Saturday Morning Midges

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

A little Sculpin tying before feasting. Happy Turkey Day!

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

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

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

And the winner is...

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

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....

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

Realistic Worm Pattern and a fly giveaway contest

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

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

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

Czeching it up

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

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

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!