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fishing, casting, and recruiting
wow- what a day! hit the streams with my son, (18), who is here for the
summer. stopped in appalachian anglers first, to pick up a couple of new flies- god, i could go nuts in there- and after inquiring as to theo, whom i found out is in alaska, i think, we headed out to the waters of the watauga river. there were a couple of other anglers out there, who reported little action, and after about an hour there, with the same result, we headed to another stream up on the parkway. you know which one i'm talkin about, opie. nice trout waters, and beautiful scenery. hung out there for a couple of hours during which time i fell into some fairly deep, very fast moving water- no injury to report, and i was saved from being swept away by the rocks that locked me in! i really thought i had good footing, and i knew there was a little pool of deeper water there, but my efforts at caution did nothing to help me. came out with a couple of scratches on my leg, and that was it. actually, the water felt pretty good, but i stayed wet the rest of the day. after that adventure, my son and i decided it was time to eat some lunch, and so we layed out our food on a rock, and sat down to eat. a few minutes into lunch, i noticed a prolific hatch. i got all excited and put down my food, and picked up my rod. however, another half an hour didn't help zero catch score for the day thus far. but my son witnessed his first hatch, and appreciated the significance after i explained it to him. we then decided to head to price park, so that i could practice casting, and while doing so, a young man came up to me, and struck a fly fishin related conversation. turns out he is a guide who lives in michigan, and is down here for the summer to teach fly fishin to some kids at camp. i told him i was just learning, and so he asked me to show him my cast. he then spent about half an hour with me, workin on my cast, and by the time he re-joined his friends to play ball, i was casting with great confidence, and pretty well. i heard one of his friends say to him that he was a really good teacher, becasue he had taught me that well, that fast. (so, you were right mark-good suggestion, only it didn't happen on campus G). anyway, my son wanted to try it, and damned if he isn't a natural. he was casting that line out, with nice loops, and layin it down straight, and before we left the park, he was hooked. all the way home he kept talkin about how much he wants a fly rod, and he wants to go back out tommorrow. he just fell right into it. good stuff! all in all an exciting, satisfying, and exhausting day. *and* i feel good about my casting. ;-) snakefiddler- can't wait for october........ |
fishing, casting, and recruiting
"snakefiddler" wrote in
.....snip an obvious fine day for ol' snake... Good on ya Jen, you're actually moving faster at this flyfishing thing then I imagined you would. Getting casting lessons, observing hatches (I ain't never identified a hatch, btw) and now your son is getting the itch. You have embarked on a long, expensive, interesting and satisfying hobby, where will it all end? Maybe for you, the rest of your life I would hazard a guess. See ya in Oct. Frank Church |
fishing, casting, and recruiting
"Frank Church" wrote in message 9.11... "snakefiddler" wrote in ....snip an obvious fine day for ol' snake... Good on ya Jen, you're actually moving faster at this flyfishing thing then I imagined you would. i am *so* diggin it. i'm looking forward to doing a lot of fishing this week, while i am between sessions for summer school. Getting casting lessons, folks seem to be very willing to help.. observing hatches we saw two today, at two different locations. (I ain't never identified a hatch, btw) and now your son is getting the itch. You have embarked on a long, expensive, interesting and satisfying hobby, where will it all end? Maybe for you, the rest of your life I would hazard a guess. i reckon you're right about that. this is really good stuff. and now that i am beginning to feel good about my casting, it is even more exciting. i found out from my aunt the other day that my great grandmother was an avid fisherwoman- did a great deal of fishing in indiana, in the white river. i'm sure you're familiar with it. See ya in Oct. lookin forward to it :-) snake Frank Church |
fishing, casting, and recruiting
Babylonian Proverb: "The gods do not deduct from man's allotted span the
hours spent in fishing." Sounds like your gaining time. "snakefiddler" wrote in message ... "Frank Church" wrote in message 9.11... "snakefiddler" wrote in ....snip an obvious fine day for ol' snake... Good on ya Jen, you're actually moving faster at this flyfishing thing then I imagined you would. i am *so* diggin it. i'm looking forward to doing a lot of fishing this week, while i am between sessions for summer school. Getting casting lessons, folks seem to be very willing to help.. observing hatches we saw two today, at two different locations. (I ain't never identified a hatch, btw) and now your son is getting the itch. You have embarked on a long, expensive, interesting and satisfying hobby, where will it all end? Maybe for you, the rest of your life I would hazard a guess. i reckon you're right about that. this is really good stuff. and now that i am beginning to feel good about my casting, it is even more exciting. i found out from my aunt the other day that my great grandmother was an avid fisherwoman- did a great deal of fishing in indiana, in the white river. i'm sure you're familiar with it. See ya in Oct. lookin forward to it :-) snake Frank Church |
fishing, casting, and recruiting
