Down with the Clinch! Up with Davy!

I decided to take my chances with the scattered thunderstorms in the forecast and, after peaking at the radar, headed to Hamden to get some fishing in on the Upper West Branch of the Delaware.  It turned out to be a beautiful evening, though bug activity was extremely low.  I've been hearing that hatches have been fairly localized and that there can be a large difference in activity even just a quart mile away.  As darkness settled in, I started seeing a few rises to what appeared to be fairly small sulphurs.

Over the course of the evening, I fished an Royal Wulff dropper with a pheasant tail nymph, an iso emerger, a rather larger cream variant, and finally a small sulphur.  All of this was on around 10-11' of 4x leader.  I had the most luck on the sulphur, but what I really want to talk about is my difficulties with improved clinch knot.  I am perfectly willing to admit it comes down to my errors when tying the knot, but I regularly have the knot slip on me when hand testing after tying, and for about the fifth or sixth time this season, I lost a fish (and my fly) to knot failure.  It's maddening, especially on a slow night like tonight.

At this point, I'm pretty sure my error is that I'm feeding the tag through the wrong side of the loop and that's allowing the knot to slip.  It can certainly be argued that this is not the knot's shortcoming but mine.  Granted.  However, when you're standing in the stream, after dusk, trying to get your fly tied onto a nearly invisible tippet so you can cast to that nice rise you just saw, you want a knot that's reliable and easy to tie.  For my money, the improved clinch just isn't the right knot for the job and tradition be damned.  Enter Davy Wotton and the Davy Knot.

I admit, this knot is new and untested to me, but after the reading I've done I will definitely be giving it a shot on my next outing.  It's far easier to tie and has significantly improved performance over the clinch knot and even the Orvis knot (another contender for my affection) based on testing.

But don't take my word for it!
http://www.redrockadventure.com/fishing/flyfishing/davy-knot.htm
http://mattsbucket.blogspot.com/2011/10/knot-testing.html

And here's an animated how-to:
http://www.netknots.com/fishing_knots/davy-knot

UPDATE:  I've been out quite a few times since this post and I'm completely sold on the Davy Knot.  I will never go back to the Improved Clinch.  It's easy to tie on the river, extremely small so it won't change your presentation, holds up extremely well, and saves you a ton of tippet material since it's a simple matter to reduce the tag end to less than an inch when tightening.  Hats off to Davy Wotton!

West Branch at Walton

I left O-town before sun-up to get to Walton and on the water by 6AM.  I'm not usually a morning person, but this week's looking a little busy and I have to take the opportunities when they present themselves.  Checking the flow rates on the USGS site, levels are still high at around 500 CFS, but they're dropping fast and I was eager to get back on flowing water.

When I arrived at the river to scope out the situation, the day was beautiful, but the water was still fairly silty and there was no insect activity that I could discern.  I decided to give the hopper n' dropper rig a go and tied on a #12 parachute hopper on a 4x tippet and then a #16 pheasant tail nymph 18" below that.  The hopper makes a great strike indicator for your nymph, and while I know it's probably a bit early to fish hoppers, I noticed a few smallish grasshoppers yesterday while mowing the lawn so I figured we're not too far off.  At any rate, the trout weren't interested, though I murdered the river chub population, easily catching 15-20 of the silvery little guys, mostly on the nymph but on the hopper as well.  The only trout I saw was a rather large brown that was hanging out within a foot of the bank.  Unfortunately, he saw me before I saw him and he took off for deep water.

Throughout the morning, the few decent rises I saw were all close to the bank.  I can't be sure they were trout with black bass and carp in these waters, but the one I spooked certainly suggests the possibility.  I've read that larger trout will hold close to the bank when the water is high.

After a little while, I adjusted my nymph rig out to around 30" to get it a bit lower, but had similar luck.  Next up I switched to a muddler minnow hoping it would entice a strike in the murky water.  Again, no luck, though at one point it raised a 3' monster of a carp from the murky water about 3 feet from where I was standing.  Let me tell you, that got my heart hammering!  I could have stuck my foot out and kicked him and I had no idea he was there.

