Caddis Chronicles

As you might imagine, I am still confused, but this time it's about what to post that you all might find interesting from the past year in the life of Caddis Chronicles .  I have no illusions that rehashing the highlights and low lights of the past year may be less than a thrill for the readers, but what the hell, it was a good year to be present on this big blue orb circling the sun - isn't every year?

January 1, 2013 - Took over a dozen fish on the South Branch, here's the first. 

 

We met Doug Freemann, at the winter fly fishing shows.   Great kid, passionate, thoughtful and one hell of a fly fisherman and fly tier at 15.  He made the US Youth Fly Fishing Team in 2013.   

     

 

We had an April to remember, great fishing and the transition from winter to Spring was a good as it gets. 

 

August we flew to Idaho with Bruce to visit his son JB, and fished hard all day from early morning to sundown on the Henry's Fork and the Madison.  Nothing like sunset on the HF.  

Wouldn't you know it, it's the end of the year and I can't decide what to post.  I fished today, caught a pig, and had a great day on the water.  The sky was clear, blue and cloudless, and the air was warm and breezy; just how we like it.  Just after I caught the big rainbow, I stood on the bank of the river talking to Tim Flagler, and a bald eagle flew right over our heads along the river corridor just above the tree tops.  It was awesome.   Tim commented that maybe it was a sign - we should enlist.....I told you I was confused, didn't I?

 

Yesterday we made an impromptu trip into the concrete jungle better known as New York City,  It is such an incredible departure from the serenity of the woods and rivers we most often frequent that I enjoy it immensely when I am there.  I drove in, which makes the experience all the more interesting - idiots honking their horns like it will make traffic move faster, delivery men on bicycles riding as though no one else is on the road, and pedestrians that might as well have had blinders on walking out from between cars and crossing against the light.  Who needs video games? 

 

     

So where am I going with this?  Well, it's been a wonderful year for so many reasons.  Sure, we had some rough patches, but they only exist to make us more aware of all the good stuff that goes on around us.  We fished a lot, traveled, and best of all spent time with some of our favorite people - many whom we have known for years, and a few new ones that came on board as though they were with us all along. 

 

We made some awesome tying videos thanks to Tim and Joan Flagler at Tightline Productions.  And thanks to those videos, we heard from folks from far off places that if not for the internet, we would never have had the pleasure of knowing.   For instance, today I learned that the folks in Australia need to know a substitute for snowshoe rabbit foot hair, since they can't get that fly tying material there - it's banned from import.  And closer to home, thanks to the tying videos we made, I also found out I dub wrong....backwards.  Who knew?

 

Okay, let's stop there.  I'm not changing the way I dub, not at this late date.  Besides it works just fine for me, and after all, it's just fly tying.  Now if I were performing surgery, then we'd certainly have a problem.  No one wants a heart that beats backwards, do they?  They might fall out of love all the time.......

 

We'll sign off now, but not without thanking all of you that have spent time following Caddis Chronicles.  Over the next few days I'll be posting photos and some vague narrative chronicling the highlights of the past year.  My judgment may be a bit biased, but I'll do my very best to keep it entertaining, if not downright hysterical.

 

Sharpen your hooks.

 

P.S. If you are really desperate for social media interaction, I can rarely be found tweeting on twitter - @Mattgrobert  You can thank my wonderful and talented daughter Megan for talking me into such a crazy endeavor.  She's a marketing and communications wizard, who thinks it might do something for my "brand".  I tried to tell her I was too old for that shit, and that I am allergic to exposure, but she has a way of getting daddio to follow her logic.       

    

Greenback cutthroat trout exist in only one body of water, a small stream known as Bear Creek, not far outside of Colorado Springs, Colorado. In fact, the greenback cutthroat trout is one of the rarest trout in the world, with only 750 individual fish remaining. The survival of these rarest of trout is in severe jeopardy, and those that are striving to prevent the greenback's extinction are making a dire plea for help.

 

Our good friend and photographer, J.B. McCollum, whom you may recall we visited this past summer with his father in Idaho, has a feature in the Winter 2013 issue of Montana Fly Fishing Magazine.  The feature is titled, "Progressively Lost", a photo essay of J.B.'s travels in Montana as he explored both its fabled and unknown fly fishing waters.
   

This past week I heard from an old friend who moved to California some years ago, Hugh Rosen.  He was saying hello and letting me know he posted a link to one of my tying videos on a UK fly fishing forum thread  LINK here.  I met Hugh in the early '90s, when I had a fly shop in Summit, NJ.  He was a regular to the shop, and in '94, he decided it was time to learn to tie flies and so he took my fly tying class. He's been tying and fishing his own flies ever since. 

