Ausable River Trip [Cast of Characters]

Here's the cast of characters.  It's the only picture I have of the five of us.  We are having breakfast at The Country Bear (web site here), a little breakfast and lunch spot down the road from where we stayed in Wilmington.  As you will see as you schroll down the page, we are having way too much to eat.  We couldn't resist the coffee rolls when we learned they were baked on the premises.

Jim, Paul, Rob, John, and Peter (me)

We treated a bunch of these as "breakfast appetizers"

Next Post: Rainy Day Tuesday Fly Tying

Ausable River trip [Preliminary Plans]

Each year, usually in June, a group of fly fishing friends heads for trout country for a few days or more of fly fishing fun.  Typically the trip is to northern New Hampshire for fishing along the Connecticut River.  Last year the trip was to Colorado, and this year it was to New York’s Ausable River.  My friend Paul says these trips have been going on for over 35 years! I've only been on two of the trips, but am looking forward to many more.

The Ausable is a famous trout fishery.  I know of it because of Fran Betters, famed fly tier and the proprietor of the Adirondack Sport Shop in Wilmington, NY, about 10 miles from Lake Placid. 

In fly tying, Fran is best known for “inventing” the Ausable Wulff, the Haystack, and the Usual.  He’s also authored several books about fly fishing and fly tying.

I met Fran at the Marlboro (Mass.) Fly Fishing show, perhaps in 2006.  I wish I’d bought one of the Wulff’s he was tying.  But I did purchase some “authentic” dubbing for tying the Ausable Wulff.

Fran ran his shop from 1963 to 2009.  He has now passed away, and his former shop building is now a restaurant. Here are several old pictures from www.northcountryfolklore.org

If you decide to fish the Ausable, several fly shops are worth going to are:

http://www.ausablerivertwoflyshop.com/

http://www.hungrytrout.com/

http://www.jonesoutfitters.com/

http://www.wileysflies.com/

There is also available a very nice map identifying all the fishing spots along the main part of the Ausable.  The map takes a little bit of getting used to.  The river runs northeast in a fairly straight line to the western shore of Lake Champlain, but the map is oriented with north facing downward.  It’s easy enough to turn the map around to get north facing the “right” way, but then the text is upside down.  Regardless, it is a map well worth having with you.  It's available on line as a downloadable pdf file.  Here's the link:

http://www.ausablerivertwoflyshop.com/2_Fly_Map.pdf

Next post:  The cast of characters.

Ausable River Trip [Just Back]

This year's June fly fishing trip with friends was to New York's famed Ausable River.  I'm currently reviewing my pictures and working on a series of posts about this trip.  I know my friends who were on the trip will enjoy the pictures; but I am also hoping the pictures and text will be of general interest to others reading my blog.

Right now it looks like nine posts will follow this one. I expect (but don't promise) to "publish" one post per day starting tomorrow.  I hope I can write and pick pictures fast enough to keep up with that pace!

Just to get things started, below are a bunch of images selected randomly.

 

A blue sky was rare

It just rained one day.  But there was plenty of water and
it was usually overcast. This view is from the Trout Hunter.



Late lunch/early dinner.

This fly patch shows signs of lots of experimenting.

 

Quite a find outside the house one morning.

This is what happens when you fish morning, afternoon and evening!

 

First day out on the water

The weather here in New England has been absolutely gorgeous.  We need rain, but with day time temps in the mid-60s and nights in the upper-30's I am really happy. It's nearly the end of April, and the April showers never arrived.

It was a good ski season with more than the average amount of snow, so I am surprised to see water levels low along some of my favorite trout rivers and streams.

So... this week the skis went down into the basement and the fishing bag and gear got thrown into the back of my van. As I mentally went through my mental check list, I recalled how a couple of years ago I did the same thing; but I forgot either my waders or my boots.  Ever do that?

As it turned out I did much better this year for my first day out... I only forgot my wading staff.  Thankfully, the water was very manageable.  Attached to the wading staff is the holster and web belt.  So those items was forgotten at home, too.  But the leather belt in my blue jeans provided a satisfactory alternative.

Sunday was to be the day, so on Saturday I checked the water flow on the Miller's River one more time.  It was nearly perfect.



I fished my favorite section, a spot way downstream, nearly to where the Millers flows into the Connecticut River.  As has been the case for years, there were no fly fisherman there... though I did chat with a spin fisherman.  I managed to catch four hungry rainbows.  I wondered if they were holdovers, as they just seemed too thin for recent stockers.


One of my favorite sections.

This season's first trout, a thin, perhaps 11" rainbow.
Caught on a clipped peacock Woolly Worm, size 12.  It is also called a Wonder Bug.
The tippet is thick, at 3x, because it was very windy.

