New Leaders

     I got the chance to get out on the stream today.  It was a gorgeous day on the water.  Didn't have a lot of successful catches but I got the chance to test out a new leader setup.  I received some samples from Moonlit Leaders.  I was casting some heavy double nymph rigs and had an absolute joy in casting them with this leader setup.

I recommend everyone take the time to check out this company and their quality leaders!

http://moonlitflyfishing.com/premium-series-big-hog-leader/

News and update

It had been a while since I last posted. There have been a lot of things going on lately. One of the most exciting recent news is that I have been accepted to the Deer Creek Pro Staff. I am so excited by this. Their products are outstanding. Make sure you check them out. 

 

 

I have also been busy with a lot of shop orders. Here is some of what I have been tying lately. 

These flies are some custom died hackle with a gray body and wood duck wings for a guy that will be fishing Big Pine Creek in Northern PA.

Blastin & Castin

A couple months ago, I received an invite from a good friend of mine to spend some time up at his cabin in Tioga County that is not far from Wellsboro, PA.  We decided to take an extended weekend to do some of the things we both enjoy, fishing and hunting.  I did a lot of dreaming for this trip.  I felt like it was going to be about the perfect time to see the gobblers in action in the woods and it was also about the right time to see some mayflies and caddis on the stream. 

 

When the time finally came to leave, I was busting at the seams.  The weather they were calling for was absolutely perfect every day that we were to be there.  The water levels were decent and dropping.  We got to the stream and I was in heaven.  The caddis were everywhere but it turned out the fish didn't want anything with them.  We didn't catch anything but the best part was we had the local eagle fly over our head about 30 feet.  That was supper exciting. 

 

Saturday morning was quiet in the woods.  There were no toms talking and we only saw one lonely hen.  We made up for that quiet time though in the creek.  Both my friend and I did well catching a lot of rainbows, one brown and a couple small mouth bass.  I had received a tip from Big Meadows Fly Shop owner that copper johns were taking fish.  That is what brought most of my fish to hand.  The other patterns that caught fish for me this day were the Chain Gang Pheasant Tail and the Ice Magic in brown/orange and Olive/yellow.  My friend even managed a bullfrog he caught with his hand.

 

 

                                    Ice Magic

 

Sunday morning, since we couldn't hunt we decided to take a walk out to the field and just scope things out to see if it was worth hunting this field edge again.  Well, what we saw I feel was a once in a lifetime opportunity.  There were four hens and a gobbler that was in full strut.  They were about two hundred yards away in the open field.  With the sun shining on him, he was an absolutely gorgeous sight with his fan spread out and gleaming beauty reflecting in the sun.  The hens walked out of the field and he started to follow.  But interestingly enough, he ended up turning around and going the opposite direction.  We soon found out why.  There were two jakes that came into the field that came running at him, challenging him for his control over this nice group of hens.  What proceeded to happen absolutely shocked us.  These two jakes proceeded to take advantage of the numbers.  For about 5 to 10 minutes, there was a major battle going on between these three birds.  The one jake would take the gobbler's focus and the other bird proceeded to sneak up behind him and sucker punch him.  It is amazing what kind of sounds these birds made vocally, and with their wings as they would hit each other.  It was a super loud fight that saw the bigger, older bird cowering away in defeat. 

 

As we fished that evening, we decided to use this as a sign that we needed to stay in this field for the next day's hunt on our final morning there.  We didn't do as well Sunday night fishing as we did Saturday but we were happy with how we did.  All the fish we caught this weekend were in the 11" to 16". Now we were crazy excited for the next morning. 

 

Neither of us slept all that great in our anticipation of seeing any of those three birds we saw Sunday morning.  When we got to our spot along the field it wasn't very long before there were gobblers talking in the trees.  We were getting more excited by the minute.  We waited till it became a little more day light and started calling to the birds with a slate call.  I sat in anticipation looking over the field figuring that as they got closer they would pop out in front of me.  My friend decided to face the opposite direction just incase the bird would circle in behind us.  Well, as it turned out it was two gobblers that came in together and they were in my friend's sight.  He was able to harvest a really nice bird at 25 yards away.  It was a 16 pound bird with a 9.5" beard at 6:15 am.