As a last ditch, I switched to a hot spot ant, though by this point the sun was fully on the water and heating things up.  Other than the occasional chub, nobody was interested so I contented myself with a beautiful morning on the water and packed up my things just as the first of the spinning fishermen arrived to try their luck on the bass population.

Gilbert Lake

Even with water levels dropping slowly, the water's still quite high and silty in the streams and rivers.  With that in mind, we decided on another evening of lake fishing. This time around, we left the boats at home and instead opted to fish from the small fishing pier at Gilbert Lake.  It was a beautiful night for fishing: cool and clear with next to no wind.  Even when the wind is calm back in "civilization" it's often quite breezy (and quite a bit cooler) up in the hills that form the basin for Gilbert Lake so we were pleasantly surprised to find the water as smooth as it was.

The local knowledge calls for a spinning rod with a marshmallow rig to catch the stocked rainbows holding in the deeper parts of the lake.  It's an extremely hands off approach.  Cast your line out there, let it sink, real in any extra slack, prop up the rod, and sit back and watch the tip for any odd wiggles.  The nice thing about that is on a night like tonight, you do all that and then bust out your fly rod and spice things up a bit.

My 5-weight with floating line is definitely not the right set-up for lake fishing under most conditions, but there was a little bit of surface activity tonight and I really just love to cast.  I started off with a wooly worm and fished that until I snagged it on a back cast and lost it.  That caught me a fat old bluegill.  After that, mayflies began swarming so I switched to dries.  My novice identification: grey fox and a few light cahills (Ephemera guttulata & Stenonema canadensis respectively).  The grey fox's seemed to be mostly preoccupied with flying around and mating and weren't touching down on the surface yet, so I went with some light cahill patterns and did my best to fish to the occasional rises.

Lake fishing is definitely a different animal and one I need to work on more.  The fish don't hold in one spot waiting for food to drift by in a lake so you need to kind of guess where they are and where they're going.  With the rises so infrequent tonight, I didn't do a great job, and based on my results, they might not have even been rainbows rising.  Aside from the bluegill, I netted two 12-14" largemouth bass on the light cahill.  I have to admit, fighting even small bass such as these guys is pretty fun on a 5-weight.

Reflections

This afternoon after the thunderstorms blew over, I took my daughter down the wooded path beneath sparkling trees with raindrop-covered leaves resplendent in the sunlight.  We walked carefree through the wet grasses and enjoyed the raucous birdsong and the clean, fresh smell of the newly washed forest. At the base of the hill, her tiny hand in mine, we crossed the makeshift bridge of three old landscaping timbers laid side-to-side over the small outlet, and stepped onto the grassy berm of our small pond. 

Perhaps a quarter acre all told, no lunkers lie waiting in its tanon stained waters, unless you count the bulbous-headed bullfrog tadpoles rippling the water's surface in their awkward and hasty retreats. 

"Look, Daddy! I can see the clouds!" exclaims my daughter as she peers down into the waters searching for hidden mysteries.   I do my best to explain reflections as I carefully mash a piece of cheese onto the tiny hook and adjust the little red bobber. Angles and light and density. How does one put that into 3-year-old-ese?  I don't. I just throw it all against the wall of her mind and wait to see what sticks. I am always amazed. Always. 

The fingerling pumpkinseed is a wiley quarry, cautious and cunning, but we two are accomplished fisherfolk. Our first catch of the day comes mere seconds after the hook hits the water; a tiny sunny with barely enough weight to sink the bobber. My daughter's laugh sparkles like the raindrops as we carefully fill the purple bucket with pond water and place the little fish within.  A second follows in quick succession before our luck turns. 

Hook after baited hook drop into the water only to be stripped clean of Polly-O string cheese, but we are not to be defeated. My daughter's laughter again rings out, "Daddy! That sneaky fish stoled our cheese again!"  In the end, we land that "sneaky fish" and one more of his friends.

