Well, we've had an earthquake and a hurricane and I'm still standing. Sorry for the lack of updates, but it's been a pretty long week.

With the imminent danger of the hurricane, I decided to sneak in some fishing on Saturday morning. I got to the stream at 8am and there was barely any action. I found a few rising trout, but the bugs on the water and the in the air were extremely scarce. I also noticed that now that it's later in the season, the trout are more sketchy about trico patterns. The same flouro-fiber pattern that was killing them a few weeks back was no longer working. They'd constantly rise and refuse. After about 45 minutes of skunkville, I switched it up from a female with flouro wings to a male with white antron and sparkle organza wings. That did the trick. I brought two trout to hand in a matter of minutes. One was a beautiful little wild brown that put up a heck of a fight. The other was a slab stocked bow which pretty much gave up fighting as soon as he was hooked.

As soon as the second fish was landed, the rises just stopped. I think the trout got the memo about the incoming storm and got lockjaw. Or it could have just been the wind that was picking up. I tried for another half hour and then packed it in. I wanted to get home before mother nature started trying to destroy us all. I hadn't caught a trout in a few weeks so it felt good to go out and hit a few on some dry flies. I do feel bad for those trout. When I left the stream, it was running around 85 CFS, just slightly high. It crested at 8000 yesterday.

By the time I got home the weather started to get worse. Winds picked up. I spent the day like everyone else; glued to the TV and switching back and forth between the Weather Channel and the local news. By 8pm, the rain was coming down and the trees were bent sideways. I knew it would be a long night.

My wife and son went to bed around 11 and then the tornado warnings started. We had 3 or 4 of them from 11 until about 1:30 in the morning. I kept hanging by the windows and door, listening for a freight train approaching, ready to pull my family out of bed. Luckily, it didn't happen. It was definitely scary though. I dozed off around 2 and woke up at 4 to check the basement for flooding. Bone dry! Go sump pump. Luckily, we were one of the few I know that didn't lose power once for the entire storm. I couldnt sleep so I wound up just sitting there again, watching the news until they woke up around 7am.

Once 8am rolled around, the rain had tapered off to a drizzle, and the winds were only around 20mph. We had cabin fever so we decided to drive up the street to a diner for breakfast and to check out some of the damage. I noticed the creek behind our house had swelled up out of the woods and into the corn fields behind our neighbor's farm. After breakfast, I dropped off the wife and my son and drove to a few spots on the creek to get some video and pics. Here's some first hand images of the Irene carnage. Keep in mind that the normal size of this creek is 18-20 feet wide at the most in the areas where I took pictures.

I drove over it today and I was pretty amazed at how much the water receded. It might actually be fishable tomorrow. Now whether or not there's any fish left, who knows.

The skies cleared more and more throughout the day, and by 6pm the strong winds were almost gone and it actually turned sunny. Irene did say goodbye with one hell of a sunset.

Barely any fish, but still a nice weekend

2011-08-21T20:46:00.010-04:00

I spent Friday afternoon alternating between weather.com and the USGS online water gauge for the Little Lehigh. There was a 40% chance of Thunderstorms/Flash Flooding, and of course, it happened. The stream was running around 68 all day, and then between 7 and 9pm it jumped up to 130. The last time I tried for tricos during high waters was a pointless trip, so I wasn't going to make the same mistake twice.

I decided that I was going to hit up a tailwater in the Poconos that's only about 20 minutes north of the Little Lehigh that I knew wouldn't be washed out. Luckily, Becker, one of the guys over on the PAFF forum that I met once on the LL lives right near the tailwater and offered to help put me on some fish. I wasn't going to say no to some top secret fishing holes!

Well, he did show me some nice water. We fish a deep pool with some braided water and a nice smooth tailout. I came across a giant swarm of tricos while I was waiting to meet up with him around 7am so I was hoping it would be a good day. When we got there, we saw all kinds of mayflies, even some blue quills, which I've never actually seen up close before. We fished for about 4 hours to some sporadic risers. Unfortunately, I got the skunk. I had quite a few takes, and had a couple on for a few seconds, but it just wasn't my morning. Becker brought in two, including a nice wild brown. All I've ever caught on that stream were 8 inch rainbows, so I was surprised at the bulk on this fish. My apologies in advance for the picture quality. I forgot my camera in the car and only had the i-phone with me.

