December To Remember

The Swift is a lifesaver!! My last trip to the Millers was on Hallowen. After that the rains came, then the ice and then the snow. Without this little tailwater I would be waiting until April to cast a fly. I made three trips to the Swift in December. Two trips were to the "pipe" and one to the "Y" Pool. The Y Pool trip was on the morning of Christmas Eve which turned out to be warm but very windy. I took to big rainbows in three hours. The two trips to the pipe accounted for 67 rainbows in about four hours of fishing. There are a gazillion small rainbows here and they were a blast on my 6ft, 3wt. bamboo. Hot flys were the Hot Spot and jailbirds in size 16.

It's been a good December which caps off a good year. Can't wait till 08!

MRF

The Swift - Saturday November 24

Now, this was great!!! Stole two early morning hours and landed 12 trout, all 'bows and one brookie. All were caught on one fly, a #16 "Hot Spot". The hot spot is any dark, slender nymph with either a yellow, orange or pink band of dubbing around it's middle. No tail, no hackles. Just dead drift this nymph WITHOUT an indicator unless you begin to see nyphing rises and then drift it under some indicator putty and only six inches under the indicator too.

Indicator putty - the best stuff going and I don't know why it's not used more often. Unlimited sizes, easy to put on and adjust and easy to take off. Still, flyfishers are using their cork "bobbers" and yarn indicators that are the size of a shaving brush!!!

I may try a weekend day on the Millers if the water level stays down but the Swift is calling me.

MRF

Saturday, November 11, on the Swift

Saturday morning found me on the beautiful Swift River for the third consectutive Saturday. This was different from the past two outings. first, it was not raining and second, it was loaded with flyfishers. I made my first cast below "the pipe" at 7:45am and by 9:00am I counted eight other anglers fishing above and below this section. What made it special and entertaining was the presence of flyfishing celebrity Marla Blair with a camera crew of one who spent over two hours recording her flyfishing prowness. Marla caught a lot of trout but the major event was the dunking of her camerawoman who fell "back first" into those frigid waters. She and her camera survived and that's a good thing. Marla is a fishing machine!! So was the young guy, maybe twenty, dressed in waders and a hooded sweatshirt (a Swift River homey) who yanked trout out of thin air that morning. This kid can fish!!!!

The count - 11 rainbows either landed or almost landed. Early on the trout were slow to respond with only a #16 dark beadhead showing any interest. By 10:00am the fish became more active. You could see them darting back and forth. That's when a #20 dark olive emerger began to bring trout to the net. The days obligations made me leave just before 11:00am when I KNEW that a full blown hatch would start soon.

Winter is a special time on the Swift. I need to spend a full day there.

I will soon.

MRF

Saturday on the Swift

The alarm went off at 6:00am. Soon I was driving down Rt 202 under dark skies and breezy conditions to get my spot on the lower Swift River. The weatherman on the radio spoke of the Nor'easter charging up the coast with hurricane gusts and buckets of rain. If this holds off till noon I'll be fine.

Now here I am, below the "pipe" and I'm the ONLY one here!!!! I guess my brother longrodders have been scared off for a second Saturday because of a forecast. Soon I'm joined by the only other angler I'll see this morning. I tie on a #16 grouse and flash and for the next two hours bring only two small rainbows to the net. This pipe stretch, so good last Saturday, is just off today. I end up switching spots with the other angler, taking a position at the deeper, slower section a few hundred feet below the pipe. This section is LOADED with fish and they appear to occasionally be taking something just below the surface. Then things change as a tiny olive mayfly appears. Soon the surface is awash in them and the trout really begin to rise. A search through my"tiny fly box" reveals only two olives and they are #20, a bit large for this occasion but they will have to do. Short story - I lost both those flies after taking four of those rainbows. Time to leave.

Six trout in four hours isn't that bad and it beats raking leaves! As I drive over the Rt.9 bridge I notice that the "Y Pool" parking lot is EMPTY!!!!!!! I've NEVER seen that before.

It's early evening and it's raining. I have a roast in the oven, a glass of wine next to me and I'm half way through tying up some tiny olives. Next time.......