Proud and triumphant my little girl declares, "Daddy, I'm getting a little cold.  Will you carry me home?"  And so we gently pour our trophies one by one back into the pond, and I carefully stow the pink princess rod and the purple bucket before scooping her up into my arms. 

Walking back up the hill beneath the sparkling trees with my daughter's arms wrapped tightly around my neck, I know with a certainty this will be my most successful outing of the season and the one I'll remember many years from now when she has grown and gone off seeking quiet wooded paths of her own.

Basswood Pond (Burlington, NY)

With the streams running high due to all the rain lately, my buddy and I opted for some pond fishing instead.  We threw the boats (a kayak for me, an ultra-light canoe for him) in the trailer and headed up to Basswood Pond in Burlington, NY.  We arrived around 6pm and couldn't have asked for a better scene.  The pond was smooth as glass and the bugs were just starting to come out.  Fish were already rising throughout the pond so we boarded our boats with high expectations.

Best I could tell based on coloration, size, and time of year, the cream colored mayflies swarming the water were most likely Light Cahills (Stenonema ithaca, perhaps?) though I had my best luck with a March Brown dry fly.  It was a fun evening as mayflies were swarming everywhere and the fish were eager to get a meal.  I didn't catch anything larger than a foot, but by the end of the evening I had netted 1 brown, 1 rainbow, a couple of smallmouths (the DEC says there are only largemouths in the pond, but I beg to differ), a sunny or two, and a few fingerling largemouths.

Casting from such a low seat in the kayak was a challenge for me, mostly because I kept trying to force things by muscling the rod around in my excitement.  All that got me were tailing loops and fly line wrapped around my rod tip.  Purposely slowing things down and smoothly accelerating to each stop got me straightened out.  I really need to focus on "less is more" when I cast.  There's more time than you think.  Drifting in a kayak and presenting to rising fish also meant a lot of casting at odd body angles and even more practice fishing my back cast.

Unlike my usual stream fishing, success on the smooth pond was all about delicate presentation, something at which I'm not yet consistent.  On a stream, fishing in a current, you can get away with some more awkward presentations since the water is riffly and you're casting above the fish and allowing it to drift down over them.  Not so in a pond.  If the fly doesn't float down naturally, nobody's interested and if you overpower it and it hits too hard, you'll see the surface ripple as your fish disappears into the weed bed below.

I didn't land any lunkers, but the night was beautiful and it's always fun to catch fish, even if they're just little guys fresh out of the stocking tank.

Art Flick's "New Streamside Guide," dry flies and thoughts on matching the hatch

As a novice, the seemingly endless number of flies to choose from is absolutely overwhelming.  And forget about trying to identify a specific fly by sight.  It seems like every fly tier has his/her own version of each fly and sometimes two or three.  Given everything that's out there, where do you start?  How do you know which dry fly to use and when?

You can devote a lot of time to this and get extremely scientific, and as I gradually progress, I admit, this is the sort of thing I can see myself getting into, but when you're just starting off, you need to narrow the focus a bit.  As a wise TU member said, when you're just starting out, it's more important that you have confidence in the fly you're using than anything else.  Get out on the water, see what insects are around, and do your best to match the size and color.  You may not have the perfect fly, and there may be some fish your imitation doesn't fool, but it'll be enough to get you fishing and get you catching fish.  To give you an idea, my local TU Chapter president, Dave Plummer, has over 600 trout in his fishing journal from last year, and he swears up and down he uses a grand total of 6 different flies.  (I need to get a peek at his fly box!)

OK, so what flies do I need to get started?  If you live in the US Northeast, get yourself a copy of Art Flick's "New Streamside Guide".  Seriously, he's done all the work for you.  He spent 3 years on the Schoharie Creek in NY catching bugs, identifying them, and taking detailed notes on hatch times and habits of each and he's even gone and matched the types of bugs with the most common flies that imitate them.  To top it off, he narrows it down to around 10 dry flies to cover you all year.  He talks about what to use when and why and his book, with it's photos for easy identification, has been toted along in fishing vests since it was first published in 1969.