"Frank Church" wrote in message 9.11... "snakefiddler" wrote in ....snip an obvious fine day for ol' snake... Good on ya Jen, you're actually moving faster at this flyfishing thing then I imagined you would. Getting casting lessons, observing hatches (I ain't never identified a hatch, btw)... I was going to work this into my Wales TR, but my summer grad school seems to dominating all my time and that TR seems to be fading, so I'll tell it here. I SAW A HATCH! I mean, REALLY saw a hatch! I was fishing i Brecon, at the bottom of this pool behind a bridge abutment, and noticed that there were a growing number of little white bugs starting to accumulate in the 'wind eddy' behind the bridge. The fish (what few there were) were starting to rise in the river eddy there, so I instantly recognized that a hatch was going on. I was standing about waist deep in fairly clear water with a grey-green bottom, and as I looked down at the water around me, I saw the occasional 'thing' float by.....maybe one per cubic meter of water. I gently reached down and trapped one, and bygod, it was a nymph. An honest-to-mergatroyd nymph! I instantly realized why PTs and GRHEs work so well...at first glance, this thing was the spitting image of a #28 PT, but with slightly more pronounced legs in the upper half. It was such a total A-HAH! moment that I was overjoyed. I had always imagined that, during hatches, the water was saturated with these things, and I never had any real understanding of how they moved, or why a fish would select my fly instead of the real thing. But seeing these in the water made the mental light bulbs all light up. Two real interesting observations I had from this experience: 1) Contrary to what I have read, not one of these nymphs was floating in the 'head up' position. They were all horizontal, with the head/thorax upstream. The shape of the body was the exact tapered shape of a well-tied PT, but instead of rising the way the books all show them, they were rising horizontally. This might have been because they were getting swept downstream in the mediocre current, but the fish downstream of me were taking them more often than the fish in the eddy upstream. That tells me a lot about the importance of keeping some tension on your line as they drift in the current, to keep them horizontally. This is also why they get taken at the end of the drift, when they are sweeping upwards. 2) (this is a biggie): Every single one of the nymphs I saw was at approximately the same depth as it floated past me. I figure that they were all coming from the same general source (somewhere near the downstream end of the eddy, where the current could steal them), and were rising at about the same rate. That means that there was a very specific 'diagonal rising zone' that they would be in; deeper down at the eddy, reaching the surface somewhere downstream of me. If I were casting a PT in the current, it would be very important to know where this 'rising zone' was so that I could get my nymph into it. I imagine that a feeding fish would not be looking for a nymph along the bottom if the naturals were inches from the surface, for example. Anyway, I was overjoyed to actually see this thing in action. Like so many things that you have a rich mental image of....the real thing had absolutely no resemblance to what I imagined it would look like. --riverman |
fishing, casting, and recruiting
"rw" wrote in message m... riverman wrote: I SAW A HATCH! I mean, REALLY saw a hatch! Cool. Fishing a mayfly hatch is the essential flyfishing experience, IMO. The day before yesterday I went to the Big Wood a second time for the green drake hatch. These are big bugs -- size 12 -- and the fish go nuts for them. It was outstanding. Did you, or have you ever noticed what I mentioned about the 'diagonal rising zone' of the nymphs on a stream? I always sort of figured that the nymphs would be rising in a sort of inverted snowstorm: all going upwards at all depths of the water column. What I saw was quite different, up by the source eddy, there were none near the surface, and I suppose a dozen meters downstream, there were none at the bottom. --riverman |
fishing, casting, and recruiting
riverman wrote:
I SAW A HATCH! I mean, REALLY saw a hatch! Cool. Fishing a mayfly hatch is the essential flyfishing experience, IMO. The day before yesterday I went to the Big Wood a second time for the green drake hatch. These are big bugs -- size 12 -- and the fish go nuts for them. It was outstanding. I lost what I thought was my last green drake dry fly on a fish (AARRGH!), so I tried a a few flies that I thought might work -- a #12 parachute adams, a very small green-bodied stimulator, and a #12 green EHC. The fish utterly ignored them. Then I found an actual green drake pattern in my crowded flybox and again caught fish. It brought home to me the importance of matching the hatch under these conditions. -- Cut "to the chase" for my email address. |
fishing, casting, and recruiting
"rw" wrote in message m... riverman wrote: Did you, or have you ever noticed what I mentioned about the 'diagonal rising zone' of the nymphs on a stream? I always sort of figured that the nymphs would be rising in a sort of inverted snowstorm: all going upwards at all depths of the water column. What I saw was quite different, up by the source eddy, there were none near the surface, and I suppose a dozen meters downstream, there were none at the bottom. