The annual fly box disaster recovery act

Well, it is between Christmas and New Year's, and the annual panic has set in. Trout season here in Michigan starts on the last Saturday in April, and due to the vagaries of the Calendar that Means April 24 this year. Damn! Hardly enough time to get the flies tied and a new rod or two to finish before the opener. And it is worse than you think- quite a few of our more famous trout streams are open all year, and some of them have nice spring steelhead runs. So when you here the first spring peepers you need to be ready.

This year is typical. What started as a the beadhead box, the nymph box, the wet box, the streamer box, the dry box, and the pray for death box (anything less than size 18) somehow turned into a massive jumble of matted hackles, flies floating loose in all corners, and a streamer that was somehow still damp from last summer. Go figure. It was pretty clear than any fly that wasn't producing that day was snipped off and tossed in the first box that came out of the vest. Such sloth. There were other affronts- those stupid-ass Hendricksons with the overhackle of wood duck that were supposed to be killers? The entire dozen still sitting in a neat row, all but one intact. The one I used is a bit matted and still had a leader knot, but clearly it had not been touched by a single fish. They get removed and sent to the redo box where the materials will be removed with a razor blade and retied into something that will catch fish. Yeah, right. That box has been receiving flies for 10 years and I have yet to get into it. And a half dozen size 12 nymphs, all untouched, but the half dozen size 14's in that pattern are gone. And the 4 black weed seeds that I tied before I figured out that natural deer hair was the way to go. What am I going to do with all this crap? And worse: the slim Borcher's that I know will never work.

And I finally realized that if you carry a dozen of each pattern, you can only carry about 20 different kinds of a particular fly in a box. So except for the obvious producers, I am going to cut back to 4 of each pattern and watch my backcast. Except for obvious proven patterns, and flies that tend to have short life spans, either because they are fragile (pheasant tails) or spend life near the bottom (I carry a dozen Walt's worms and seem lose them every 3rd or 4th cast).

This year, I have decided that wet flies are a lost art, and plan on fishing them extensively. Look for some future posts on the McGinty, blue dun, picket pin (a top seller in the orvis catalog about 1980), and the Alexandria (reputedly banned in some English waters because it it too effective). Gotta get tying, and right fast. It will be here before you know it. Of course, this is what makes fly fishing so cool. The season never really ends, and Michigan winters simply fly by. Or are at least tolerable until March 15.

The Hiatus

I have been besieged by my readers (all two of them) as to why there was a lag in posts. The answer for this is seen to the left. He is a rat terrier, and has required considerable time and attention.

There was another issue as well. I wanted my fly photos to be better, and was too cheap to buy a new light for illumination. Instead, I obsessed with getting the three dollar garage sale light to work. It finally happened today.

The Mickey Finn has its day

This classic streamer gets it's name from the Chicago underworld, where a Mickey Finn was a bar drink laced with chloral hydrate- the concoction would render the drinker unconscious enough to rob. It is a truly classic streamer pattern, and has appeared in every fly tying book, magazine, web site, and collection as a "must carry" pattern. Even Earnest Schwiebert wrote about it in "Trout".

Presumably, the pattern was such a knockout on trout that it just had to be called a "Mickey Finn". Since everyone who is anyone carried the pattern, I dutifully tied up a dozen in 1999 and always carried three or four in the corner of the streamer box. However, the pattern had a distinction; it was the only fly pattern that I ever tied that never once caught a fish. Part of this was that I never tied one on unless it was one of those cold cloudy desperate days where the stream seemed lifeless. I would usually put on one when I came to big dark pool, make a few desultory casts, and snip it off in favor of something that might actually work. It became a joke- I knew guys that would fish the Mickey over any other streamer pattern but I hated it.

I actually consider the Mickey Finn not as an attractor pattern, but a very good imitation of a redbelly dace. But redbelly dace are pretty scarce in most of their range, and creek chubs, black nosed dace, and sculpins are far more widespread. So although it was good, dace just weren't important.