 

We still had a lot of hope for the rest of the day.  We stayed at the same spot with our hen decoys in the open field and the sun coming up and drying the grass off.  We made several attempts to bring in birds alternating through the different calls we had with us by using the slate call, box call and even a mouth call every 15 to 20 minutes from the time he shot his bird until about 10:00.  At this time we put them all together and brought out all the stops.  We had also put his bird out with the hen decoys and propped up his bird's fan to maybe draw in any a bird willing to challenge him for the two hens.  Waiting about 15 minutes after this calling spree, there seemed to be no response. 

 

 

 

As we were getting ready to head back to the cabin, I went out to gather up the hen decoys.  I was stopped in my tracks as I looked up to the far corner of the field and there stood two birds at 335 yards away.  I crawled back to my spot and we gave a few calls on the slate.  It got these two birds' attention and the started to work our way.  We could see with binoculars that the one bird was a nice mature tom.  The other bird looked small enough to be a hen but we couldn't tell for sure. 

 

It took a half an hour with a couple calls to make sure they were interested in continuing to close the gap.  At about 40 to 50 yards away we could see that the one bird was a small jake.  I now was super hopeful for my first time turkey hunting that I should be able to get a shot at one of these birds.  Well, the gobbler kept coming and headed right for the dead tom that was now used as a decoy.  He was starting to puff up his body feathers and ready to go into a strut.  I decided at 30 yards I was going to take him now before he put up his fan.  My friend gave a couple purr calls to get him to stop and put his head up.  My first shot stunned him and he spun in a circle.  Then he gave me a half second and I was able to finalize the deal with a second shot that sent him waddle over spurs.  Here is my first ever spring gobbler, a 19 pound bird with an 8.5" beard. 

 

 

 

What an awesome weekend of Blastin & Castin!!!

 

 

 

CRO Flies

When I was at the "Tie One On" event a couple weeks ago, I received an invite from the guys at CRO Flies to go fishing on the Tulpehocken. This is a stream I have fished somewhat but at limited locations and for short amounts of time. There is a section of this stream that is a couple miles long that is designated by the state of PA to be delayed harvest. This means that for most of the year it is a catch and release stream only. And for the month of March till the opening day of trout, special regulation streams are the only streams you are allowed to fish on for trout.

I was looking at my schedule and wanted to take my son out to test out his new waders. Well, I notified these guys that I was going to get on the water for the first time this year. They worked it out for their schedule to meet me on the water Sunday. Unfortunately for my son, he got a cold and had to miss out on this opportunity.

I found out from Luke where to meet along the stream. Even though he forgot what his brother drives, I was able to get to the correct parking lot and met these guys along the stream. They were at this one spot that was to be good. There wasn't too much action there so we hopped on over to another location.

At this next location there were a few other fishermen that had the same idea as us. But there was plenty of room for us all. These guys know this stream like the back of their hand. They might even have each rock and each hole named. They put me in a great spot but I have to say I am probably a better tier than I am a fisherman. These guys though, knew where to put their fly and get great drifts. I was excited to see both of them connecting with fish on both sides of me. I did pick up my first fish of the year out of this spot. I was using the Double Duty in brown with copper bead and copper ribbing. Josh got the big fish award for the day, when he picked up a real thick shouldered 17" or so, holdover rainbow.

We finished the rest of the evening out at one more great little spot. I rolled a couple fish and got into a good fighting sucker. All in all, it was a great day of fishing and a great time with some new friends. Thanks CRO Flies.

If you ever need a day on the water and want some cool dudes to guide you, I highly recommend you schedule a trip with the guys at CRO Flies. They know how to put you on fish. But you need to be able to set the hook and keep them on your line if you want to put them in your net. And maybe if you fish with them you will use a new pattern that I put them onto, even if Josh gets a good laugh at this crazy simple pattern! 

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.

Memorial Day 2012

This weekend I am really looking forward to. We always go to a friend's cabin. There are a bunch of kids and they have a blast hanging out and playing together. There is nothing like creating your own games and fun times in the mountains. They will also get some of the older kids to take them on golf cart rides. They take the carts out on the groomed paths around the cabin. This always seems to be one of the highlights from the weekend.

