Browns are in

This past week, I was on the Piscataquog in New Boston. The stocking truck must have been there earlier in the day. Brown trout in one pool and rainbows in another, hitting most anything that came by.

I was glad the rains came to push the fish downstream. Too many worm fishermen are setting up rods and cleaning out pool after pool, filling their 5-gallon white buckets.

Last week, I ventured to The Pond. Nice day with a few fish rising. Fished a stimulator with a #16 BH hare's ear. Picked up a nice tiger trout. The osprey is back catching more fish than I was. The mosquitos were in full force having replaced the black flies.

The recent rains should give the rivers a nice shot in the arm. Next week should, once again, be prime conditions for fly fishing in NH.

Filling the Time When you Can't Get Out

Since I wasn’t able to get out this week and therefore have nothing to post as far as fishing goes, I thought I’d share with you a tip I got on Midge tying at the Fly Fishing Show held in MA this past winter from a Fly Tier named Rich Ross. Often I’ve been on the ponds, lakes, rivers seeing fish rise but nothing I had to offer seemed to work. They were hitting something small and black and I have come to surmise that it could have been the notorious Black Midge they were eating as certainly those midges were eating me. Most of the charts I look at that track hatches (fish food) by month will list the midge over the course of months throughout the summer so, if the weather gets bad you may want to look at your fly tying table and tie up a few of these. Hopefully I be writing to you about how I made a killing with these flies sometime over the coming summer months. What I liked about this technique is that it kept the ‘wings’ on top and I can tell you from experience that you can see this fly, even though it is so small from pretty far away.

Here is the Midge build, step by step, it’s really pretty easy.

What you need:
Black Thread
Black Poly Yarn
Peacock Hurl
Grizzly Hackle
Instructions:
Lay a bed of thread to the bend in the hook

Cut a piece of Poly Yarn about 1 ½” long and then pull about ¼ of the thread from the rest of the thread, make a loop and tie the ends on at the back of the hook:

This is where I use that tool I made from 2 large hooks connected with a rubber band:

Hook one end to the loop and the other end some place up high:


Next tie in the peacock herl:

Next tie in the grizzly hackle:

Next wrap the hackle around the thread post that you have held up with to rubber band contraption. Hackle before the peacock because after to wrap the herl you’ll need to tie it in at the back of the hook:

Wrap the thread to the front of the hook and then wrap the herl to the front and tie it in:

Or a more clear picture:

Next unhook the poly year, using two fingers on either side of the thread, pull the hackle to the left of the thread, lay the thread along the top of the hook towards to front and tie it down:

You’ll notice I probably have too much hackle at the back of the hook but if you start the hackle wrap a little higher on the thread, being careful not to go to high that it would extend past the hook eye when you lay the thread along the top of the hook it would be perfect. Cut the left over poly yarn off, a couple of whip finishes and you’re done:

You’ll notice that all of the hackle is on top of the hook like wings, the hook will set down in the water (breaking the film) and the hackle/wings will set up high in the water. The guy who showed me this technique at the show says that you can see it from 30 yards out on the water.

I hope you have fun with this fly. After you do a few you'll find that they go pretty quickly.

Old Trips

I was cleaning up my photos and came across a few pictures from last year. Last year was my first year in many that I started actively fly fishing again and is when I really got hooked. It was also the first year I started tying my own flies and my goal was to catch some fish on flies that were tied by my own hand. As I started fishing, I started to talk to friends, neighbors and business associates about the sport and was very surprised to find out how many people I knew that were avid fisherman and, even more surprising, fly fisherman.

Anyway, I was invited out to Seattle to do a little Steelhead fishing but when I got there the rivers were running a little high so we went to a small pond instead. I have to tell you, the fish are BIG out there or at least they were in this pond.

Here are pictures of a couple of fish I caught on woolly buggers out there:









To say I had fun would be an understatement! I must have landed 6 – 7 all around this size. Sorry for the quality, being new to the whole adventure I wasn’t equipped with a camera, luckily I had my cell phone along, the quality isn’t as nice as the camera I now carry but the proof is in the pic!












