New goodies in the mail = new bugs

On Monday, I ordered over $50 worth of stuff from Performance Flies and I could not believe it was already here when I got home today. I picked up some dohiku nymph and jig hooks, some more UV quill body for Nick and myself, some glo-brite floss, and some Jan Siman dubbing in peacock bronze and UV bronze.


The stuff can get a little pricey because it's all imported from Europe, but it's fun to try some new material and I love using all of it. The dubbing really lives up to all the great stuff I've heard about it. I didn't get home until rather late tonight, but I had some time to knock out 3 bugs.

Dohiku barbless 1X nymph hook, size 14
Montana lucent tungsten bead, blue 7/64"
Glo Brite bright green floss (body)
Coq De Leon feathers (tail)
UV body quill- pearl (rib #1)
UTC ultra wire xsmall, gold (rib #2)
Jan Siman UV bronze dubbing

Crazy blog love

I've been reading a ton of blogs from other people, and I thought I'd share some recent posts/blogs that pretty much rock.

1.There's a fly tying contest over on TreartonFly, the blog created by one of our readers, Gaeron. Go participate and show his blog some love. He ties some really nice flies.

2.Normand came up with a great link to make your own barred rubber legs over on Fly Tying New and Old. I swear, I learn something every time I read his site.

3.Fish On, Fish Off, a website by our newest google follower (welcome!), has some great fishing stories and even better seafood recipes. (I do love my shellfish)

4.Bigerrfish has a great day of fishing. (I just love this guy's posts about his fish. They are always a story)

5.Owl Jones has a podcast now. The first 30 seconds had me in tears. "This is a podcast, I'm supposed to cast some pods". This is the only site where you can get info on fly fishing, and pics of child beauty pageants and jarred pigs feet in one location.

In other news, I attended my first fly tying class tonight. It is being taught at an LL Bean in Center Valley PA by George Maciag. It's mostly geared towards people who never tied a fly before and the only pattern we tied tonight was a San Juan worm, but I still learned something. His explanation on aught vs. denier thread was great. The course is 29 weeks and the patterns will get more advanced each week. I had a great time and I look forward to next week. I'm also very curious to see how fast the people who never tied a fly before start to progress. Once the patterns get more advanced, I'll be sure to post some here.

Well, I'd love to maybe post some patterns, but a new Halo Reach map pack came out, and I have some 9% belgian beer, so the vise is getting ignored tonight. Peace out.

A pattern I almost forgot about

I was talking to a co-worker about stocking up on my dry flies today and I realized that I needed some caddis. All the dry caddis I've had over the past year were ones that were given to me at Xmas, so I never really had to make any of them. I think I might have tried it once or twice with limited success. I do hate working with deer hair, which is probably one of the reasons I've avoided it. It was when I sat down at the vise tonight that I remembered some of my fishing trips to the local stream last year. I remember throwing size 16 caddis dries and getting hits from trout, smallies, largemouth, rock bass, bluegills, and even crappie. I remember thinking to myself that this would be an awesome pattern if it had rubber legs. I decided to drink a bunch of beer and give it a go. I had some Montana centipede legs I bought for carp flies that seemed to work pretty well. These are sloppy flies because of the beer I've been downing for the past few hours, but I'm sure they'll do just fine in the stream behind my house.

Rubbered legged drunken caddis
size 16 2xl dry fly hook
brown hackle
harelin hare's ear plus gold dubbing
tan deer hair
orange rubber legs - medium



While I was on the rubber leg kick, I decided to whip out some of the hi-vis foam ant bodies I picked up for 50 cents when the LL fly shop was going out of business. I call this one "The Bant" (or Bass Ant..because there's sure as hell no ants around here this big that would actually fool a trout)
size 16 2xl dry fly hook
hi-vis foam ant body
orange rubber legs - medium




I tied these flies with various lengths for the rubber legs to see what works best. Once it warms up and the stream opens for fishing, I'll let you know how I did.




Before I go, I'd like to give a shout out to Sly Fox 113 IPA. I love this stuff. Good night.

Father and son tying session

So, my wife went to the gym this morning and I had some quality time with the little guy. I wanted to have his first fly tied before his 2nd birthday, which is in two weeks so we decided to give it a go. The only things I did with this fly were putting on the bead that he chose, and whip finishing. He picked out the materials, held the saddle feather in one handle and with my help, actually wrapped it on the hook with the bobbin. The cotton chenille was all him. I was extremely proud of him. He started clapping after he finished it. I asked him what it was called and he said "green cow games mommy".