I'm lucky enough to have a copy from 1974 that was passed to me through a good friend from a gentleman by the name of Joe Knapp.  Between Art's research, and Joe's hand-written notes, I actually stand a decent chance of picking the right fly and matching the hatch.

The following is a little table I put together based on Joe's notes, but you can find similar hatch charts on the internet at places like The Fly Shack.

Mayfly Name:	Dry Fly Name:	Hook Size:	Time of year:
Iron fraudator	Quill Gordon	12 or 14	Last few days of April, 1st 3/4 of May
Ephemerella subvaria	Red Quill (male) or Hendrickson (female)	12 or 14	1st 3/4 of May
Stenonema vicarium	March Brown	10 or 12	All of May
Ephemerella attenuata	Blue-winged Olive	16 or 18	Last 3/4 of May into 1st half of June
Stenonema fuscum	Grey Fox	12	Late May & Early June
Stenonema ithaca or adensis	Light Cahill	12 or 14	Late May through Mid July
Paraleptophlebia adoptiva	Dun Variant	18 or 20	Late May to Late August
Ephemera guttulata	Grey Fox Variant or Green Drake	10 or 12	Last half of May & Early June
Potamanthus distinctus	Cream Variant	12	Last 1/2 of June through 1st 1/2 of July

After that, try to seek cooler water and fish terrestrials like ants and hoppers.

Upper West Branch

We've seen a fair amount of rain this week and the reports seemed to indicate water flow would be a bit high on my usual streams so I ventured upstream on the West Branch to Hobart, NY. One of my goals is to net a wild brook trout and I figured now was the time to do it.  The farther upstream you go, the faster the flood waters tend to recede, and the DEC says there's a good population of wild brookies up that way so off I went.

I'd be lying if I said I was good at fishing pocket water and prospecting for trout when none are rising, but I gave it a go. The water looked fishy to me, but I didn't see a thing.  I went with a wooly worm, a small caddis imitation, and a royal wulff but to no avail.  I did finally use the old "face the trees, forward cast through the gaps, and fish your back-cast" trick. Works like a charm. 

Back in town, I fished in the park where they have the stream dammed off. There were a few fish rising on the still water so I figured I'd give it a go and at the very least, work on my casting.  The results speak for themselves:

Fishing your Back-cast and Casting Backhanded.

Fishing your back-cast is something I first read about in the Ultimate Book of Fly Fishing, although at the time I was still focused on learning the basics and didn't give it too much thought.  More recently, I read about fishing your back-cast in Rich Osthoff's "No Hatch to Match."  In both cases, it was a quick sentence or two about dealing with casting when there is a lot of foliage behind you.  Instead of facing the water, turn around and face the foliage.  That way you can more accurately direct your forward-cast between the breaks in the trees and instead fish your back-cast.  I'll be honest, I haven't actually had much cause to use this trick yet, but hey, sounds good to me.

How I got around to fishing my back-cast had nothing to do with foliage.  I was wading in the upper West Branch with the water flowing from my right to my left.  I casted my dry fly upstream and let it drift down across my body and to my left.  Since I was in a long run with a fairly steady current throughout, I was getting a very long drift.  The issue I had was that in order to get my fly back upstream, I had to pick up my fly and false cast while facing downstream and slowly turn upstream to cast again.  Not a huge deal, but it seemed very inefficient to me and all that false casting is sure to spook a lot of trout.

Instead of turning 135 degrees (to cast at a 45 degree angle upstream from a fly nearly straight behind me) it occurred to me a few nights later that it would be fairly easy to instead fish my back-cast.  Face downstream on the pickup, throw in a false cast or two to get the angle right, and fish the back-cast instead.  I'm sure I'm not the first to think of this, but I haven't come across it yet in my reading so I figured I'd jot it down as info I found useful as I learn how to fly fish.

