wschmitt3

I really like these flies, I love the look and the idea, but..... I have had absolutely no luck with them, I will admit I have never fished them in still water, only moving, both fast and slow moving but only moving. I feel like they don't move as much as I thought they would. I am planning to try them tied a little more sparse than the set I tied up the first time to try to get them to breath a bit better. With that said that looks like a very well tied fly. Neat head, nice body, A+ tail. This one below was one of mine, not one of the best but the only one I've got left from the old batch I guess. I gave out the ones I had in my box to a fly fisher I came across one day.

Thanks, Urn357. I was looking for something like that.

BCT, I caught one that was probably 16 inches on a small dry ( sz 18 light cahill if memory serves) and 6x tippet that was a real challenge to bring to the net it was a real long thrash battle in skinny shallow water. My phone is kaput so I don't have a picture or I would share it now (I may have shared it previously on in fish pictures, I know I snapped one). I really don't mind catching the big ones but those little ones I really don't like especially when they mess up sight casting to a couple nice rainbow trout. Also the little ones are so aggressive they can really be a problem. I have heard a few times that cold water fall fish are pretty good eating. When the water is above the high 60's they are mushy and the flavor is no good but when its cool they are as good as most stocked rainbows that have been in the river for at least a year.

Every now and then I hook a Fall Fish when fishing for trout. It doesn't really bother me most of the time but there was one day when I was sitting and watching a couple trout feed and I laid in a perfect cast and as soon as the fly hit the water a little tiny fall fish came up and grabbed the fly just barely beating the trout to the fly and obviously once the fall fish was hooked the trout were gone. Other than that I am fine with catching most any fish.

Its not too bad at all. I got my heads on hair wing flies allot smaller when I started to tie in the tinsel right up to the hook eye and focused on using the fewest possible thread wraps to hold the stuff in place. There may be some master tier that says that the heads have to or should be some particular shape but I don't subscribe to this opinion. I think heads should be as small as possible, unless of course you want to paint on eyes and I do not do this either so I cant help you there. My advise is to focus on small like on the one below If I had to make a guess I would say that the shape of the head is achieved from a bit of black head cement like Loon Hard Head. I attached a picture of one of mine as well its certainly not master work but its a fishing fly that will catch fish and that is the point I didn't finish the head, I don't always because its messy but I do like to some times.

I saw that, pretty cool.

Care to expand on this cannonsatellite? Is that number through charter or some other service? When you say our who do you mean?

I get walleye on buggers now and then in the Connecticut River and they can get pretty big it can be hard to get them up off the bottom with a 4 weight. I often get them on brown buggers fished deep. There is a deep hole right near where I live that usually has a few in it and I have had good luck dead drifting a white bugger from the riffle that feeds into the pool. It is tough fishing though because depending on flow it can be almost impossible to get the fly deep enough (high flow = water to fast, low flow = water too shallow & fish not there). Nice fish.

What ever works for you. When I was younger I skateboarded some (was never very good) and I skated mongo style. That is to say I pushed with my front foot rather than my back. It worked just fine cruising around and I could really get moving fast very quickly but I always got grief for it and I had to learn to push normal to do some tricks and for skating in a skate park. Sounds like you've got the same thing going on. Are there any flies you cant tie wrapping counter-clockwise?

My vote in general is slits and I dont care about water proof. I have an Umpqua weekender, scientific angler (Big Fly, Nymph, and a high Cap Dry fly) and the big black cabelas fly boxes. None have actually proven to be totally water tight and all claim to be if memory serves. I like them all and my favorite is the Umpqua Weekender. I like the weekender because I can carry a few flies of each type in it its what I carry on short outings close to home. It has magnet for tiny flies, slits for medium size buggers (and things like that), and tons of slits for various size dry flies and nymphs. But I do keep a full stock of flies in all three of my Scientific Anglers boxes for those days where I explore water and want a big selection. The big black Cabela's boxes are for bass flies and big streamers/baitfish patterns. I am going get a box with foam slits on one side and compartments on the other this summer just cause I'd like one but I'm in no hurry for that because the boxes I have do the job just fine. the only thing I dont like about slit foam is crushed hackle but its easy enough to just brush it back into place with your fingers. Regarding drying, as a habit I typically leave my boxes out to dry in a window or on my fly tying table after an outing. They will not dry or dry very slowly in closed fly boxes regardless of whether they are water proof boxes or not.

link doesn't seem to work http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/faq/fishfaq1c.html It was kinda my understanding that they cant see color in the sense that we do but instead they see shades and tones

Tied this up as a quick stonefly nymph. I dont really like doing the kaufmann's stone back so I wanted to do a different version and this is my second edition of this fly and the insect it is intended to imitate (find one every time I kick seine). I may add a second fold in to the process and a set of legs. BTW... sculpinmaster like your f-fly

Yea those things are a mess but I bet they trap lots of air bubbles. Its been said many times buggy is better. When I started tying and I tied up my first hare's ears I tied them up as neat as I could and I remember one day I caught a rainbow on one and left it on my rod and the next day I caught another rainbow the next morning and this one was a little bigger and had some teeth, after I released the fish I checked my fly and leader and the fly was a little chewed up. The fish picked out the dubbing for me and made the fly better. I must have caught like six or seven fish that day on that one fly then I lost it to a snag. Ever since then I tie the abdomen neat and the thorax scraggly with a split thread dubbing loop. After dip testing in my fish tank I see that the old method doesnt trap hardly any bubbles and the new method traps lots and lots and the work quite well for me.

