The blob is the latest joke to be added to what used to be a fur and feather sport.Will someone please come up with a name other than flyfishermen for those who use these type of things.They denigrate the sport. - DanT,
DanT says it all!!!I agree with DanT. This sports' definition, a definition that has existed for a 100 or more years, has been run through the weeds to encompass a growing style of slinging weighted flies, flies that have very little resemblance to natural stream organisms for the sole purpose of causing trout to strike outside of a feeding purpose! Trout see hundreds of insect prey every day that are represented by flies that are of the natural color/form/shape found in a trout stream. To fool a trout with a natural looking insect is the epitome of fly fishing. To get it to strike a Blob, a bright green Mop or a glowing Rainbow Warrior or something like that is a lesser version of fly fishing. Maybe it's not fly fishing at all.
A blog post of mine a while ago mentioned a "fisher" on the Farmington. I watched him catch trout after trout but after a short while I wasn't fooled by his 9ft limber road or the fact that he was casting fluorocarbon line but by the fact that his 9 ft rod was rigged with a spinning reel and the fluor was 3X! He was fishing with meal worms (legal where he was). I wanted to introduce him to flies but I seemed to have gotten the fact that he had been approached before. I showed him a fly that looked like his meal worm and there was some interest but he said that his trout were never deep hooked and he released all of them.
I asked him what he would do in shallower water seeing that he had lightweight split shot a foot above the fly. "Take the shot off" he said. DUH!! I should of known. That's easier to do than changing a weighted fly and that's easier and makes a lot more sense then looking for a water flow (faster) that suits nymphing. (can't believe I saw that on the internet!!!!)
In short, there are degrees or levels of fly fishing. If your game is to catch as many fish as possible with costume jewlery you must realize that after a few dozen you are working over freshly stocked trout which includes the Farmington. If your intention is to fool trout with something that looks and acts like a natural insect then you are in the zone, you are FLYFISHING!!!
The Rivers
The Millers, EB and the Ware need rain. The Swift is fine.
Guided Trips
Book me NOW!! October and November are great months that can be warmer than May and April. These are my favorite months!!!!
Ken
30 comments:
I was curious ken - where do the trout go when the water gets real low like it is now? And when we do get significant rain, how long does is take for the trout to come back and find those spots after the rain?
Ken
I frequently go back and check the blog from a year ago to see what patterns and comments were a hot topic at the time. Interestingly the river flows were almost the same as current conditions. I recall reading of a threat the DFW would not stock some streams due to low water conditions. Lets hope we get a soaking soon.
Mike
I think the regulations that pertain to the salmon river fly fishing only area are a good definition of "fly fishing" versus using a fly rod and reel to fish. You can't use mono rigs or competition line, etc. You have to pretty much use a floating line and adjust the leader length, shot, etc. to get the fly into the strike zone. And actually MEND line versus standing over them and casting the same 15 feet of line.
I do find the moralizing about fly fishing a bit amusing, with all due respect. I say that as someone who is pretty close to a dry fly purist these days, and one with a strong preference for casting flies to rising fish as opposed to prospecting and blind casting. Moralizing about the right way to fly fish goes back to Halford (perhaps farther), who claimed the high ground for dry flies imitating adult insects, cast upstream, only to rising fish. Morals aside, his understanding of trout and fly behavior turned out to be quite flawed... his flies sank, at least partially (it's nearly impossible to keep some part of the fly... hackle, hook points, etc from breaking the surface) but b/c trout eat lots of cripples and emergers. His flies worked mainly because they failed to do what he claimed was so morally important... float perfectly. Skues, the nympher, had a far more accurate understanding of trout behavior, morals aside. Should we call weighted flies and sinking lines fly fishing? Lee Wulff opposed their use in Atlantic Salmon fishing to allow the fish the refuge of deep water, but in the Pacific Northwest fly fishermen developed innovative tackle and casting techniques (Skagit) to fish large weighted flies on the bottom for winter steelhead. Should we not call that fly fishing? What of the classic techniques of fishing feather-wing streamers on sinking lines for landlocked salmon and brook trout... fly fishing or no? What about floating gobs of foam and rubber that bear but a passing resemblance to a stonefly or a grasshopper (a natural food that trout rarely actually eat)? Are such flies any more of a fly than a mop just because they float? (I sure had a fun day hooking 18 - 20inch cutthroats on size 6 chubby chernobyls in a Yellowstone tributary no more that 20 feet wide as they dropped back to the main stem after spawning, though.) What about multiple flies at a time? A brace of three wet flies is as traditional as it comes. Split shot on the leader and tight-line nypmhing... that's how people drift bait for trout, but should we say that Joe Humphreys isn't fly fishing? I do get a kick out of the Euronymphers not b/c I disapprove of the technique, but because they feel they have invented something new, when in fact, it's the way people drifted nymphs and yes, bait for decades before indicators (aka bobbers) became popular. While we're at it, there is a long tradition of drifting bait on a fly rod (the ol' garden hackle), and John Gierach writes about the day he was able to catch his limit without having to fish worms.
