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.

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.

Jesus. When someone catches a smalll mouth on the fly this big, what do you say? “Holy mother of Christ that thing is just fucking sloppy!” comes to mind. I won’t say who sent me this (read on) or where it came from. I’m not even tagging this post too much because I can’t even find the words that would do it justice and it just wouldn’t be fair. (Truth is, we’re going there in a few weeks and we just don’t want to be bothered!)

What I will say is that a guide in Michigan sent me this picture and you can find him in our links. Browse his site and marvel.

With the warm temp’s on Saturday, a calm Sunday seemed like a good day for my own personal “opening day” on my home waters.  For me, home waters are literally that… home.  A small warm-water river that actually runs behind my house and through the small rural town I call home.   These opening days are some of my favorite fishing experiences of the year.  I seem to spend as much time admiring flora and fauna as I do trying to poke some fish with a fly.  One of the joys of having home waters is being able to learn the intricate details.  Truely knowing your water inside and out.  A deadfall here, a hole there.  A narrow channel next to a log where you have caught a nice fish the last few years, etc.  The only way to know these is to have spent countless hours fishing these waters.  Spending that much time with anything, good or bad, creates a  bond.  This bond is what causes us to take pride in, and defend, our home waters.

This river in particular, has a long history of threatening the town around it every winter.  In recent years, countless floods have come and gone.  The power of such a small stream at it’s worst, can be unnerving to say the least.  But these floods do more than force us to put everything in our garage up on a tables and clear out our basements.  Floods are the classic sculptors of my home waters, and each opening day is like a new gallery opening for those of us who fish it.  Sometimes the changes are grand, sometimes subtle.  Some for the better, some not so good.  But different.  Altered.  The only constant is change.

Caught a few fish that I hadn’t expected to catch.  A nice, fat, early smallmouth was brought to hand, and a few LARGE carp were spotted in places I had never seen them before.  I’ll make the mental note to look for them later.  Found a few new holes the hard way (Lesson to be learned – always wear your waders with the straps up until you ‘re-learn’ your water).  Suckers moving onto the gravel – always good to fish behind them.  The season is here.  Months of sidewalk shoveling and windshield scraping have given way to flower planting and picnics.  The next few weeks will have me wiping grass from my waders.  A byproduct of a small river running through a small town.  The floatilla of grass clippings used to bother me.  Careless I thought, and lazy I assumed.  Now I just see an it as increase in organic content for the smaller inhabitants of the river.  They need to eat too.  Get up, get out, fish, find a wildflower.