Come out and support the Titan Fly Fishers and watch some freakishly inspiring films!

The Titans event will also be featuring some of the Midwest’s top guides and fly tyers tying up some of their favorite local patterns for catching Midwestern finned critters.

I think this is the least amount you’ll pay to see the films so you have no excuse!

Click the flyer for show details

The above is an oddball pattern that saved the day on a few occasions. It needs a name and deserves one for its productivity. It was based on an old streamer pattern that I saw in Fly Tyer mag. All they had was a line drawing of the pattern so I made a visual note and when I sat down at the vise this is what happened. Saddles for the tail with white Puglisi in between, crystal chennile body, scruffy marabou sort of collar off of a pheasant cape, and a cone head. Biggest fish on it was only a 14″ bow but on a day when mostly what you’re getting is chases on other flies you take what you get and a 14″ trout is good enough for most of us anyway. Whatever the case, this fly caught a lot of fish when nothing else was working. It will be one of those that gets a “multiples” spot in my box this coming season.

Olive version of the Nutcracker. Zonker strip tail, palmered marabou over krystal flash, deer collar and spun deer hair head. Good sculpin pattern that gets some viscous strikes when fished from a boat and cast on the banks.

My version of the SHF (shit house fly. aka, McCunes sculpin). Mine is a bit beefier than the original. Zonker strip tail tied off and palmered up the body, fox tail collar with red yarn gill plates (not visible in the pic) under the deer hair collar, spun deer hair head. Same as above for strikes etc…

Murdich minnow. Originally tied as a small mouth pattern. Mine is a Puglisi fiber tail under krystal flash, I used polar fiber butts for the skirt, crystal chennile body top half colored with a marker and big holo eyes. This is one of those flies that I swore was too flashy for trout and was proven wrong that it isn’t. I poo-pooed it for a few years before I tried it. It is a great smallie pattern but trout seem to love it too. I think that because of it, I will start tying some of my trout streamers with more flash. I had fish come out of the water to pounce on it. Loads of fun and can be tied in a variety of colors.

I have a few other patterns that I am working on and have tried on trout last season. One of which is a combo of a Todd’s Wiggle Minnow and a Murdich Minnow. Its almost too fuggly to post but when I tie a few more I will. Its one of those patterns that I’ll tie for bass too. It is super erratic in the water, moves a ton of water, and gets the aggressive fish to jump on it. So far I haven’t moved anything major with it but it has caught some trout. If you have ever fished the “wiggle minnow” you know how much fun it is to fish and this one is just as fun but dives deeper.

Yeah, I know. Is this really necessary?

There is a SHITLOAD of info available in all sorts of media to get yourself educated on this sport/pastime/gay ass artsy activity. What ever you want to call it, it isn’t like its brand spankin’ new and if you’re at a loss to figure it out, there are ways to get a leg up on the clueless, get smart, and get the most from your next trip. Whatever the situation, a local stream or lake or a weekend excursion, there are no excuses for not knowing what to be prepared for. If you’re gonna do it, make the most of it for yourself and rely on your learned knowledge versus that of the person that took you to where you’re fishing for the day or weekend, or, if your lucky, the week. Chances are, that person that took you there wants to just go fishing just as bad as you and wants to do it without having to keep tabs on you. Sure, there are exceptions, first timers, etc… still… even the “noobs” should do thier homework. What are you going to do to prepare for that next outing?

Let’s start with the basics:

BOOKS and MAGAZINES.

What are you looking for? Its easy… Search for it. Find it. Buy it. Borrow it. Steal it. Just get it. Its that simple.

All it takes is a little forethought and a few pages before bedtime for a few weeks before you go that will help you get educated before that next trip. Are you gonna be an expert after a few books? Of course not. Don’t be an asshole and think that either. Trust me on that.

