More from Paul about the Dark Edson Tiger

My friend Paul DiNolo recently sent me the following remarks:

Hi Peter,

The "Dark Edson Tiger" streamer has been one of my "go-to" flies for over thirty-five years. The pattern has a long and distinguished record as a highly successful streamer, especially for those anglers who fish the Rangeley Lakes region of western Maine. The fly was originated by Bill Edson of Portland, Maine in either 1928 or 1929.

The Rangeley lakes district was the spawning ground for many famous streamer fly designs, and a wide variety of tying styles evolved which would provide the development of some historically effective patterns like the Grey Ghost, the Black Ghost, the Colonel Bates, the Supervisor, the Nine-Three, and both the Dark Edson Tiger and Light Edson Tiger to name a few.

With all the possible choices, I was almost immediately  attracted to the Dark Tiger. The reason made perfect sense to me. It looked like the simplest fly to tie and it didn't require a large assortment of expensive or hard to get materials.

I started by looking up the tying sequence and discovered that there seemed to be no one definitive pattern, but with only minor variations they were all about the same, and they all performed quite well. Edson's originals featured "real" jungle cock eyes. When these got to be too expensive he tied in little pre-formed brass cheeks to suggest eyes. There have been other small modifications, but the Dark and Light Tigers remain very effective to this day.

I tie my Tigers in a few different sizes, depending mostly on the kind of water that I'll be fishing, and the angling methods that the various stream conditions dictate.

This sample was tied by Paul DiNilo "to be fished".  

On bigger rivers, I will cast a size #6 or size #4  5-x long Tiger quartering downstream and let the fly swing until the fly is directly  downstream. Then I will strip the fly in with a varied erratic retrieve. If nothing happens, I will take a step or two downstream and repeat the process. This might not be the most exciting type of angling, but it does work well. However, this is not my favorite type of fishing. Given a choice, my first instinct is to fish dry flies on the riffles, runs and pockets of the beautiful little mountain streams that criss-cross  much of northern New England.

When the trout don't seem inclined toward surface feeding activity, I have no moral dilemma regarding going down to the trout's level with streamers, nymphs, and wet flies. The geometry of these small streams will not allow wide down and across swings. Fishing the small pockets and runs of a small headwater brook requires accurate short line casts aimed to a point just above a suspected trout location.

Tied by Paul DiNolo according to the original recipe that
specifies a gold tag and jungle cock eye.

In these situations I usually fish a size #10 or size #12 4-x long version of the Tiger. When I get the fly in the right spot, I will retrieve the fly back in a series of short twitches. When possible, I like to bring the fly forward, and then let it slide back as if it were a minnow fighting a losing battle against the stream flow. This technique can present you with some surprises. If you find the time to go north for a trout fishing day trip, try teasing some of these in front of little wild trout. It could open the door to some very rewarding angling.

---Paul DiNolo

Paul's Parachutes

My friend Paul DiNolo has written another story for fishingwithfles.  Paul also has an upcoming article in the magazine "On The Water", for which the photos of his flies below were taken.

From Paul:

Parachute dry flies have been around for a long time (since the 1930's), but they didn't start gaining popularity until about twenty-five years ago. The main reason for this  is the degree to which “Catskill” styled dry flies were seen as the standard for dry fly design and usage. The fact that so many anglers used them so often practically insured that they would achieve a certain amount of success. 

In the late 1960's and early 1970's there was a great deal of time and effort used to closely investigate how trout responded to various fly pattern designs, and types of presentations. Out of this research came some dramatic results that seemed to challenge the conventional dry fly wisdom of the time. The work of angling authors like Swisher, Richards, LaFontaine, Borger, Caucci, and Nastasi, to name but a few, indicated that trout key in on the profile of the insect's body.

They also saw the differences of trout feeding activity as the insects passed through the various stages; larva, emerger, dun, and spinner. The parachute fly can be presented in ways that can offer a good chance of success during these different stages of the “hatch”.

While I employ streamers, nymphs, and traditional wet flies in my trout fishing, my favorite method is dry fly fishing in small mountain headwaters. In that type of angling, my first choice is almost always some sort of parachute fly. Coming in at a very close second place is the standard Elk Hair Caddis. When I first started using parachute flies, I didn't make the change all at once. It took me about five or six years to make the almost complete transition (Occasionally I still use “Wulff” patterns and “Stimulators” with the Catskill style “radial” hackle).