Although I didn't land any fish, it was still a beautiful day on the water. I'll definitely be back to that stretch again. We also hiked downstream about half a mile and found some really nice holes that I can't wait to go back and hit again. I might try for next weekend.

Since I was out for a good part of the day yesterday, I decided to get some father and son time in this morning. I took Michael on his first trip to Cabelas. He had a blast. He got his first encounter with the toothy monster in the aquarium and couldn't stop looking at him.

We walked around for a while, and I picked up like $40 worth of tying material, but unfortunately, no grizzly hackle. I did manage to find some really nice dun colored elk hair. Expect some BWO comparaduns shortly! He had a good time and told me he wants to go back again to see the elephant :)

Speaking of grizzly hackle, if you want to know what to get me for Christmas, you can start with this:

This evening, I spent two hours organizing all my tying stuff. It looked like a flock of birds exploded at my desk. It was a total mess. I now have everything nice and organized. This will probably only last a week, but for now, I'll enjoy it.

Maybe I should be tying some cicadas

2011-08-19T16:51:00.001-04:00

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No hackle needed

2011-08-18T23:54:00.004-04:00

As we all know, hackle has been hard as hell to come by. I've been getting around it by tying very basic comparadun and spinner patterns. here's some basic hair comparaduns that have me covered for sulphurs, light cahills, and whatever the hell that bigger light colored mayfly is that I keep seeing coming off around 8:45pm that I have yet to identify. I call this one MFX (Mayfly X). I've pulled fish with it this month so I know for sure that it works.

Size 14-18 dry fly hook
Cream microfibbets
Spectrablend dubbing - pale yellow
Comparadun Elk Hair - bleached cream

I also whipped up some rusty spinners, but I have yet to fish these. I kept them very simple with a thread body. Dubbing the body seemed to make it look too bulky and natural spent mayflies always look thinner to me so I did without it. These can be tied in about 45 seconds once you get the hang of x-wrapping the wings.

Size 14-18 dry fly hook
Uni-thread 8/0 (rust)
Dun Microfibbets
White Antron Wings

The hunt for Chrome is getting closer...

2011-08-17T23:40:00.004-04:00

It's mid-august and I already have visions of fresh chrome steelhead on the end of my 8 weight. I saw a post on the PAFF forum asking for volunteers on a steelhead fly swap so I jumped in. Here's a sneak peak at the pattern I'm tying. This one is called simply "root beer". I learned it last fall on the Salmon River. The fish were taking natural nymphs patterns, and caddis. The brown nymph color combined with the caddis larva shape give you the best of both worlds, with just enough flash on the collar and glass bead to get their attention. Fish it in faster water where the fish don't have a chance to take a second look.

Size 8 Mustad 2x strong caddis hook
Lagartun French Mini-Flatbraid in olive brown (abdomen)
Petite Estaz in brown (collar)
Killer Caddis glass bead in pearl brown

I've also bee working on big stoneflies for Salmon, Steelhead and Browns. Here's one that I'm not quite happy with yet, but I like how it's starting. I'm calling it the Grandaddy stone because of all the grey hairs. Going to make a few tweaks to it. I'm digging the tiny bit of flash in the dubbing.

Saber Stonefly Nymph hook size 8
Black Goose Biots
Uni-stretch body material in black
Swiss Straw in black (wingcase)
Dubbing - Black Hare's ear plus mixed with some cut up Sparkle Organza

And I'm that note, I'm going to catch some sleep. I didn't get around to posting any more about the beach trip over the weekend because the fishing was awful. We did however find out that we're having another boy! Michael is excited to have a little brother. Still working on names though. If it was a girl, it would have been Brook (you can guess why!) but she shot down the names Grayling, Char, and Smallmouth so far. Any other suggestions?

It's a start...

2011-08-12T11:18:00.001-04:00

More to come(hopefully....).

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