Fly Fishing Information On The Millers, Swift, Middle, West and East Branches Of the Westfield River and the Ware, and Mill rivers. YOUR BEST SOURCE FOR MA. FLY FISHING INFORMATION, the top ranked fly fishing blog in Massachusetts! WHAT FLY FISHERS READ!!
"But then the more I fished these little creeks and the more I learned about them, the better I liked them. Part of that was just the constant exposure. Sure, there are better fisheries within a half day's drive - and I made those drives and longer ones often enough - but there was nowhere else where I could slip in an hour of fishing before work or two or three hours after and have a rod in my hand every day of the week." - John Gierach (Note: Gierach mentions fishing "two or three hours after" work. It's always been my favorite time: dusk, the witching hour, call it what you want - it's magic. - Ken The Copper Grouse
The Copper Grouse has proved itself!! In mid Winter I fished it after working a stretch unsuccessfully with another popular offering and ended up cleaning house! That happened a few more times with different flies first but the Grouse caught the most each time.
Now, I'm not a proponent of "super" flies, "guide" flies and all of that BS. PRESENTATION RULES but sometimes we will put something into a fly that makes all the difference. I guess that's what a Wooley Bugger does. Add the Partridge and Orange and the Pheasant Tail to that short effective list.
February On The EB
There is one thing we can put to rest and that is unsubstantiated feeling that our rivers are running low for this time of year. That is false. All one has to do is check out the USGS readings for our rivers and you will see that the real time flow and the median flow (average) is about the same. Also realize that these median flows average out over 70 years for most of the rivers. In short, todays flow pretty much equals the 70 year average. If we have a normal summer we will be fine.
BTW, I've been dreaming of the EB of late and of one spot where I've NEVER seen another angler except for my wife who took a monster bow one September morning from this spot. If I ever break an ankle on the EB it will be here. It has no streamside path which tells you something. NOBODY DARES TO GO THERE. It is a true rock garden with pocket water that dwarfs most other rivers and it's loaded with unmolested trout. I'll be giving some hints about this place. I'm sure my friend Gary, the Lord of the Westfield, has already figured it out.
It's been over two months since the shortest day of the year (12/21 or so). Right now the length of day is like it is in mid October. In about 2 weeks we move the clocks ahead. Time to book a trip to one of these rivers that you have always wanted to fish but....... The Millers, the Ware, The EB and the WB and the Swift await you.
Time on the water isn't spent. It's invested. (Unknown)
My Marabou Muddler
Commenter Sam started it by throwing out an innocent remark about tying the Muddler Minnow. That started a chain reaction with me. It's been years since I've bothered to tie one let alone fish one. The tying part ended today and it ended with my favorite style of Muddler - The Marabou Muddler.
Dan Gapen, a Canadian, invented this fly in the late 1930's and it took over fly boxes all over North America. Gapen's original looked like a novices attempt at fly tying with that goofy, untrimmed deer hair head and odd wing placement but it still caught fish and lots of them. But it didn't stop fly tyers from "improving" the bug by trimming the head to perfection and mounting turkey quill wings which ALWAYS seemed to separate and fall apart after a fish or three. It seemed that we would be fishing this forever as a sunken fly (weighted) OR as a dry (deer hair floats) fly to imitate hoppers and stoneflies but then something happened!
In no time at all the Wooley Bugger tossed the Muddler right out of the "best fly ever" rankings down to an afterthought for many. Muddlers still have their believers but they are hard to tie (fly tying trainees in Asian fly factories are always taught the Wooley Buggers first because they're easy) and if something easy comes along that's a fish magnet we will choose it.
Dave Whitlock's Marabou Muddlers
Enter the Marabou Muddler! I first saw this critter in McClane's New Standard Fishing Encyclopedia. It was the creation of the genius Dave Whitlockand it had some things going for it. First, it had that lifelike marabou tail which the Wooley Bugger stole and second, that waterlogged marabou offset the buoyancy of the deer hair and got it subsurface quickly without too much weight. I've caught many trout with this pattern and it was my go-to subsurface fly for smallmouth on Wachusett Reservoir.