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "diagonal rising zone." I've never seen nymphs rising to the surface. Maybe your eyesight is better than mine. One thing I have noticed, and particularly in this green drake hatch, is that the bugs weren't emerging all over the river. They appeared in a certain type of current -- fast and deep. The river is still pretty high, but clear. These were not places you'd normally expect to find trout holding. The only reason they were there was to feed actively, and they didn't have much time to nail the big duns. One cool thing is that you could tell where the mayflies were emerging by watching birds. Robin, blackbirds, and western tanagers would swoop out from the back to nab duns in the air, and tree swallows would pick them off the surface. You can use the bird situation to model the 'diagonal rising zone'. If the emergers were coming up at a certain spot in the river, and there was as light breeze (say, blowing southwards), then the birds would not all be congregating above that spot on the river, at all heights. The ones who were feeding low to the water would be right above that spot, but the duns that got past those birds would be blown to the south as they rose. So you'd expect the birds at higher elevations to be farther to the south. This is the 'diagonal rising zone' of the duns. In the water, its the same. Imagine a deep pool of slow water, with an outlet on the downstream side. If there are rising nymphs throughout the water column in the deep pool, then there are nymphs getting sucked into the outlet current at all levels. But, a few feet downstream from the pool, there won't be any nymphs at the bottom; they will have risen a few inches, so there will be an 'empty zone' along the bottom of the river from that point on down. Dragging a nymph through that zone will be useless. The 'diagonal rising zone' is the diagonal zone where the nymphs are, starting at the bottom near the pool and rising to the surface several meters downstream, depending on the current. In Wales, all the nymphs I saw swhere I was standing were between 1 and 2 feet below the surface: I looked deeper and never saw one go by at knee level, and (in an effort to keep my sleeves dry) I tried to find one near the surface to scoop up, but never saw one shallower than 1 foot deep. Also, there were no fish rising near me, but they were rising about 10 meters downstream from me, or in the calm pool above me. I suspect the fish near me were eating nymphs that were 1-2 feet deep, that the fish 5 meters downstream from me were eating nymphs that were 6 inches to 1 foot deep, and the fish 10 meters downstream were eating nymphs on the surface. --riverman |
fishing, casting, and recruiting
"riverman" wrote in message ... "Frank Church" wrote in message 9.11... "snakefiddler" wrote in ....snip an obvious fine day for ol' snake... Good on ya Jen, you're actually moving faster at this flyfishing thing then I imagined you would. Getting casting lessons, observing hatches (I ain't never identified a hatch, btw)... I was going to work this into my Wales TR, but my summer grad school seems to dominating all my time and that TR seems to be fading, so I'll tell it here. I SAW A HATCH! I mean, REALLY saw a hatch! I was fishing i Brecon, at the bottom of this pool behind a bridge abutment, and noticed that there were a growing number of little white bugs starting to accumulate in the 'wind eddy' behind the bridge. The fish (what few there were) were starting to rise in the river eddy there, so I instantly recognized that a hatch was going on. I was standing about waist deep in fairly clear water with a grey-green bottom, and as I looked down at the water around me, I saw the occasional 'thing' float by.....maybe one per cubic meter of water. I gently reached down and trapped one, and bygod, it was a nymph. An honest-to-mergatroyd nymph! I instantly realized why PTs and GRHEs work so well...at first glance, this thing was the spitting image of a #28 PT, but with slightly more pronounced legs in the upper half. It was such a total A-HAH! moment that I was overjoyed. I had always imagined that, during hatches, the water was saturated with these things, and I never had any real understanding of how they moved, or why a fish would select my fly instead of the real thing. But seeing these in the water made the mental light bulbs all light up. Two real interesting observations I had from this experience: 1) Contrary to what I have read, not one of these nymphs was floating in the 'head up' position. They were all horizontal, with the head/thorax upstream. The shape of the body was the exact tapered shape of a well-tied PT, but instead of rising the way the books all show them, they were rising horizontally. This might have been because they were getting swept downstream in the mediocre current, but the fish downstream of me were taking them more often than the fish in the eddy upstream. That tells me a lot about the importance of keeping some tension on your line as they drift in the current, to keep them horizontally. This is also why they get taken at the end of the drift, when they are sweeping upwards. 2) (this is a biggie): Every single one of the nymphs I saw was at approximately the same depth as it floated past me. I figure that they were all coming from the same general source (somewhere near the downstream end of the eddy, where the current could steal them), and were rising at about the same rate. That means that there was a very specific 'diagonal rising zone' that they would be in; deeper down at the eddy, reaching the surface somewhere downstream of me. If I were casting a PT in the current, it would be very important to know where this 'rising zone' was so that I could get my nymph into it. I imagine that a feeding fish would not be looking for a nymph along the bottom if the naturals were inches from the surface, for example. Anyway, I was overjoyed to actually see this thing in action. Like so many things that you have a rich mental image of....the real thing had absolutely no resemblance to what I imagined it would look like. --riverman god, i got excited just reading your post, and i wasn't even there! i know i haven't been at this very long, but i *have* figured out that an experience like that is what fly fishermen dream about. to have all that rich information in the water, and possess the knowledge and ability to put it all together, *and* make it work must be thrilling. i don't believe in an elitist society, either in the functional world nor the leisure, but i sure can see how having the ability to understand all the intricacies involved in fly fishing, and manipulate them to success can instill a great deal of pride in one's fishing abilities. great stuff- snakefiddler |
fishing, casting, and recruiting
riverman wrote:
