TR: A Swede at Penns, part one

Let me start off by thanking all of you guys for a good time.

Mike Makela, Gene Cyprich, Lou Teletski, Walt Winter, Tim Carter, Bill
Claspy, Jeff Miller, "Indian" Joe MacIntosh, Handyman Mike Shaw, Bruce
Fisher, Frank Reid, Wolfgang Siebeneich, Joel Axelrad, Tom Gibson, Vince
Norris, Dave PA, John "asadi" Baker, Dave LaCourse and Allen Epps.

Tom Littleton did a great job as Clavemeister.
Dave LaCourse was just the friendliest and generous guy, putting me up for
the night before and after the clave and also seeing to that I got there.
Handyman Mike went out of his way to see to that I got back to Boston and
also lent me a place to sleep that last night, thanks.
Gene Cyprich lent me a place to crash for one night so that I could spend
that one night at Hemlock Acres to be able to socialize with all of you over
a beer or two, thanks.
Jeff Miller was very generous letting me stay at the Carolina cabin, thank
you very much Jeff.
Mike M, Lou T, Frank R, Gene C, Tim C (I might have forgotten someone)
thanks for guiding me around.
Indian Joe, you cook excellent breakfast (a bit too much fat for my taste,
but excellent none the less) thank you.
Joel and Frank, the raffle night was great fun, thanks.

Rabbit food is good for you, sugar and fat ain't (Wise words from a Swede).

Where do I start? So much happened during this week that I have a hard time
too take everything in.
The first three days I only caught 14 fish and was outfished by everyone, to
say the least fishing at Penns was way different than anything I ever done
before. The surroundings where beautiful with all that lush vegetation, and
the rivers seemed equally high on nutrients.

What did I learn during those days? Well, fish at Penns are educated, not as
sensitive to presentation as they are at home but very sensitive to what fly
is at the end of your tippet. Penns have some spectacular hatches and I did
at one given time see the spinner fall of three different mayflies with one
other mayfly and three different caddis present and hatching, just amazing.
The flies are generally bigger at Penns, for example the March brown over
there is twice the size of the same fly in Sweden. The stonefly is enormous
compared to the ones we have but the caddis flies are slightly smaller.

Mike Makela invited me to the art of nymphing the big stonefly nymph with
the help of split shots and I caught a nice 18,5 inch brown and several more
on that. Too bad that fish had to run into the shallows, not much of a
fight. Nymphing the big stonefly nymph with a long line isn't recommended
since it will get snagged very due to its weight and size. What we did was
very close to Czech nymphing.

Several fish were caught on a black wooly bugger, but most fish on sulphur
emerger and spinner, march brown spinner and tanned caddis. Too bad the
hatches were so short.

Well actually, one night it almost went on for two hours, but I really don't
want to talk about that event. NINE I tell you......nine.......

More to come...............

/Roger