My subsurface Muddlers have a very trim head to cut down on the buoyancy whether the fly is weighted or not. Ones that will be fished on or near the surface will get less of a hair cut.
I don't, as you see in my photo, use streamer hooks on Muddlers. I want that material to move around in the current and a size 8 wet fly hook works fine. The fly is small enough so the trout will take it in one gulp. BTW, I've gone almost totally away from streamer hooks for bait fish imitations and use marabou for almost all of those imitations. Another BTW, I can't wait to be on the EB or the Millers during a sunny day in early June when the damsel flies hatch. This fly will kill them.
It looks like you readers have gotten used to the new Fly Page as pageviews have really gone up and sales are coming in. Thank you!!
And don't forget to book your Spring and early Summer trips!!!
" I also appreciate the extra weight of bamboo, especially in shorter, lighter rods. Manufacturers can't say enough about how light their graphite rods are, but to me that weightlessness is irritating. I can't feel them load and I'm always looking behind me to see what the line is doing on the backcast." - John Gierach
Wing material, especially for dry flies, has gone through an evolution over the past 50 years which, whether I like it or not, I have been able to witness. Years ago feather material of all sorts (mallard, wood duck and CDC come to mind) came from birds. Calf tail (not so good) and snowshoe hare (much better) have their place. But synthetic material has found its way into the game and that is good thing. First, it's fairly indestructible when compared to feathers and secondly, it sheds water as a synthetic should. Is there a drawback?
Well, yes! Most complaints about the synthetic post yarn material is that it's too hard to work with and the major complaint being how to measure out the amount of fiber to use. This is critical when tying small flies of size 20 and smaller. Here's a trick:
Find that long lost hair comb that you have in a bathroom cabinet or in that sock drawer of yours. In the photo above you will see what I'm writing about. Notice the LARGE teeth and the smaller teeth.
Now notice the second photo.
That's a photo of a hank of very fine post wing yarn being
separated into strands of correctly measured wing yarn. The BIG teeth work great for wing post material for sizes 14 through 16 and the fine teeth work great for all the smaller stuff down to about size 26.
Remember, if you think that you have enough wing material for a fly you probably have too much. GO ON THE SPARSE SIDE or the material will just wick up water and fold over and become top heavy.
Take one of these strands that you see on the left and cut it about 2 inches long. Tie in the wing material on a size 20 dry and make the post about an inch long. You want to tie it in at that inch long length because you want to have something to pull on as you snip the material to the correct length. That will make the material splay out the way it should as seen in the above photo. Notice that there's not a lot of wing material on that fly. That's what you want.
I always look for the finest wing material for standard and small dry flies. Fumed silica is the best floatant for this style of fly. I'ts the best floatant for all dry flies.
Book Me
I'm booking up for this Spring so don't wait. The Swift, Millers, Ware and all of the Westfield Branches are waiting. Book now and remember there's no deposit with me!!
"The Flyfishing catalogs weren't much of an improvement. They tended to confirm the worst fears that the conservationist Aldo Leopold had expressed in the 1940's, that our love of the outdoors was fast being overwhelmed by an addition to gadgets. Anglers could now clank their way to the river weighted down with a dizzying assortment of guy things: digital thermometers, telescopic wading staffs, streamside entomology kits, head mounted ion lights and a collection of pliers, clamps, clippers, scissors, forceps and hemostats that made you look like a surgeon heading for the operating room". - George Black from Casting A Spell
It seems that old misconceptions die hard or die not at all. Just when you think that we have entered an age of piscatorial enlightenment some alchemist from the fly fishing dark ages throws out an unscientific nugget and proclaims it to be sound advice! Here's a collection:
1. Don't bother flyfishing until the leaves on an apple tree are the size of a mouse ear.
Take the above advice and you will miss the Quill Gordon hatch and a good part of the early caddis. That sage advise didn't work 50 years ago and it doesn't work now!