So this went on for 25 years, until a fateful sunny summer day on the Ausable River. My friends Jim J. and Jaime S. and I were doing a hopscotch float and there was the inevitable discussion about what they might be bitin'. Jim and Jaime both suggested that the Mickey Finn was a pattern worth considering, and I scoffed. They looked at me like I was an idiot. I scoffed again, thereby adding to my future misery and shame. We were catching fish on dry flies until about noon when it sort of drizzled out. I was in a post-lunch stupor and not getting anything. One of those, "well at least the morning was good" days. Somehow, I decided to tie on a stupid-ass Mickey Finn, go fishless, and then make fun of my friends for their bad advice. A good plan, but it went bad on the first cast when a nice brookie smashed the fly. I then had one of the most eye opening experiences of my fly fishing career, but it wasn't about the fish that were smashing the Finn about every third or fourth cast, it was what the pattern taught me.

The Mickey Finn is a great pattern because of all the flies I have ever fished, it is the one that is most visible from 30 feet away when it is swinging through the darkness of deep pools and runs. Because you could see the fly, you could work it within inches of stumps, and watch how it was responding to your strips and mends. But the craziest part were the strikes. I would watch a brook trout (and occasional brown) fly out of their lairs, eat the fly, and then turn back toward the stygian depths. It was only after they had moved 6 to 12 inches that I could feel the strike. That day, I was fishing graphite because we had all agreed that three guys in a canoe was not a good situation for cane rods, and it made me realize that cane rules because of its sensitivity. Next year, I am going back with a cane streamer rod to see if I can detect strikes better, and I think I will.

The coolest part of the day came when I spied a small deep hole with big stump at the tail end- the pool was a depression about the size of your office desk. I thought, if I were king of the brook trout, that would be my spot. It was, he was big, and was released. About five minutes later the fishing ended when the last of my three Mickeys ended up in a tree, but it was fun while it lasted. I now love the Mickey Finn, and will never be without it again even though Jim and Jaime will undoubtedly make fun of me every time they see me fishing the pattern. I don't care.

Another interesting thing about this pattern is that there are almost no published variations. About the only variation I have seen in tying books is the addition of jungle cock eyes, or small painted-on eyes. I do know of two varations though that were developed by friends: William M. of Berks County PA used to add an overwing of grizzly hackle and claimed the pattern was far more effective. My friend Jim J. Ties his with a pink fur body ribbed with tinsel, jungle cock, and a topping of peacock herl . It works.

And by the way, every fishing story I have ever read that discussed this pattern as a fish catcher described the same weather pattern: Midsummer, sunny and hot. That was my case, and it may be most effective that time of year. Why? I have no idea.

The weed seed

This pattern was stolen from Mike Schultz, resident sage, fly tyer, guide, and employee/manager of our local fly shop: Colton Bay outfitters on the west side of Ann Arbor. Mike is a brilliant fly tyer, and like all brilliant fly tyers does not realize how brilliant he is. If you can steal one of his patterns, you should. I first came across the weed seed as he was tying a bunch of them for a guide trip. I was looking at them, and he explained that he needed a fly that floated well but was simple and inexpensive to tie. He guides a lot of beginning anglers, and they tend to lose a lot of flies. I liked the look of it, and bummed one from him. It had no name, so I christened it the weed seed because it did look a bit frumpy. The weed seed is also a term used by A.K. Best to describe poorly tied dry flies. I did not know Mike then as well as I do now, and I thought that he may have been pranking me by giving me a pattern that was an "A Number 1 Hat Decorator", so I pranked him back by giving his creation a derogatory name coined by one of the most influential tyers of our generation. As is per usual with these things, I was paid back in spades.

I am still ashamed, and this is why. Fast forward to the following weekend on the Ausable River. I was fishing, and waded past a cabin where breakfast was being prepared. A bunch of guys boiled out and refused to let me pass their dock unless I showed them what I was using. One comment: you have released more fish in the past few minutes than we have caught all week. And what, pray tell, was I using? The weed seed. I had tied it on first thing, and it was catching every riser that saw it.

