No fish

In message
,
Giles writes
Quite no, Bill.....and kennie. It's a numbers game, and that's a
fact......but it isn't necessarily a simple binary either/or
proposition. If you dump ten thousand three-pound trout in a stream
that is all of three feet wide and a mile or two long, they will
indeed wreak havoc. But three pound fish can't get into some of the
places that three inch natives might. And the bubbas will be along
shortly to hoover most of their brethren out of the stream shortly
anyway. Then again, that isn't really all that realistic scenario, is
it? No, it isn't. But outlining absurd extremes is a useful means of
creeping up on the parameters (yeah, I know the mathematicians claim
that word as their sole property.....tought ****) of a problem or
issue. At the end of the day, making decisions about resource
allocation is a messy and almost always thankless task. And the pros
learn as they go because the situation changes constantly.
Pronouncements about what happens and what does not, about what should
happen and what should not, about what is occurring and what is not,
how it should be dealt with and how not, emanating from rank amateur
observers should, of course, receive all the attention and approbation
that they merit......but, really, not much more than that.

Quite or not quite!

Introducing 3 lbs + trout into an ecology which never did sustain such
monsters is an imbalance of nature. having huge fish available is only
an enticement for the greedy fish hingry anglers. These topes aren't
really interested in the sport of fly fishing, rather they want trophy
fish and that makes them fishmongers ij my book.

By the way, some of the feeder streams of the river are devoid of fly
life due to the indiscriminate use of synthetic pyrethroid sheep dip.
Thus fly life is seriously affected and means less food for the fish.
--
Bill Grey

In message 2009092017351975249-dplacourse@aolcom, David LaCourse
writes
I don't fish for stocked trout, and no, I am not an eliteist.

Dave



For the sake of the group. I should explain that the group that I fished
with are the Tawe Disabled Fishers and many of them just can't get to
the river because of their disabilities.

Small put and take fisheries give them easy access and a day out fishing
which improves their quality of life.

.....and no, I'm not disabled.
--
Bill Grey

On 2009-09-20 21:10:04 -0400, rw said:

David LaCourse wrote:

I was speaking more about the hopper flies. The only time I've used a
hopper or a Madam X was out west. I took some ugly carp out of the
lake above the Bighorn. It was lots of fun but not very sporting.

You caught carp on a big ugly dry fly? That would have made my day. You
are like totally awesome, dude. Rock on.

You should have used the Madam X on the Middle Fork.

We were in a boat hunting for "lips" - a carp on the surface vacuum
cleaning the surface. When you saw a fish doing this, you cast the fly
about 10 feet in front of it. If it doesn't change course, it will
eventually swim up and inhale the fly. When you set the hook, all hell
breaks lose. They are one ugly but quite powerful fish. The first one
I hooked was about a 10 pounder and he dived straight down taking all
of my line (90 ft or so) and most of my backing (another 90 ft).
Scared the hell out of me. The guide just sat there and laughed. I
eventually brought the fish to the surface and landed him. Every one
that I caught displayed this same behavior - dive deep, straight down.
It really was a hoot.

I used the Madam X (or something similar) on the Middle Fork. My
grandson and I cast into this pool that had to be 15 feet deep. The
water was gin clear and you could see the bottom. As soon as the fly
hit the water you could see a cutt or two coming up to investigate it.
When you had a take, it was difficult to not set the hook watching the
fish come up and take your fly. My grandson kept pulling the fly off
the water before the trout took it. Very funny experience for both of
us.

I'd like to float the Middle Fork before I die. Great river.

Dave
(cold in camp this morning - low 30s with a touch of fog)

On 2009-09-20 20:28:52 -0400, Todd said:

David LaCourse wrote:
d;o) You haven't been fishing very long, have you. There is a hatch
almost every day. I just walked down to the river and there are bwo
and tan egg laying caddis all over the place. A few fish rising, and
some takes on emergers. After dinner I will tie on a size 20 soft
hackle PT and catch fish. When the light is almost gone I will switch
to a dry tan caddis, size 16

For about 50 years or more. Oh, I am sure things are hatching around
me, but I am never there when it happens. I only get a few hours
every week or two if I finish my rounds early. I fished my river for
three years before I caught a thing. Now, when they are stocked
I catch 18 in two hours. After that, 3 to 4 in and hour and a half.
and 4 or 5 that I do not get the pleasure of meeting. Total
fun at the end of a long day working.