2. Trout need to eat a lot in the Winter to survive. This would make perfect sense if trout were warm blooded BUT THEY ARE NOT. They are cold blooded which means that as the water temperature drops their metabolism slows down and they don't
need as many calories. They eat more at 60 degrees than at 40 degrees. One guy was so pissed off at me for exposing his flat earth theory that I had to ban him from this blog.
3. Online Guides To Rivers I wrote the Millers Guide after accumulating over 20 years of knowledge on this river from top to bottom and I have no plans on tackling another river. That's why I was pleased to see a few years ago that someone had written an online guide to the Swift. As it turns out this writer started his Swift River Guide with the disclaimer and I paraphrase: " I have little experience fishing below Route 9". What kind of a Guide is that? I rest my case.
4. Bad Advice On Playing A Trout Part 1 I will paraphrase: Turn your drag totally off and when you get a hit point the rod at the trout and let him run until he has to stop and catch his breath. RIGHT, THAT WILL WORK!!! Let the trout go where it wants and it will go to any snag it will find. I knew a striper flyfisher who would do the same thing just to say that they 'ripped line from his reel". Flush this advice.
5. Bad Advice On Playing a Trout Part 2 "If the trout pulls to the right, you pull from the left and vice versa while always keeping the rod low to the water." Keeping the rod low to the water is a perfect way to allow the trout to run deep and wrap itself around something. I've seen this happen with people that I've guided who were taught this bogus advice on YouTube or paid good money to learn this at a fly fishing school.
It's best if you KEEP YOUR ROD UP!!! It will force the trout to stay off the bottom where it (and you) get into trouble with snags and it will force the trout to thrash on the surface where it will tire itself out quicker (being half in the water and half out of the water will do that to a trout).
Harry Darbee had yet another way to locate springs when he was learning the river. "If you see bright green algae, that's what they call "frog spawn", a slimy algae, a leaves, no stems, no nothing. Whenever you see that you've got cold water." "Why do they call it frog spawn?" a fisherman asked. "Because that's what the old timers and country folk thought it was. They didn't know their ass from third base." From Catskill Rivers by Austin Francis
The Millers in South Royalston
It seems to happen at this time almost every year and that are the dire warnings and concerns about the lack of snow and how it might effect the Summer conditions. First, it's way too early to raise the alarm about drought. We have had winters like this before. For instance:
1. Way back in 1992 we had a horrible snowy winter. I remember XC skiing in Harvard Forest in Petersham in APRIL. By the end of June we were into well into two months of next to no rain and it ended up being a dusty Summer.
2. The above photo was taken in March of 2007. A bad Winter?? Hardly. We had no snow that Winter until when that above photo was taken. How was the Spring and Summer of that year? Actually it was wetter than normal.
3. 2009 was the wettest Spring and Summer that I've seen in Central Ma. To remind you how wet it was just remember that Quabbin overflowed that JULY!!!! What happened after that? The spigot got turned off that Fall and stayed turned off from the Winter, through the Spring and into the late Summer. 2010 was the lowest I've seen the Millers up to that point and it followed the wettest Summer of 2009.
Personally, I don't give a damn how much snow we get BUT I care about how often we get rain. Normal rainfall is the best without flooding or dry spells. A Summer with normal rainfall serves the trout well.
Joe Brooks Loved Blondes Joe Brooks was a flyfishing innovator. One of his best creations was his "Blonde" series of streamer flies. They are great flies because they are very simple in design and construction and they catch fish.
You can make them small to catch trout or large to catch salmon to bluefish to stripers. The beauty of this fly is that even when it's exceeding 6 inches it's still very easy to throw out there. It is nothing more than bucktail or craft fur tied VERY sparsely. The body material creates the profile but makes it easy to cast.