The weed seed is brilliant because it is easy to tie, and it looks like everything under the sun. It could be a mayfly, a caddis, a stone, or even a small hopper. I have messed with different colors, but natural seems to work 90% of the time. There have been times when it doesn't work, but those are pretty rare. It floats so well that it is a good searching pattern, which is the way I use it. It is a great pattern for those days when nothing is really rising, but you feel like fishing dry flies anyway even though subsurface might produce more fish.

The recipe:
Tail: two strands of krystal flash.
body: a clump of deer hair. Lay the clump around the hook shank, spiral back, then spiral forward.
Wing: a clump of deer hair. Leave the butts stick up like an elk hair caddis to form a small head.
Hackle: non, but you can leave some of the body or wing longer to make a few legs.

Takes 30 seconds, lasts and floats forever. And it catches fish. It has got to be the ultimate in impressionistic patterns. It is now one of my go-to flies, especially on new water. And the truth is that I asked Mike if it would be OK to write about it. He is very gracious about sharing his knowledge, and gave permission.


Update: I now tie the pattern with an antelope hair wing. It really flairs out and makes it float better and longer.

The night I could do no wrong

I went fishing with my friend Jim J. . This is generally an intimidating experience, because no one outfishes him. Ever. He is one of the most observant guys I know, has the patience to work a pool until he catches the largest fish, and has a knack for figuring out what they are doing and when they are likely to do it. And he can work flies so the fish come rocketing out of their lairs to strike.
So I was prepared for complete and abject humiliation.

We were on Michigan's Pine River, and I had decided to go for broke. The night before the Brown Drakes were hatching. I saw four risers all night, and got all four on a Robert's yellow drake. The next night had to be the big night, so I took only a small box of dries and a 7 foot four weight cane rod that I had made myself. And of course, there were no rises. I poked around in the one fly box I had, and discovered a small muddler. It was a double error- I usually keep all the dries in one box, and the pattern was a bastard muddle that I had tied from memory. It had a black chenille body, a ragged deer hair head, and a couple of strands of crystal flash. Since it was an hour until the brown drakes, I greased it up and presented it as an early season grasshopper. This produced nothing.

The strange part came when the fly got waterlogged. Toward the end of a cast it finally gave up the ghost and sank. There was an immediate strike and I landed and released a nice brook trout. Next cast, the now-slimed fly sank again, and a nice rainbow was hooked and released. I thought, OK, if that is the way they want it ..., and pulled the fly under water and did some short strips. This time it was one of those browns that make you wish you had brought the net.

Thereafter, it was a glorious and inexplicable insanity. Toss out the fly, strip or twitch it once or twice, and a fish would be on it. Nothing huge, but an honest 10 - 12 inch fish on nearly every cast, and every once in a while a 13 incher. Mostly rainbows, but a few browns. It went on and on. I came to long deep pool and put the fly in a log on the opposite bank. Way too deep to wade to it. I did a roll cast, it popped out and landed in the water where a respectable fish ate it. A few minutes later I sent my lone precious emissary way up into a poplar. It looked like a cat's cradle about 25 feet up. I pulled, the fly popped free, and the entire mess slithered out of the branches and down into the stream where, you guessed it, a fish hit it.

I began to wonder if the fish were crazy, and tried other patterns, including a black stone that I had overlooked in a corner of the fly box (the only other subsurface fly with me). Nothing. Dry flies. Nothing. Back to the weirdo muddler and there would be a strike. Before I knew it, it was dark and we met back at the canoe launch. Jim had been throwing everything in his box with nary a strike. He had even dropped his favorite mouse pattern while tying it on and had to watch it drift out of sight. And although it was hot, still, and humid, neither of us saw a single brown drake.

I have no idea what happened. There were no rises, and the fly did not imitate anything that I could imagine. Caddis swimming to the surface? No caddis hatch. Sculpins migrating? It was black, and being being dead drifted at the surface with an occasional twitch or strip. All fish in the entire watershed concentrated at the canoe launch? Hard to imagine. I came to the conclusion that I will never know.

And flushed with success, that little black muddler was used on many following trips. It never caught a thing again.