While I fish dries 90% of the time, I do enjoy tossing out a junk fly (blob, mop, etc.) on occasion... it's fun to watch fish swim halfway across the river to circle and inspect the fly, and sometimes eat it. It's also fun to break the rules, so to speak, and catch a fish on something outrageous, and it's a refreshing reminder that our quarry really isn't as smart as we like to think. After 10 or 15 minutes though, I'm ready for the more demanding puzzle of fooling an actively feeding fish, preferably on a dry fly... not because it's morally superior, but because I enjoy the challenge and it's more fun for me to catch them that way.
Instead of worrying if the way people are fishing counts as fly fishing, we'd probably do more good by moralizing about protecting the fish and the habitats they depend on, and about making sure the sport of fly fishing that we love is accessible to all people, etc. (I know almost everyone here agrees on the importance of those issues, so I am not meaning to call anyone out.)
Frankly I think the English have it right to only allow upstream dry flys on some of their streams. Now that is true flyfishing! No hatch, no catch!
Love that caddis pupa, Ken. What is that body section made of?
Nice brookie on the parachute Adams tonight. It is always a treat to see hits on a dry fly.
Earlier I had my hardest hit of the year on a hare's ear nymph. The take stripped line before I even set the hook. Hook didn't stay set for long, but fun to have on for a short while. I saw a yellow underbelly before line went limp. That was a nice one.
Be Well,
Sam
Zack,
Trout find spring holes, seepage, tiny tribs and the like. As soon as rain arrives to quicken the flow the trout will return. You see this in tiny brook trout streams.
Brendan,
Well done!
Sam,
It's a latex body.
Ken
Very nicely put. I'm curious if many people know that this fly the "Blob" actually mimics a natural organism.
Dear Ken,
As you are doubtless aware, nymph fly fishermen vary according to their fishing style and equipment. At one extreme is the 'Euronymph' angler, with his 10-foot rod, complex leader, and weighted jig-style fly; at the other is the dry-fly angler who fishes a nymph only when the occasion demands. In between are the great majority of nymph fly fishermen who use conventional fly tackle and fish nymphs because of their effectiveness; some use strike indicators and other visual aids, some do not.
I count myself among this majority, an angler who is not a "typical, I HATE FLY LINE, nympher". I use a 9-foot, 5-weight rod with matching reel and line, my own hand-tied 9-foot leaders, and NO strike indicator. I fish fur nymphs (Hare's Ear, Casual Dress, and others) and herl nymphs (Sawyer-style Pheasant Tails, Zug Bugs, and others) of my own manufacture, submerged to proper depth with tin shot - no beads for me! I rely entirely on the 'subtly wrong' motion of my fly line (and the occasional subsurface flash of a feeding fish) to signal when I must set the hook, typically with less than 20 feet of fly line deployed. This is short-line, but not necessarily tight-line nymphing.
It is a sophisticated and effective technique which has taken all of my 57 years of fly fishing to master, at the very least equivalent to the skill of an expert dry-fly or soft-hackle angler. While I share your concern that Euronymphing and gaudy synthetic attractor patterns uncomfortably stretch the definition of fly fishing, I urge you not to tar all nymph fly fishermen with the same brush.
-Mike
Miles is absolutely right. The blob fly, originally designed for stillwater fishing, can imitate a cluster of daphnia, or water fleas, a tiny crustacean that lives in lakes. In my mind, when fishing it in a river, it's a powerbait imitation, similar to many egg flies, mops, etc. All of these junk flies probably have moments where they can be used as an imitation of a natural trout food, but they cross the line to attractors when they are tied in large sizes and gaudy colors. The blob, which is tied with a pretty cool sparkly and translucent chenille, is really no different than a big egg fly (about size 12)... trout never see eggs that big, but they can often be convinced to eat flies like that.
To Everyone,
This may be the best collection of comments on an individual post that this blog (Me) have seen in years. It's not the usual "nice trout" or "nice photo" that you see on other blogs but real stuff that are conversation starters and I'm not talking about equipment discussions but discussions on catching trout. Three cheers for the ones who comment and for ALL of those who read this blog.
Ken
Loaded topic....when fishing a cone headed streamer, are u fly fishing? It's not a FLY after all. It's a fish pattern. I fish salt about 15 days a year. I put weight on my crab pattern to get it in the zone of a permit. I think you get where I'm going. I could go on and on with certain scenarios. What's definitely not fly fishing is crimping huge lead on leader and blind casting for salmon.
