redietz

If you can add a frog, I get to count crayfish and bats.

I sure I'm forgetting a few: Brown Trout Brook Trout Rainbow Trout Cutthroat Trout Steelhead Silver(Coho) Salmon Black Crappie White Crappie Eastern Chain Pickerel Bluegill Pumkinseed Red Breast Sunfish Carp Fallfish Creek Chub Mountain Whitefish Tiger Trout (brown x brook Rosy Sided Dace Black Nosed Dace Several other unidentified species of minnow Channel Catfish Smallmouth Bass Largemouth Bass Rock Bass Warmouth Bluefish Sand Dab White sucker Yellow Perch

Excellent! Always good to see old Heddons getting some TLC.

Nice looking emerger pattern.

With the coronovirus thing, you may have to wait a while to get anything out of China. (I've got the same problem -- just ordered a MxCatch single hand spey line. Not expecting it soon.)

I'm in total agreement. I generally don't even look at pictures of fish in trip reports, although I do like photos of the wate/scenery.

"Redbreast" is actually a bit of a misnomer. They usually have an orange breast. Just like the ones in your video. Here's video showing all the sunnies in the US: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUX-g5KREvE

From what could see, the sunfish you caught were red breasts, not long ears. The latter have a blockier (if that's a word) end to their "ear", usually tipped with white or red, are more colorful than overall than red breasts. Google both of them and see what you think -- you got a better look at the fish than I did. And putting my pedantic hat on, unlike what you said at the end of the video, you didn't appear to catch any bluegill; they're a separate species. This only make a difference to me because when I've helped out with teaching the Boy Scout fishing merit badges, a few of the scouts have caught red breasts large enough to qualify for the unclaimed state record, only to have their father id the fish as a bluegill and toss it back before I could say anything. (Actually I've caught red breasts big enough to qualify -- minimum is 14 oz -- but those sorts of things are more meaningful to kids, and I'd rather see a scout get it.) I'd love to see people more conscious of what they're catching. Red breasts are the sunfish that I catch the most of, since they're better adapted to rivers and streams than bluegill, and I seldom fish still water. I enjoyed the video, byw. Looks like a river I'd like to fish.

I have a plastic box (a Sucrets box when they were making them from plastic) into which I've drilled a number of holes. I put wet flies into it, and it goes into the ventilated inner pocket of my vest. The flies dry quickly.

A few times, decades ago, when I noticed fish hitting the blood knot, I would swap my fly for a bare hook, about a size 22, and simply tie a piece of tippet material to it with a couple of half half hitches and trim the tag ends short. I caught a few fish that way. No need to get fancy.

There's a third option, which is to palmer forward and then counter rib. (I'me guessing at what the video shows, the machine I'm on at the moment is too slow to play it.)

You might try one of the "foam friendly" super glues. They're designed to not affect plastics.

And Pritt and Theakston!

Since Aelian describes fly tying in Macedonia ca. 150 AD, I think you rule out England pretty quickly. The Angles and Saxons hadn't even invaded the place yet.

I had a couple that I also thought were "challengeable", but I guess in something like this, the computer can't think, and requires exact matches. It's easy enough to allow for multiple correct answers, though, or to just look for a keyword like "tying". Also, the "correct" answer is misspelled on at least one of the questions. Still, a laudable effort, and if you're just learning to program, it's always good to program something you're interested in.

I carry a variety, but I'm not sure it's necessary. The most common pattern in the Cumberland Valley spring creeks is just muskrat fur bunched thick in a dubbing loop and trimmed flat on the top and bottom and rounded into an oval when viewed from above. From what I've seen out west, they tend to favor an ostrich herl version. I once watched a guy cleaning up in a spring creek by the simple expedient of using a small foam beetle, with a few split shot ahead of it, Size is probably more important than any other aspect.

Although both are crustaceans, cressbugs (isopods), aka sowbugs are different critters than scuds (amphipods), aka "freshwater shrimp" (they're not shrimp but resemble them.). Both are very common in spring creeks, and both are usually fished as nymphs. Just goggle "cress bug" and you'll come across any numbers of patterns for the pillbugs.

Back in the 1830's, Alfred Ronalds, author of The Fly Fisher's Entomology, did an experiment about how sound affects fish. He had a fish observation shack build out over a river through which he could feed live insects into the stream without being seen (used for a number of other observations as well.) He had friend stand on the side of the shack away from the river and repeatedly fire a shotgun into the air. The fish weren't in the least bothered, because that even that much noise in the air doesn't carry into the water. I seriously doubt that line noise or a click and prawl reel would do so either. OTOH, if he trod heavily on the floor of his shack, the fish would instantly scatter, since the low frequency vibrations were being directly transmitted into the water.

I actually can't remember which direction Hayes claimed that mayflies face; I really haven't noticed a preference myself. It is imperative, however, that mayflies fly upstream to make up for the distance they've drifted over their lifetime (and in the course of emerging) else they'd be gone from a stream in a generation or two. It's possible that they're already orienting themselves as their wings dry. I'll have to dig up my copy of the book to see what his claim was. It's an otherwise good book, but I didn't buy this particular theory.

Among the other rationales I've read for tying flies with the head over the bend is that orientation in the stream matters. In that theory, IIRC, flies orient themselves so the they are facing upstream. Therefore it's more natural when fishing a dry upstream to use the backwards tie. Peter Hayes goes into the idea at some length in Fly Fishing Outside the Box: Emerging Heresies. While I personally believe the idea is harebrained, if true you'd be defeating the effect by fishing those flies downstream. I'm going to stick with tying flies in the conventional orientation.

From a purely fishing standpoint, a "wing" makes the fly easier to see, which is far from pointless. I agree, however, that it does nothing to increase the appeal of the fly to the fish.

And the Snipe and Purple has been catching trout for several hundred years now. I wouldn't be without it.

That's a great pattern. It deserved to be published.

That's true with trout as well. If there's any relationship between size and the appearance of the rise, it's got to do with the size of the food item rather than the size of the fish. A large fish can't afford to spend a lot of energy chasing a tiny bug.

Have you tried fishing a soft hackle in the film? I find that a Partridge and Orange can be a killer in the circumstances you describe.