Over the past twenty-five fishing seasons, it seems as if I find some new and useful feature about parachute flies each year. Here are a few reasons why I like parachute flies so much:

• Parachute flies almost always land on the water right side up.
• Parachute flies don't twist leaders.
• Parachute style hackling can be applied to most standard fly patterns with good results.
• Parachute hackle need not be the best grade of hackle to work. In fact, you will  get better results with second or third grade hackle.
• Parachute flies can be found in practically fly shop or catalog. This was not always the case. When I first started using them, I had to tie my own.
• Parachute flies are highly visible because of the “post wing”. These day I use some sort of fluorescent polypropylene yarn for my wing posts. The ability to follow the first few inches of drift for any dry fly will greatly increase the number of “quick strike hook-ups you get.

Now that it is known that trout eagerly take naturals as they are about to break through the surface tension of the water, we will do well with parachute fly patterns like the “Klinkhammer” (above) with its abdomen in the water and its thorax on the surface.

The Parachute Ant (above) has proven to be quite effective during a swarming event or as a late summer searching pattern. And, in the last two seasons my friends and I have had good luck with parachute styled Elk Hair Caddis (below).

Some of my angling buddies expressed some concerns about the perceived difficulties involved in tying parachute flies. There are a number of different tying methods, all of which work, and there are plenty of tutorials on YouTube. Don't worry if your first few attempts won't win any beauty contests. It seems as though trout have artistic standards known only to them. I have had enough experience to believe that trout seem to prefer bedraggled flies. So, if you haven't given parachute flies a fair trial, think about doing so this year. 

A Monday flyfishing trip to New Hampshire

Sustenance... The Poor Boys Diner

This is the first river we fished, along rt. 16 in the Pinkham notch area.

Me.  Taken by friend Steve P.

The Elk Hair Caddis - parachute style, pictured below, worked great for me.... once I found it in my fly box.

I usually fish a parachute with a simple tail of a few strands of feather fibers or a few strands of hair from a ground hog. This would be more of a mayfly parachute. And I started the day that way.  But it simply did not produce for me on Monday. 

However, the longer and fuller profile of this caddis tied by my friend Paul DiNolo worked wonders.  After finding it in a corner of my flybox, and after catching a few trout on it, I remembered earlier hearing Bill at North Country Angler in North Conway talking about this being the time to fish terrestrials and hoppers. To the extent that grasshoppers were working, this caddis perhaps imitated the profile of a struggling grasshopper.  I have always felt that the parachute hackle can connote action and motion.  And a downwing of elk or deer hair has long been used to imitate grasshoppers, the most famous pattern perhaps being the Latort Hopper.  Add a pink post parachute and now I can see it among white foam and bubbles!

My friend Paul will be the first to tell you that these flies were tied to be fished and not photographed.  I think he is right; I caught a mess of trout on this sample, and it held up well.  I find that if you can use your fingers to get the hook out of the fish, the fly will last longer than if you must use forceps to remove the hook.  One more reason to pinch down the barb!

Below are a few pictures.  It looks like the elk hair (or perhaps coastal deer hair, from the looks of it) is tied in about 2/3 from the eye and the poly post is tied in about 1/3 from the eye.

This is a lot of material tied onto a size 12 hook.  It takes a little practice to get this pattern clean and neat.

Soft Hackle Flies: A follow up by Paul DiNolo

My friend Paul has just prepared another article about soft hackles, which I published on the Web site earlier this evening.  I am writing about it here on the blog, but the full article and five photos of samples he tied and sent to me with the article are on fishingwithflies.com, here:

http://www.fishingwithflies.com/FliesWithaStory.html

It's at the top of the list, story #88.  Story #87 was also written by Paul and I published it two weeks ago, about his Soft Hackle Brassie and how to fish it.  The two articles are a good complement to each other.

Soft Hackle Brassie: better photos and Paul's article

I hope you will enjoy Paul DiNolo's article about the Soft Hackle Brassies he and his friends found so successful this fall and early winter on the deep glacier-formed ponds (called kettle ponds) near his home in southeastern Massachusetts.

I've published his story on my Web site in the "Flies With a Story" section here:

http://www.fishingwithflies.com/SoftHackleBrassie.htm

Also, I have some better pictures of the flies.  These have been included in the story, as well.

The photos done for the previous post were taken with a modified flash arrangement I was experimenting with.  I didn't like the results: things looked to flat and there was no pop.  So, I am back to the way I've done it from the beginning... using 2 or 3 desk lamps with spiral lightbulbs.