To me, crimping weight on your leader takes away from the cast/presentation aspect of what most of us really want to do...cast dries. I used to indicator fish with weight for steelhead and enjoyed it. But the mending and casting is difficult and has torn my shoulder up.
There's nothing better than matching a hatch (which i can rarely figure out). I have a lot of trouble seeing anything under a size 20 and it takes away some of the visual fun for me and I also question how good my presentation is when I can't see the fly.
The comment at the top by Dan...I totally get what he is saying. The guy is the best I've seen at the swift...along with a few other regulars. I've never picked his brain on the presentation of a size 32 and probably won't. I'm not near as dedicated to the trout fishing on the swift as others. And it's OK. It's not a numbers game for me. If it were, I'd nymph with lead all the time. I'll continue to try to match hatches, but when a 26 ain't working, I'm putting on an a size 10 STIMULATOR...so just do whatever you want and have fun.
I am heading for fire country (rocky mountain west/Yellowstone) tomorrow...I am going to have everything from #22 CDC Sparkle Duns to a large but not too large un-articulated streamer...I draw my line at rapala type flies LOL....whatever works for you and you aren't throwing bait or gear and bonus points if you tied it yourself is fly fishing to me. The important thing is to respect the resource and fellow anglers.
Are you suggesting that we all throw away our Wooly Worms, Wooly Buggers and PMX?
As i believe has been mentioned here in the past by others a grey-ish mop fly looks an awful lot like a cranefly larvae - can be killer on the deerfield.
A bright chartreuse mop, though? maybe an overweight drowned inchworm? :-)
And as is mentioned above- anyone who thinks Euronymphing is new to the US should re-read John Geirach's Essay "Zen and the Art of Nymph Fishing" found in Trout Bum- his tight line nymphing technique sounds an awful lot like techniques trumpted by a lot of nymph fisherman today- tought to him by Ed Engle no less. Same goes for the books written by Joe Humphreys.
A really great discussion tonight. Kudos to Ken for starting it and Brendan, et. al, for putting forth some great views and examples. I can't fly fish these days because of work and lack of time, so I'm enjoying this vicariously. Tight lines, gentlemen. And remember: Fishing should be fun.
RKL
Mattk,
Are you kidding?? A streamer is a fly even though it represents a fish. If it's made from fur, feathers or lightweight tinsel and it needs a fly line to cast it ITS A FLY!!!
Brian Miner,
Refer to the answer above
BobT,
Good luck out there!!!
PeteB,
I fish a grey mop fly with a black or brown back (done with a sharpie) because it mimics a leech or a hellgrammite and it's a killer on the Millers. I have no use for chartreuse which is the color of Power Bait.
Ken
So, with all this talk of grey mop flies where can you buy them or what is the recipe to tie them?
Great discussion, and all respectful comments. You don't see that much on message boards.
I'm over 60 and have been fly fishing since I was about 7 or 8 years old. My techniques are offering upstream dries to rising fish, or "dapping" wets to tiny wild brookies on woodland trickles when I can find them. But I've also hurled lead weighted Estaz Eggs to steelies in Pulaski, and tossed Deceivers to baby tarpon in the Caribbean. I got my first fly rod false albacore three years ago on a RI charter, and I caught my very first-ever "strike indicator" trout on the EB this June. A few weeks ago I finally mustered the courage to try true night fishing for browns with a big Muddler on the Millers. (No catch, but I broke the ice) A good buddy of mine has embraced Czech nymphing and I've tried it more than once, but it just does not sing for me.
I guess I'm trying to say that I'm constantly trying new things, am open to all styles and aim to judge none. To me, the important thing is staying active, appreciating and protecting the resources, and trying to share it wisely with others when I can.
Life's way too short to fight about something as ephemeral as fishing, and I really appreciate the many good folks who follow this nifty blog.
Good work, Ken.
That's my point. It's FLY fishing. Totally agree with u. It doesn't have to be a mayfly/caddis to get credit for being a FLY. So to those to say weight on a fly isn't fly fishing...I disagree. For those chucking lead 2 ft above a "ESTEZ EGG"...thats not fly fishing. Its fishing with fly gear.
Thank you Ken and everyone else for a great discussion!
Just to defend chartreuse for a moment... there are a number of insects with bright green and yellow bodies... caddis like the green rockworm, hydropsyche, zebra caddis, some BWOs (e.g. attenuata), and terrestrials like inch worms. The green weenie fools plenty of wild browns on the famous PA spring creeks and a chartreuse mop could certainly imitate a large caddis larva.
However... the effectiveness of undeniable attractors like chartreuse eggs and blobs certainly calls to mind PowerBait and complicates the question of whether the trout are taking flies like the mop or green weenie as natural insects or as attractors. If they are catching fish and you're having fun, do you need to know why? If you do want to know why, you probably fall more in the match-the-hatch school and might try a more realistic imitation to better solve the puzzle. If you are having fun and don't care why, I don't think anyone should question your morals or think you are any less of a fly fishermen.
