Philly

I love mop flies. I've probably gone a bit overboard with them. When I first saw one I didn't know what to make of them. My salt water club was doing a tying demonstration at the L.L. Beans in Marlton, NJ. The club president was tying orange ones, which he swore chain pickerel loved. I borrowed a few pieces and it was downhill from there. I started buying various mops but the pieces were bit large(fat) unless I wanted to tie crane fly larvae. Found some mop mitts for washing cars. They were what I was looking for when fishing for trout. This will give you the idea of their size. N. Next I moved on to panfish, some would work for trout. Everyone seemed to be tying nymph type flies. Why not floating ones? And then bass/chain pickerel This year I changed up the floating mops. Initially, I just used a piece of a foam cylinder. I'm replacing them with dumbbell eyes made from foam cylinders. Also decided to add some marabou tails to the floating and sinking bass ones. See what happens when you have too much time on your hands during a pandemic. There are two types of mop pieces. Dust mop pieces which can be dyed. All I had on hand was a kit for making tie dyed shirts. Rather than bright colors I ended up with pastels(3rd picture). For the wet mop pieces, I just used permanent markers. They do work. The bass in my Avatar took a mop fly. I've caught trout, rock bass, perch, panfish, chain pickerel, largemouth and smallmouth bass on them. Trout colors: Chartreuse, red, pink, olive and black caught the most fish. Also caught a couple on tan and grey Warm Water colors: Panfish, bass and chain pickerel keyed on yellow, white and chartreuse. Panfish also like blue. Thorax: various types, colors and sizes of sparkle or ice chenille Weight: Bead Heads Flotation: Foam cylinders Hooks: Most of them are tied on Gamakatsu B10S stinger hooks, from size 14 to 1/0 depending on the species

Unless, you forget it's up there and drive off. Been there, done that. Now the rod's the last thing I put together when I'm getting ready and the first thing that gets put away when I get back to the car. Fishing from boats. I usually fish with my friends, none of them fly fish. Boats range from 12 to 16 feet. I'm up in the bow. I usually have two fly rods and a spinning rod with me. Spinning rod is one piece(5' 10") is rigged and sits on the deck next to the gunwale. The fly rod I'm not using is rigged but broken down next to the spinning rod. Fly bag, boxes organized into top water at one end, and subsurface at the other. Small tackle box. Both sit next to me where I can reach them from my seat. When I go up to Ontario, the arrangements are different, since I drive the boat. Years ago before I took up fly fishing, I built a rocket launcher out of a wooden milk box. Four rod holders in front, and an adjustable one on the side, where I can put a rod if we're trolling so I don't have to hold the rod. I added two rod holders on the opposite side to hold my fly rods. The interior of the box is large enough to hold marker buoys, maps, tackle box with lures and my fly bag, and various odds and ends, bug spray, sun tan spray, gloves Two most important things, for me, when fishing from a boat are organization and situational awareness. Organization, so you know where things are, and to keep the deck uncluttered. Situational awareness to prevent accidents, getting hooked by the other guy, casting to the same spot, and so on.

I don't use EP fiber. I find it too coarse for small bait fish patterns. I use Mirror Image and prep by it blending flash into it prior to tying. Steve Farrar showed my Salt Water Fly Fishing Club how to do it when he did a tying class for us several years ago. You can apply it to any of the artificial bait hairs we use. One advantage is that it creates a tapered material which cuts down on the trimming needed to shape the fly. I use two methods when I tie my bait fish patterns. Hi-tying and V-tying. Hi-tying creates the shape of the pattern. Material is tied on the top and bottom of the hook. The more space between the pieces of material the narrower the body of the fly will be. V-tying adds bulk to the fly. Material is tied on the side of the shank. Same principle applies the more space between the pieces of material the narrower the profile will be. For example, if I were tying a glass minnow, I would use between three and five pieces of material to tie it. Not necessarily a smaller hook. A shorter shank hook. The Gamakatsu B10S or something similar is a good hook for baitfish patterns You can blend colors. For example, instead of a dark olive back, you could blend the olive with white or pearl fiber to give it jus a hint of olive on the top. Your pattern will catch fish. A couple of suggestions. Use a clear mono or polyester thread, and move the head closer to the eye of the hook. Here's a couple of the patterns I tie. The top one is a silverside imitation, the bottom one which would be closer to a glass minnow, is suppose to imitate a bay anchovy. I used blended Ultra Hair for the top pattern and blended Mirror Image for the bottom one.

