I managed a nice bit of fishing on saturday after a work meeting.  Thankfully, the meeting only lasted until about 9:45, and then a bit of quick driving had me on the swift river for a bit of spanish style and czn style nymphing... which morphed into a hybrid of using a long (20 foot) leader I created, with a "New Zealand" style indicator.  I'm normally not sold on indicators nymphing, but this has a chance and Ill try it more.  It fished better when I swapped to a stillwater "furled" leader created by Blue Sky Leaders.  I've made the move to furled leaders for most fishing (they are not so hot when it's really cold - they freeze faster than mono/flouro), they cast awesome, almost like a long extended front taper on your fly line.  A nice system for sure.  I also like that when fishing a 6-8x tippet, they act a bit like a shock absorber with stretch, helping protect super light tippets and the small flies at the end of those tippets.

 

Anyway, the day was mostly experimenting with leaders on the newish (just got it late summer last year) 11foot, 4wt.  That said, it was a decent fishing day... 4-5 rainbow's to net and several others escaping with a "quick" release prior to entering the net... The best fly was a Walt's worm with an orange hot spot tied on a #16 jig hook with a gold bead.  That fly got lots of interest all day.  One fish fell for an experiment of a fly that's basically a big #12 scud with a chartruese belly.

 

I have had a few good destress sessions at the vice this week as well...

 

Last night was a doing up a few more caddis larva, a few compradun's, a few of my low riding take on an X caddis - the hot butt... and a big searching fly that's a variation of an Ausable Trude.

 

A night before was about some Ausable Bombers (never have enough of these), some Ausable wulff varients (tied on a slightly curved hook and with a white calf body hair tail vs the normal woodchuck gaurd hair tail), a reload on various Walt's Worm variations and a little midge experiment...

Hopefully, these will all be tested on local freestones and small streams soon!

Be well
Will

Busy... but optimistic...

I've not been able to post as much as I'd planned... yet.  Work, winter storms and life just have been challenging.  So a quick one today and hopefully I can get back to more posts in the future.

I have hit the water a little - with little luck and very leaky waders.  That's now fixed and some time opened for me this weekend... I'm hopefull that tomorrow I can get out for a few hours.  That said, I anticipate about 4000 guys on the water since we only have one stream that's legitimately fishible here in MA right now and it's going to be a beautiful day around 50 degrees and sunny... So be it, a few hours near the water fishing or watching others fish is worth while!

I have been tying.  I'm trying to settle on what I want to tie up for a prize.  My sister in law is in charge of several national parks in the south east, and they are doing a raffle... She asked me to tie up some flies for the raffle.  That's a fun thing to do - but, as is the case for an eclectic tyer like me... picking flies is tough.  I'm leaning to a few red fish flies since the event will be near Hilton Head SC, but I also want to do some classic married wing wet flies since, well, they are just pretty... and a few flymphs as well.  Ideas are welcome!

On that note, here's a pic of some recent ties - from left to right: Ausable Ugly, a Telico Nymph variation I like (top) a squirrel and orange streamer, a sunburst flymph...

 Starting bottom left: a married wing wet I thought would be a nice combo - grey/orange/yellow, a dark sunburst flymph (pink back half v orange and no orange dubbing), a few caddis pupa, an olive wet (which also works well in the film if olives are coming off or other dark mayflies are coming off) and a hackle-less picket pin - great little fly that sinks a bit faster than the classic picket pin.

 Thinking of sunny warm days... A thunder creek streamer shortly before...

 This nice brookie attacked it last May on the east branch of the swift river here in MA.

Have a super weekend!