Some may say that the blonde is an arcane fly and modern flies are an improvement but I believe that less is more and firmly believe that this fly is the saltwater version on Frank Sawyers Killer Bug - total simplicity. If Sawyer ever fished the Salt he would of loved the blondes!!
"Disappearing in the opposite direction is the greatest gift a flyfisher can offer his partner" - George Black
First Small Dark Stone of the Season < If there is a harbinger of Spring that will catch the eye of the winter worn fly fisher it is the little Taeniopterygidae Stonefly, known as the Early Dark Stonefly and/or Winter Stonefly. Get a day where the temperature hits the mid 40's and the sun is shining and they will seem to be everywhere. I live on the banks of a decent trout stream and on those mild days my porch, deck and fence posts will be covered with them as they seem to be content to just soak up the rays.
They are a major hatch as far as numbers go but a minor hatch as far as surface activity is concerned. First, they crawl out of the water to hatch in sometimes inhospitable conditions such as high, flooded rivers. Second, most freestones in our area will be pretty empty of trout until the stocking trucks arrive. Third, in the words of Thomas Ames, Jr. "Fish are more likely to rise to early stoneflies when adult females are ovipositing and when there are other insects, like midges or early mayflies, to draw them to the surface."
I'll always have some imitations with me especially on March days at the Y Pool and those imitations will represent this insect's life stages with the egg laying stage being the most important IMNSHO. This also gives me a chance to play with quill bodies which is a fly tying skill that is being lost to the flow of time.
The egg laying stage -
Size 20 dry fly hook
sparse blue dun hackle fibers
body - dark grey stripped quill (Sharpies work well on getting the right shade of color
Hackle - Grey or black
This high floater can be skidded across the surface to imitate egg laying stones and does a good job at imitating the Winter Caddis too!
Now, to imitate the insect as it is hatching you need pattern like the one developed by the great Art Flick. Just take the pattern above,ditch the stiff hackles for small, webby brownish hen hackles and use a brown quill for the body. This fly will be fished around the rocky edges of the shore (Y Pool) just beneath the surface. It can also be used to fish over the spent stoneflies.
This fly is more important for getting your spirits up than for bringing trout up. That's why I'm mentioning it!!
The "Other" Swift River
Massachusetts has two Swift Rivers with the western river being a free flowing jewel. It's also a major tributary of the EB, dumping in to that river in the town of Cummington. It is a cool, mossy and shaded place that is one of those thin, blue lines that we all want to fish but.....
It's not hard to find and you should give it a try. Ken
" I frankly don't make much of a living, but I make a hell of a life" - The late, great Jack Gartside
Kens Flymph
Well, I decided to "formalize" my fly selling effort and dedicate a whole page(s) to the endeavor instead of the current scatter gun approach and having the flies share space with other blog related things. Welcome to the FLY PAGE!!!
Follow these easy instructions:
1. go to my current blog post
2. Directly across and to the right of the current blog title you will see a tab labeled "The Fly Page". Click that tab.
You will then be able to scroll up and down through an expanded offering of flies all accompanied by much better photos. I've expanded the selection to include larger wets and flymphs for our bigger freestones and this section will continue to expand. Paypal takes care of everything.
So, dig in and restock your fly boxes. We will be fishing soon enough.
It starts in February
Spring that is!! Since 12/21/19 we have gained over an hour of precious daylight. And even though February has always been a snowy month it is the month where the sap lines (it used to be buckets) begin to flow. Pretty soon you will find a little black stone fly or three by any open flowing water. There's no stopping the change in seasons!!!
The Bread Crust - It always works
The late Polly Rosborough invented this caddis/mayfly imitation to be fish wet. He also made it a devil to tie. Try splitting partridge tail feathers in the "red stage". I eliminated the partridge and made a lucky substitution last year and it worked fine.