Here's another thing I found interesting while practicing fishing my back-cast in the yard just last week.  With a slight adjustment of the angle of your feet, fishing your back-cast is absolutely no different than casting backhanded.  It's just a simple change of perception, but for me it made a huge difference.  I had no problem whatsoever fishing my back-cast.  It was only a matter of adjusting the stop points on my back-cast and forward-cast to get the presentation right.  Any time I tried to cast backhanded, it was a hot mess.  Let's just say it's a good thing I follow the rules and always wear glasses and a hat while fly casting.

Instead of facing forward and trying to cast backhanded, try facing to the side or even slightly away from the stream and pretend you're fishing your back-cast.  Same result.  The line is on the opposite side of your body and the presentation is much easier to control.  As you get used to that, you can gradually rotate your body position until you're facing fully forward and truly casting backhanded.  I'm still working on it myself, and perhaps a certified casting instructor would call me to task for such a thing, but so far, this different way of looking at things has helped me immensely.

Gear Review: L.L. Bean Streamlight Ultra Outfit

For my first few attempts at fly fishing, I borrowed an old rod from my buddy that his dad left him and strapped on a 50's era Pflueger Medalist that I found behind the garage of the house I just bought.  Aside from what little I gleaned watching a few YouTube clips and whipping a piece of yarn around in the backyard I had next to no idea what I was doing.  Don't get me wrong, I still have next to no idea what I'm doing, but I have learned a little since then.

First off, the borrowed rod was 6'10" fast-action Browning graphite rod.  Given the area and what I know of my friend's dad, this rod probably made a lot of sense for him.  The relative shortness and fast-action would be perfect for delicate presentations of small flies on small pocket water in the area in and around Oneonta, NY.  As a novice, I found it very difficult to control, specifically in that I wasn't able to effectively load the rod, and I felt zero connection with the fly line.  As I grow in skill and my feel improves, I actually find this rod fairly easy to use as long as I don't need to cast very far, but that comes as no surprise as it's not what it was designed to do.

As a novice learning to cast on my own, that old Browning was definitely not what I needed.  I did a lot of reading on the subject and it seemed to me, most folks recommend starting out on a medium action, 5 or 6 wt rod in the 8'6" to 9' range.  I mentioned in my previous post that I love L.L. Bean's Ultimate Book of Fly Fishing.  Well, based on that book, largely positive online reviews, and on Bean's ridiculous "no questions asked" lifetime warranty I took advantage of an early spring 20% off fishing sale on LLBean.com and ponied up for my very own Streamlight Ultra outfit.

I opted for the 9' 5-weight outfit as a good starting rod and I went with the 4-piece so it would pack more easily.  The aforementioned Browning is a 2-piece and while it's 2 feet shorter, even that is a bit unwieldy when broken down.  While not even close to their top-of-the-line model, I continue to be extremely impressed with the quality of this rod.  I could go into more detail about "alconite stripping guides" and fancy reel seats, but you can read all the hype on L.L. Bean's site if you're interested.  As a novice, all you really need to know is that the rod looks and feels great and that if you screw up and slam it in your trunk or wrap it around a tree, L.L. Bean will send you a new one FOR FREE.  OK, I suppose you might want to know how it casts too.

I can honestly say, my casting improved immediately.  Suddenly I was able to easily feel the rod flexing and loading on my casts.  That difference alone brought me to the next level as it allowed me to more easily flex the rod and control my acceleration when casting.  The medium action makes the rod much more forgiving which gives you a fighting chance when trying to form your loops.  As the line straightens out, on a back cast for example, the rod's action allows it to flex to a greater degree and more slowly than the old Browning, and that gives you a lot more time to pause and then accelerate into your forward cast.  When you're new to casting and the motion isn't second-nature yet, that extra time is really going to pay off and help you train your body on how to do things right.