Did you, or have you ever noticed what I mentioned about the 'diagonal rising zone' of the nymphs on a stream? I always sort of figured that the nymphs would be rising in a sort of inverted snowstorm: all going upwards at all depths of the water column. What I saw was quite different, up by the source eddy, there were none near the surface, and I suppose a dozen meters downstream, there were none at the bottom. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "diagonal rising zone." I've never seen nymphs rising to the surface. Maybe your eyesight is better than mine. One thing I have noticed, and particularly in this green drake hatch, is that the bugs weren't emerging all over the river. They appeared in a certain type of current -- fast and deep. The river is still pretty high, but clear. These were not places you'd normally expect to find trout holding. The only reason they were there was to feed actively, and they didn't have much time to nail the big duns. One cool thing is that you could tell where the mayflies were emerging by watching birds. Robin, blackbirds, and western tanagers would swoop out from the back to nab duns in the air, and tree swallows would pick them off the surface. -- Cut "to the chase" for my email address. |
Coolest hatches (was fishing, casting, and recruiting)
riverman wrote:
You can use the bird situation to model the 'diagonal rising zone'. If the emergers were coming up at a certain spot in the river, and there was as light breeze (say, blowing southwards), then the birds would not all be congregating above that spot on the river, at all heights. The ones who were feeding low to the water would be right above that spot, but the duns that got past those birds would be blown to the south as they rose. So you'd expect the birds at higher elevations to be farther to the south. This is the 'diagonal rising zone' of the duns. In the water, its the same. Imagine a deep pool of slow water, with an outlet on the downstream side. If there are rising nymphs throughout the water column in the deep pool, then there are nymphs getting sucked into the outlet current at all levels. But, a few feet downstream from the pool, there won't be any nymphs at the bottom; they will have risen a few inches, so there will be an 'empty zone' along the bottom of the river from that point on down. Dragging a nymph through that zone will be useless. The 'diagonal rising zone' is the diagonal zone where the nymphs are, starting at the bottom near the pool and rising to the surface several meters downstream, depending on the current. That clears it up. As I understand what you're saying, the current is taking the emerging nymphs downstream as they rise through the water column, so you find them at different depths depending on how far downstream they are from the bottom. Fishing emergers is something that's mostly beyond my experience. I've had some success with midge emergers on the San Juan, but I mostly try to dead-drift nymphs near the bottom. Willi is the by far the best emerger flyfisher I've ever seen. I've watched him catch some big fish that way, when everyone else was getting frustrated fishing dry flies. It seems to me like something that has to be learned with much experience and great attention to what's going on with the bugs and the fish. I'm going to offer a question for ROFF: What are the coolest hatches you've ever seen? Here's my list: - Brown Drakes on Silver Creek, Idaho. These huge mayflies (#8) make a phenomenal spinner fall in the evening, and continue through the night. You can catch fish in the pitch black of night, striking by ear. - Morning Tricos on Silver Creek. Another spinner fall. It requires a dead calm, or the tiny bugs are blown off the water. The fish feed on pods, hoovering in rafts of bugs. You fish downstream, aiming your fly into a mouth. - Salmonflies on Marsh Creek and the Middle Fork of the Salmon. Huge gyrocopter-like bugs that always look on the verge of crashing. - Black caddis on the Bighorn. Keep your mouth closed. - Green drakes on the Big Wood. -- Cut "to the chase" for my email address. |
Coolest hatches (was fishing, casting, and recruiting)
I'm not sure of the insect type, as it was early in my ff experience but I
saw a hatch on Wilson Creek one time. The bugs were comin' to the top of the water and looked like popcorn poppin'--HONESTLY. Their wings would unfold (?), they would float with the current momentarily and then fly off. It was really neat, as I had never seen anything like it, and I wasn't sure what was happenin' at first. Finally it dawned on me what was taking place. I had only read about hatches, in books, at that time. I have since seen many bugs emerge in numbers, but never like my first experience. Mark "rw" wrote in message m... riverman wrote: You can use the bird situation to model the 'diagonal rising zone'. If the emergers were coming up at a certain spot in the river, and there was as light breeze (say, blowing southwards), then the birds would not all be congregating above that spot on the river, at all heights. The ones who were feeding low to the water would be right above that spot, but the duns that got past those birds would be blown to the south as they rose. So you'd expect the birds at higher elevations to be farther to the south. This is the 'diagonal rising zone' of the duns. In the water, its the same. Imagine a deep pool of slow water, with an outlet on the downstream side. If there are rising nymphs throughout the water column in the deep pool, then there are nymphs getting sucked into the outlet current at all levels. But, a few feet downstream from the pool, there won't be any nymphs at the bottom; they will have risen a few inches, so there will be an 'empty zone' along the bottom of the river from that point on down. Dragging a nymph through that zone will be useless. The 'diagonal rising zone' is the diagonal zone where the nymphs are, starting at the bottom near the pool and rising to the surface several meters downstream, depending on the current. That clears it up. As I understand what you're