Also notice the fine, soft, blue dun hackle on these flies. It comes from the cheapest grade C (or worst) roster hackles I can find. Not as soft as partridge or starling but getting close. Plus I'm a sucker blue dun hackles.
I'm old enough so when I say "years ago" I mean decades and not a handful of years. In short, that insurance commercial with the saying "we know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two"fits this blog perfectly! So, back to the time machine for this 1970's era event.
Years ago the Squannacook River was my home river and I met a lot of local fish hawks on those waters. One of those characters was an old gent who only fished nymphs and only BLACK NYMPHS. It didn't matter what insect was hatching or what stage of life cycle the insect was going through, black was the color! All his sunken flies were black and his fly box looked surreal. One thing was for sure and that was the fact that he caught tons of trout, period!!!
Now, why did this color work for him? First, he had enough skill to catch trout and could of done it probably with any fly. I think that black worked because its profile STANDS OUT in the water better than flies of multiple colors. Now, I never tested out this theory but I never forgot about it either. Last November I put it to a test on the Swift.
The black soft hackle looked ok with its black floss body, ultra thin copper rib and black starling hackles. (note: starling is very fragile so it pays to tie the feather in by the tip which causes fewer break offs. Do this with all soft hackles) Both size 14 and 16 took fish on that cold day. A better fly? Too early to tell but I like the idea of simplifying my fly selection. Black starling beats ALL other soft hackles when You want to create a black emerging fly. CDC doesn't cut it because it doesn't hold up, period!
Things I'd like to see
I'd like to see fly fishing only on the list of MAJOR rivers as listed by the DFW. The future of fishing on these rivers is Fly Fishing. 10 or so years ago I conducted a survey on these blog from mid March through June. I asked readers to count the number of anglers they saw on a fishing trip and asked them to determine if the anglers that they encountered were fly fishing or using another method on flowing water. (Rivers) I excluded any C&R or fly only sections and small brooks that were stocked. In March the flyfishing percentage was around 40% and other methods around 60%. Forward cast to April and the reverse was true" 60% were fly fishing and 40% were other methods. Double Haul into May and it was 80% flyfishing, 20% other methods. June was ALL FLYFISHING!!! Numbers of anglers INCREASED in April through June. What does that tell us. It tells us that spin and bait folks don't show up as the season progresses, they decrease in numbers because the chance of filling a limit decreases as the season goes on BUT FLY FISHERS CONTINUE TO FISH RIGHT THROUGH THE SUMMER. Fly fishers practice defacto C&R because they WANT the fishing to continue. What's wrong with that??
I've guided and encountered many flyfishers from all over the eastern states who have heard of the Swift and the Deerfield and the Millers who can't believe that we allow catch & keep on what are becoming destination rivers.
Time for a change!!!
Things I Don't Want To See
Articulated Streamers have become a fad in these parts. They can be essential in other fisheries but when your average BIG trout is +or - 20 inches are they really needed? I've seen BIG fish taken (6lb browns and 30 inch salmon) taken out of the Swift on everything from size 20 to size 30 flies, that's REAL FLYFISHING) to know that you don't need to be throwing beefsteak when something more manageable will do.
What really bothers me about articulated streamers is that some cowboys have stuck on plastic wiggle tails to these flies. The Bass Pro group must be having a field day knowing that they have "soiled our linen" so to speak. If you use these ungodly appendages you have crossed from fly fishing to the Dark Side . Yup, my opinion!
Another Thing(s) I Don't Want To See
Competition flyfishing - Who invented this monster. I have heard that chosen rivers get the shit stocked out of them before the event. What does that prove?
Stomach Pumping - This seems to be on the wane and that's a good thing. Gastric lavage is pointless because we already have a good sense of that the trout is feeding on. The Super Bowl
Jimmy G. is the Patriots connection to this Super Bowl. I want the 49'ers to win. (Really - they won't)
