Summertime Fly Fishing

I enjoy warmwater flyfishing as much if not more than trout and saltwater fishing.  Though I have to travel about an hour from my front door to find a decent trout stream, I can walk out my front door and be casting over water in about 5 minutes.  The area I live in is peppered with lakes and ponds of all sizes.  Since New Jersey's trout fishing is a 3 season affair for me, I need something else to occupy my time during the summer months.  That means bass, panfish, carp, and the occasional trip to the beach for some salty action.

Panfish are probably my favorite.  Abundunt, scrappy and great fun on a three weight.  Early mornings and late evenings can often produce some great topwater action.  Probing the depths during the day will produce some of the biggest fish of the day.  They tend to school up by size class, so if you locate a good sized fish you bound to find some more in the same area.

You will find these little fish in all colors of the rainbow from drab to brilliant.  Not to mention that they are some of the finest eating on the planet.  No need to feel guilty about taken the occasional stringer of fish home either.  In most waters around here they are ignored and thereby abundant, sometimes too abundant and the population can certainly sustain a few meals a year.

Happy Birthday U.S.A.!

I hope everyone has a safe enjoyable holiday.  God Bless America!

High water nymphing

My buddy Lou over at Fly and Fin recently posted a video on You Tube featuring yours truly involved in some spring time fishing.  These flows are what we have seen all spring and are still seeing now at least once a week when a string of thunderstorms roll through.

Its coming to an end...

until September that is.  Trout fishing in New Jersey is winding down for me until the fall.  I personally don't fish for trout in most waters around here during the summer months.  I give the trout a break once we start seeing daytime temperature spikes hiting the seventy degree mark.  Lately the trend here has been morning temps in the mid to high sixties and by mid day you could see some places hitting or exceeding the seventy degree mark.  So there will be some traveling involved when it comes to trout fishing over the next few months, which is not a bad thing.  There will be two weeks in Montana in July, a few day trips to Pennsylvania and maybe a long weekend in New England.  Local trips will be limited to warm and saltwater venues, again not a bad thing.

My last trip of the spring season found the river high and off colored which has been the norm this year.  So it was a nymphing game and the golden stone nymph continued to produce well.

It was a mixed bag of brookies, browns and rainbows.  A nice way to wrap things up until fall.

It is great to see these small native fish in the river.  If you encounter a fish smaller than 9 inches around here you looking at a native fish.  This little brook trout likely was flushed out of one of the tributaries that feed this river, but there are plenty of similar sized browns found throughout this section of water which is great to see.

Not all of the fish were small, these two rainbows stretched the tape past the 20 inch mark.  They were in prime shape.

The next trout you see on this blog will likey be from somewhere other than New Jersey...until September that is!

The Neighborhood Bruin

This fellow has made quite a stir around here of late and has even got his picture in the local rag. Below are some shots taken by a neighbor's friend ( I did not get the name or I would have given them credit) of the bear while he was taking a mid day snooze in a roadside tree. He has not caused any major problems, other than rooting through your garbage if you happen to leave it out unsecured.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

They are finally looking up!

Its been a difficult season this year.  On most days that I have had available to fish I was forced to deal with  high muddy water.  Lots of fish caught but all below the surface.  Things have finally settled down over the last few weeks and there has been some fine afternoon dry fly fishing.  There have been some great sulfur hatches but little in the was of surface feeding.  The late afternoon spinner falls are another matter all together.  Fish can be found boiling on the surface as clouds of spinners descend to the water, just as the last visible light slips below the horizon.  It becomes a game of feel and sound. There has been some great fishing just after dark.  Fishing in the dark presents challenges.  Since I try not to use a light on the water, re-tying flies to tippets can take forever,  There is enough fumbling with rod and reel going on, so no after dark photography for me, besides its a short lived game, so there is no time for pictures.

Luckily there have been a few that have been convinced to sip a dry fly while still light enough to enjoy seeing the take.  This guy fell for a carpenter ant at high noon...

This one on a sulphur emerger fished in the film.

Its been a long time coming...

Golden Stonefly Nymph

Golden Stone 

This pattern has been particularly effective over the last few weeks.  Many of our local streams have seen an emergence of large stone flies in late May. Trout have been keying in on these large nymphs as they move towards the shore to crawl onto to the bank in the evenings to molt into winged adult stoneflies. 

Pattern Recipe:

Hook: Tiemco 200R (size 8-10)

Bead: Tungsten brown or black (3/16" for size 8)

Thread: Danville 210 denier white

Underbody: 8 wraps .30 lead wire

Tail: Goose biots (golden yellow)

Abdomen: Tapered thread underbody tinted with olive brown on top and golden yellow on bottom, covered with yellow or clear vinyl d-rib (medium)

Rib: Medium black wire 

Thorax: Synthetic or natural dubbing in a golden stone color to match the natural

Wing case:  Two Pheasant "church window" feather cut with a wing burner.

Legs: Round rubber (solid or barred)

Tying Instructions:

Although this pattern calls for a lot of materials it is relatively easy to tie.  

Begin by mounting the bead and placing 8 wraps of the lead wire on the hook shank, pushing it up against the bead to hold it in place.  Place a drop of head cement or super glue over the lead wraps.  

