New creations

Here are a bunch of flies that are on their way to a friend to be field tested in western pa.

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.

March 11 fishing trip

I got to go do some fishing with a friend on his boat today. The temps were a little chilly in the morning but it warmed up in the afternoon. The skies were bright blue and it turned out to be an awesome day on the water.

We decided to try the Susquehanna river and also spent some time on the Juniata river. The Susquehanna was flowing a little high and was a touch cloudy. It wasn't awful even with all the rain that came through up north a couple days before. There were a ton of boats where the Juniata empties into the Susquehanna.

We spent considerable amount of time on the Susquehanna at some really decent spots but to no avail. So we decided to run up the Juniata and see what might happen up there. The water was crystal clear. At five or six feet deep you could still see the bottom.

We fished most of the afternoon and evening on this water. There were less boats which was nice. We had more of the water all to ourselves. Well, except for A few guests.

This first visitor we had, thought he was hidden or was going to be totally territorial if we got too close to his grass patch that he was enjoying. This muskrat was enjoying the sun as he nibbled the small green patch that he found. We found it quite comical the way he kept about his business as we floated over to check him out.

The other visitors we had were a little more annoying but it was fun to watch them flying around. The only problem with them was they ended up flying all over us at times. So we had them on our hats, clothing and on our hands. Here was some of the little black stoneflies that stopped by for a visit.

Unfortunately as fishing can go sometimes we had an awful day. We didn't bring one fish to hand and we didn't even long line release any. I don't know if it was the high pressure, the recent full moon, or what other excuses I could come up with but we just didn't have any luck. I was able to fish some of my new designs and with the clarity of the water was able to see how the swam in the water. I came away thinking that they are going to be worth another try. I was happy how they looked before I fished them and after. I just didn't get any fish approval. Sometime soon I will have to post some pics of the new designs. And till then I can show some fish that liked them too.