How to follow water-flow information on your favorite rivers

Here in southern New England we have been deluged with rain over the past week.  At times like this I find it important to study water flow information from the federal government's Web site before heading out.  Below, for example, is the current status of the Millers River in Erving, MA.  I fished it last Friday (May 13) when it was below my self-imposed threshhold of 500 cfs (cubic feet per second).  As you can see, today, a week later things are quite different, with water flow at about 1,500 cfs.  That's unfishable.

If you'd like to find out how your river is doing, just go to http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/rt.

rt= real time data.  You will get on your monitor a page that looks like the image below.  It's fun to see what other parts of the country are doing.  New England is wet (blue and black dots), and across the south things look below normal (red dots).

(Note: The image below is a screenshot and is not active.  It is not click-able.)

Once you get this page up on your computer using the link above, just click on your state to get to your state-specific page. You'll be able to negotiate your way from there.  Each dot is a different river location. 



A good online source for leakproof, clear-plastic zip bags

I always have a water-resistant camera with me when fishing, to record the day or perhaps even get a good picture or two. However, most people leave their cell phones and cameras in the car to avoid getting them wet.  That's a good idea.  But there are times when it would be nice to have these devices with you.

A couple of years ago I found  relatively inexpensive and heavy-duty leak proof zip lock bags at a Web site called http://www.thewaterproofstore.com/.

I bought a multi-pack selection of four Aloksak bags (direct link: http://www.thewaterproofstore.com/aloksakmulti.html) for under $12, the largest of which is 12" x 12". The store has quite a few other nice products as well.  I have no connection with the company.

The image below shows my old Panasonic ultrazoom camera, a small Canon not-waterproof point and shoot camera, and my old and still-in-use cell phone.  The fourth bag in the kit has gone missing *LOL*.

I bought a few more multi-packs last December.  They make great gifts for your fishing buddies, or perhaps stocking stuffers for outdoorsmen/women in your family.



A tip for collecting your tying trash

Rather than discarding an empty tissue box, try using it as a scrap receptacle.  The tissue boxes with the clear plastic covering the hole works great.  It is easy to push in your trash, and the plastic essentially traps little feathers tips and butts and fluff from escaping. 

This old tissue box has been on the side of my desk for years. When (if?) it gets full I'll just replace it with another. 



A strategy for finicky panfish during the "dog days of summer"

I heard on the evening news last night that this has been the warmest first six months of the year (overall, for the entire country) in history.  Since we don't have central air-conditioning at our house, we have been suffering these last few weeks.  I don't think the fish like it either.

Locally there's not a chance that I will fish for trout.  Some will find underground springs to help them holdover, but my guess is that a lot will die off. 

So, I fished again today from my floattube for bass and panfish.  But the fishing on my favorite farm pond was as slow as I have ever seen it.  I fished the first 30 minutes without any action, trying topwater poppers and hoppers and gradually fishing deeper and deeper.   Nothing.

Thinking about what other strategy I could try, I felt a need to fish something smaller and deeper.  If I had some really heavily weighted small nymphs I would have tried them. Something like a Copper John would have been excellent. But, sometimes the best strategy for getting small nymphs down deep without adding more weight is to make adjustments to your leader.

I was fishing my standard panfish leader:  A 6 foot tapered leader with about 2 feet of tippet added.  That usually means a 3x tippet as that nicely turns over the poppers and buggers.  To get deeper, I added about 3 feet of 5x tippet to the 2 feet of 3x tippet to create a 10 1/2 foot leader.  I attached a beadhead and went to work.  The 5x tippet material helped the beadhead sink because its thinner diameter sliced and sank through the water better.  It also placed the fly further from the end of the floating fly line. Once the fly is down deep, it is important to move the beadhead only slightly because when you strip the line the beadhead will move up in the water column, and away from the fish.

This worked great.  I kept the line barely taught and waited for the subtle "tap, tap, tap".  The first beadhead was a size 12 herl body nymph with a short tail of rabbit fur.  Basically, my "Hare & Herl Bugger" without the hackle.  I managed to catch some big bluegills, and I also managed to loose a couple of fish that got wrapped around lily pads or underwater structures.  With 3x I can usually coax them toward me, but 5x is a different story.

I then moved to an even smaller nymph.  Probably a 14, but it had no tail.  Just a bead head, white wool body and a couple of wraps of white hackle tied aft, rather than in front.  Little white grubs like this work well for me during the summer.  I find this interesting because usually I find dark colors better.  To really change things up, try a white grub on a scud hook.  This gives the nymph a little wiggle.  Unfortunately, the scud hook grub was another fly I was without today.  I would have tried it next.

Below is a picture of what was perhaps the largest (almost 10")  bluegill of the day, followed by the largest (and only) Pumpkinseed.  Pumpkinseeds don't get quite as large as bluegills.  At nearly 9" this was a big one.

Don't lose your trip photos! Back up your computer!

I just received an email from my friend and fly-tyer-extraordinaire Bob Mead.  You may know Bob for his natural looking flies, such as the praying mantis and lady bug.  (Here's my picture of the ladybug fly he gave me in 2005.  Believe me, there's a hook under there.)

Check out the Web site he has with Dave Martin at: Bob and Dave's Auctions.  At this moment over 100 items related to fly fishing are being auctioned.

Anyway, I was just checking in with him because the January Fly Fishing Show in Marlboro, MA is coming up soon. Bob confirmed that he will be there and I look forward to saying "hi".

As we exchanged emails, Bob informed me that before Thanksgiving his 2-year old Apple died and he lost all his pictures, emails, addresses, documents and articles.... in other words, everything!

Losing photos would be unbearable to me and I know others would be lost without all the tunes they've downloaded to their computers.  The moral of the story:  backup your computer. 

There are many strategies and techniques for this.  I use two of them!  That's right, I back up two different ways:

1)  I have a 1-terabyte harddrive that sits next to my computer and is connected with a USB cable. Mine requires electricity, so it is plugged into my powerstrip, but there are other models that are portable which get their juice directly from the computer through the USB cable.  I believe 1-terabyte is 1,000 gigabytes, so it provides a lot of backupability.  Mine is made by Seagate. With the included software you can schedule backups to occur automatically, such as every night.  I back up "incrementally" which takes less time as it backs up only the information that has changed or has been added to my computer's internal drive since the prior backup.  I paid about $100 for this external drive.

2) If someone were to steal all my stuff or the house were to burn down, I would be out of luck with #1 above.  So I also backup online, to http://www.mozy.com/.  The cost is about $50 per year for unlimited backup.  One warning:  you really need a fast internet service (i.e. no dialup) to make this work.  You can schedule Mozy to work in the background while your computer is on, though this does slow down the computer somewhat (at least it does on mine.)  Or, you can manually activate the backup, such as while you are eating dinner or while you're watching a football game... or tying flies!  I do this perhaps once a week.

Recommendation:  If I could do only one thing it would be Mozy.  A similar vendor is Carbonite, which my wife uses.  There's no extra hardware to find room for at your computer station and it provides great peace of mind.  From what I understand Mozy backs up your files simultaneously on servers in several cities across the country as additional disaster protection.

Peter