The Soft Hackle Brassie

My friends Paul, Dennis and Jim have been fishing the kettle ponds of Cape Cod and environs all fall and through December, with awesome success.  I haven't quite found my way down to fish with them, as I seem to have put my gear away in early September.  But I have enjoyed Paul's frequent telephone calls with "fish reports"  to tell me how great the pond fishing (stocked trout) has been this year (unlike last year).

Paul loves to fish dry flies and usually waits to see insect activity before stringing his flyrod.  This is the advantage you have when you live so close to good trout water.  Over the years he's developed some good instincts for fishing his home waters through the fall and until the last pond freezes over.

But this year, Paul and my other buddies seemed to have eschewed the dry fly and have found their greatest success with what Paul calls a soft hackle brassie.  I recently asked him to send me a sample and he quickly tied up a couple of each of the colors he'd been using:  copper, red, and green.

Paul is a great story teller and writer.  He's written two "Flies with a Story" articles for my Web site, here and here.  I've asked Paul to write a story about fishing the soft hackle brassie, and I a sure he will.  In the meantime, here are a few pictures I took of the flies he sent me.  These are all tied on size 12 hooks.

 





A package from Paul: 4 Rangeley style streamers

My friend Paul sent me four Rangeley style streamers to use in a photo project I am planning.  I want to use my dSLR and macro lens to make high quality photos worthy of printing large.  Making something look good on a Web site or computer monitor (displayed at 70 to 100 dots per inch) is relatively easy.  And just about any digital camera can do a wonderful job.  But when printing big at 200-300 dots per inch, it is a different story.

Anyway, I haven't started that project yet.  However, I've taken some quick hand held photos of each of Paul's flies, using a point and shoot camera, and I have displayed them below. 

Note that two of the flies, The Professor Streamer and the Grizzly King Streamer are stretched out and modified versions of old wet fly patterns, each tied by Paul on a streamer hook in the Rangeley Lake style.

Paul informed me that the four flies he sent me were tied on Mustad 3665A hooks, size 2. This model of Mustad has a 6xl shaft.

The Kennebago Special

The Professor Streamer

Grizzly King Streamer

Rapid River

A few images from my day-trip to northern NH [Sep 19]

On Sunday the 19th, my friend Paul and I drove to northern New Hampshire for a day of fishing.  Unfortunately the water was a bit cooler and a bit higher than we were hoping for. As it turned out it was a great day of fishing but a poor day of catching! 

We each tagged a couple of bigger trout (stockies) in the morning and I did manage a couple of pictures (a rainbow and a brookie, posted below).  Each was caught with a parachute fly with a brightly colored post.  Mine had a pink post. Paul was using an orange post. 

That's Paul below drifting a dryfly:

In the early evening we picked up a handful of the smaller fish, as a caddis hatch broke out just before sunset. One of my most pleasant surprises was the picture immediately below.  It was actually three images overlapped and combined in photoshop to create a vertical panorama, though it has been cropped to a more normal aspect ratio.  I did this because the camera lens was not wide-angle enough to capture the water falling in the foreground plus the beautiful sky.

Additional Images (for non-New Englanders, that is the Mt. Washington Hotel at the bottom):

Six classic wet flies tied by Paul DiNolo

I have just created a page in the "Flies with a Story" section of fishingwithflies.com, with pictures and pattern information for the six classic wets tied by Paul DiNolo (see my prior post for more information)

Here's the link to the new page:

http://www.fishingwithflies.com/SixClassicWetFlies.htm

Paul DiNolo to have an article published

My friend Paul is expecting an article he wrote about wet fly fishing to be published in September's On The Water magazine.  Paul is a frequent contributor to the magazine, and is known especially for his knowledge of small stream trout fishing. 

The magazine has two editions.  One edition concentrates on New England fishing and the other on New York and New Jersey.  Both appear to be more oriented toward salt-water fishing.  For example, of seven articles in the August issue, six are salt-water oriented. This orientation doesn't surprise me, as the magazine's headquarters are in East Falmouth, MA, on Cape Cod. 

You can buy a copy or subscribe to the magazine by going to their Web site, http://www.onthewater.com/. Back issues are available and their Web site also includes a "where to buy" list.

In preparing his materials for submission to the editor, Paul asked if I would photograph a selection of classic wet flies which he tied and delivered to me in the fly-box pictured below.

On my Web site's Flies with a Story page, I plan to post the individual images of each fly soon, along with some text and tying instructions from Paul.