saying, the current is taking the emerging nymphs downstream as they rise through the water column, so you find them at different depths depending on how far downstream they are from the bottom. Fishing emergers is something that's mostly beyond my experience. I've had some success with midge emergers on the San Juan, but I mostly try to dead-drift nymphs near the bottom. Willi is the by far the best emerger flyfisher I've ever seen. I've watched him catch some big fish that way, when everyone else was getting frustrated fishing dry flies. It seems to me like something that has to be learned with much experience and great attention to what's going on with the bugs and the fish. I'm going to offer a question for ROFF: What are the coolest hatches you've ever seen? Here's my list: - Brown Drakes on Silver Creek, Idaho. These huge mayflies (#8) make a phenomenal spinner fall in the evening, and continue through the night. You can catch fish in the pitch black of night, striking by ear. - Morning Tricos on Silver Creek. Another spinner fall. It requires a dead calm, or the tiny bugs are blown off the water. The fish feed on pods, hoovering in rafts of bugs. You fish downstream, aiming your fly into a mouth. - Salmonflies on Marsh Creek and the Middle Fork of the Salmon. Huge gyrocopter-like bugs that always look on the verge of crashing. - Black caddis on the Bighorn. Keep your mouth closed. - Green drakes on the Big Wood. -- Cut "to the chase" for my email address. |
Coolest hatches (was fishing, casting, and recruiting)
From: rw
I'm going to offer a question for ROFF: What are the coolest hatches you've ever seen? Here's my list: - Brown Drakes on Silver Creek, Idaho. These huge mayflies (#8) make a phenomenal spinner fall in the evening, and continue through the night. You can catch fish in the pitch black of night, striking by ear. - Morning Tricos on Silver Creek. Another spinner fall. It requires a dead calm, or the tiny bugs are blown off the water. The fish feed on pods, hoovering in rafts of bugs. You fish downstream, aiming your fly into a mouth. - Salmonflies on Marsh Creek and the Middle Fork of the Salmon. Huge gyrocopter-like bugs that always look on the verge of crashing. - Black caddis on the Bighorn. Keep your mouth closed. - Green drakes on the Big Wood. Siphlonurus Alternatus on the Swift in MA. The spinner fall rather than the hatch. The big size 10 spinners drop right at dark, and sometimes in such numbers that attempting to fish it is useless. Sadly, this hatch seems to be disappearing on this river for no apparent reason. Trico spinner fall on the Battenkill. Same as you described on Silver Creek. The Eastern Tricos are *small*, 26 and 28 toward the end of the hatch. I used to tie a "double" fly on an 18 or 20 so I could use a decent sized hook. Worked to an extent, but was far from perfect. Hendrickson/Red Quill hatch on the Farmington River in CT. Here again sometimes so heavy at it's peak it is nearly impossible to fish. George Adams "All good fishermen stay young until they die, for fishing is the only dream of youth that doth not grow stale with age." ---- J.W Muller |
Coolest hatches (was fishing, casting, and recruiting)
"Jeff Miller" wrote in message news:RBFDc.5744$mN3.1637@lakeread06... the only true "hatch" i've experienced was penns creek 2000, march browns, sulphurs, black caddis, and grey caddis. a blizzard of bugs that excited the fish for hours throughout the day, not just minutes near dark. it's caused me to return each year since, but i've not seen it repeated. this year, for about 20 minutes around dark was close...even saw my first green drake. I remember my first green drake, at least I think thats what it was. I posted on roff about it. My overwhelming thought was of recognition from all the pictures I had seen. It was an amazing feeling. --riverman |
Coolest hatches (was fishing, casting, and recruiting)
the only true "hatch" i've experienced was penns creek 2000, march
browns, sulphurs, black caddis, and grey caddis. a blizzard of bugs that excited the fish for hours throughout the day, not just minutes near dark. it's caused me to return each year since, but i've not seen it repeated. this year, for about 20 minutes around dark was close...even saw my first green drake. the waters, wildlife, and scenery of montana and idaho, not the hatches (so far), have seduced me as well... maybe this year the bugs will sing the sirens' song, eh? jeff rw wrote: I'm going to offer a question for ROFF: What are the coolest hatches you've ever seen? Here's my list: - Brown Drakes on Silver Creek, Idaho. These huge mayflies (#8) make a phenomenal spinner fall in the evening, and continue through the night. You can catch fish in the pitch black of night, striking by ear. - Morning Tricos on Silver Creek. Another spinner fall. It requires a dead calm, or the tiny bugs are blown off the water. The fish feed on pods, hoovering in rafts of bugs. You fish downstream, aiming your fly into a mouth. - Salmonflies on Marsh Creek and the Middle Fork of the Salmon. Huge gyrocopter-like bugs that always look on the verge of crashing. - Black caddis on the Bighorn. Keep your mouth closed. - Green drakes on the Big Wood. |
Coolest hatches (was fishing, casting, and recruiting)
"Mark H. Bowen" wrote in message ... I'm not sure of the insect type, as it was early in my ff experience but I saw a hatch on Wilson Creek one time. i have only seen a literal handful of hatches (as might be classicly considered) in the carolina appalachians. first time was on hazel, on one of the few times we were on the creek near dark. they were creamy, probably sulphurs, based on what i saw described as such on penns. fish rose everywhere, we would catch the odd riser, but nothing spectacular. then, about ten years ago, at snowbird, during the first weekend in april, a sort of reverse drizzle of little blue duns just went on for a couple hours or more; i can honestly say that, for the first time in my north carolina experience, i truly "matched the hatch" with the smallest adams para in my box, and actually caught more fish than with a standard attractor. couple years after that, there was a green drake hatch on lower hazel that only lasted about 30 mins. i didn't see the first fish rise. the duns looked like little toys, bouncing down the riffles. i've probably forgotten a couple more events, but you get the drift. yfitons wayno |
