February Dry Fly Fishing and Goodies in the Mail

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!

It is December, right? Also, I actually won something.

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!