If you are fishing a fertile stream, there is a hatch that will occur
daily, not once or twice a year.

Trout in their feed lies foraging off the drift act
much different than trout feeding off a hatch. Ozzie
has a bunch of great video on the subject in his
"the underwater world of trout: feeding lies".
In the drift, they do not like each other's company.

Huh? I have taken trout and salmon from the same run on both dries and
nymphs. I've never asked the one I caught on the dry how he feels
about the one I caught on the nymph. Perhaps I'll try that today.
Have you ever fished with a dry fly and a trailing nymph? Most on this
forum have. The fish comes up to take the dry but sees the nymph and
takes it instead. The "feeding" lines contain fish that will either
take a nymph OR a dry.

Here is a difference between a "drifter" and a "hatcher":
a "hatcher" would fish a Stone right side up. A "drifter"
would fish it upside down. There is great video of this
in Cutter's "Bugs of the Underworld".

By a "drifter", do you mean nymph fishing? A nympher would fish all
kinds of nymphs besides a stone fly. On the rare occasion that I do
nymph a stone, usually on waters other than my home ones, I fish it in
a dead drift bouncing off the bottom. How can you fish a stone fly as
a "hatcher"? It's a nymph meant to be a sub-surface lure. It's
surface fly would be a stimulator - big and bushey - not the same fly
you would sub-surface.



A tip from a "drifter": do not forget the white nymph.
Nymphs shuck their exoskeletons several times a year as
they grow. Until they readjust, they are cream colored.
If I can not get my trout to pay attention, I switch to
white or cream color. More yummy, less crunch.

(??????)

I meant that a nymph's that have shucked the old skeletons
before their new ones are in place are easier to catch,
eat, and less bran

And you know this how? The only white nymph I fish is a buckskin
caddis, and I fish it simply because it immitates a particular caddis,
not a nymph that has "shucked".


I don't fish for stocked trout, and no, I am not an eliteist.

Not elitist. You are blessed to be close enough to a wild
river. They are like two different fish.

Farm raised fish are easier to catch and taste funny. I always
let wild trout go. Most framed raised ones too. I usually only
keep one if it bleeds out on me.

My wild ones get really, really ****ed when you hook them.
Total fun!

-T

Yup. It is "total fun".

Dave

On 2009-09-20 20:32:45 -0400, Todd said:

Todd wrote:
David LaCourse wrote:
d;o) You haven't been fishing very long, have you. There is a hatch
almost every day. I just walked down to the river and there are bwo
and tan egg laying caddis all over the place. A few fish rising, and
some takes on emergers. After dinner I will tie on a size 20 soft
hackle PT and catch fish. When the light is almost gone I will switch
to a dry tan caddis, size 16

Hi Dave,

I should also mention that I fish in the winter,
just as soon as the ice melts off the rocks
and I am not a risk of killing myself. No
hatch at all in the winter. You must fish
the drift: mainly Stones.

-T

There ARE hatches in the winter.

I consider myself a nympher (or what you call a "drifter"). I did a
bit of drifting in my life but it wasn't with a fly rod in hand. I
nymph all the time and stones are my last choice of nymph simply
because there are so many mayfly and caddis nymphs in the water. I use
a stone on the West Branch of the Penobscott simply to get the intended
lure (usually a caddis nymph) deep enough. The fish will almost always
take the caddis nymph before they take the stone.

Dave

On Sep 21, 4:40*am, Bill Grey wrote:
In message
,
Giles writes





Quite no, Bill.....and kennie. *It's a numbers game, and that's a
fact......but it isn't necessarily a simple binary either/or
proposition. *If you dump ten thousand three-pound trout in a stream
that is all of three feet wide and a mile or two long, they will
indeed wreak havoc. *But three pound fish can't get into some of the
places that three inch natives might. *And the bubbas will be along
shortly to hoover most of their brethren out of the stream shortly
anyway. *Then again, that isn't really all that realistic scenario, is
it? *No, it isn't. *But outlining absurd extremes is a useful means of
creeping up on the parameters (yeah, I know the mathematicians claim
that word as their sole property.....tought ****) of a problem or
issue. *At the end of the day, making decisions about resource
allocation is a messy and almost always thankless task. *And the pros
learn as they go because the situation changes constantly.
Pronouncements about what happens and what does not, about what should
happen and what should not, about what is occurring and what is not,
how it should be dealt with and how not, emanating from rank amateur
observers should, of course, receive all the attention and approbation
that they merit......but, really, not much more than that.