Coolest hatches (was fishing, casting, and recruiting)
rw asks:
I'm going to offer a question for ROFF: What are the coolest hatches you've ever seen? 1. Green Drakes at peak of hatch on Penn's(trestle pool). Literally, millions of extremely large white spinners, fish going berserk. 2.Sulfurs on Big Fishing Creek, three different species of duns hatching, two species of spinners in the air. No clue what each fish wanted, and each individual wanted something different. Put 20 different flies on that night. 3.First Penn's clave, March Brown spinner fall. These buggers are in the air a lot of nights, but never fall. They did, in Poe Paddy, and yielded a few nice fish, and one really nice fish. So disoriented, I got Handyman lost getting out of Poe Paddy... 4.Penn's again, April 2003, Grannom Caddis. Hatching adults were clustered so thick on my wader legs(brown neoprene, maybe they thought I was a tree?) that Makela easily scooped two handfuls off the back of my right leg(about 500 bugs) and didn't make a dent in the total, and that was just the few who clambered onto me. 5. Hendricksons on Little Schuyllkill River. Breezy day, heavy hatch was blown all over the creek. Fish went nuts chasing blown-over and drowned adults. This went on for nearly 3 hours. |
Coolest hatches (was fishing, casting, and recruiting)
"rw" wrote... snip I'm going to offer a question for ROFF: What are the coolest hatches you've ever seen? Besides seeing some minor hatches, I ended up in the middle of a massive sulphur hatch on the Swift River in Massachusetts a few years ago that was phenomenal. I almost forgot to fish, I was so taken by the event. -- TL, Tim http://css.sbcma.com/timj |
Coolest hatches (was fishing, casting, and recruiting)
1. Green Drakes at peak of hatch on Penn's
2.Sulfurs on Big Fishing Creek, 3.First Penn's clave, March Brown spinner fall. 4.Penn's again, April 2003, Grannom Caddis. 5. Hendricksons on Little Schuyllkill River. I'll see your 5 and raise you the white miller hatch on either the Potomac or the Rappahannock River. I have caught it in both places. 30 feet out from shore, you loose track of where you are. You can no longer see the shore. You need a scarf or settle on coughing up bugs for the next week, 'cause they're so thick you can't breath. I think the one on the Rappahnnock was the most intense as you added darkness into the picture. In both cases, if you had anything white on the end of your line, it wasn't on the water for more than 30 seconds. Smallies, bluegill, carp, chub, anything in the water were all on the surface feeding. |
Coolest hatches (was fishing, casting, and recruiting)
Frank Reid wrote:
1. Green Drakes at peak of hatch on Penn's 2.Sulfurs on Big Fishing Creek, 3.First Penn's clave, March Brown spinner fall. 4.Penn's again, April 2003, Grannom Caddis. 5. Hendricksons on Little Schuyllkill River. I'll see your 5 and raise you the white miller hatch on either the Potomac or the Rappahannock River. I have caught it in both places. 30 feet out from shore, you loose track of where you are. You can no longer see the shore. You need a scarf or settle on coughing up bugs for the next week, 'cause they're so thick you can't breath. I think the one on the Rappahnnock was the most intense as you added darkness into the picture. In both cases, if you had anything white on the end of your line, it wasn't on the water for more than 30 seconds. Smallies, bluegill, carp, chub, anything in the water were all on the surface feeding. First, I'm not easily surprised/amazed/puzzled..... .....First Penns Clave (2000), first day - Saturday, about 5 PM. I stepped off the island behind the Cherry Run cabin and I thought, for a few seconds, that I was having a TIE. There was a step function from daylight to near-total darkness. March Brown hatch all around me. Absolutely astounding. Never before or after have I seen any such concentration of insects. Had to be a hundred thousand big flys involved, at least. By the time I realized what had occurred, spit out all of the bugs and fumbled through my fly boxes, searching for the March Brown imitations that were still in the cabin, the event was concluded. In the Carolinas, "hatches" are seldom seen, if they occur. This was a halcyon moment, for me and an event I'll never forget. Tom n4tab at earthlink dot net |
fishing, casting, and recruiting
There is nothing like being on the water looking up and seeing millions of bugs
Green Drakes June of 95 or 96 standing on the trestle bridge on Penns Creek what an awe inspiring site you do not want to stand there slack-jaw or your mouth will be full.......April 03 grannom caddis hatch Penns Creek so many bugs they blocked out the sun.......May 03 sulpur spinner fall Big Fishing Creek got arm weary pulling in fish and i was not the only one.....May 04 another sulpur hatch Penns Creek several days to be exact.....I have proberly seen many more hatch in the 5 decades + years i have been fortunate enough to be on this planet we call earth but never thought much of them untill i got the flyfishing bug..... I have always been respectful of nature but stop and think what it takes to make a fishery like Penns The Gunpowder The Madison Yellowstone or you local trickle......... Mother Nature at her finest......... Handyman Mike Standing in a river waving a stick |
fishing, casting, and recruiting
"Mike" wrote I have always been respectful of nature but stop and think what it takes to make a fishery like Penns The Gunpowder The Madison Yellowstone or you local trickle......... Mother Nature at her finest......... i can dig it, mike. i have often just sat on a rock in a pretty run on hazel creek, and just let the water run through my legs, thanking god for the chance that i found the place. yfitons wayno |