I also attended the Orvis Fly Fishing School in Manchester VT with Jeff and another friend. It was a two day course, teaching us some basic techniques of casting, even learned a little about double hauling, fly tying, equipment, and knots. I even got a chance to fish the famed Battenkill River. At night the three of us would sneak off to some ponds in the area and try our hand at what we learned that day. Here is a picture from that excursion:







Not much of a fish but this is the first one I ever caught on a fly I tied myself. I caught it on top with an Elk Hair Caddis.










I would recommend the class to anyone who might be interested. The instructors were great, the two days fun and overall it was a good time on the water. In any case, I hope to get out this weekend, weather permitting, and I’ll let you know how it goes next week.

It was a Great Weekend for Fishing (sort of) 5/9/09

As you can see from Jeff’s first post(below), I’m not allowed to give the name of our favorite fishing hole for fear that the people reading this blog will flock to it and ruin it for the rest of us. Personally I think he’s just being selfish!

In any case, with my wife away for a couple of weeks and not home for Mother’s Day, I had no alternative but to be out on the water chasing some trout this weekend. Just to mix things up a bit, Jeff and I went out early Saturday Morning, we were on the water by 6:00 am.











It was cloudy, eventually it rained, but the wind was absent and the fish were rising. I only had a few hours of fishing in front of me as I had to get to Logan to pick up my eldest son who flew in for a few days to watch his brother’s lacrosse games this week.

In any case, I got a few Saturday morning, Brookies all. I fished a dropper rig, Elk Hair Caddis on top, Prince Nymph on the bottom, both tied by my own hand. The nicest one was a 13” Brookie which gave me quite a fight. When I left Jeff was "0" for the day and it was starting to rain. I caught up with Jeff on Sunday and he tells me it stopped raining shortly after I left and that he hooked into 3 Brookies. Unfortunately, he didn’t have his camera so I guess we just have to take his word on this. I also met up with Jamie on Sunday, you’ll remember, he went with Jeff the week before for Salmon and he also was a bit hesitant when I mentioned that Jeff picked up an Atlantic Salmon and he got skunked. He was quick to point out that while Jeff said he hooked into a fish, Jamie was not around to see it! Hmmm, I am starting to sense a pattern here. Jeff, I think you should put your camera in your vest for future trips so that no one will question your reports. Not that I would ever question you integrity of course!!!

On Sunday I borrowed one of Jeff’s kayaks and took my visiting son, Joe, with me to the pond.



It was pretty windy and I didn’t expect much but when you have a chance to share a passion with one of your kids you take it! And it was windy, the two of us were blown all over the pond but in the end I caught what was probably my nicest fish so far this year. I haven’t run the tape measure against my net to see what the actual size was but I’m guessing it’s in the 16” range.



What a nice rainbow, it took close to 15 minutes to bring it in. Again I was fishing an Elk Hair Caddis on top with a Prince Nymph dropper and picked this one up on the dropper.

Not a bad Mother’s Day weekend for a Dad!!

Secret Pond Without a Boat

I snuck out to The Pond early afternoon to fish for a few hours before the lacrosse game. I didn't have the kayak so I waded the shoreline. Fish were rising everywhere. I saw a few caddis coming off but nothing major. I'm guessing they were going after emergers.

I used a crippled caddis with a bead-head Copper John dropper. Within about an hour, I landed two nice brook trout and a 10" smallmouth bass.

The Pond looked great. A slight mist hung over the water and at the far end, the unseen loons were making quite a racket. A very peaceful couple of hours. Plus, both the varsity and JV won their respective lacrosse games.

A Neat Resource You Can Use for Fishing

I’m relatively new to the area and don’t know where a lot of fishing locations are nor am I familiar with locations by name. I read the stocking reports religiously and see where the state is putting fish in the water but to be honest, I have no idea where these places are. Places like PURGATORY BROOK, WALLACE BROOK, SWAIN POND, SPECTACLE POND, where are these places and how can I get there? One way I’ve been able to locate these places is by using Google Earth. The Software is free and can be downloaded directly from the web. Did you know you can type in the name of the water body, town and State and Google Earth will zoom right in on that location! You can see the water body, nearby roads and landmarks, review the topology of the area and even get directions, it’s great! I recommend you give it a try the next time your lost for a place to fish. Go to the State Stocking report (I’ve posted the link over on the sidebar) get the name of the place you might want to try and plug it into Google Earth and scout it out!

Happy Fishing!!

