Monday, June 25, 2018

The FrankenFrog


Our Friend from Indiana, Paul Beel aka FrankenFly, has come up with a great looking frog imitation that I want to share with you all.  Paul is a fellow fly tyer/fly fisherman who has developed a number of trout and warm water flies and shares our passion for improving fly designs to overcome tough fishing situations and hatches.

One of the primary reasons you might design a fly is to solve a particular problem. Many times, as a fly designer, there are various products that may give you an idea for a fly that you may not have thought of otherwise.

Through the years I have tried many times to design a frog fly. I was really trying to solve a problem which is to have a top water fly that resembled a frog, so bass would go crazy over it. I never was happy with what I designed for this type of fly or it didn’t swim or pop to my liking. Eventually I abandoned the thought of designing a frog and any time I wanted to fish this type of fly, I would just throw a larger popper.

Read the whole story on how Paul developed this pattern on his blog: FrankenFly

You can purchase this fly as well as his others here: FrankenFly Fly Shop

Nice job, Paul!

Sunday, June 17, 2018

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to all of the dads out there!

I had an early Father's Day last weekend with my son, Hunt, who came down from Boston to fish with me and some of our friends in the Catskills.  Hunt worked until 5 before driving down so Friday evening I fished with Steve on the East Branch of the Delaware River.  It was a beautiful time to be on the river with barely a breeze, warm at first, and clear.  As the dusk settled in, the air cooled and sulphurs, isonychias, gray fox, green drakes and caddis hatched sporadically but the fish didn't cooperate beyond a bunch of one-and-done rises that were little more than a tease.  When the sun dropped below the mountains, the sky above us filled with march brown spinners.  The spinners hadn't dropped to the water by the time darkness set in so we packed it in and went to get some dinner and get back to the cabin before Hunt arrived.

(Click image to enlarge)
Here's a march brown spinners that greeted us under the cabin lights.  Check out the length of those tails! 


We were also greeted by this giant cream pattern-wing sedge - Hydatophylax sp. These are very large caddisflies - this one is a good 1.5 inches long! Over 2" including antennae.


Saturday we fished in the morning hitting many pools on the Beaverkill, but the bugs were sparse and with that very few fish were rising.  Being June, we had no interest in fishing nymphs so by early afternoon we called it quits and went back to the cabin to tie some flies for the evening and catch up with Hunt on the last few months in Boston and his new job.

Saturday evening the bugs really didn't get going until dusk, but when they did the fish responded and we took a few nice browns on Iris Caddis fished in the film.

On Sunday morning we fished a bugless Beavekill.  We hit a bunch of pools and all were pretty quiet.  We saw very few anglers as a result.  In the early afternoon though, we noticed a couple of fish working right off the far bank of a wide, flat pool and Hunt decided to see if he could reach them with a biot body/cdc wing cornuta spinner.  He worked hard, making 50' + casts, and over about 20 minutes or so managed to get a couple of soft takes but no hook ups.  Determined, he changed position to get above the fish a little more and after a short while he got a solid hook up that he brought to net to finish up a great weekend.


The only thing missing were Hunt's two sisters, Megan and Leigh, who are always with us in spirit when we fish.

Hunt, Leigh, Captain, Michael and Megan
Have a great day everyone!

Monday, June 4, 2018

It's Green Drake Time

It's hatch time all over the Northeast and our buddy Vinnie got in on the action Saturday catching a couple of nice browns on a green drake emerger while fishing the Upper Delaware River system.


Sharpen your hooks.