So, here it is..the Green Cow Games Mommy streamer.


But daddy also got some time in on the vise this weekend. I'm too lazy right now to post up any detailed shots/recipes, but I knocked out some orange and blue copper johns, more euro-style tungsten nymphs, a new baetis nymph to replace a pheasant tail (which I'm really digging so far), and the early stone pattern I read about on "This River is Wild". I did switch that stone up a bit though. After reading Charlie Craven's article in this month's Fly Fisherman on CDC for nymphs, I swapped out the starling for black palmered CDC (which is a pain in the butt to wrap properly!) If anyone wants detailed shots of these, or recipes, let me know and I'll post them.





Oh, and by the way, I tried to fish today. I hit the Little Lehigh and didn't even last an hour. The water was dark green, about 3 feet higher than usual, and had some RIPPING current. I had a few chases on a slumpbuster, but that's about it. Unfortunately, it was a skunked weekend.

Volunteering to stock

Before I get started with this post, I just want to say that I am 100% against stocking any streams that contain wild fish. What you're about to read about is a stocking of a stream that is just short of boiling hot once it gets into July, and most of the fish have long been dinner by that point, and have allowed hundreds of kids the chance to catch their first trout.

That being said, I decided to volunteer today and help stock the stream that runs behind my house. There's about a 3 mile stretch of it that is stocked. There were thousands of fish, ranging anywhere from 7 inch rainbows, to 20 inch palaminos, to 9-10 lb brown trout. Some of them were CHUNKS!

I've never helped do this before so it found it quite interesting. We met at a parking lot in Quakertown. There was a big stocking truck with a really cheesy logo on the back of it, and a game warden. I love how the picture shows tons of brookies being stocked, yet there wasn't one brookie in any buckets I saw today.


There were about 3 or 4 other cars there waiting to help stock as well. It was mostly older guys with their grandsons, and a few teenage guys. We followed the truck to the stream and by the time we got there, the trail of cars had tripled. By the third stocking spot, it was pretty much a parade of people lining up to get a bucket of fish and dump them in the water.

The good thing was that I only saw one fish die the whole afternoon. The bad news was that it was a 5 lb palamino. I feel bad for those things. They are sitting ducks. Even in the murky water, they could be spotted 30 yards away.


Besides seeing 10 lb fish being dumped into a stream literally 200 yards from my back door, the other awesome thing I saw was how fast these fish adapt to their environment. At the last stop I went to, they were dumping in a ton of huge fish into this really deep slow run. While I was handing buckets down to people, I had two little black stoneflies land on my hand. Sure enough, two minutes after the fish were dumped in, they started rising. Seeing monster fish going apeshit on the surface after tiny stoneflies made me want to grab my 4 weight from the back of my car so badly, but I have to wait until 4/2.


I have so many more things to post right now. I have a bunch of new bugs to show off, my son tied his first fly today, and I tested out making a UV mono sighter for euronymphing. But, it's 2am, and with daylight savings time, that means 3am so I gotta get some sleep. Here's a few more shots of today's stocking.

I'm an uncle, again!

Sasha and Nick (my sis and bro-in-law) gave birth to Sebastian Porter Lees last night around 7:30pm. Mom and baby are doing great. He came out a whopping 8 lbs 5 oz. and 22 inches long. I got up there about an hour after he was born last night and got to hold him. He's a chunky little guy with a full head of hair. Congrats to both of you on your new bundle of joy.

Nick and I are already planning a fishing trip to Montana or Labrador once all the boys turn 10. I can't wait. How cool is it to have "Sea Bass" as a nickname?


Some more random thoughts....

1.It's going to rain today. Like 2-3 inches of rain. There goes fishing this weekend.

2.We hit 6000 page views since Thanksgiving yesterday. Pretty insane. I know it's small comparing to some of the blog authors that read this, but it's a start.

3.Psycho Prince continues to be the search term that its bringing in the most traffic, also now followed by UV Quill Body. I guess everyone wants that stuff. If you're here because you're searching for it, you can buy it at Performanceflies.com.

4.Someone got here by searching for "indian thorax sex videos". I don't know what the hell that means, but it scares me to think about what you were actually looking for.