I use clear thread that I pick up in the craft stores. It's actually a clear polyester thread. A 400 meter spool costs about $2. If you have an old bobbin, you can stretch the holder portion to fit the spool. Beats having to transfer it to a smaller spool. It also comes in smoke color. You can also pick up spools of metallic polyester thread. I have gold, silver, copper and pearl spools. This is what my bobbin set-up looks like. Next to it is a spool of clear mono I picked up a local fly shop. I use it for bait fish patterns, zonkers, nymphs, even on some of my foam patterns. I've got a lot of floss hanging around from my earlier tying days. Floss or silk thread would give you your best shot at a translucent fly. You could use 10/0 or 12/0 but if you were building a tapered body it would use up a lot of thread. These are some large soft hackles I tied up for bass. The first two I used floss for the over body. The white one has a holographic silver body under white floss, the second a chartreuse Big Fly thread under yellow floss I'm not sure whether the body material is craft store or fly shop. It was a translucent brown, under body is fluorescent orange thread This one has a pearl polyester thread under body. I used a fine clear knotting cord, that I colored pink with a permanent marker. All of the bodies are coated with UV resin

If you can find it in black or olive, it makes a great leech pattern.

I don't really tie that many articulated flies. I did tie some articulated Woolly Buggers for my Canadian trip at the end of August, but I didn't use them. So they'll sit in my fly box till next spring. I'll give them a shot for largemouth and smallmouth on the lakes we fish up in the Poconos. They're unweighted and I added eyes to them. I used a large Fish Skull articulated shank for the front and a 3/0 Daiichi 2461 streamer hook for the back. Hackle is either saddle or schlappen. They run 6 to 7 inches long. I tied them in the three colors that I've had success with when I've fished Woolly Buggers, The patterns even have names. White River Demon Catskill Killer Chili Pepper

These are three of my most productive bluegill/panfish flies. The top picture is my best producer. I used a soft foam spider body as the template. Middle are floating mop flies, I treat the mop pieces with floatant. Bottom: Left side, Tony's Froggie, my second best pattern. Right side: Bluegill Bug(?) I didn't have much luck with them this year Yellow is the most productive color, followed by white

I always start with yellow or fluorescent yellow whether it's a popper, slider or floating mop fly. It's been my top producer for many years. I fish mainly clear or tannic lakes and streams. Sticking with poppers, next, white, chartreuse and fire tiger. Marabou tails, on larger ones, I add legs. I keep the legs short, no longer than the tail. Keeps the smaller ones from grabbing just the legs. Size-wise. Occasionally, I'll fish a size 8, otherwise, size 6. Pretty the same colors for largemouth/smallmouth bass. Depending on the lake or stream, I add a perch/sunfish pattern, and or a shad pattern and some pencil poppers and crease flies. Size 6 to 3/0.

I found this mayfly on the window screen of my cabin when I was up in NE Ontario the first week of September. It about a size 12. Any idea of what kind it is?

I only had one run-in with a snapping turtle while fly fishing. I was fishing my local creek near a deep pool. The water was clear and I noticed a large snapping turtle walking across the bottom toward me. I figured it was on its way to somewhere else. It just kept coming. I thought about poking it with my wading stick, and realized that probably wasn't a good idea. I kept backing up, and the snapper kept coming. I got into shin deep water, and it stopped and turned around. Not sure if it was being territorial or not. The only other problem I had with them was back in college in NW Tennessee. Being a poor student I tried to supplement my diet of cheap pork steaks and Kraft Macaroni and cheese with fish. Several professors I knew had farms with ponds on them which I had permission to fish. First time out I was having a good day with eight or so bream on the stringer when I noticed the fence I had the stringer on shaking and the stringer being pulled. A snapping turtle was working it's way through my dinner. I managed to save two of my fish. I brought a small Styrofoam ice chest with me to throw the fish in after that.

I must have started tying spiders late. Only white and black were available. Here's an early one that I colored chartreuse with a Prismatic marker. They caught a lot of fish for me, but they weren't very durable and absorbed water.. I eventually used the large sponge body spider as a template and started making them out of craft foam, initially with 2 mm but now I use 3 mm foam. The original morphed into these. Still my top producing pan fish fly.

True. At least we're not killing cats to prevent the spread this time, just not getting vaccinated. Figure next year I'll just have to update the information on the ArriveCan app and maybe get another Covid test. Almost time to get my flu shot. I don't either. I wouldn't be surprised if Canada closed the border to us again. I know some of the European countries are. I noticed that most Canadians I saw in Ontario were wearing masks. At the lodge, the tables in the dining area were all 6 feet apart and it was well ventilated. The staff wore masks when they were serving meals, but masks were optional for guests but all of us were vaccinated. Even the dock crew was masked when they helped us shove off in the morning and when we came back in the afternoon for dinner and when we came back from fishing after dinner. Talking with the staff, there are Canadians who are refusing to get the vaccine but it's not anywhere near the scale it is here in the States.