 

Hugh also related a story of being in England this year and fishing the famed Test River for its wily brown trout.  He took fish on Pheasant Tail nymphs, and dry flies  - The dry that delivered was Preben Torp Jacobsen's Ollie (named after Oliver Kite) - it is a palmer hackled Kites Imperial variant.  Being always curious about flies, I asked Hugh what an Ollie was, and he sent me the following step-by-step on how to tie it:

Hook: Kamasan B-440 #14 (turned-up eye as in the original)
Thread: Imperial purple (8/0)
Tail: Dun hackle

Body: Graylag goose herl or CDC feather tied in at rear by the tip, twisted and wrapped forward. . 

Palmered body hackle: Whiting pro saddle dyed olive.  Wrap hackle to read as shown and tie in and counter-wrap with gold wire.

The man himself.  Looks like a beautiful setting - one more place to fish on the bucket list.

It's Fryday the 13th, so of course we are featuring an egg pattern!  In this fine video Tim Flagler shows how he ties an egg pattern that can be used for trout, steelhead or salmon.  Talk about easy, even I can tie this one.......

 

 

......it's an eggscellent pattern.

 

Sharpen your hooks!

Sunday 12.8.13 - There are some days when cold weather and a poor forecast doesn't have the last word, and the desire to be on the water wins out. Today was one of those days, and everything worked out great – we managed to stay warm, caught fish, and most importantly it was restorative.

The air was calm and raw, the temperature was 29-30 degrees F, and the muted daylight seemed to come from the horizon owing to the very thick cloud cover overhead. From the time I got on the river it felt as though snow would start falling any moment; threatening the first hour or so, and then delivering the last. I’m not complaining, it was quite peaceful – very still and quiet, except for the whisper of the river and the birds in the bare trees above. Woodpeckers tapped away as they searched for a meal under bark and in tree hollows. In the distance, the occasional sound of roosters and cattle added texture to the day.   

Yesterday I woke to a gray, fog embraced day, that looked more like a September morning than that of December.  If not for the bare trees and shriveled ground cover, I would have thought we were in for extended daylight and the possibility of an evening hatch.  Instead, the river called me to it with urgency, for the warmth of the day would be short, and with that the rare opportunity to fish dries on a December day in the Northeast.

 

When I got to the river's edge, the warm, gray air was calm and filled with a heavy mist falling from the slate sky above, larger drops of accumulated spray dripped from the tree branches.  The river was low and clear, a quick check of the water temperature showed a reading of 50 degrees F, which is not typical for this time of the year.  A few dark midges were in the air, nothing approaching a hatch, but apparently enough were on the water to bring a few hungry trout to the surface.

 

I first tied on a simple snowshoe emerger, size 22, and fished it off the end of a 14 foot leader tapered to 6X.  I cast the offering to the expanding surface rings left by rising fish.  And those fish came to the fly only to hang at a 45 degree angle, nose an inch away, drifting under the fly for a second or two before slowly fading back down out of sight.  We played this game with two or three fish for a while; checking my fly, changing my casting position, and kneeing low, but to no avail.  I just kept getting the fin.  Then I tied a #18, soft hackle pheasant tail emerger to that same leader, and began fishing from an upstream and across position.  The second cast drifted only a few inches before the fly vanished in a tiny blip and I set the hook.  After a brief but spirited battle the trout came to net, a nice 14 inch rainbow, the fly set firmly in the angle of its jaw.

 

The accomplishment?  Another year that we caught a trout on a dry fly in each of the twelve months.  It's just one of those silly challenges we give ourselves to make things a little more interesting.  Here's a close-up of the fly just before it was removed and the trout was set free. 

 

I have written about this pattern in previous posts, and given the effectiveness of this pattern throughout the year, we thought it was time to show how we tie it in another fine video produced by Tim and Joan Flagler of Tightline Productions.  I used this fly just a little over a week ago to catch a few nice wild browns during a decent BWO and midge hatch on a PA spring creek.     

I tie this fly in sizes 18-24, and fish it over hatches of small mayflies and during midge emergences. When fished, the body of the fly drifts just under the surface – the thin line – while the wing rests on top of the surface. Surface tension is a wonderful thing. Also note in the photo below of a well-chewed fly, the snowshoe rabbit foot hair appears glassy, translucent and almost as though it is liquid filled (click on the photo ). Which leads to my final thought on the matter – when choosing snowshoe rabbit feet for your flies, be sure to use the ones that have shiny, glass-like hairs on the pad, and reject the ones that have chalky, dull hair, it definitely makes a difference.

