Brachycentrus americanus

A few pictures from a quick hitter central Pennsylvania trip for the grannom emergence.

Beautiful morning on my favorite river.

Waves of caddis fly upstream all day. So thick that I pulled my hood up over my head for awhile to keep them out of my shirt.

It looks like a little toy but that is an 8′ rod.

Bigger water is nice because it allows for longer casts. Pick a spot and you can cast to risers in all directions. It gives you a chance to test out your limits…of which I have many.

With so many aquatic insects in the water I always check my waders and boots when I finish fishing for the day.

Hitchhiker.

A few seasons ago I bought a furled leader for fishing dry flies. A buddy of mine uses one so I decided to give it a go. It does make my loops look great, turns flies over effortlessly, and I say that with modesty. The only downside that I noticed was that the leader seemed a little more wind resistant and it would “stick” a bit in the current at the end of my drift making it harder to lift. I’m going to keep using it for the year and see how I like it.

“Is that a furled leader!?”

An added bonus of road tripping to central PA is that I get to drive past Clem’s. Everyone has their favorites but this is the best BBQ that I’ve had. Plus my wife loves it so it makes it easier to tell her (read ask her) that I’m going fishing and “I’ll stop at Clem’s on the way home, whaddya want.”

Do yourself a favor try it.

Thanks for checking me out.

 

Fontinalis Fin

I’m not really sure which version of the “fin” flies that this is but I think it most closely resembles the Fontinalis Fin…although there may be a grey throat/collar instead of the furnace that I used. This was my first married wing wet and it was very tedious. I set and reset the wings until they fell apart so I cut new slips and tried it again. It’s all about the pinch wrap, and good quality duck quills too. The real master of the winged wet fly is Pennsylvania’s own Don Bastian. Check his work out at http://wp.me/PtVo and see what they’re really supposed to look like.

Thanks for reading.

Florida

If a situation ever arises that would force me to choose between driving 2 hours to Erie to fish for steelhead or fly 2 and a half hours to Florida to fish for tarpon, specks, bonefish, jacks, ‘cuda, snook, etc, etc, I’m taking Florida. I’ve never been a beach person but it’s not even a contest.

A1A…beachfront avenue.

This was my first trip to fish Florida and after mining metric tons of internet info on the subject I was dizzy. A 9wt with an intermediate tip line and a small box of basic flies would have to do. I’ve become quite fond of saltwater flies and there are quite a few that I’d like to tie but stainless steel hooks aren’t cheap.

Clouser’s, deceivers, schminnows, and seaducers.

The beach is funny at 6:30 AM. There are drunks laying around with half finished Coronas, garbage, and a tide’s worth of seaweed washed up on the shore…all conveniently swept away by city employees before the lifeguards open their towers at 10:00 AM and subsequently the masses arrive to stake their rectangles of beach front real estate for the day.

I think Bimini is out there somewhere.

I’ve fished with enough skilled guys to know that my casting needs work. A steady 15 to 20 MPH (or was it knots? what’s the difference, it was damn windy) breeze out of the south for two days reinforced this notion. Facing east and casting right handed put a fly in the collar of my shirt and another one into my right forearm. A size 2 Mustad in your arm is a good reason to remember to pinch down those barbs. Fortunately my cast had collapsed and the hook didn’t give me too much trouble. I ended up casting back handed the rest of the day.

I’m convinced that there isn’t a fish that won’t eat a chartreuse over white Clouser minnow.

So again, I’m new at this. I don’t know anything for certain. I was just going off of any internet info I could dredge up but a repetetive theme was that you can catch snook off of the beach in summer. Snook will winter over in the back bays, rivers, and canals and then move towards the salt as summer sets in and water temps rise. They’ll spawn and then move toward the beach for the summer where they ambush baitfish caught in the wash. They can get so shallow that their backs come out of the water as they run down prey up on the sand. I really think I was about a month and a half early for this but I got lucky anyhow.

So in conclusion, snook are awesome. They readily crush flies, they fight like crazy, and they can get damn big. A large one could really put a hem in your dress. And if anyone finds a pair of discontinued polarized Smith sunglassed rolling around in the Atlantic, those are mine.

Hare’s Ear Wets…sort of

Tying comes to me in spurts. Motivation comes and goes, sometimes driven by the “necessity” of an impending hatch. I mean, c’mon, I have all winter to tie for the Spring but I never do. Now the rush is on. The olives are here and although I haven’t seen them, the blue quills are probably making an appearance. Next will be Grannoms and somewhere in there will be the Quill Gordons. I missed them in 2012 because of the warm Spring but 2013 looks to be a little more promising. So there’s the impetus…the famous Quill Gordon. I’ve become motivated to tie some wets for this year’s Epeorus pleuralis emergence.

Size 12’s

I’ve never tied a Hare’s Ear nymph with proper guard hairs for a tail. I’ve never even owned a hare’s mask but I used what I had on hand to wrap these up. I guess they aren’t proper Hare’s Ear Wets. In the future I’d like to use thin slips of quill in the slate gray color for the tail as well. Now, can anyone explain to me how to tie up a wet fly leader?