Black Bear Green Butt

Hook: #4-8 Streamer or Salmon Hook

Thread: Black 70 Denier

Tag: silver tinsel

Butt: fluorescent green thread or floss

Body: black floss 

Opt. Throat (not shown): black hackle or marabou

Wing: black bear fur

Head: lacquered black thread

Pale Evening Dun

Hook: Dry size 16-20

Thread: 8/0 Primrose (or pale yellow)

Tail: Natural Dun Hackle fibers

Body: Thread wraps

Wings: Natural Dun Hackle tips

Hackle: Natural Dun

Upper West Branch Report

The water on the Upper West Branch is low (~80 CFS at Walton) and clear and amazingly cool for mid-August. Bob Wikoff and I headed out to fish the stretch between Hamden and Delancy and take advantage of the fall-like weather. We were hoping the fish were of a mind to do the same and weren't disappointed.

There wasn't a whole lot of activity during the afternoon, though Bob nabbed a few browns on a Red Quill and I caught one small-mouth on a CDC emerger. I did receive a major jolt when a three-foot carp pursued my CDC emerger as it swung in the current. Ultimately his senses were too keen and he decided to let it go, but not before my heart rate shot through the roof.

As evening fell, things started to pick up. There were quite a few different bugs out on the water including some big yellow mayflies which I think were golden drakes, small charcoal caddis, tiny BWOs, summer stenos and some light cahills. I had good luck with a #16 blue quill as well as a #14 Parachute Adams, releasing at least a half dozen browns, though Bob out-fished me 2 or 3 to 1. He started out with a dark brown deer hair caddis and moved to a Red Quill which caught several fish just prospecting. As rises began he switched to a light Cahill and finally to a Pale Evening Dun, both of which he used to deadly effect. Beneath one tree which was leaning very low over the water, he side-armed several casts and pulled quite a few trout out, 2 or 3 of which were in the 16-17 inch range. I could hear him chuckling, "Ha! Thought you were safe under there, eh?"

Upper West Branch Report

It's been cool and a little rainy around here leaving the water conditions much better than normal for this time of year. The West Branch Delaware at Walton was at around 100 CFS tonight, up a little from the recent rains, but still quite clear. I'd love to see it up around 200-250 CFS, but the water is cooling off nicely so I took a break from warm water fishing and headed down to Walton to try out some hopper and cricket patterns and a few comparadun variations I had worked up.

There wasn't much in terms of surface activity and no obvious hatches going on tonight, but I found a few fishy spots (mostly fast riffles emptying into deeper runs) and did some prospecting. Sadly, I lost my hopper fairly early on to a fly-eating multiflora rose. I found that particularly painful as I had no backup and the damn thing took me a good 20 minutes to tie. The black cricket pattern I based it on worked well though. I had three hook-ups and landed two, both browns.

Being black and riding low, the cricket was very hard to spot in the fast water, so I tied on my trusty comparadun, a mahogany colored size 12, and went back to work. Again, the fly performed and landed several more browns, a 10" small mouth bass, and few river chubs, just for good measure. The trout and bass were all caught in faster water where the Isos like to hatch and the oxygenation is higher. Wading back to my car, I saw fish rising in a long, slow-moving run. I had a feeling they were chubs, and I wasn't disappointed. With the water so low and clear (and probably a bit warm and stagnant), the trout head elsewhere for their food, shelter, and comfort.

Davie McPhail's Black Cricket

Materials (listed in order of use)

Hook: #12 dry fly
Thread: black 70 denier
Back: black craft foam
Butt: black dubbing
Tail: 2 black goose biots
Thorax: black craft foam, wrapped
Rear Legs: black goose biots
Wing Case: black craft foam
Front Legs/Hackle: black dry fly hackle
Antennae: fibers from starling feather or black pheasant tail
Head: black dubbin

For a detailed instructional video, go to the source:  

Oaks Creek Report

JBP and I decided to scout some new water tonight and headed to Oaks Creek up near Fly Creek, NY a little outside of Cooperstown. It's a smaller stream that runs from Canadarago Lake down through Fly Creek and eventually into the Susquehanna River below Cooperstown. Rumor has it there is a decent population of wild brown trout and native brookies and given that much of it remains wild, it definitely doesn't get much fishing pressure.

JBP being a raging extrovert, we quickly found ourselves parked in some nice folks' driveway walking through their backyard along some beautiful waterfront in and around a favorite local swimming hole. Oaks Creek itself was picturesque, the perfect image of a wild trout stream. It was large enough that I didn't feel over-gunned with my 9 ft 5 weight, especially in the many holes scattered about, but I could easily see a Tenkara enthusiast having a field-day in there.

It being August, the water was a bit warm for trout so I can't attest to the veracity of the aforementioned rumors. However, I did catch a good half-dozen small-mouths (the largest around 10 inches) and more river chubs than you can shake a stick at.  Again, the Iso Comparadun was my go-to top water fly and it drew strikes despite there being little to no surface activity. As the shadows grew longer, I switched to an olive woolly bugger with a red tail and it too caught plenty of fish.

Bass in the ole Farm Pond

We took the family camping at a friend's property near Treadwell, NY and they just happened to have a farm pond full of large mouths. I didn't get to spend a lot of time trying to hook them, but I was able to wet the line once or twice.

Foam disc poppers, bucktail streamers, a "Maple Syrup" and several other flies failed to entice the finicky bass. What did finally catch me a whopper was a classic black woolly bugger with a black plastic bead-head resting on the bottom and twitched once and a while. While the minnow imitations earned a few follows and not much else, the woolly bugger is the only thing that drew a strike. The poppers didn't seem to attract any interest at all. Seems the bass in this particular pond like their prey lazy and slow moving making me think of helgramites and leeches. Hmm... we sure did a lot of swimming in that pond!