Mount your thread behind the lead and wrap towards the bend of the hook, where you will tie in you split biot tail, wire ribbing and vinyl d-rib.  

Next build up a tapered thread body and cover the lead wire with thread wraps.  Once your underbody is formed, tint the thread with the markers, dark on top, light on the bottom.  

Form the abdomen by wrapping the d-rib forward with tight touching wraps stretching the material slightly as you wrap it.  Tie it off at the start of the lead wire. If you wrap it with the flat side of the material against the hook shank you will get a nice segmented appearance.

Next, wind the black wire rib forward allowing the wire to fill the grooves between the d-rib. 

For the thorax apply dubbing to the thread and dub half of the remaining space on the hook shank behind the bead.  

On top of the hook shank tie and the dubbing you just applied tie in one of the wing case feathers.  

Apply additional dubbing to the thread and dub right up to the bead.  

Next tie in the final wing case feather and tie in the rubber legs on each side of the fly.  Apply a small amount of dubbing to cover your thread wraps and whip finish and apply head cement if desired.

Golden Stone (alternate view)

Solving a Mystery

I spent a few hours on my favorite trout stream over the holiday weekend and had an excellent day of fishing.  I had the whole section of river to myself, which shocked me since it was a holiday weekend.  What made it even more enjoyable, was the fact that it was one of those rare occasions where you manage to figure out what your pea brained quarry is focused on and find that little piece of the puzzle that makes for a great day's fishing.

After spending the first few hours of the day picking off a fish or two.  I sat down on a mid stream rock and began to ponder all the reasons why the fishing was so slow.  I reckoned it could have something to do with the little bit of color that still lingered in the water from the high water event earlier in the week, or perhaps the fish were gorged on sulphur nymphs that have been coming off in huge numbers every afternoon.  As I sat on this rock and retied my leader and selected yet another set of flies to present to the fish I spied this fellow crawling up from the waters edge.

This was a good sized stone fly with bright yellow markings on its underside.  With no better choices to go with I selected a large golden stone fly nymph as my anchor fly and was rewarded with a fish on my first cast.

And so it began...for the rest of the afternoon fish after fish came to this fly including the big fish in the previous post.   Here's a few more quick shots of this fly in action.

The fly I fished was a one of a kind experiment.  It was a more detailed version of a soft hackle stone fly that I regularly use.  Instead of a soft hackle it has a traditional double wing case and some rubber legs added.  When that fly was eventually lost to a fish, my soft hackled golden stones produced well enough but not quite as good as the experimental version.  So its off to the vice to turn out some more of what is now a proven pattern instead of a experimental one.

Catch and Release

Over the past few months I have caught and released this fish on four seperate occasions.  She has always been caught in the same spot despite the fact that she has been released several pools down stream from where she is originally hooked.  She always does the same thing, a few quick bursts up stream than an about face and a mad rush down stream that requires you to beat feet after her or she's gone baby gone!  The fish has a damaged mandible from a former battle and and a very recognizable spot pattern on the cheek.  The picture above is from our most recent encounter this weekend, when she took a big golden stone nymph (more on that in a future post).

The first time we met it was late winter and it was far too cold to be messing around with a camera so she was quickly sent on her way but I made a note of the water she was in and that damaged jaw.  On that occasion she was tricked by a green rockworm imitation.

Our next meeting took place right before the season opener.  This time a pink san juan worm with a gold bead did the trick.  I saw this take as she rose up from her spot in front of a log and picked off the fly mid current.

Our third encounter took place a few weeks ago during a high water event.  She was in the same spot as always.  She is never visable but you just know she is down there somewhere.  This time a heavy cased caddis imitation fooled her.

I am going to bid her farewell for the rest of the season and leave her be.  Four times in one season is more than enough...

Cabela's 11' Czech Nymph Rod

I recently purchased a 4wt  11' CZN fly rod from Cabela's.  I had to wait a while for it since it was on back order, but its in my hands now and its time to give it a quick review.  First off I should mention the price point.  At $200.00 it is probably one of the cheaper fly rods on the market today.  The rod is manufactured in Korea and the fit and finish on the rod is just as good as rods costing 3 times as much.

I have fished this rod since the begining of the season and have been thrilled with it.  The extra foot of reach over my ten foot rods has allowed me a little extra stand off distance for some of the more tricky spots on the river.  On some smaller streams I can cover the water bank to bank without even getting my feet wet.  This is a special purpose nymhing rod, ideally suited for Euro nymphing techniques.

The rod has a supple tip and a bit of power in the butt section.  It presents a cast of nymphs well and the light tip protects fine tippets but the rod's more powerful butt section allows you to quickly bring fish to hand.  I won't comment on the castability of this rod because quite frankly there is no traditional casting involved with many of these techniques.  Recently I had the opportunity to fish the rod with traditional indicator techiques and it is well suited for that purpose as well.  The added length makes mending a breeze but more importantly eleven feet of rod often allows you to keep the line of the water entirely making mending unnecessary.

If your looking for a reasonably prized Czech Nymphing rod you may want to check this one out.  The rod is available in 3-5wt and lengths from 9'-6" to 11'.