Clipped hackle peacock Woolly Worm, also called a Wonder Bug, with tail of turkey biots.
An underbody of 10 wraps of lead wire helped get this down deep, as did
casting upstream.  Yes, I do use a strike indicator.

I fished for about 3 hours, after which I decided to drive upstream and hang out at a couple of the bridges with access to the River, in search of conversation.

From the bridge in the center of Erving.
Do you see the fly fisher at the edge of the pool?
Just above the run in the foreground?

Also taken from the bridge in Erving.
Personally, I'd be nymphing in the fast water.



This final picture was taken from the bridge by Orcutt pool.  It was fun to lean over it and converse with a couple of fisherman, neither of which had had any luck. 

Taken from the bridge by Orcutt Pool.





Flies With a Story: Bill Long's Dragonfly Nymph

In the prior blog post I commented on Bill Long's realistic dragonfly nymph.  I have now uploaded to fishingwithflies.com Bill's story of this big bad boy.  Included are tying instructions and tips,  fishing tips, and a few pictures including a top view and side view.

The story is indexed at the top of the following page.  It is labeled as story #89:

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

Bill Long's Realistic Dragonfly Nymph

A while back (actually, a very long while back) my friend Bill Long from Pennsylvania sent me a sample of a very realistic dragonfly nymph that he has fun tying and fishing. 

I've drafted a page for the "Flies With a Story" section of my Web site and have sent it to Bill to check for any errors or revisions to the recipe. It will include several photos of the sample he sent me, and some tying and fishing tips.

When the page is ready for the Web site I will post a follow up blog to this one, with the link.  In the meantime, below is a single image to give a sense for the size of this beauty.  The nymph is a bit left of the wooden ruler because I pressed the hook point into the end of the ruler, but you can see that it is very close to 2" in length.



Soft Hackle Flies: Thoughts on Tying Techniques

My last three blog posts have been about soft hackle flies tied by my friend Paul DiNolo.

Soft hackle flies are generally simple to tie.  Usually it's only a simple body, perhaps a touch of dubbing for a thorax and to make the barbs of the hackled collar stand out, and a few turns of a soft hackle feather. Materials are minimal and applied sparsely.

When it comes to tying in and wrapping the hackle there seem to be two general techniques: (1) back-to-front and (2) front-to-back. 

BACK TO FRONT 

The one I have used, and the one I think is the most common (at least among my friends), is to tie the feather in by the tip and wrap it forward.  This is the "back to front" approach.  This places the longer feather barbs toward the front of the fly.  But because the stem of many soft hackle feathers gets stiffer and thicker very quickly as you move down the feather from the tip to the butt, a sturdy tie-off requires more thread wraps (at least for me) and results in a more substantial head than what is offered by the "front to back" technique.

Using the extensive video library at www.globalflyfisher.com/videos I found a couple of videos that demonstrate the "back to front" technique.  Both are by Davie McPhail.  The first one shows him using a hackle that has been stripped clean of barbs on one side.  Because of this, the three wraps of hackle he gives the fly result in a nicely sparse fly.  In the second video, he uses a hackle that has not been stripped on one side, and he also demonstrates a different tie-in technique.  These links will take you to the videos on globalflyfisher.

http://globalflyfisher.com/video/olive-spider

 

http://globalflyfisher.com/video/grouse-gold-river-wet-fly

 





Check out the full catalog of Davie McPail fly tying videos at YouTube:

 

http://www.youtube.com/user/daviemcphail

 

 

FRONT TO BACK

The second technique is the "front to back" technique.

I've never been able to master the technique.  But now Hans Weilenmann has made a few videos that make the technique much clearer to me.  I believe Hans Weilenmann is the master of the economically tied fly.  I don't necessarily mean that he uses economical materials. I mean that every thread wrap has a purpose.  There is no waste of materials, thread, or time.

[I've just reminded myself that once Hans told me that if a screw driver is needed for the job, the best tool is a screw driver, not a Leatherman.  If you think of flies as tools for catching fish, he seems to apply this thinking to his flies as well.]

The following videos are again from the globalflyfisher library of videos. Both videos demonstrate the front-to-back technique. The second pattern, the Lil' Dorothy, was just published on YouTube yesterday.

Please note that Hans has prepares his videos to be best viewed in HD; either 720p or 1080p.

http://globalflyfisher.com/video/soft-hackle-wet-wsplit-thread-rib

http://globalflyfisher.com/video/lil-dorothy



Check out the full catalog of Hans Weilenmann fly tying videos on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/user/HansWeilenmann

Also, check out Hans' excellent Web site:


http://www.danica.com/flytier/index.html. 





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.