fishing, casting, and recruiting
here here done the same thing many times
Handyman Mike Standing in a river waving a stick |
Coolest hatches (was fishing, casting, and recruiting)
riverman wrote: I remember my first green drake, at least I think thats what it was. I posted on roff about it. My overwhelming thought was of recognition from all the pictures I had seen. It was an amazing feeling. if i hadn't the good fortune to be fishing with mike makela at the time, i never would have known the bug was a green drake. it was tan in color and not as huge as i was expecting, and because of the near dark, its green tint in the wings couldn't be seen. makela nabbed it from a nearby tree leaf. we then fished using a huge green drake fly...both of us hooked up. my fish, a brown, was about 14 to 15", the last fish hooked on that day, and it went wildly airborne. on the second leap, it threw the hook. pretty neat stuff... jeff |
Coolest hatches (was fishing, casting, and recruiting)
Indian Joe has told the story many times of his vision of a trico hatch on
Silver Creek. I was in the campground the first evening and everyone said the hatch would be about 9:30 the next morning. One guy who came to fish the hatch each year showed me his fly box--size 20 male trico's- female trico's- wounded trico's-size 22 trico's with the same assortment. . He shared a couple of flies and helped me pick out a good spot on the creek the next morning. There were around ten guys standing spread out around the creek watching a few large pods of trout swimming all around us as I cast again and again close to them with no results--the other guys just waited. At 9:32 it happened--TRICO'S everwhere- in your eyes- in the air -in the water how could you get a fish to take your fly while the water was covered with live flies? I could not ! After casting unsuccefully for twenty minutes I decided to try a different fly and caught a couple of 12 inch trout on a royal wuff.. as the hatch faded twenty minutes later I had to leave but shared a couple of royal wuffs with my new friend who was still flailing the water unsuccesfully with a size 24 spent wing tryco spinner or some sort of thing. Now if you want to talk about major hatches on land I could tell you about the Love Bug hatch in Florida in 1943-- drivers wrecked their cars because the couldnot see highway--women ran around nude as they ripped off their cloths to get the bugs out of their underware |
fishing, casting, and recruiting
"riverman" wrote in message ...
[snip excellent stuff] In Wales, all the nymphs I saw swhere I was standing were between 1 and 2 feet below the surface: I looked deeper and never saw one go by at knee level, and (in an effort to keep my sleeves dry) I tried to find one near the surface to scoop up, but never saw one shallower than 1 foot deep. Also, there were no fish rising near me, but they were rising about 10 meters downstream from me, or in the calm pool above me. I suspect the fish near me were eating nymphs that were 1-2 feet deep, that the fish 5 meters downstream from me were eating nymphs that were 6 inches to 1 foot deep, and the fish 10 meters downstream were eating nymphs on the surface. --riverman and hence a common practice is to fish an emerger on the surface with a nymph on a dropper that will vary based on success. If you can identify where in the column the nymphs are floating so much the better. on the Delaware up in the tailwater sections, this is a killer technique and often the only one that will work. |
Coolest hatches (was fishing, casting, and recruiting)
"a-happy-up-yours" wrote in message hlink.net... Frank Reid wrote: 1. Green Drakes at peak of hatch on Penn's 2.Sulfurs on Big Fishing Creek, 3.First Penn's clave, March Brown spinner fall. 4.Penn's again, April 2003, Grannom Caddis. 5. Hendricksons on Little Schuyllkill River. I'll see your 5 and raise you the white miller hatch on either the Potomac or the Rappahannock River. I have caught it in both places. 30 feet out from shore, you loose track of where you are. You can no longer see the shore. You need a scarf or settle on coughing up bugs for the next week, 'cause they're so thick you can't breath. I think the one on the Rappahnnock was the most intense as you added darkness into the picture. In both cases, if you had anything white on the end of your line, it wasn't on the water for more than 30 seconds. Smallies, bluegill, carp, chub, anything in the water were all on the surface feeding. First, I'm not easily surprised/amazed/puzzled..... ....First Penns Clave (2000), first day - Saturday, about 5 PM. I stepped off the island behind the Cherry Run cabin and I thought, for a few seconds, that I was having a TIE. There was a step function from daylight to near-total darkness. March Brown hatch all around me. Absolutely astounding. Never before or after have I seen any such concentration of insects. Had to be a hundred thousand big flys involved, at least. By the time I realized what had occurred, spit out all of the bugs and fumbled through my fly boxes, searching for the March Brown imitations that were still in the cabin, the event was concluded. In the Carolinas, "hatches" are seldom seen, if they occur. This was a halcyon moment, for me and an event I'll never forget. Tom Jefferson river. As I look upstream, I can see a single remaining cloud of early morning fog hanging over a stretch of river about three hundred yards away. The sun is low and I can see uncountable bright splashes as fish are rising everywhere in an astounding feeding frenzy. It takes me a few minutes to realize that the cloud is not fog, but millions of tiny bugs. Culver's parking lot. 10 p.m. on a sultry June night. The hex are so thick around the sodium vapor lamps that they've reduce available light in the lot by 50% or more. It is impossible to take a step anywhere in the lot without crushing twenty or more bugs. Weyauwega. 9 p.m. on a sultry June night. Westbound on U.S 10 at sixty miles per hour. Hit the hex hatch.....and I mean HIT......halfway down a hill approaching Partridge Crop lake. Impossible to tell for sure, but there must have been at least a hundred of them hit the windshield in a small fraction of a second. Sounded like it had been hit by several soaking wet towels. Instantly blinded. Managed to coast to a stop on the shoulder without incident and spent 15 minutes or so cleaning off the goo. Wolfgang |
