Red Neck Brookie

 

    Hot weather & a blue collar shitty corporate job have made it difficult lately to get in some dry fly fishing. maybe some night-time troutin' is in order. 

    on my local streams lately I've been discouraged,  Any time I tie any sorta dry with wings... synthetic or not,   my tippet twists up like crazy! its annoying. try doing this.... tie on a stupid small mayfly/winged bug with a strand of a spiders web, cast, twist,  then 2 minutes later, rip off that tippet, tie on some more nearly invisible shit that doesn't pigtail,  thread the impossibly small hook eye again. after I repeat this process, maybe 2 or three times, I'll tie on a wet. dont tell rolf.   I've found out that brookies are pretty carnivorous. If I try to tie a small brooktrout, it usually works.
    So I"ve been making these brookie flies outta all the stuff in the first shot, a few Hungarian partridges, Indian Hen, jc, Pheasant (a tiny red, neck feather highlights the jc nail & outlines the back) & some tiny tiny brown hen neck hackles make a lateral line.  sometimes I add some natural or white to the belly,
   

sz. 16 longshank, bent

Kill a Kat Kontest

Its like 90 today and  the bass are still in coves. the 30"ish above fought me in the current last night. still less than a 5 min battle, but these fish are strong this year. & fat! the early summer in march jumpstarted the season. I dunno, but last years Ct & World record wasn't the longest fish, but it had a good'ol' American gut.if these things keep growing in the deeper LI Sound waters, it might get beaten again this year. (someones already come within 6 or so lbs) September Bassin will be off the charts!

Ive been at the vice replacing the dozens of trout flies that caught trees this year. after reading a post by smallflyfunk, I decided to start making some small terrestrials.   I gotta get some better way of photographing shit. especially sz 24 spiders. CDC puffs seemed to make awesome looking abdomens when folded over, and I laughed a little using fisher cat whiskers for legs.  You dont get many whiskers on a pelt, so the only solution I could come up with was.... Kill more of those fuckers. If people out there start using more of this rodent, then its two-fold.... there will be more trout for you to catch & the demand for whiskers will facilitate an eradication effort.      . The dubbing is superb!  I used to use Muskrat belly fur, (excellent excellent superfine shit!) but I'm leaning towards Fisher cat now.  as soon as I kill a local one, I'm posting pictures. Please people, carry a gun fishing, I once heard these pests eat 100 fingerling trout a day!
    Reminds me of a thing that's going on right now... Me and 3 others are in a betting pool. $10 bux to the first to catch a native (non-stocked) Tiger on a dry. There aren't too many places around here for them, so its difficult .. but what made me think of it was.. .What if there was a Kill a Kat (fisher) Kontest. 10 bux to the first to Kill a Kat in a stream. I can't wait to use local belly fur on a pattern.

Night-time Flavor

   I've been tying up a bunch of shrimps lately. they all incorporate some of the same, and some variations. most of them are without feelers under the abdomen, just because i wasn't sure they would swim right on a thin gauge #6 hook.(top shrimp is bigger hook)
   Starting over, there were tons. TONS! of shrimp in the water this week, they were all nearly transparent, about 2" long.Aat one point, me and a fishin buddy tried counting the rises. it was nonstop, 2-3 breaking the surface every second!!!  Awesome.  Every time I see this, I freeze, shine my lamp in the water, and pay attention. I guess its kinda like flippin a stone in a creek. whats the different bait I ask, I'm not looking for the usual schools of baitfish, crabs, or etc. I'm looking for the flavor of the night.. this week it was shrimps. 
  Get out to a muddy cove after a warm day, catch the turn & ebb, and listen. The warm, bait-rich rushing water at a narrow cove entrance will be the hot-spot.
   Concentrate on the eyes.. its often the most visible feature in moonlight, I found that Orvis's Mirage Eyes in 3/32" worked best.  once sealed into the body with some epoxy, they glow great!  I tried out 6 slightly different shrimp imitations,  the burnt mono eyes are not as effective after dark, dont use lead or copper, the biggest fish are on the surface, and short, fast retrievals. 3" at a time, pausing every 2 or 3 feet.
   Ps, the only reason I used such a thick hook up top is because I straightened out a few on relatively small bass. this shrimp swims correctly, and will bring in that 40-cow when he hits

My two Shids

    

 I've got a pattern that i call the Shid. its the shit!  its kinda a cross between a shrimp and a squid, hence; Shid. Two keeper stripers in 10 min, and I went home. I know the game, those fish are smart, after I throw 'em back, they all go tell their friends not to eat Shid, and I'm Shid outta luck. Deadly.