It should be no surprise that there are books that will cover just about every facet of this sport. Rivers, lakes, ponds, fresh water, salt water… Even if you have nothing planned, it never hurts to fill in the gaps between what you already know and what you would love to do in the future. Yeah reading about the basics, gear, rigging, etc… is pretty dry but at the very least you can go knowing what “tippet” is and how it is important that your leader has the balls to “turn over” your fly. Plus, the next time you are hanging around with your fishing pals that already know this shit you won’t be the guy or girl asking the dumb questions about what size tippet you should use with “X” fly in”Z” situation and/or if you should be fishing a floating, sinking, or intermediate line. Even if you already know the basics about rigging etc…  pick up a book about baitfish or entemology or one on what your target species is. Learning a bit about your quarry will pay off on the water as will knowledge on how to read the water your on. It will tell you a lot. You just have to know what you are looking for.

DVD/Video.

This option is better than it has ever been.  Even our library in Toledo, OH has videos and DVD’s on fly fishing (along with books). Sure, they’re not holding Hustle and Fish or any of the AEG films but they have DVD’s and videos you could learn from and they span a variety of water types (fresh or salt). If your library sucks and you need this form of media to learn then I would suggest you hit your local fly shop or Google.

The Interwebs…

Ahhh the Interwebs… Probably the best source of info you’ll ever find. Sorry print media but its true. I love print and I would never carry a laptop to the shitter. But you should know that while your reading this there are others watching You Tube vids on fly tying or fly casting and those folks will use what they learned to out fish you.

Probably the best gig on the interwebs is the USGS Real Time Water Data. Hands down the greatest cheat sheet for what your river is doing at the moment and the recent past. USGS gauges are the next best things to being there. The trick is to learn the patterns and log what you see at any given flow for clarity and fish-ability. For example, you were on such and such river and the visability was at just over a foot at 340cfs. You can usually find some info on fishing forums to help out with this too. Once you get this part down, you’ll be hard pressed to ever waste a drive to find that the river is blown or just still muddy from the last blown out. Super important tool for steelheading the Great Lakes. Its easy to figure out. Go to your state, click on the river you want to see and presto. You get the flow in cubic feet per second, the height (at the gauge), and sometimes temp and other neat stuff like amount of dissolved oxygen. Hardest part is finding the river you want because they aren’t labeled at first glance but if you put your mouse on one of the dots it should pop up the name of the river.

YOUTUBE:

Great source for casting tips, fly tying, fish porn… Obviously lots of stuff there.

Blogs:

Just like the one you are reading right now. There is a wide variety of them out there and most are not aimed at how too’s but if you took the time to comment and maybe ask a question you might actually learn something from these people. Just remember that the blogger’s home base is internationally anywhere so the knowledge base is huge. We like to get hits on our blogs so asking us a quick question is perfectly acceptable. We reserve the right to publicly “flame” you though if you ask something stupid.

You can read the rest of this story right here at The Drake Online with its fresh new look. Its an older story from last year or the year before but well worth the re-post here for the obvious reasons.

I sympathize with “The Junkie”. I know the pain of his addiction. Literally, I can still feel it in my elbow on my stripping arm from the last two trips up north. Tennis elbow has a partner in the world of fly fishing and it doesn’t come from casting. It comes from the answer to questions like this one:

“Dude, how is it that we are using the same fly and the same rig and you’re getting twice the hook ups on the same amount of follows?” He said.

“Strip faster.” I said.

Now I’m paying for it everytime I get the milk from the fridge. Streamer fishing for a few days from a boat can be tough on an old guy like me.

A couple of my Hatchless friends, among others, jokingly (I think) chide me for liking to tie and to use small flies, particularly dries, while fishing. I thought I would take the time to explain why I do so and in the process, possibly bring some people over to the dark side, even if just occasionally.

Fishing for me is an escape from my daily life. I’m a stay-at-home dad (SAHD, for short) by choice. I quit my job as a public librarian to be with my children full time, and while I love them dearly, Daddy needs some alone time once in a while. That’s one of the reasons I picked up fly fishing. It allows me peaceful time away from making breakfasts, lunches, and dinners; time away from vacuuming; time away from laundry; time away from resetting the Mac from Mandarin back to English; and time away from helping to brush tiny teeth and wipe tiny butts.