5.Speaking of intercourse, Loren Williams kills it on this Vladi worm tutorial using a pink condom for body material!

6.To drum up some more traffic to the site, I'm going to holding a custom fly giveaway contest very soon. Yes, I said custom. I will tie the patterns I'm giving away to your color/size specifications if you win. It doesnt get much better than that. But, in order to win, you need to be a google follower so I suggest looking to the right and following us -------->
More info soon.

7..I thought I was fast at tying eggs, but Craven is a mad man.

But...will it catch fish?

I sat down at the vise tonight and realized that it's been nagging me that I can't find a good use for this Shaggy Dub that I bought a few months back. I've been tying a lot of caddis pupa and a lot of euro nymphs, so I decided to combine them along with the shaggy stuff.

Here's the outcome. This will have a TON of movement in the water, and still somewhat resemble a natural food source. I kept the rubber legs longer so I can trim if needed.

I think I might wind up tweaking it to make the body a little thicker, but the question remains...will it catch fish? Good news is that I just got permission from the wife to hit the Salmon River in NY the second weekend of April. While all the meat chuckers will be chasing stockies in my backyard, I'll be battling chrome. I can't wait.

To get the rubber legs to hold like that, I applied the same technique I used in my first tutorial video on tying rubber legs. It's pretty much the same thing, just smaller material.

Size 10 scud hook
Tungsten Nymph Head bead
body - chartreuse floss
ribbing 1 - UV quill body (graphite)
ribbing 2 - UTC ultrawire XS, chartreuse
thorax - Senyo Shaggy Dub, Orvis brown squirrel dubbing with a touch of rust colored ice dub

In other news, I got an email from Feather Craft last week advertising some full ringneck pheasant skins for $20 so I decided to pick one up. I was pretty floored when I got it in the mail today. This thing is so beautiful that I almost don't want to pluck a feather off it. This is gonna make some amazing stonefly wingcases, mayfly wings, and nymph gills. It's about two times larger than I thought it would be too!

More Euro-style...

I'm digging these Nymph head beads




I also knocked out another czech nymph, this time in caddis green.

Some bugs to wrap up the week, and a great deal on tying material

Before I get into all the bugs I just made, I thought I'd let everyone know that CABELAS HAS 30% OFF ALL TYING MATERIAL RIGHT NOW! It's a great time to stock up on basics and maybe some pricey stuff you've been avoiding for a while. They aren't really announcing it on the site, but if you go to the fly tying section, everything is discounted. Just trying to save my readers a few bucks :)


I finally got some time to sit down at the vise tonight and play with some of the new materials I bought yesterday.

I've never been much of a czech nymph person, but this pearl braidback was just begging to be used. It looks great as shell back.

Size 8 scud hook
.020 round lead wire
Sybai pearl braidback (pink)
Dubbing:
- rear - Harelin Hare's ear plus mixed with Orvis ice caddis green
- hot spot - Orvis Spectrablend scud in pink
- front - Spiky squirrel mixed with black hare dubbing
UTC French tinsel in gold (under rib)
4X Tippet (over rib)


I also started to test out these Dohiku barbless hooks. I love the shape of them. I also really dig the way the UV quill gives it a tiny bit of glow.

Dohiku barbless wet hook size 16
black matte tungsten bead
stripped peacock (rib 1)
pearl UV Quill Body (rib 2)
UTC ultra wire, small, orange (rib 3)
Harelin Hare's ear plus mixed with Orvis ice caddis green


I also tried one with a floss body. Keeping the stripped peacock out of the equation allowed me to make a much thinner body.

Dohiku barbless wet hook size 16
black matte tungsten bead
pearl UV Quill Body (rib 1)
UTC French Tinsel, gold (rib 2)
Spiky Squirrel dubbing, olive
olive green floss (generic)

Valley Forge Fly Fishing Show Recap (and some non-skunked goodness!)

Today was bittersweet. There were definitely highs and lows. I didn't go to bed until 2am, and I woke up right before 5, wide awake. I stayed in bed trying to sleep until 6 and then I figured I might as well just get up and head down to the convention center to beat the crowds. I hit the road just before 7. The usual 1-1.25 hour commute only took me about 35 minutes and I got there and realized that it didn't open until 9. Oops.

The good thing was that Valley Creek was only a few miles away. I scouted it yesterday so I knew I could find fish. I strung up and started to hike it upstream through some water I didn't check out yesterday.