Again, I'm no experienced fly caster by any means, but with this rod I can easily execute a 45' 4-part cast with solid accuracy and casting a dry fly 60-70 feet is more than doable.  As my skills improve, I do notice that the rod seems a bit willowy when faced with a heavier streamer or a lot of aerial line, at that point, it flexes a bit too much, but I suppose that's where your double-haul comes in.  And if you regularly need to cast large streamers more than 60 feet, you're going to need a heavier outfit.

If you're new to the sport and looking for a quality rod to start you off right, you can't go wrong with a Streamlight Ultra.  Hell, if you're an experienced fisherman looking for a quality rod to take trout fishing and you're not looking to spend a fortune, you could do a lot worse than a Streamlight Ultra.

Book Review: The L.L. Bean Ultimate Book of Fly Fishing

Of all the books I've read on how to go about this sport, L.L. Bean's The Ultimate Book of Fly Fishing helped me the most in terms of getting me started on the right foot.  Written by three legends, Macauley Lord, Dick Talleur, and Dave Whitlock, it is perfect for the aspiring fly fisherman.

The book is divided into three sections, the first being an introduction to the sport written by Dave Whitlock.  He discusses everything from equipment and tackle, to entomology and even on-stream etiquette.  Without going too in depth on any one subject, he gives an excellent overview on what you're in for if you decide to give this sport a go. Let's face it.  As a beginner, there is so much to learn about fly fishing that you can easily get overwhelmed.  Dave does a great job of presenting the basics and giving you the foundation you'll need to start asking the right questions going forward.

The third section of the book discusses fly tying by master tier Dick Talleur.  To be completely honest, this section went way over my head on my first read-through.  Having caught a grand total of 1 trout on a dry fly in my illustrious young career, I was in no way prepared to make use of this section other than to get a basic idea of how flies are tied and to get some practice identifying some of the more common flies out there.  As I become more interested in tying my own flies (I'm thinking next off-season), I'm sure I will come back to this section with a much better appreciation for what's being offered here.  While I agree that to become a better and more complete angler, I must learn to tie my own flies, as a complete novice, this section didn't help a whole lot right off the bat.

This brings me to the section of the book that makes the whole thing so worthwhile in my opinion.  In Part 2, Macauley Lord does an amazing job of teaching you how to teach yourself how to cast.  If you read this chapter and go through the exercises (yes, even the pantomimes in front of a mirror!), you will learn how to cast.  I'm not saying you'll be perfect and that you shouldn't get yourself to a casting instructor at some point early in the learning process (more on that later), but you will learn enough to get out on the water and catching fish.  I can't recommend this section enough to the beginning fly fisherman.  The first time I got myself in front of a real casting instructor I was told I had "natural loops."  I didn't tell him that there was nothing natural about it.  I found a great resource, used it to the best of my ability, and spent a lot of time practicing in the yard.

A Brief Introduction

A few rather pathetic forays in 2012 were enough to get me addicted to fly fishing.  I've enjoyed fishing since I was a kid, but I was always in awe of fly fishermen when I happened to see them at my neighborhood creek.  To me there was something magical to fly casting and the fact that fly fishermen could catch trout consistently and seemingly effortlessly while I never even drew a strike with my baited hook did little to dispel this notion.

Fast forward 15-20 years and I find myself living in upstate New York, just a quick drive from some of the most famous streams in American fly fishing history.  The minute we decided to move our family here, learning to fly fish became the goal.  But how does one go about learning to fly fish with no prior experience, no mentor, and no idea where to start?

As I write this opening entry, I'm already a couple of months, 2 classes, several weekly outings, and 3 lovely fish (and a few little guys) into trout season.  I've grown in leaps and bounds as a fly fisherman, and yet I'm barely a fingerling.  My hope is that this blog will serve as reference and help me keep track of information and experiences, good and bad.  And who knows, maybe it will help someone else in a similar situation.

Art Flick recommended keeping stream journal on a small notebook to make note of important things like water temperatures and hatch times throughout the year.  Well, perhaps this is 2013's version.