Another reason I took up fly fishing is that I grew up spin fishing for bluegills and crappies and trolling for walleye and salmon with my family. When spin fishing, my dad would always tell us boys to stop fiddling so much with the gear and “just let it sit there a while.” Huge spoons and J-plugs being pulled behind a boat for hours while the sun has yet to come up, or is just going down, is fun in its own way, but I wanted more. More fiddling around. There was nothing wrong with hauling in fifty good-sized perch or especially, twenty-five to thirty-pound coho and chinook. That was awesome. Still, I wanted more.

More what? Well, I wanted to see the fish taking the bait. Okay, then why didn’t we just go bass fishing with poppers? I don’t know—we just weren’t bass fisherman in my house. We viewed walleye and salmon as the best fish and type of fishing. Growing up, I always viewed bass fishing as a Southern sport complete with the accompanying accents. (I am, by the way, a total Southern-accent bigot for some bizarre reason, and that may have contributed to my lack of bass fishing as well. I do tie and use small poppers for smallmouth now.) Seeing a cork bobber dip was as close to seeing the take as I ever got until I began fly fishing, and everyone knows that’s no fun.

Then there is simply my personality. I am a person mired in minutiae. As a former English teacher (seeing a pattern yet?) I automatically analyze everything I see and hear—I always have. I once got the crap beaten out me in my own backyard, practically with my mother’s permission, by a neighborhood buddy for insisting that he enunciate the -gs at the ends of his present participles (I was about ten or eleven). I also am a bit of a gearhead and tinkerer. No other human has worked on my Jeep in six years and I have built everything from the deck attached to my house to my own USB car charger for my iPods and PDA. (I don’t split my own wood or make my own transistors; however, don’t think for a moment that I haven’t considered those.)

Again, what does this possibly have to do with fly fishing, and particularly, dry-fly fishing tiny flies? In my view, there is no point in fly fishing if one isn’t going to tie his own flies, and  again, I want to see the take. To me, a size ten hook is big and a fourteen is perfect.  I have yet to see a bug on the water that is as big as, or looks like, the old hard-sided Samsonite luggage I see some guys tossing. I am also a weight bigot. I absolutely refuse to add split shot to a leader. (Actually, I have done it once or twice, but I felt dirty.) My younger brother, with whom I go steelheading whenever possible, just loves this about me. I do add weight to the nymphs I tie, though I rarely fish them. I’m much more likely to use a hare’s-ear parachute dry than a hare’s-ear nymph.

I guess what it all boils down to is that I just want to see that damn strike so badly that I’m willing to give up catching many fish (and quite likely larger fish) for catching ones that will make me happy. If that means I only get a few eight to ten-inch trout, so be it. (I will resort to weighted nymphs to avoid being skunked entirely, but I’ll be damned if I ever use a woolly bugger again.)

Anyone who thinks a #26 parachute pseudocloeon or a #22 tricorythodes spinner won’t catch a decent-sized trout, I have a test for you: let me stick one of those little bastards into your lip and pull on it. I have a feeling you’d follow wherever I led.

Part of the excitement for the creative fly tier is naming the fly.  But lets be  honest someone, somewhere has probably assembled the same material arrangement before, and named it themselves.  But the best fly names are those that have a story. Hence, the brief and pointless story of the S.H.F…  One of my “go to” streamers for trout and smallmouth is a simple sculpin pattern consisting of palmered and zonkered rabbit strips and a spun deer hair head with a collar.  It probably had a name when I tied it but I don’t know what it was.  While fishing it one day with Caulfield, he points out that I am fishing with a “Hedgehog” or “Woodchuck” or some other name I can’t remember.  That’s two ‘official’ names now that don’t mean anything and no one remembers.

Soon after, Caulfield fishes one of the Hatchless home waters (Michigan’s Ausable River) with a guide who actually gives him this very same pattern but refers to it as an S.H.F.  and since then, the name has stuck with me.

Why????  Simple.  The guide had found one of these flies stuck to the door of an outhouse, liked it, copied it, and used it.  Hence the name ‘Shit House Fly’.  The moral of the story, name  your flies something fun.  You are the only one you have to impress.

Kelly Galloup has mastered this idea with flies like the ‘Zoo Cougar’, the ‘Sex Dungeon’ and the ‘Green Butt Monkey’.