It Was Another Good Day of Fishing 5-3-09

Jeff and I split up this week and fished two different locations. Friday, Jeff played hooky and went up to the Pemi with another friend, Jamie, to try his hand hunting the Atlantic Salmon the State stocks. Jeff was fishing an Orange Bomber and I’ll leave it to him to post about his day.

I, on the other hand, had to work on Friday and with no one able to get out this weekend, I went back to my favorite pond to see if what I could do. So Sunday I packed up my kayak and headed for the pond to try my luck. It was an overcast day, around 62 degrees, no wind, and I had a window of about 3 hours before parenthood called me back home to run my son around. The pond wasn’t nearly as busy as it was last week but there were a few guys out fishing in canoes and kayaks. As I pulled up the fish were rising but I know enough about this place to know that just because they were rising, didn’t mean they would hit what I had to offer.

I started out with the rig that worked last week, I had a Elk Hair Caddis with a Bead Head Nymph dropper. But, unlike last week, they were hitting on top this week. Not a lot of action but I did manage to pick up a 10” Brookie within 15 minutes of being on the water. I thought this was going to be a great day! But that was it, nothing else even looked at my rig. I’m sure you know how frustrating it is to see fish rising all around you with nothing hitting what you’re fishing. Soon I started changing out what I was using. I noticed that in the beginning, I would only see swirls on the surface where the fish were rising but now I started to actually see them break the surface every now and then. Now I don’t profess to know how a fish thinks, nor do I profess to understand exactly what was going on but I did know they weren’t hitting my Nymph, I did get a hit on the dry but it wasn’t until the fly got pretty wet and started to sink a bit deeper into the film did I even get a second hit on the Caddis. I switched to a Crippled Elk Hair Caddis and my luck changed. I picked up another 2 Brookies, nice size, maybe 12” and 13” not bad. With the clock moving closer to my commitments back home, I headed to the boat ramp but started to actively cast the Crippled Elk Hair. I didn’t let it sit for long, just kept putting it out there, let it sit for about 30 seconds and cast again. As soon as it hit the water after 3-4 casts something hit it hard, nearly coming out of the water but I missed it. A few more casts and WHAM! I hooked into a 15” Tiger! Beautiful fish, I am only sorry that I didn’t have my camera for a picture.

Well that was it, I had to head home. For a quick 2 hour venture I picked up 3 Brookies and a nice sized Tiger trout. So far the season is off to a great start, let’s hope my luck holds for the rest of the season.

Opening Day

Jeff and I went out to one of our favorite little ponds for opening day last Saturday (4/25/09) and we weren’t disappointed. I caught 4-5 Brookies, a couple of nice sized ones, but Jeff picked up the nicest fish of the day:



A very nice Tiger Trout










When we got to the pond it was a little windy, I was out in my new Kayak, and Ocean Kayak Trident Prowler 15, very nice kayak, moves well, very maneuverable, especially with the rudder system, plenty of room and I just love the Rod Pod feature:



But I digress.












Even with the wind, there was a small protected area of the pond that caused most of the fishermen to stack up but, as I have found with most Fly Fishermen (but certainly not all) everyone moved in and out of the area and everyone was willing to share their secrets and help each other catch fish.

Jeff and I weren’t having much luck which was especially annoying as we were watching a couple of guys from Bedford reeling in fish after fish. They shared with us their secret; they were fishing with a dropper rig. Now for those of you who don’t know what this is, and to be honest, this was the first time I ever tried one, it is a dry fly tied on the end of your leader and then taking a piece of tippet, maybe 18” – 24” long, tie it to the bend in the hook of the dry and tie a nymph (or whatever the fish are hitting) on the end of the tippet. Throw the whole thing out there and see what you catch. This did the trick! I had an Elk Hair Caddis on top and a Bead Head Nymph as the dropper. WHAM!! We were catching fish like no tomorrow!! At one point I had a fish on the nymph and, while I was trying to bring him in, another trout was hitting the Caddis as it was whipping around being pulled by the first fish in a bunch of directions.

What more could a person ask for, sunny, 85 degrees weather, fish rising and hitting what we were fishing. Sadly I’m at work today, Jeff, however, is on the Pemigewasset hunting Atlantic Salomon with another friend of ours. Hopefully the next post will come from him with the details of what those two have been catching all morning!