MRF

Late Season on the Millers-Fall on the Swift

Well, things are beginning to wind down. The great surface action of the past month and a half is becoming a memory. On the October 24 I got an hour in at Rezendes in the Bears Den. I was looking for rising trout but that hour before sundown failed me. Rollcast forward to Saturday the 27th. The forecast of heavy rain was dead on as I drove down to the Swift and the "pipe" section which is a favorite of mine. I met one other angler that morning who agreed that the rain would keep others off the river. "Yesterday I couldn't find a place to park because of the crowd" was his lament. We didn't lament for long. I caught 8 rainbows and he had about as many. A size #16 grouse and flash took half with the rest coming on a #16 dark olive beadhead. The new Orvis rain jacket worked as advertised. I was there for just less than three hours and wanted to spend the rest of the day there but obligations made me reel up and head for home. October 31 - One hour at the Kempfield in the very late afternoon. After seeing only one trout rise I put on a #8 marabou muddler and fished the rocks above the slow water. Bang! One 14 inch brown. Bang again and a parted tippet. Time to tie up some marabou muddlers and try this area again in November.

The Millers will begin to rise with the Autumn rains and the draw down from Tully Lake. It usually means an end to the great dry fly action that this river gives us in the Fall. Maybe it will be a bit late this year (hopefully). There's always the Swift to keep the diehards like me occupied till Spring.

The top left photo is of a rainbow from the Swift from last Saturday. The other is of "the pipe" with nobody there. I told you it was raining hard!!!

MRF

Kempfield Pool Again - October 17

Maybe it was too much to expect another banner day like I had two days before. Friends of mine from eastern Ma. spent Tuesday, the 16th, on the Wendell C&R and had limited success. Some BWO's but very little surface action. I made it down to the Kempfield for two hours before our monthly TU meeting the next day and caught the two rising browns that presented themselves but it was an interesting evening anyway. It was interesting because of what some flyfishers see and what some don't see.

When I arrived there was an elderly grey haired gent who was casting and retrieving a fly in the wide slow portion of this Kempfield stretch. What I noticed was what this gent didn't notice - the delicate rise of a brown near the rocks along the south bank. This guy never even tried for this fish!! After a while this guy left for home and I took up his spot. It was then that I noticed that there were two fish in this area that would rise, gently, every few minutes or so. Well, I put the #20 BWO emerger to work. The casts had to be long and right on the spot due to the rocks that guarded the spot. I took both of those trout, both browns, with that tiny fly. There is a lesson here. Some tactics work and some don't. If you are dragging a sunken fly with no success and there is a surface feeding brown within casting range then you go for it with the appropriate fly! It is hard for me to believe that this guy DIDN'T see these fish. All I can say is that he didn't see the sporatic rises otherwise he would have been on to them. The lesson - keep a clear eye and be aware of everything that is happening around you. Beadheads and buggers will fool the foolish rainbows of spring and early summer. By now the 'bows are long gone and the browns demand real skill and patience.

MRF

Catskill Weekend - Millers Monday

I received a great birthday gift this past weekend in the form of a long weekend, courtesy of my girlfriend, at an inn on the banks of the fabled Willowemoc in Lingingston Manor up in the Catskills. It is hard to believe but I've never been there so I took three days to scout out the "Willow" and the legendary Beaverkill. I visited and took photos of those storied pools on the Beaverkill - the Junction Pool, Ferdon's, Hendrickson's, Cairns, Horse Run (awesome stretch), the Wagon Tracks and Painters Bend. I'll be back, hopefully next June, to fly fish this beautiful region especially the Willowemoc. It is such a beautiful stream!! Oh yeah, I managed to actually fish for an hour. No runs, no hits, no errors. The above photo is a stretch of the Willowemoc upstream from Livingston Manor.

Now, for a real report!! I managed to find myself on the Kempfield this late afternoon. I expected the same nymphing trout that have been driving us crazy of late and I wasn't disappointed. This time I was armed with plenty of BWO emergers in #18 and #20. I tied them a bit differently using only olive or brown thread for the body and then a dark olive thorax finnished with a poly wing post. As it happened I was greeted with a good BWO hatch. All told I took 11 browns. It was just a great autumn afternoon.

MRF