Coolest hatches (was fishing, casting, and recruiting)
On 6/27/04 12:40 PM, in article
, "rw" wrote: I'm going to offer a question for ROFF: What are the coolest hatches you've ever seen? Just for sheer humor, Saturday night at the 2004 Penns Clave. A handful of us were gathered at Three Streamer Stan's bridge in the evening. None of us were gonzo/brave/stupid enough to string up a rod because of sporadic but consistent lightning and thunder. So we spent an hour or two waiting for the rain to stop and trying to capture representatives of the three or four hatches that were simultaneously occurring. Grown men leaping up into the air for rising bugs, waving their caps in an effort to snag the winged beasts. The trout must have been laughing their asses (adipose?) off. Bill (Tom, does Bruce have those bug photos on a web page?) |
fishing, casting, and recruiting
"Wayne Harrison" wrote in message . com... "Mike" wrote I have always been respectful of nature but stop and think what it takes to make a fishery like Penns The Gunpowder The Madison Yellowstone or you local trickle......... Mother Nature at her finest......... i can dig it, mike. i have often just sat on a rock in a pretty run on hazel creek, and just let the water run through my legs, thanking god for the chance that i found the place. yfitons wayno ah, yes, uncle wayno- indeed; the pleasure of experiencing the water swirling around my legs, taking in the scenery , and inhaling the fragrant air can be intoxicating. when i go out to our streams here, particularly if it is early in the morning, or after it has been raining, i swear i can smell every shade of green surrounding me. and to stand in the water, and to virtually become a part of everything around me, is a joy, to be sure. snakefiddler |
Coolest hatches (was fishing, casting, and recruiting)
rw wrote in news:40def7c0$0$28111
: I'm going to offer a question for ROFF: What are the coolest hatches you've ever seen? Here's my list: Snowflake caddis, Goulburn Dec 2002. Good fish on 'em too. BWO - May - Goulburn ... lotsa flys, drizzle, fish and fun. Duns (probably rusty duns: it was pretty dark) february '97 Midges on the Goulburn. Struck a general rise to them a few years back ... unbelievable -just- subsurface nymph fishing. Alittle river: Caddis and Cicadas - things crashing into rod, unnamed small river Dec 2003. March Flys: Jan 2004. Grey Stoneflys in February 2004. Christmas Beetles: Dec on the Yarra, back in 95 ' or so. Soldier Beetles: Feb 98' Damsel flys: Anderson's Lagoon ... summer '93 ... . You could reach down scoop a nymph out and watch it hatch in your hand. Fish were belting about the place seemingly chasing adults but there were no riseforms as such: they were on the nymphs. Caddis on some Tassie Lakes (Bradys) this season gone and last. Stickys. Damsel flys on the Macquarie, the adults. Steve |
Coolest hatches (was fishing, casting, and recruiting)
Bill Claspy writes:
Grown men leaping up into the air for rising bugs, waving their caps in an effort to snag the winged beasts. The trout must have been laughing their asses (adipose?) off. Bill (Tom, does Bruce have those bug photos on a web page?) a perfect visual for that scene......as for Bruce's photos, last I saw they were in large-format, unedited form on his laptop. Tom (who didn't have to leap for anything,thank you) |
Coolest hatches (was fishing, casting, and recruiting)
"Tom Littleton" wrote in message ... Bill Claspy writes: Grown men leaping up into the air for rising bugs, waving their caps in an effort to snag the winged beasts. The trout must have been laughing their asses (adipose?) off. Bill (Tom, does Bruce have those bug photos on a web page?) a perfect visual for that scene......as for Bruce's photos, last I saw they were in large-format, unedited form on his laptop. Tom (who didn't have to leap for anything,thank you) Tweren't so much a matter of necessity as sheer physical exuberance in the face of raw nature and good company. Wolfgang who, truth be told, didn't NEED to be there in the first place.......but rarely declines an invitation to the dance. :) |
fishing, casting, and recruiting
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Coolest hatches (was fishing, casting, and recruiting)
Wolfie notes:
Tweren't so much a matter of necessity as sheer physical exuberance in the face of raw nature and good company. I was exuberant and all that, I merely noted that I don't need to jump to grab bugs way up.....just don't ask me to limbo..... Tom |
fishing, casting, and recruiting
"snakefiddler" wrote fog on the blueridge parkway, in the twighlight is a gorgeous sight. yes, by god, it is. |
Coolest hatches (was fishing, casting, and recruiting)
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Coolest hatches (was fishing, casting, and recruiting)
riverman wrote: I'm going to offer a question for ROFF: What are the coolest hatches you've ever seen? Here's my list: i had just started flyfishing, middle of last year. about a month or two later, i was standing in the Kings River in central California downstream of friant dam, when bugs started flying everywhere. kings river caddis! they were crawling on the brim of my hat, climbing around my eye glasses, inside the lenses, all over my legs and arms and shirt, it was cool. i thought, OH, so THIS is what they mean... strangely enough, no fish were rising on that october-ish evening. eric fresno, ca. |
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