Unfortunately, I didn't see many fish and the few I did see took off like a bat out of hell the second I got within 30 feet of them. I swear these browns have eyes in the back of their heads. Or it could just be that I'm 6'4", weigh 270, and it's pretty much impossible for me to stay out of site. You can see me coming two miles away.

But moving on, I did see a ton of BWOs coming off the water. I guessed them at about a size 18. I took off my nymphs, switched to 7x tippet, and threw on a few no hackle CDC dries in 18. I hiked back down to the familiar water from yesterday and sure enough, they start to rise. Swinging 18s over them for half an hour got me zilch. I started wondering if it was the pattern, or the size.

I switched to a 22 and started working one fish that was about 40 feet downstream from me that I could see rising just behind a branch hanging down from a tree into the water. I hid behind a tree so he didnt see me, and just started repeatedly casting until he finally took the fly. Even though they claim the water here is polluted and you can't keep any of the fish, this fish fought like he was a much bigger fish and jumped clear out of the water 3 times before I got him in. He looked 100% healthy, plump, and had beautiful red spots on his side.

My first Valley trout


I love dry fly fishing for spooky wild fish. Few things in the fishing world are more fun to me than hitting small streams like this. I worked my way down for about another 200 yards having a blast and started to head back to the car.

On my way, I saw a pod of about a dozen fish happily rising to olives about every 2 seconds in the tail end of this long pool. I knew that if I moved another two feet towards them they'd be gone, and that this was going to require a very long cast and a ton of patience to even have a shot at one of these fish. I kneel down, turn around, and get ready to get my gear situated and into the water, and I was reminded at just how f*&^king stupid people are sometimes. This portly fellow, who I noticed wading basically dancing around dead center in the middle of a 15-20 foot wide stream and casting at the bank wondering why no wild spooky fish would take his fly see me scanning the water and notices the rises too. He starts literally trying to run through the water to beat me to the spot. As soon as I saw him moving I could just see the fish take off upstream at 50 MPH, and into deep cover. (Mind you, he was a good 50 yards downstream..I wasn't creeping up on his spot) He stops right where the fish WERE rising, and starts chucking a giant size 10 nymph into the water.

I walked by and pretty much just said "You know there were just a dozen fish rising immediately where you're standing right?" He replies "Yeah, that's why I got to this spot." Idiot.

I didn't let it phase me too much. I didn't get skunked. And I'm sure he did. I then shot over to the convention center. I have to say, I was dissapointed in the show. It was about 1/3 the size of the Somerset show, yet it was the same $15 entrance fee. The show was much smaller than I thought it would be. Quite a few of the guys listed to attend were not there, and there really wasn't that many good tying material shops in attendance. I spent less than 2 hours there. I think $5 or $10 would have been much more reasonable for a show of that size. And since there were less fly shops there, it meant that the ones who were there were less competititive with pricing. I didnt' really get any good deals. I did buy a ton of stuff anyway. (click to enlarge)


As for highlights, there honestly wasn't that much. I'm pretty excited to take George Macaig's tying class after seeing those woven stoneflies again.

Bruce Corwin was once again cool as hell. He let me test out the Ekich automatic bobbin and I actually decided against buying one. They are way too heavy. He also has this trick with wood duck to make mayfly wings which is totally insane. I have to try it out.

Aaron Jasper put up with me asking a ton of questions and was really cool about answering all of them while I watched him tying his polish woven patterns. He makes it look so easy, and he even gave me one of them. (thanks again and good luck with the grayling!)


I was looking for some Jan Siman dubbing and some magic shrimp foil, but unfortunately no one had it. Luckily, I came across Kevin Compton's booth and he had some cool euro materials for sale. I picked up some Dohiku barbless hooks, UV Quill body (this stuff is awesome), and some Sybai pearl braidback in two colors.

And that honestly just about wraps it up. Also, what's up with not serving beer there!? I think next year I'll just stick with Somerset and skip Valley Forge. Not worth the money. So yeah, I caught fish, had a run-in with an idiot, paid way to much to enter a rather small show, but still got some good materials (even if it did cost me way too much). Definitely some highs and lows.

Lots of things to do

Well, it's Friday night and I'm making my list for tomorrow. The Fly Fishing Show Expo will be in Valley Forge PA.