I think flies often start out as imitators and get modified to become attractors (gaudier colors, larger sizes, etc), but sometimes the progression is reversed. Stan's Blue Midge (popularized by Ed Engle in Tying Small Flies) was inspired by a study of hatchery trout and their preferences for salmon eggs dyed different colors (blue being preferred to all other colors). So a salmon egg dyed blue, as un-natural a food as you could imagine, became a more imitative fly, albeit one with elements of an attractor. (I've yet to see a natural midge that is blue... bright red or chartreuse, yes, but not blue.) I don't even know where to start with those purple dry flies everyone and their uncle uses out west to catch trout feeding selectively on small PMDs and BWOs... maybe a blue body would work even better?
Brendan,
A chartreuse mop is an undeniable attractor. Chartreuse caddis larva??
Anonymous 10:11,
Go to Walmart to the car wash section for all the grey mops that you need.
Ken
Love these comments- My chartreuse comment earlier was meant tounge in cheek- as the old saying goes- "if it ain't chartreuse, it aint no use!!!"
Remember buying pack after pack of bright green dubbing the first time i hit a blanket apple caddis hatch on the beaverkill as a teenager.
Ken, although you might look at chartreuse and see the color of powerbait, how do you know that fish see colors in the same manner that we do with light refraction and current? When it comes to fishing plugs, I've read that stripers see bunker (and other larger baitfish) as having a yellow hue to them when looking up through water column and into the sun. How people know this I have no idea but food for thought versus painting with a broad brush and labeling everything brightly colored an attractor.
Many free-living caddis larvae come in various shades of green, ranging from olive to chartreuse (and for that matter, many cased larvae are also bright green if removed from the case, such as grannom larvae). Rhyacophila and Hydropsyche are widespread, often abundant in trout streams, and very available to the trout since they don't form cases. Rhyacophila are large and fat and they live in fast water, so a mop could certainly be a passable imitation. I learned to indicator nymph years ago on Grand Lake Stream during heavy Rhyacophila activity/hatching... salmon hammered any green caddis nymph size 8 - 12 fished close to the bottom (2 BB sized split shot helped) during the day. In the evening during hatching and egg-laying, letting the flies swing up became effective. A chartreuse mop would certainly have worked as an imitation under those circumstances, though my experience was years before the fly was invented.
I agree that in most circumstances a chartreuse mop fly is an attractor, but there are some moments where it could be an imitation. This is true of many attractors... eggs, san juan worms, green weenies, etc. In rare circumstances they can be imitations, in a particular size/color, but they are effective outside of those rare moments because they work as attractors (and outrageous colors and larger sizes can at times enhance their effectiveness by making them more attractive). Mops in the right colors can work well as imitations of large insects, particularly ones that wiggle/swim in the drift (hellgrammite, stonefly, large caddis, etc). An orange mop could pass as an egg I suppose, though it is several sizes too big to be a trout egg, and a pale yellow mop could pass for sucker spawn (a cluster of small eggs), but we would be kidding ourselves to think that this is the reason mops are typically taken by fish.
I've let this conversation ruminate for a while. Having said this...my opinion is that if the the usage of these flies in question denigrate the sport. Then people who feel this way should stop selling them and tying them. Because of course selling them and teaching people to tie them would be hypocritical. I know for a fact that at least one of the two parties wanting to assign a new name for this type of fly fisherman has done just that. I would be willing to bet that the other has done the same. When people have been told by others how great they are over and over for decades, they start to believe it.When they start to believe it...their learning stops. It's called ego and it is a legacy killer.This is unproductive. The fact that someone has a fly rod in their hand is a win as far as I'm concerned. Understand that many really good fly fisherman have learned to wet a line with these flies. Some fly fisherman will evolve from this way and some will not. Either way is okay. Know one elected either of you to pass judgment on the hands that feed you. If you have a belief in a certain way then I respect that. Inforce your beliefs through example. Not insults. I do not "ruffle feathers " I pluck them. Please answer one question. What would you call the fly fishermen that denigrate this beautiful sport? Fair question? Be kind and lead by example.
Couldn’t agree more. Very well said.
Pat mentioned 'trout vison' in his post. Fish do see colors differently than we do. A local gentleman named Reed Curry wrote a book on how trout perceive light and color: "The New Scientific Angling- Trout and Ultraviolet Vision'"
Interesting read...
Mike,
That leaves the question - What do the trout see when we see the color olive?
KEN
I'm not sure; it's been a long time since I read Curry's book. I'm a much simpler fly fisherman than Curry. I tie up the usual colors in hues that work for me and mimic what I see in nature around me and in the bugs in the river. I don't spend time considering the UV fluorescing qualities of the material on the hook. Still, Reed's book offers some interesting ideas.
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