Favorite Stuff: The Bugger Barn from Cliff Outdoors

I just wrote a short review about a really nice fly box, the Bugger Barn. This product comes from Cliff Outdoors of Casper, Wyoming. It's a sturdy little bugger, and well worth looking at if you like organized fly boxes with good carrying capacity. The review is indexed on the page called Articles/Favorite Stuff.

Or, you can skip the index and go directly to the review by clicking here.

Another good day fishing for panfish and bass

I took Friday off from work, as it was supposed to be a nice day. With Hurricane Dan moving up the coast it was expected that Saturday and/or Sunday would be filled with rain and wind. Definitely not a good day for casting a fly. So, if I wanted to fish I needed to take a loooong weekend, and Friday was the day!

Well, Friday started out kind of "iffy"; not what I expected. Wind was cool and out of the east (generally not a good thing). The sky was a solid cloud bank when I awoke, and the air temperature was a cool 50F. But as the morning progressed the sun began to shine through and eventually I thought the fish might be starting to stir.

I packed up the Hobie Float Cat and got to my favorite pond around 11 am. The pond is long and thin and runs from north to south, so it was actually quite sheltered from the breeze.

I found the water was cooler than the week before and there was no surface activity of any sort. The yellow bodied Edson Tiger that was still on my line from its successful outing last week was not successful on this day. So, I switched colors to what is actually my favorite version of this fly... black. Its tied with a twisted black marabou body, a dun dyed mallard hackle and a few strands of peacock. I can't tell you that the herl helps, but if does look better! Plus, I just use the butt ends of herl I have collected from tying herl body flies. This is another fly which I definitely want to tie with step-by-step photos for the Web site this winter.

The day turned out to be another banner day of fishing, with loads of bluegills chomping on this one fly, with 4 or 5 largemouth bass thrown into the mix.

A good day fishing for panfish

This has been a crazy summer. July was one of the coldest and wettest in history here in New England, and I don't think I was even once was able to fish a river. Well, maybe once. But generally water levels were what they normally are in May, right after spring runoff.

That left me fishing ponds from my hobbie float cat. But even that has been something I have avoided for about two weeks due to the oppressive August humidity and high temperatures.

Well, I finally got out on Sunday and the fishing was fantastic. Humidity was down a bit, temperatures were below 90F, and there was enough of a ground level breeze to keep me happy.

The closest thing I had to the yellow jackets that were swarming the lily pads and were getting sucked in by the bluegills was a single Brooks-style yellow stonefly nymph which I tied with rubber band strands for a tail. Lots of action! It was unweighted and I fished it right along the edge of the lily pads with great success until I lost it after one vicious strike which could only have been a pickerel.

The reward was bluegills (males) in spawning colors. On the other hand, one photo here is of a male (yes?) in post-spawn lack-of-color. It was the greyist colored bluegill I had ever seen, and I thought a picture would provide an interesting contrast to the bright-colored spawning males.

After loosing that one-and-only yellow stonefly nymph I switched to the only other yellow fly I had with me. This is my own little version of a Dark Edson Tiger. (Mr. Edson named his fly after the "dark" wing and not the "light" body; the Light Edson Tiger is tied with a yellow wing and peacock herl wrapped body.) The bluegills slammed it and typically this meant removing the streamer with foreceps, whereas when I had fished the nymph it was usually dangling from the upper lip. A couple of bass fell for it too.

My Hobie Float Cat

I've just added a page in my Articles/Favorite Stuff section about my Hobie Float Cat. I have had this pontoon boat for nearly 15 years and its been a near constant companion. The build quality is excellent. Only the few scratches on the bottom of the polyethylene pontoons make it obvious that it is not new. Click on the link below for the article and a few pictures:

Click Here For Article and Images

Flies used fishing for trout on the Connecticut River

This picture is a follow-up to my previous post, about fishing for trout in northern New Hampshire along the Connecticut and Androscoggin Rivers. I hope to be adding individual close-up pictures of each of these flies to the Web site. But, in the meantime:

In the fly box on the left, at the 9:00 position: Deer Hair Caddis tied by Paul to match the alderfly. (see my earlier post for a picture of the alderfly.)

10:30 position: Hare and Herl Bugger tied by me. I tied this also with a lead wire underbody and with hen hackle wrapped over the entire body, to make a Hare and Herl Woolly Bugger. But the bead head version shown here was the only nymph I needed for this trip, which I fished unabashedly under a medium sized fluorescent red indicator.

12:00 position: Paul's "realistic" Alderfly imitation, tied with a lacquered church-window feather from a pheasant.

2:00: My favorite dry fly, a very visible Parachute Coachman. A size 14 is all I frequently need.

