Crappie Kebari

Tenkara has become my favorite way to fish for Crappie and other panfish.   I have converted one of my favorite, brightly colored soft hackles into a reversed hackle, kebari style fly.  I have had quite a bit of success with this pattern over the last few seasons.  Sometimes it performs a little better, other times the fish prefer the pattern tied as a traditional soft hackle.  On a tenkara rod this one feels right.

Pattern Recipe:

Hook:  Standard wet fly ( the one pictured is an old, no longer made Mustad with a wicked barb)

Thread:  6/0 Uni your choice of color

Body:  Chartreuse Ice Dub

Thorax:  Pink Ice Dub

Hackle:  Hen pheasant tied reversed

Farmington River

I recently took trip to Connecticut's famed Farmington River with a group of friends.  We headed up to the river on the tail end of a nor'easter, so we had some adverse weather and water conditions to deal with.  Despite less than ideal conditions it turned out to be a great trip.

There were plenty of chunky little rainbows to be had.  They were everywhere and eagerly took our nymphs and streamers in the morning and rose to Hendricksons and caddis in the warmer afternoons.  The rainbows averaged 12 to 14 inches with the largest nosing up to about 16 inches.  They fought surprising hard for their size.

 The brown trout averaged a inch or two less and were just as abundant.   I managed to hook a few larger browns in the 20" class, while fishing streamers in some of the deep runs and pools, but they got the best of me and never made it to the net.

The fishery folks on the Farmington have an interesting way of tagging fish to identify when they were stocked.  The small recently stocked brown trout all had this green laser etch behind their right eye.  I have never seen this method of tagging before.

We managed to have one phenomenal afternoon when my buddy Rick and I got into a riffle that was just teeming with fish.  There were actually more fish in this one spot than I have ever encountered on a river before.  We discovered that they were staged in that riffle taking emerging Hendricksons.  Fishing soft hackles we took fish on almost every casts for hours right up until dark.  The numbers of fish caught was astounding, between the two of us it was one of those rare "100 fish days".

Fishing two fly rigs and catching two fish at a time was just as common as catching one!  More often than not, everyones rod was bent over at the same time.  Since we left fish biting the night before, we returned the next morning morning with another friend and found the fish there again.  This time they appeared to be taking spent little yellow crane flies.  A partridge and yellow soft hackle did the trick and we did it all over again.   This had been my first trip to the Farmington, I can't wait to head back!

Soft Hackles

Soft Hackles

One of my favorite soft hackles is the classic Woodcock and Hare Lug.  Over the years I have fished a lot of soft hackle and hare's ear patterns.  Whether its tied with the classic silk abdomen and dubbed thorax or a complete body of hare's ear dubbing, both styles have worked well for me.  I inadvertently experimented with this old stand by of mine today.    While tying this afternoon,  I became distracted by my three year old and grabbed a package of spiky squirrel dubbing instead of my usual hares ear.  The yellow silk that was intended for the abdomen became the ribbing and was also exchanged for wire for a little extra weight on flies that will not be fished in the film.

Granted simply changing dubbing is not a huge departure from the norm, but I really like the way spiky dubbing on these soft hackles look, they will definitely catch em...

More Fall Fishing

This trip could have been one of the best of the year, conditions were perfect if not for one thing...leaves.  The day dawned cloudy, wet and warm.  The forecast was a 80% chance of rain but no wind and temps in the mid 70's. I thought for sure it would be the perfect day for chucking big meaty streamers or swinging big bright soft hackles.  When I arrived on the banks of the stream my hopes were dashed, it was literally a flowing soup of leaves.  

There was absolutely no way to retrieve a streamer or work a set of wet flies with out fouling on the debris floating down stream. By picking out current seams out of the main flow you could find clearer water and willing fish.  But since these were not prime lies the fish were smaller.  I did get smashed by one bruiser of a brown trout as he grabbed a 10" rainbow I had hooked.  The fish had fought it's way into a deeper pool and the brown came up to eat.  It chased that fish right up to my feet and just waited there for almost a minute.  I could have touched him with the tip of my rod.  I guess he could not figure out where his lunch went and was expecting it would scoot out from some unseen hiding place.  I tossed the rainbow back into another current seam and hoped he made it back to the safety of shallow water. The day produced loads of fish but nothing bigger than 12".

  
Winged wets proved more successful than soft hackles.  Due to the leaves in the water my usual soft hackle presentations were out of the question.  So it was short casts to small sections of open water and a hand twist retrieve of the flies.  The winged wet fly presented a better profile under these conditions.  Drab colors with some flash seemed to work the best.  

Bamboo Day

Over the weekend my club on the South Branch of the Raritan River did something a little different.  We rolled back the clock 50 or 60 years.  Fishing would be done with bamboo rods and the only flies that could be used were dry flies or wet flies.  Fortunately I had recently taken possession of my first bamboo rod.  This rod was built by a local rob builder and friend, Art Port.  Art had fished with me last fall and at the end of the day he opened up his truck and let me look over the 30 or so rods he had in the vehicle.  I was looking for a 5wt primarily for fishing wet flies.  So we picked out a half a dozen rods, strung them up with some soft hackles and cast them in the "home pool" of our club.  I stood in the river making a few casts and actually connecting with a few fish and Art stood on the bank handing me the different rods to try.  It was a tough decision but I settled on a Garrison 209E, a 7'9", 5 wt designed by Everett Garrison and written about in Hoagy B. Carmichael's book, A Master's Guide to Building a Bamboo Fly Rod.  Art built an identical rob for me with the only changes made being a flamed blank and blued hardware.

Yesterday was my first opportunity to fish this rod, and it performed wonderfully.  Fishing wet flies is my favorite way to target fall trout here in New Jersey.  I prefer a longer rod for this style of fishing and bamboo has some limitations when it comes to length especially if you want to keep the weight down.
But the softer action of bamboo is absolutely perfect for fishing wet flies.  The action on this rod was perfect for fishing wet flies.  Yesterday the fish preferred soft hackles on the swing.  The fly patterns I picked up from Blue Ribbon Flies worked very well.  These two patterns were the top producers of the day.

 Full Dressed Red

September's Song

This fly rod handled fish up to about 20" in length with ease and despite its softer feel had quite a bit of backbone which helped in bringing some of the larger fish to hand.

At the end of the day I had the opportunity to do a little dry fly fishing although my "dry fly" was a size 18 Starling and Purple fished in the film.  The rod was a pleasure to fish dries with as well.  We could never identify what the fish were taking but it did not matter since they eagerly gobbled up the small soft hackles on a dead drift.  

I gave the rod to my buddy Lou from Fly and Fin at the end of the day and he did well picking up these surface feeders on small soft hackles, picking up a couple of fish in a few casts.  

  This could be the start of a very expensive addiction...

Fall Wet Flies

Fall is my favorite time to swing wet flies for trout. In past years I have found that during the autumn, trout aggressively take large wet flies fished on the swing. The fish seen to prefer the bright gaudy stuff, red and orange being some of the most effective colors. One of my favorites is the Queen of the Waters

On my trip out to Montana this year I was speaking to the folks at Blue Ribbon Flies and they are big fans of fishing big soft hackles in the fall as well. The patterns that they use on the big lake fish coming up into the Madison and it's tributaries are also brightly colored, with red and orange being common themes.

This year I will be trying some of these western patterns on my home waters.

Full Dressed Red

Shakey Beeley

Lucky Bucky

September's Song

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