While the kids are doing their thing my friend and I head out to do some fishing. We often take his boat out on the Susquehanna river and do some bass fishing. I am always fly fishing and he spin casts. Last year we had an epic day bass of fishing. The water was rising. I don't think we ever caught so many smallies in the 15-18" range as we did that day. I would love to experience another day like that one! I will also head to Big Fishing Creek or Spring Creek to try and hit some of the mayfly hatches. This year my son said he would like to join me. So I hope to get him on his first trout on the fly rod. We may see the sulphurs and caddis on Spring or if the water comes down we may hit Fishing Creek. The green drakes are soon to arrive. They are also seeing some slate drakes, sulphurs, and tan caddis right now. This could lead to some exciting dry fly action.

If the water is still high on these creeks I may be doing some testing on some of my newer streamers that have done well in other locations. I am also anxious to try out some of my bass patterns.

Here is one of my newest ideas.  I haven't decided on an official name for this fly yet but I am thinking of "Ice Minnow", "Polar Express", or if you have a suggestion let me know.  I want to see if I get as good a response from some trout and would like to also test it on the bass to see if they like the looks of it.

I also have some sculpin patterns I want to try.  I have fished these a little but haven't received any feedback on them yet.  Others that have fished them have like them though.

I have a couple newer chain gang nymphs I would like to test.  Below are the prince and royal prince.  They have brought some to hand but need to continue testing these.  Also is a bead head chain gang stonefly pattern.  May have to see if I get any response from it as well. 

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

Successful Clients

I received a couple emails recently of some of their success on recent trips to the streams. The first pic is of Kevin Smith who was using the Chain Gang Copper John on his trip to Chile. It is a really beautiful brown with some nice size. He highly recommends this trip to anyone. The Andes mountains are gorgeous and the fishing was great.

The second photo is from Michael Byers who has been a client of mine since I started. He lives in MI and was enjoying time on his water when he hooked into a nice brown using an Opal Caddis dry fly I had tied for him. This brown was his first dry fly fish of this year.

Congrats to both these guys in successful times on the water.

Orders

I didn't have much time to do anything but fish lately.  There have been a few orders I have worked on.  A couple of fly shops have needed to restock and here are a few of those that went out in the mail.  Out the door goes a bunch of Zebra midges, some purple soft hackles, and a batch of Y2K's.

Contest Flies

I am not even sure anymore how I heard about a new fly tying contest but the deadline is March 15 to be post marked. So I put a package in the mail for the Baxter Bulletin fly tying contest.

There are seven categories. I am sending in flies for five of them. The categories I have flies for are trout nymph, trout soft hackle, trout streamer, small mouth bass, and bass. Any of the below patterns are available through MyFlies.com Custom Order. 

For the Bass category, this is a pattern that I had a lot of success with in the fall of 2011.  It is called "Movin & Groovin".  It got its name when my daughter came home from kindergarden and said she had fun at Movin & Groovin time at school.  Well, I found out it was the teacher's way of getting some of the excess energy out of these young energetic kids.  This pattern just made me think of the kids movin and dancin around the room.  The tail is made of bead chain and allows me to attach shorter materials to make a longer pattern.  The tail is made of artic fox and ostrich herl.  This pattern swings and dances in the water that the fish find irresistable!  It is always moving even when at rest.  When you strip it and then give a pause, the water just makes this thing pulsate. 

"Movin & Groovin"

 The second pattern I submitted was for the trout streamer group.  It is a newer concept but utilizes the same mechanics as the Movin & Groovin by using the bead chain to lengthen the body and have extreme motion. 

Sculpin 

The third pattern was for the small mouth group.  This is a new pattern too but has a lot of trigger points to it that should get the fish's attention.  A little bit of flash for the antenna, tons of movement with the marabou and the rabbit strip back, and lead dumbbell eyes placed close to the bend of the hook to allow this pattern to drop level, as most crayfish do.  I am currently fishing with this pattern in black, brown and olive. 

Crazy Craw

The fourth pattern is for the trout wetfly group.  This is a new idea as well.  I am using UV Chewee Skin on the body and pheasant tail feathers for the hackle.  The Chewee skin gives a nice reflective quality about the body and is a nice attractor.



Chewee Soft Hackle

The fifth and final pattern is similar to the soft hackle in that it is using the same body material, UV Chewee Skin.  I am tying this pattern in caddis green and tan, with or without a bead head. 

Chewee Caddis