My guess is that it was more economical than political, though it's often hard to separate the two at times. I would imagine that there was a lot of pressure by the tourist industry to open the border to Americans. The lodge I went to, Garden Island on Lady Evelyn Lake operated last year at about 40% capacity. From talking to the owner he was doing a bit better this year, getting more Canadian customers. Last week he was supposed to be full, 23 people. There were going to be four of us going, but two guys dropped out in July for reasons unrelated to Covid. A party of 8 from Michigan cancelled when either two of the party came down with Covid or tested positive for it. And a Canadian couple who booked in the last month didn't show up at the pick-up point. We ended it up with 11 people, and four of them had only booked the 5 day package rather than the 7 day. He was absolutely ecstatic that he was fully booked for the last two weeks of the season. On the US side, the area impacted economically is smaller and probably mainly along the border or areas just south of it. So there most likely was/is not a lot of pressure to open the border to Canadians. Just my take on it. Hopefully this will be over by next year and we'll all be able to cross the border in either direction without a lot of hassle.

Got back last Sunday from a week long trip to a lodge in NE Ontario. Much easier getting back into the US, than getting into Canada. To get in we had to sign up on an app, called ArriveCan. Asked for all sorts of info, including where you were going to quarantine. One of the pieces of information was where you were going to stay asking for a town, street address. The lodge is in the middle of a lake. After three tries, I listed the nearest town, the name of the lodge, and the cabin we were staying which was Dockside East. The other thing was a negative Covid test done within 72 hours. I'd made an appointment to get the genetic test at a local pharmacy. It was cancelled a couple days before the test. I made another appointment with the same pharmacy at a different location. It was cancelled an hour before the test. I had to scramble to get a script from my primary care doctor to get the test at a local hospital. Which I did. Test came back negative. It took about 15 minutes for the guard to go through our paper, and she decided we had an awful lot of stuff for two guys going fishing for a week, so she sent us over to have our car searched which took another half hour. We got through, fought traffic from Toronto heading up to Cottage Country. We stayed in North Bay for the night, and drove to the pick up point on Saturday morning in pouring rain which stopped by the time we got to the pick-up point. This is a fishing report, unfortunately the weather wasn't conducive to fly fishing, we had wind most of the week, so we spent our time looking for places out of the wind to fish. A lot of the spots that produced in late July or early August weren't producing, but we found some decent coves, almost out of the wind. We ended up catching 110 smallmouth for the week. Most were caught on jigs, with either night crawlers or twister tails on them, or lures. Of the 69 I caught only four were caught with a fly rod. I lost another four when they jumped close to the boat and spit the hook. Top water action wasn't happening. I caught a 14 inch bass on a top water, and lost another one. Two came on a crayfish pattern. My buddy had caught a 16 inch bass and it spit up a recently eaten crayfish which landed in the boat. After matching the colors with one of my crayfish pattern, I put the crayfish on a jig and immediately caught a bass on it. Tied on the crayfish fly, hooked four, landed two both 15 inch fish. The last was caught on a small bucktail jig which also caught me a small perch. Overall, a good week. Most of the bass were in the 14 to 16 inch range. I caught two 17 inchers. The biggest for the week that anyone brought in was 18 inches. I lost one that was close to 20 inches. I'd caught a small pike, 20 inches, and didn't check the line and the bass broke me off right at the boat. That was the only pike we caught. A guy in another group caught a 32 inch pike. Only 16 walleye. With the wind it was hard to anchor up on my favorite mid-lake shoal or to drift. We did catch a few slot fish early in the week, but threw them back, figuring we catch more later in the week. Wrong. We did catch the two biggest walleye for the week. On top of that mid-lake shoal. My buddy's was 23 1/2 inches and I got one 25 inches. I do have some pictures, mostly scenery, I'll post when I figure out how to get them out of my new camera.

I had some luck back in May with ones I tied on size 6 Klinkhammer hooks. Picked a couple small largemouth and chain pickerel on them. These are for lake smallies. I tend to wrap a bit of extra hackle on the larger ones. Mainly I'll be fishing them with my 6 wgt. I do have an extended fighting butt about 10 inches long that I can screw in. I'll probably give the two-handed approach a try at some point. I do have three white ones with pearlescent bodies and three with silver bodies for minnow imitations. Hopefully, I'll have some pictures. My goal is to catch one or two over 20 inches.