    Its raining today, but with tide in my area somewhere around 1752 give or take, I cant resist. I'll catch my favorite dusk tide ebb.  (always the most productive)   My guess it that the daytime sun heats up all the high waters, hopefully coinciding with some sort of hatch.. and when the ebb starts, all the fish are attracted to not only the warm, but the food in it. Lately there has been some storm surges, bringing lost of eel grass up, making casting very frustrating, but hey, if you don't play you cant win, right?

WTF.

   My fly was good, my fluorocarbon tippets knots were strong, the furled leader nearly invisible underwater. but the cheap Chinese finger-cuff thing failed on me.  maybe it was a 40" fish, or a 20"er out to prove something, but after simply one tug, the 'take' hit, all was lost. I generally like these finger-cuff things,   and I'll probably put another one on, they cut down on water drag, and go through the eyelets easy. I'm no good at nail-knots, and don't like the bulk on my line. any suggestions? just bad luck

Pickit Pin tryouts

  Been tempted to try this pattern for a while. so i thought I'd try tying it a few different ways. .
     First attempt, (bottom) fell off tick sized magnet I keep on my reel to hold flies, I was kinda pissed, because the cut tail, mid section hackle, and pheasant wings looked cool, i kinda thought it might work. it didn't .
     Second attempt, clockwise, used a sz. 16. think it was a dai-riki dry with the larger gauge wire. after a little research into the flies roots, it seemed appropriate to use materials that made it an authentic (kinda-sorta) picket pin. so, I used gopher. it was a red fur,  but I wanted the "emerger" qualities to show in this fly, cause' I'm kinda hung up on dries, so I used the fur fluff, which meant removing all the reddish hair tips... stupid. anyways, the tails are all brownish red (Ct. nutmeg)top, tan unders colored hackle tips, but where i got hung up was,,, honestly I couldn't find my red squirrel, I know what shape the hide is cut and everything, but i cant find it.   for the body I tried tying in a thin gauge (ultra-super-thin-stuff) copper, forming a dubbing loop with the pheasant hurl. i ended up with essentially a dubbing brush that i wrapped around the body before following up with the same hackle feathers as the tail.     The second fly broke off on a fish. (11x does that sometimes) 
     Third fly,  got a Fisher Cat substitution, simply because I hate the species and would like to put my contribution into the market, facilitating a demand to kill these animals. The more fisher cat I use, the more dedicated I feel towards the preservation of brook trout. this time, my body hackle was a separate, smaller feather, that was butt tied on. It worked much better. this little 8or9  incher thought so.

     Next time I tie the Pin, it's gonna be brown hackle tip tails, with the inside black, not white. the dubbing brush thing worked well, but made the hackle look like shit. maybe a copper weighted hook, with gold and brown transparent tinsel dubbing loop, so the butt tied hackle will stand up better.

full moon fever

Its full moon again. Striped bass have been amazing this year. bigger than last year for sure. With last years world record coming out of the water 35 minutes from my house, and a 75 pounder being brought in a week and a half ago... Ct is heating up!!!  squid are abundant from 4" to an amazing 12" i've had most luck on an 8" pattern, but the last 3 or 4 nights have brought out schools of baitfish, cinders, and grass eels, so I'll go with my favorite pattern to match all three. verrrrry simple, and just as effective. its a TMC 2546 sz 4, green tubing, and green flash. thats it! really! and it works. so easy to make, make them in sizes from 2.5" to 5" so you can match the baitfish/eels as they grow over the next month. mix in a little red inside the body to mix it up if you want. (as you tie off the head, fold the flash over the tubing to match the grass eels gills)

these worked last year, full moon tonight...... 

26 days ago, this 36" ate my 8" squid, maybe she'll be hungry tonight too?

SSS (super secret spot)

This stream connects one off-limits reservoir to another off-limits reservoir. To me, Largemouth bass aren't worth the risk, (or a $250 ticket at the least) and when the utilities/DEP are too lazy to put signs up 2 miles deep in the woods, giggity!  There was absolutely no signs of humans out there, barely any deer trails, just native brookies living in the cleanest water around. I felt guilty leaving footprints in such an untouched paradise. i tried taking a video, and happened to catch a rise just at the end of it. Sorry about the quality, I'm a minimalist in the woods