5:00: Paul gave me a few of his Elk Hair Caddis with light colored (or bleached) wing for easy visibility. On this trip, I fished this almost as much as the Parachute Coachman. I plan to tie some of my own as this was a very productive fly for me

6:00: Jon's favorite Alderfly imitation, tied with brown hackle wing and collar. I had a hard time seeing this on the Androscoggin where I first fished it, as it seems to match the tanic tinted color of the river. But Jon has far younger eyes than I do, and he scored big time with this fly during our first day's outing.

7:00 position: My Parachute Trude has a crinkly calf tail wing. Sometimes I tie-in a tail made from the hackle fibers of a pheasant's tippet feather (same as on the Parachute Coachman), though it appears that in this sample I either chose not to or simply forgot about it. The butt ends of the chartuese wing are tied so as to create the parachute post. Very economical and efficient! I find that chartreuse is a good color for early evening fishing. I have always thought that with a cream colored dubbed body and tan calf tail wing that this pattern could suitably imitate a small woodland grasshopper, as they are often tan or grey with a cream colored tummy.

Fishing way up there, near Colebrook NH

In June I took a four-day fishing trip with three friends to Colebrook, NH. This location is way up into New Hampshire. Our travels took us to the origin of the Connecticut River, and we were driving very close to the Canadian border on occasion. We fished primarily the Connecticut River below the dam at First Connecticut Lake and the Androscoggin in Errol.

On the Androscoggin we were fortunate enough to hit the beginning of the alderfly hatch, as sample of which is pictured here. A size 12 or 14 Elk Hair Caddis is a very adequate imitation. I will be posting some pictures of the flies we used, later. What we caught were brown, rainbow and brook trout, and small stocked salmon.

Below are several pictures from the trip. It is hard to believe it from the pictures, but we had rain most of the time.

Click Here For More (14) And Larger Images

First visit this year to the Land of the Nuclear Sunfish

When water levels are high (as they are in New England right now) I turn from river trout fishing to bass and panfish in local ponds. My favorite was named by my brother as the "Land of the Nuclear Sunfish". For the life of me I can't figure out where the smaller sunfish are. Really, truly, 90% of the sunfish I catch are between 8.5" and 9.5". Granted I use fairly large flies. And maybe the rules of the pond are the big 'uns get first crack at any food source. Well, whatever.

I had a great first day and took a few pictures (link below), including a photo of the fly I caught all the fish with. The top one in the photo is a virgin fly to show you how it looks after tying. The conehead gets it deep, and the fly is tied with only one material: rabbit fur from a pelt or from a zonker strip.

The instructions are simple: (1) a patch of fur tied in as a tail, about the length of the shank, (2) dubbed body using a dubbing loop and fur cut short (or just use pre-made rabbit dubbing) and (3) a collar of fur applied using a dubbing loop. I get a big kick out of fishing real simple flies! (I plan to take some step by step photos one of these days, but it is a pretty straight-forward pattern.)

The bluegill pictured below was one of 3 that measured (plus or minus) 10". Total take on the one conehead fly this day was about 60 sunfish with a few perch mixed in.


You can see more (7) and bigger images here:

http://www.peterfraileygalleries/nuclearsunfish

I have added Photo Galleries

Other than this blog (which is hosted free by google blogspot), fishingwithflies.com uses Frontpage 2003 for software. All changes are made on my computer and stored on my hard drive, then uploaded to Godaddy which serves as my Web site "host".

Frontpage 2003 is very old and cumbersome and even uploading photos is a pain. So, I have decided to sometimes upload pictures instead to my photo site, http://www.peterfraileyphoto.com/. 

Within this site I have set up a seperate folder on the "All Galleries" page, appropriately called "Photo Galleries for fishingwithflies.com".
My first entry is a 15 image sequence of an emerging dragonfly. I took these during a 30 minute period while fishing the Millers River, earlier this season.

You can get there either by going to the gallery home page and finding the first folder of galleries here:
http://www.peterfraileyphoto.com/emergingdragonfly.

To whet your appetite here is the first of the 15 images:

Here are two of six new fly photos

Bob Erickson gave me six flies to photograph and to include in his article on fishing for Atlantic Salmon in Newfoundland (see previous Blog posting). Two photos are shared here; all six have been added to his story:

http://www.fishingwithflies.com/AtlanticSalmonOnTheRock.htmOnTheRock.htm

Atlantic Salmon on the Rock

I have just added Bob Erickson's story about fishing for Atlantic Salmon in Newfoundland to my "Flies With a Story" page of this site. You can see Bob's trip pictures and read his story here:

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

Also, he sent me a few of the fly patterns mentioned in the story, and their recipes. I will photograph them soon and add them at the bottom of the story.

To tempt you, below are just three of Bob's pictures.