I just finished up tying flies for my Canadian trip next week. These are some large soft hackles I tied up for smallmouth, about 2 inches long. hook - Ahrex Traditional Shrimp, Size 4 Thread- various colors 3/0 Weight- 7/32" bead, silver, gold and black, behind the hackle Body- various, metallic thread, floss, spinner bait layers Hackle- Spey(red, black blue, purple, chartreuse), the rest schlappen or saddle

It might represent a dying or injured bait fish. I've certainly struggling belly up.

Nice selection of sunfish. We don't have that variety up here. Just bluegills, red-breasted, pumpkinseed and green sunfish. On the one creek I fish, the sunfish seem to spawn in the same area at the same time. You get some weird hybrids. The weirdest one was looked like a bluegill/green sunfish hybrid. Bluegill colors but the large mouth of the green sunfish.

Check out the Global FlyFisher site. They used to have a downloadable Leader Calculator in an Excel format. You may have to search for it. I've used it in the past to make trout leaders and warm water leaders. These days I use heavy weight thread furled leaders that were made for me. They will turn over bass and pike flies. I normally use about 6 feet of 20 or 25# fluorocarbon tippet with them.

I 've lost more than a few warm water poppers/sliders to rubber legs, not only they didn't age well, but they, if I wasn't careful, "melted" into the coating of my other bugs or melded with other rubber legs.. I was very happy when I stumbled on spinner bait skirts and skirt layers while thumbing through a Barlow's catalog looking for hooks for my bass bugs. I have a small spool of 1 mm "stretch magic" and it seems to be a bit heavier than a similar length of "sili legs" though I am planning to use the wrapping method to make up some perch colored and fire tiger legs to go with some sliders. I'll probably just use one strand rather than the two strands of "sili legs" I'm using for the others. You can still buy rubber legs from Barlow's and Jann's Netcraft. Maybe the newer versions have a different composition and don't melt or age as quickly.

Capt Bob, I'm looking at a small spool, called "Stretch Magic" that I picked up as body material. It doesn't appear to be rubber, at least I've never seen clear rubber. It might be silicone or a polymer. I I looked this up. "Stretch Magic is a strong elastic-like beading and jewelry making cord. It is made of a unique proprietary polyurethane. It is constructed of a mixture of polyester and polyurethane." Sounds like it would be pretty durable. I doubt that it would deteriorate, melt or react with the bodies of other flies like rubber does. If you stretch silicone skirt pieces they will break, this stuff just stretches. I was using clear mono to tie my bait fish patterns. I stumbled on some clear polyester thread in the craft store. Not only is it cheaper, 400 meter spool for around $2 but it's stronger than the mono. It's a large spool but if you have and old bobbin around you can stretch the legs so the spool will fit.

Good idea. I've used the clear stretch cord for bodies on some nymphs and large soft hackles. Never thought to use it for legs. Since I have a life time supply of "sili legs", aka spinner bait skirts, I'll leave this with "youse guys" to play with this idea. So are any of youse guys gonna down da shore this weekend?

I had something similar happen to me years ago on the White River in Vermont. I had been fishing the upper portion for trout, and the last spot was a deep pool where I needed a sinking line to get down to the trout.. I caught a couple of small browns and then moved on as I made my way down river fishing the deeper pools I moved from the trout areas to the lower sections where smallmouth are predominant. I found a nice spot where I could wade out to a gravel bar with the main river on one side and deep pool between it and the rocky bank. I tied on a size 8 Estaz bug, made a couple of casts, something took a swipe at. I switched to a large white woolly bugger. Lobbed it out into the pool and let the current swing the fly. The line stopped moving and seemed to be moving upstream. I stripped in the slack and set the hook and this huge smallmouth exploded out of the water. At that time I had already caught a couple of 20 inch smallmouths on my trips to Ontario. This fish was a lot bigger. It jumped a second time and the tippet broke. I flopped down on the gravel to let the adrenaline go down. Reeled the line in. As I looked at the remains of the tippet I realized that I had not changed it when I switched over to chasing smallies. The 6X tippet didn't stand a chance.

Nice. I've never had much luck with divers, wiggle bugs. Main problem was getting them to dive in still water with a floating line. They would dive in a current but half the time they ended up twisting rather than running and wiggling. Did have some luck with them with an intermediate or sinking line. I've got about a 1/2 dozen to tie up for a Canadian trip which is looking less likely. Plan to use a piece of a worm weight on the bottom of the shank just behind the hook eye to get the bill to sit under the water. Not sure a bead would work on the style I'm tying,.. The bead is a good idea.

Nice flies. I had to check where you're located as the Eastern Green Drake is totally different fly. The adult has a greenish white body and is usually tied on size 8 2XL hook