A bunch of years ago before the Lake Champlain International Fathers Day fishing derby there was a group around that was spouting about this animal rights issue they came back around just before a subsequent bass masters tournament on the lake. But I have not ever been confronted by this issue personally. Honestly I have mixed feelings about this. I see their point. It is sort of sadistic to harm and potentially kill an animal for recreation. No matter how hard we try all of us catch and release fish that die after being released and that sucks. I think that fishing with flies rather than live bait minimizes this and most fly fishers are pretty cognizant of the risk to the fish and are mindful about fish handling when releasing fish. So my personal feeling is I don't feel bad about catching fish that were put into the stream to be caught because I try really hard to make sure they live through the process and if they seem like they are not going to live I eat them. On another topic I think that big baits with multiple treble hooks can be walking the line of unnessary and cruel. I have seen fish caught on these big baits with the trailing hook caught on the gill plate or in the eye. I caught a big walleye a few years ago that didnt bite my crank bait but got hooked right in the eye. It was unavoidable but because of the way I was fishing this fish lost an eye. It was a large fish and probably not going to fall prey to a bigger fish and wasn't bleeding so i released it but I always felt bad about that.

The birds nest was one of the first flies I ever tied I cant believe I dont have a picture of it on my computer. I tied a dozen and a half Red Fox Squirrel Nymphs and about the same number of Bird's Nests about a week after I started tying and I could swear I had a bunch of pictures of them on my computer. Its funny because I remember I wasn't particularly happy with them because I felt like my thread head extended to far back on the hook shank but cal bird's was just as big if not bigger. With that said the Birds Nest is a very good fly. I have taken quite a few on it but I say stick to the original. Adding a d-rib is too much of a deviation from a very successful original pattern. But a fly with d-rib a some legs and a dubbing head could take some fish. I tied up an experimental pattern like that (variation of other patterns) for this summer see below. I have a few with a bead but beyond that I try to stick to the original. Edit - The last series I tied were tied with light olive Squirrel SLF and an olive Hungrian Partridge tail and hackle. The hackle tied in backwards so it flares out not in.

den duke those are sweet. I make inline spinners and tie up the hooks with buck tail or marabou it is tough to tie onto the treble hook but its do able.

Why do they send an ice breaker through? To reduce ice jams and flooding or for ship traffic? What do you fish for in the Kennebec?

Well I guess the weather isn't warming like I thought. Its still going to be hovering near freezing and some wet snow will be coming in.

I hear you kennebec, I'm guessing your in Maine, I'm in northern-ish Vermont on the Connecticut and I keep going to check the river that runs through town since the warm up the other day and I'm seeing signs of life (that have now slowed). The thaw is not here quite yet but will be soon. I think were getting rain this weekend some extra flow should go a little way to clear things out a little. I expect to be dipping lines for trout around the first of April as well.

Agreed Flytire.

In my opinion from what I've seen in the little bit of research I've done tenkara is allot like some of the euro nymphing or straight line nymphing techniques. Differences being, obviously, there is no reel and the flies are much lighter but.... I would definitely call it fly fishing. Its just a different technique of fly fishing, specifically not the modern technique we are all used to. Saying that tenkara is not fly fishing is like some one that casts with one hand saying that two hand casting isn't fly fishing or vise versa. Or a fly fisher that targets trout saying that fly fishing for bass and pan fish isn't fly fishing or a dry fly purist saying that nymph fishing isn't fly fishing. Bear in mind I have never fished in this way and don't really have any particular interest in it, well not any more than just general curiosity. I do like some of the patterns and will probably try some on a regular fly rod for rainbows and brookies this summer but I probably wont be buying a tenkara rod anytime soon.

That billing thing is a pain, I dealt with that with Verizon Wireless for quite a while. If you have a Comcast store front nearby I highly recommend going there they because they usually have a person that can actually fix problems like a regional manager or something of that sort. I worked around the corner from a store front so I literally never dealt with them on the phone after I called to set up the service.

Welcome, to the forum. Are you going to be able to get into waders for early fishing season or you going to be fishing in a cast?

Yea the water sprite is crazy. I think that the micro and macro nutrients (seachem flourish and NPK plant packs) are the key to the plant growth. I have noticed a huge difference in growth rates between when I dose and dont. I think that the main benefit to the CO2 is no algae.

Tank update.... I did away with the DIY CO2 setup I had it was not reliable. I purchased a small fulvial CO2 setup and it is perfect. I feed the plants with Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium as well as a iron supplement and organic carbon and micro nutrient supplement. The plant growth that you see, as full as it is, was just very liberally trimmed about a week ago. The plant on the right was cut down to the level of the middle plant and has since exploded. The middle plant was cut down to about an inch from where it is now, I cut each stem down to a node at about the same level on each so it will split off into two stems. I am considering pulling the grass and covering that area with river gravel because the bigger plants are shading too much and turning the grass brown.