I'm pretty excited for it. There's tons of materials I want so I can tie some warm water flies, and I'm running low on tungsten beads and hooks. I'm also most likely going to pick up an automatic bobbin. It's $100, but it looks too damn cool to pass up.

Also, I was actually in Valley Forge today at the KOP Mall and I decided to drive along Valley Creek to check it out. I was amazed by the amount of wild browns I saw when I walked along about 50 yards of water. For a stream that is not stocked at all, it had a very decent amount of fish. I might have to wet a line there early in the morning before the Expo tomorrow.

Coming up next weekend, I'm going to be volunteering to help stock the East Branch Perkiomen Creek. I thought it would be really great to help out the fish and game commission see where the biggest fish are dumped since the stream runs about 150 yards away from my back door. But in all honestly, it should be a pretty cool experience. Opening day in PA is only 4 weeks away.

Then that following Tuesday, I start my first fly tying class. I'm case you cant tell by my shitty fly patterns, I've only been tying for just over a year, and I'm pretty much all self taught.

LL Bean is holding classes hosted by George Macaig, who's one of the guys you see tying at the Fly Fishing expos. The classes are free as are the materials, you just need a vise and tools. I think it's like a 30 week class, so I'm hoping to learn a lot.

Fast forward to April 2nd, opening day is here. There's a childrens trout fishing tournament about 15 minutes from here. They dump tons of stockies into this little pond, and there's contest for kids to try and catch the biggest fish. I'm really hoping to get my son into a nice rainbow for his first trout. He turns 2 the next day and my goal is to make sure he lands a fish before that. I'm more excited about this than anything I've mentioned above! Then we're heading home because my wife is apparently organizing the biggest birthday party a two year old has ever seen.

Well, that's about it. I'm going to snipe some people in Halo Reach, finish my beer, and prepare for fly fishing mayhem tomorrow. If anyone of my readers are planning on attending the show, drop me a line here if you'd like to meet up over a beer. Happy Friday.

The magic mystery egg, and some carp flies

Let me set the stage for you. We are at the Fly Fishing show in Somerset last month, and my brother-in-law and I are having a discussion with one of the featured fly tiers there on epoxy use. All of a sudden, a very short, very old guy walks up and slams a jar full of water on the table. Inside it, there are about half a dozen of the craziest looking egg patterns I have ever seen. They look like they are covered in yolk, and almost glowing.

He said he was selling them for $12 a dozen and would not say what they were made out of. The tier we were talking to, and the one immediately next to him instantly grabbed their wallets and bought a dozen of them without question. They were that awesome looking. One of them said to us "We do this for a living, and this is some crazy sh*t. You don't come across stuff like this too often." I was already maxed out on my spending limit, but Nick decided to pick up a dozen.

I had all but forgot about them, but then Nick lets me know that he hit two trout on them yesterday and everyone else got the skunk. He went out today, and landed another 4 bows without changing flies all day. I asked for one so I could try to figure out WTF it was made out of.

The good news is, I think I figured it out. The bad news is, I need some of the material to see if I'm right. They really don't look like much when dry.



But, once you get them wet, they absorb the water like a sponge, almost doubling in size, and have this crazy glow to them.


I'm going to pick up some of the material this weekend and try to recreate them. More on that later.

In other news, there's a very small creek that is a few minutes away from my work. It's in a township park, and it runs alongside this small lake (ok..more like a large pond) that holds a good amount of largemouth, crappie, bullhead cats, and some pretty damn big carp. The thing with the lake and the park is that it's basically on a flood plain, and more than an inch of rain means the lake overflows into this small creek. Over the years, some of the monster carp have made their way into the creek and have pretty much just stuck around there, along with bass, cats, and even a few odd goldfish over a foot long that people have released over the years.

I've never taken a carp on a fly rod and I'm ready to go after them. I stopped by this creek tonight on my way home. It was almost dark but I saw exactly what I was hoping to see, a few carp, between 6-10 lbs, surfacing and pretty active. That made me get pretty excited to knock out some carp flies. I started doing some quick research on them, since I barely know anything about them. I remembered seeing the "armored car" san juan pattern and I found it on Rough Fisher's site. I dig this pattern, and I think it might even work on trout. It would be nice to fish a SJ without needing shot. They were fun and easy to tie as well.

Lightening Strike Scud hook, size 8
Uni-Thread 6/0 (color to match chenille)
Ultra Chenille
Brass bead
UTC ultra wire - medium (color to match)