 

 

Sharpen your hooks.

Here's a neat short film about fly fishing for marble trout in Slovenia, with some great shots and good laughs to go along with them, that we pulled off our friend Andy Baird's blog, Small Fly Funk.  The rivers and scenery are beautiful, and we just may have to add catching a marble trout to our bucket list.
 

We hope everyone had a good to great holiday weekend with family and friends, and maybe even a few of you managed to get out and fish some - we know Mr. Freemann did.  We didn't fish, but spent time with family and friends, cooked and ate, enjoyed the outdoors everyday, and even made a tying video with Tightline Productions.  It would have been nice if it was a little longer, and even better if we had fished.

I don't have any pictures from the stream, but I did take some photos of my new friends I walk past on my daily excursion.  The neighbors have nice spread they've kept horses on for years, and now they have expanded.  Check out these little critters.    

   

A film documenting the world's most extraordinary insect hatches and the fantastic fly fishing that accompanies them. The first fly fishing film to be shot on a RED One Camera. A Gin-Clear Media production.

There was no shortage of bullshit and laughter this past weekend at the tying symposium, and we participated in the festivities fully and to the greatest extent possible.  Not that we didn't share what little we know about tying flies and fishing them with whomever stopped by our tying table, we just went with the flow and pretended to have a modicum of knowledge about which we were there to defend.  If you didn't know already, fly fishing and fly tying is under attack from the computer generation - why fish or tie flies when you can stare at a screen and play Dirty Birds in your pajamas?     


As you know, I shared a tying table with Doug Freemann, the youngster from PA that shares our passion for all things fly fishing.  The kid delivered, too.  He tied the flies he typically fishes with success and explained to those who stopped to watch the particulars of why he ties them the way he does and the tactics he employs when fishing them.  Here he is demonstrating how he ties his quill nymph to a couple of my friends, Jake and Tom.  It should be noted that Jake was a student in the very first fly tying class I taught back in 1983!  Jake is now an accomplished fly tier and instructor in his own right.                        

The International Fly Tying Symposium was wonderful mix of tying, talking, laughing, sharing and meeting of like-minded folks having fun.  I'll report on the event after I get my batteries recharged with some much needed sleep.  In the meantime, I'll leave you with one of our favorite quotes heard over the last two days.

 

"Hey, Uncle Morty, take a look at the flies this guy is tying here."  

You had to be there.......

Come see us and a boat load of other fly tyers from the USA and from around the world, this Saturday and Sunday at the International Fly Tying Symposium being held at the Garden State Exhibit Center in Somerset, New Jersey. 

Great news for two popular stretches of trout waters - the changes to the New Jersey Fish Code have passed.  Effective January 1, 2014, a 4.2 mile section of the Big Flat Brook, from Route 206 bridge downstream to the Roy Bridge, and the South Branch of the Raritan River, Ken Lockwood Gorge section, will officially be catch and release only, artificial lures and flies only. 

 

Here's the Ken Lockwood Gorge section of the South Branch of the Raritan River.

 

"They say you forget your troubles on a trout stream, but that's not quite it.  What happens is that you begin to see where your troubles fit into the grand scheme of things, and suddenly they're just not such a big deal anymore." John Gierach    

National Geographic has once again opened its annual photo contest, with the deadline for submissions coming up on Saturday, November 30. One first-place winner will be chosen from each of the three categories, and the winning photographs will be published in National Geographic magazine. The overall grand-prize winner will be announced in December of 2013.

 

The Atlantic features 39 of the entries so far submitted here: In Focus

And just for the fun of it, I'll share one my recent favorites taken on the Musconetcong River a few weeks ago.  It won't win any awards, but it brings back to mind a wonderful day on the water.

When I woke this morning it was 22 degrees F outside and it was mostly dark except for the hint of soft pale light spreading across the Eastern horizon.  I could see the dark silhouettes of several does milling about the edges of the pond nervously, as a large buck lay still in the grass under the cedar tree watching them intently.  Unseen birds welcomed the new day with song.

As the darkness gave way to the expanding light, I noticed that the pond had a film of ice on it, which in itself wouldn't be a surprise except this was the first time I have seen my pond iced over.  In the 6 years I have lived here, the pond has never had ice on it, even when the temperatures have dipped below 0 F.  You see, the pond is spring fed, and the bubbling earth borne water that fills it has always been as steady as the tides; the crystalline flow from the rocks below has maintained a water temperature in the small pond above freezing season after season, year after year, until now.  The flow of late is barely a trickle, the level of the pond is down about 6 inches, making the water temperature now subject to the moods of the atmosphere.