Quite *or not quite!

Introducing 3 lbs + trout into an ecology which never did sustain such
monsters is an imbalance of nature.

Never is a very long time. Over here in the colonies we have the
advantage of a short and relatively well documented history. We have
it from too many reliabley witnesses to ignore that even tiny streams
that are virtually devoid of fish worthy of notice these days once
teemed with such monsters. New Yorkers willing to make the arduous
trek into the hinterlands of Manhattan Island were once able reap
brook trout such as most of us will never see for their
troubles.....from streams that no longer exist. I suspect the early
Celts would have found similar conditions on much of their home turf.

having huge fish available is only
an enticement for the greedy fish hingry anglers. *These topes aren't
really interested in the sport of fly fishing, rather they want trophy
fish and that makes them fishmongers ij my book.

Right. Availability is the key. Availability is what makes the kind
of scene I described above such a rare thing in the world today. I
believe that left to their own devices (i.e., entirely off limits to
human interference) many, if not most, streams would eventually revert
to conditions that would stagger the modern viewer as they did those
in North America in early post-Columbian times. After all, the fish
had millions of years to figure it all out and find what worked best
for them; big fish downstream and small fry upstream where their aunts
and uncles can't catch and eat them in the shallow water. It seems
likely that upstream spawning probably evolved as much as a curb to
predation as for reasons having to do with other physical and chemical
conditions.

By the way, some of the feeder streams of the river are devoid of fly
life due to the indiscriminate use of synthetic pyrethroid *sheep dip.
Thus fly life is seriously affected and means less food for the fish.

Just one more datum in an already inexhaustible and yet ever
burgeoning list of reasons to despair over the future of the planet.

giles

On 2009-09-20 22:07:03 -0400, Todd said:

David LaCourse wrote:

I just walked down to the river and there are bwo and tan egg laying
caddis all over the place.

Hi Dave,

If you were trying to simulate these Caddis in there
nymph phase, what would you use? I have been using Hare's
Ears #14 with some success.

-T

LaFontaine caddis pupa in this case (16). Green rock worm, green rock
worm in brown, a soft hackle "home tie" (18-22).

Dave

On 2009-09-21 05:44:36 -0400, Bill Grey said:

In message 2009092017351975249-dplacourse@aolcom, David LaCourse
writes
I don't fish for stocked trout, and no, I am not an eliteist.

Dave



For the sake of the group. I should explain that the group that I
fished with are the Tawe Disabled Fishers and many of them just can't
get to the river because of their disabilities.

Small put and take fisheries give them easy access and a day out
fishing which improves their quality of life.

There is a similar program here on the Rapid during the summer, and it
is for Wounded Warriers - soldiers who were wounded in Iraq/Afghanistan.


....and no, I'm not disabled.

Well, at least not physically. d;o)

Dave

In message 200909210806448930-dplacourse@aolcom, David LaCourse
writes
On 2009-09-21 05:44:36 -0400, Bill Grey said:

In message 2009092017351975249-dplacourse@aolcom, David LaCourse
writes
I don't fish for stocked trout, and no, I am not an eliteist.
Dave
For the sake of the group. I should explain that the group that I
fished with are the Tawe Disabled Fishers and many of them just can't
get to the river because of their disabilities.
Small put and take fisheries give them easy access and a day out
fishing which improves their quality of life.

There is a similar program here on the Rapid during the summer, and it
is for Wounded Warriers - soldiers who were wounded in Iraq/Afghanistan.

....and no, I'm not disabled.

Well, at least not physically. d;o)

Dave





You're probably right - what the Hell am I doing here :-)
--
Bill Grey

DaveS wrote:
Todd, I am starting to wonder if you really do much fly fishing or if
this whole deal is your sicko idea of a white lie to promo your also
sicko idea of "ministry." You sometimes sound like you are mouthing
stuff you get from FFing videos. Be careful Todd, Jebus may not like
fibbers.

Dave

I love you too Dave! :-)

-T