Flies for small streams and flies that are, well, small!

I tend to be an eclectic tier.  I enjoy tying 4/0 saltwater or bass/pike flies as much as I do tiny stuff.  For some reason though, every year in January and February I get into a habit where I like to reload the “Swift River” box.  If you know the Swift here in MA… it’s a tailwater that runs steady and slow, with cool, gin clear water.  It’s upper reaches just below Quabbin Reservoir are tough to fish, and often reward you for laying out very very small flies. 

My general rule of thumb there is to start with big and ugly flies – just because it’s fun to catch fish on something that “shouldn’t” work there.  But in the end, you need some flies smaller than #20 just in case. 

I prefer not going lower than 24… but like to carry a few smaller.  Last night my vice time yielded a few #28 Al’s Rat’s.  1 is according to the pattern, the other two are my “version” which has a small gray zelon tuft popping out of the thorax… Hopefully these will interest those swift river fish in the months to come. 

Beyond that were some small stream or what I’d call general trout flies like Mr Rapidian Parachute’s in #18, Dark Edison’s in #10, #10 Vladi Worms, some #18 Jail Bird’s, #20 sulfur spinners and #16 emergers…  

Felt really good to get in a good solid block of Vice time… even if it ended at 11:30PM!

Getting it going...

It's been a busy few days work wise, but good things accomplished so that's a good thing!  It's always good when hard work yeilds positive productivity.

I have managed a bit of tying in the evening the last few days.  This fall I did a lot and it was a great reset mentally... I'm really excited to fill up my boxes... And actually just ordered a new small stream box from Allenflyfishing.com.  I'll have to post images as it fills.

For now though, here's a handful of flies that I really like to fish for local trout, and a few concept Rangely Style streamers that were gifts for a friend of ours this past Xmas.  She's from NM, and will fish these quintisential new england style flies out there on rivers like the Green... it will be interesting to see how that shakes out!

Getting a Start

For quite a while, my wife has been trying to get me to start a blog.  Years ago I had one that I tried to use as a warm up for writting projects, and well... It just fadded from my conciousness as life got in the way.

My hope here is to use this in a similar way, but to focus the ideas I write about on areas that are fun and important to me instead of solely professional (which is where that old blog focused, which I think was called "Thinking Athlete"). 

My goal is to post 2X week at first... and if there is more happening then Ill add to that total.

Being my first post, Ill finish up with an introduction.

My name is Will, and I am figuring how how to live.  Thought I had a good idea how to do this... but life took over.  Having twins started that process abotu 2.5 years ago... but a year in, just starting to figure out how to do this a bit, my wife and I were devastated to learn our son has Medulloblastoma - a malignant brain tumor.  Cancer treatment and survival is brutal for anyone.  Watching your 1 year old undergo treatments and surgeries... trying to keep some level of normal for your daughter despite massive amounts of time in the hospital for my wife and I... It would take to long to write that story here.  Ill sum it up by saying it was a brutal period and though I think the boy is recovering great (thank god) I know for us, we are only now starting to feel like maybe we will be able to live again, to breathe.  And besides doing fun things as a family, for me, that means riding on and off road on my bicycle "herd", tying up and fishing flies for any fish I can chase, hitting the gym, or doing things related to my profession of performance coach.