The small pond and its present condition is a microcosm of what is happening throughout Northern New Jersey.  The water table is falling from the lack of rainfall over the last 3-4 months.  The ground is dry and the fallen leaves brittle and colorless.  Our rivers and streams a mere shadow of what they typically are. Their flows slowed to a crawl, barely filling the stream beds they have nourished for eons.  The trout hover quietly in the deeper pools and runs, feeding when they must, otherwise laying low from flying predators above.  Their only solace the cool temperatures of Autumn and fewer anglers invading their space.

Although the weather folks tell us we are not in a drought, and that it's only an aberration in the local weather patterns, there are contrasting signs everywhere you look.  Things are dry around here, very dry.  The usual tapestry of radiant fall colors was muted this year; the dry leaves mostly withered and faded, and the exceptions stood out brilliantly against the otherwise dull background.  The ground is dry and dusty, lichen and moss easily dislodged from where it lies.  And when it has rained - mostly brief showers - the earth soaked up the moisture so quickly that by the next day there was little evidence the skies had cried.

Like everything else in nature, we know things will change, waters will rise, and we will re-adapt to the new conditions.  In the meantime, we can fish, although I'm not inclined to fish our local streams and instead have been heading over to PA to fish. 

One positive is that there are things to be learned with the water levels so low.  Gravel bars are exposed, as are rocks and other normally hidden stream bottom features.  If you want to see the contours of your favorite river or stream and where every rock and holding lie is, do it now.  The rivers and streams are giving up their secrets to anyone that cares to look, and the information you get now may be invaluable in future fishing trips. When nature restores the flows, you can then recall what you see now and fish accordingly, knowing what lies below the surface.  It should help you.

All that said, I do look forward to when our rivers fill their banks and the depths are again a mystery to the naked eye.  For me, reading water is one of the facets of fly fishing that I most enjoy.

Have you ever seen the rain?

In a final push for comments, we were asked to post the following: 

There are proposed changes to the NJ 2014-2015 Fish Code - The Council proposes to regulate a 4.2 mile section of the Big Flat Brook, from Route 206 bridge downstream to the Roy Bridge, and the South Branch of the Raritan River, Ken Lockwood Gorge section, as catch and release only, artificial lures and flies only.  The proposed Fish Code would change both of these stretches of water to Catch and Release for trout and allow artificial lures only.

NJ fly anglers please act! Also, to the anglers of our neighboring States, please remember that anglers of NJ have always been there to support and improve your fly fishing resources, so please help us out!

The public has a 60 day comment period that ends November 15th, 2013. Please contact the NJ DEP and state your support for the proposed Fish Code changes and its positive impact on both the Flatbrook River and the Ken Lockwood Gorge section of the South Branch of the Raritan River.

 

Submit your comments in support of these changes HERE.

 

Copy and paste the following to the Comments section of the form:

 

I support the proposed Catch and Release regulations "RELEASE ONLY, ARTIFICIAL LURES AND FLIES ONLY on a 4.2 mile section of the Big Flat Brook River as well as the continuing trout protection within the Ken Lockwood Gorge Trout Conservation Area section of the South Branch of the Raritan River by making this CATCH AND RELEASE ONLY.

 

The trout thank you for your support.

 

In honor of Veterans Day, PBS stations around the country are broadcasting “Not Yet Begun to Fight,” a documentary about how fly fishing can help heal, or at least ameliorate, some of the physical and emotional pain that combat veterans deal with on a daily basis.

 

“Not Yet Begun to Fight” focuses on five warriors who join retired Marine Col. Eric Hastings for a week of fly-fishing in Montana through the Warriors and Quiet Waters Foundation. Hastings, who flew missions “high above the death and destruction” in Vietnam, returned home to Montana in 1969 battling dark dreams. His solace was fly fishing.

 

Click here for more: Orvis News 

For Mr. Ford and other fishermen casting off in Breezy Point on a recent Saturday — some in waterproof waders, others in bluejeans and work boots — Jamaica Bay offered a chance to practice the skills they had been learning for months.

It also is helping them recover from the trauma of war. Mr. Ford and the other men and women casting lines into the frigid waters are all veterans, many of whom have been scarred by the violence and bloodshed of conflicts abroad. They are members of a program called Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing, a nonprofit that uses fly-fishing as rehabilitative therapy for veterans.

Read the full story about this wonderful program in this NY Times City Room Blog post by Helen Coster HERE.