Tulpehocken - 4/17/2013

 

 

I planned a morning of fishing with Bill M., a good friend of mine.  We met in Ephrata and traveled together to the Tulpehocken to fish the special regs area of this stream.  We got there a little after daylight and got suited up.  It was a couple weeks since I last hit the water and I was really looking forward to it.  The water level was just perfect.  We knew there were fish in the water because when we got there the Blue Herons were trying to take claim to certain spots along the water. 

 

The water temps were perfect at about 51 degrees.  The water flows were about 140 cfs which turned out to be an awesome level.  As soon as we were on the water, it didn't take long till I had my first fish of the day.  It was a nice rainbow that took a pink and white Y2K egg.  I have to admit, I am not the best fisherman around.  I am a better tier than I am a fisherman.  I would have had double the numbers brought to hand if I would have done better at giving good hook sets.  There were several flies that brought fish to hand for me today.  Anything from the Y2K (yellow/orange and pink/white), Chain Gang Pheasant Tail, Chain Gang Hares Ear, Double Duty, and even a #24 stripper midge.  The two that did the best were the stripper midge and the Y2K, and actually the stripper midge brought the biggest fish of the day for me. 

There were spent midges on the water everywhere.  And actually the fish were rising to them all over the place.  Although, I couldn't break off my rust and connect with any of the rises.  I did a great job of missing every rise that came to my small BWO Foam Biot Emerger, which happened to be the smallest dry fly I had with me.  I wasn't expecting any surface action today.  I used my ice magic and managed some short hookups but nothing to hand.  Like I had said earlier, there are some things I need to work on so that I can have more fish come to hand. 

Well, I hope everyone gets the chance to be out on the water soon.  It was a great morning for being outside and especially to be out fishing.

 

 

 

Replenishing fly boxes

Things have been crazy lately as spring time rolls around. There have been a lot of people thinking about what is empty in their fly boxes and so have either been ordering through MyFlies.Com or have been visiting their local shops. Fly shops have been contacting me for flies to replentish their supplies and clients have been trying to fill their empty slots in their fly boxes. Here are some of the most recent orders that have gone out the door.

Chain Gang Stonefly




Chain Gang Hares Ear



Loopty Loop




Chain Gang Pheasant Tails




Y2K & Tellico Nymphs




Yellow Stonefly dries





Spirit of Pittsford Mills





Brown Beacon And Loopty Loop

Fly on the run

I was invited to participate in the Fly On The Run annual fund raiser event again this year. This event is a fund raiser for Lancaster County Career & Technology Center (LCCTC). This is a great school for kids to learn a specific trade. This is a two day event. The evening before the fishing day, there is an awesome meal that is made by the student and hosted by the student. This event allows the students real life experience in the specialties of hosting, pastries, restaurant planning, and lots of other positions. Tonight they served Lobster tail, prime rib,and lots of other great food. The desserts were out of this world! Here was one of the cake pieces. The fish image on top was all hand done with white and regular chocolate. It was on each piece. And it was very delicious.

There is an auction that is of all kinds of donated items.  one of the items was a cake made by the students. Everything on the cake is edible. Here is the item I donated.  It is a wooden 4"x6" wooden fly box.  I put in some of the chain gang nymphs (Hares Ear, Copper John, Stonefly, and two new patterns: Prince and Royal Prince) and my favorite caddis dry fly which works great on the Lititz Run, the Opal Caddis.  I also put in a Stoned Claw Crazy, a new sculpin pattern, and the Wooly Skull. This box raised $150 for future scholarships given to some of the students.

There are browns, brookies, and rainbows in this Lititz Run. This creek is a stream restoration success. It is a spring creek that was a really warm water because of thermal pollution and also suffered a lot of chemical pollution. Donegal Trout Unlimited and others put a lot of time and effort into cleaning it up and is now a first rate stream. The bug life had disappeared but in the last couple years have seen lots of bug life return. There are now several caddis varieties, a cahill hatch, and tricos.

This event is a one fly tournament. It is setup as a competition of teams of four. There are four session times to fish. Two rods are allowed during each session. We had a lot of rain on Monday and Tuesday. This allowed the stream to have a nice amount of water, which was nice because before this there was very little water in the Lititz Run.

I tried a new streamer design (Ice Magic) and did well with it. The wooly skull also did well and brought fish to hand. The new design of chain gang prince nymph also caught fish. I was really happy with how some of these new designs worked today. We had really good fishing for about forty five minutes and then the sun hit the water and it definitely slowed things down. It was bright blue bird skies. The weather was wonderful to be outside and enjoy the friendships of the guys on my team. The lunker award went to a 23.5" brown. There were a couple teams that just knocked em dead. They must have had some beats that had a ton of fish.

The event was well worth attending and was enjoyed by all. Last year they raised over $50,000 for the school and to provide kids with scholarships to further their education.

PA Opening trout weekend

This weekend was the opening of Pennsylvania trout season. The weather held out and I was able to  take my son out for a chance at his first fly rod trout. Unfortunately he didn't connect with any trout but he had fun catching sunnies. At one point both of our rods didn't have any flies on so while I was getting one of the rods ready he was doing what kids like to do, play in water. This is not a big stream as I am sure you can tell by the photos but it still has its muddy sections. He got into this one spot and started loosing his balance. I was lucky and had my camera out and ready as he some how got lucky and did not fall in. Then gave me the face of "I cannot believe you were taking pictures of me" look.

What a great time we had. If you have the opportunity, take a kid fishing!

I did end up catching two stocked brookies. The one came on the Chain Gang Hares Ear. The other on a pheasant tail. There were a handful of caddis flying around.  Occasionally, I was seeing a few risers.  The only other thing I was seeing was extremely small midges.  I didn't have those small flies with me so we just continued with what I had brought along.  I tried some new streamer patterns I have been playing with but wasn't successful with any of those patterns.  The one I have to go back to the drawing board.  So it was a good time in all aspects.

Normally the the local sportsman club stocks really nice size rainbows. Unfortunately there was a problem last summer. The hatchery is located in the area that had an extreme flash flood. We had 7" of rain fall in about 45 minutes. The rain only fell in about a three mile circle. It wiped out the fish they had started. There was that much water that came down through that up stream from them, there is a tractor dealership.  The stripThey needed to cleanup and restart so the second batch must have been brookies. They are beautiful fish but they are small.

Chain Gang Hares Ear