The flat bodied nymph

This fly is largely about hypocrisy. With the exception of the Hex and white fly hatches, most of the dry fly patterns in my fly box could best be described as impressionistic at best, and more honestly, freakish parodies. Tangerine hackle sulfurs? Hendricksons with bad case of morbid obesity? Yep. But when it comes to nymphs I go for exact.

The flat bodied nymph is not completely original- I am sure that there are other patterns like it out there. But it works, and I can't recall seeing anything exactly like it. This one started when I was reading "Chauncy Lively's Flybox". The dude was brilliant. He tied with natural materials exclusively, and used technique and creativity to make very close imitations of natural insects. He had a Hendrickson nymph I was trying to imitate, with no success. The first problem, of course, was that the pattern required condor quills. Jeez, I thought I had some somewhere. The other thing was that I just could not make my bugs look like his bugs. Probably a hand-eye issue but that is my problem, not yours. I also had recently seen an internet web page about a fly called "the muncher" which looked like a Hex nymph. I sort of combined attributes of the two patterns to come up with this thing. It also takes a page from A.K. Best, who emphasizes different colors between the top and bottom of a nymph, or the abdomen and thorax.

I have a love-hate relationship with this fly. Useful patterns should not be a pain, and no fly should require so much time to tie that you become emotionally involved with it. This one fails on both counts. But it is so productive that every year I tie a dozen and use every one. It is "the fly most often stolen or begged from my fly box by skunked fishing buddies" so that is worth something.

The pain:

Use a size 10 or 12 Mustad 9671 nymph hook, or any hook that is 2x long, and 1x heavy.

Begin by lashing two strips of lead wire along side the hook shank. Lash them on about 3/4 of the way back. Then carefully bevel them with a double-edged razor blade. This gives you a fat, flat abdomen that tapers to the rear.

Tail: Three wood duck fibers, or mallard if you failed to shoot a wood duck.
Abdomen: Turkey tail fibers reverse ribbed with copper wire.
Thorax: peacock herl.
Legs: out to each side, a small partridge hackle. You will have to root through the pack to find a small mottled one.
Wing case: grey duck primary, or something similar.

Do the wire, tails, abdomen.
Tie in the wingcase, then the partridge hackle by the tip so that both are pointing backwards over the top of the fly. Tie in the herl and wind it, tie off. Then pull/bend the partridge feather forward so that it creates legs that stick out on both sides. The pull the wingcase over the top of the whole works.

This pattern is opposite that of many patterns in that it has a distinct top and bottom. It's very unlike the western patterns tied by Charles Brooks- he believed that the fly should look the same at no matter what angle the fish saw it. I think that fish get a much better look at nymphs than dry flies, so that is my justification. Tie up a few and try them. I also use a lighter version with a light mottled turkey wing feather and grey-brown dubbing instead of herl. Tied in size 14 it seems to be a good sulfur nymph.

The Smiling Minnow

This is not a trout pattern, although I am tempted.

The smiling minnow is the glorious result of bad memory. It's a miniature version of the clouser floating minnow. We had a stretch of very dry weather on a local smallmouth river, and I had a day when my usual topwater flies sent them flying in abject fear. I wanted to try something smaller and less intrusive, so I thought I would tie up some clouser floating minnows. I did not have the recipe, so I came up with a bastardized version that was way too small, and probably substituted some materials.

1. Use a size 8 Tiemco 5212 hopper hook.
2. Cover the hook shank with white tying thread and whip finish.
3. Coat the flat side of two foam bluegill spider bodies with zap a gap and press them together over the hook shank to form the body. There is a trick to this. Put the far side on first, and position it so most of the body is above the hook shank. If you don't do this you end up with a narrow gap between the hook and body that will not hook fish. Do not ask how I learned this. Then put the second half on matching it to the first.
4. Tie on a sparse tail of bucktail or calftail, and tie in a few strands of pearl flashabou. Make it sparse.
5. Use a sharpie to make eyes and a little smiling mouth. If you do not add a smile the fly will not catch a thing.

This is my go-to low water smallmouth fly. It is insane that something so small and insignificant catches fish, but it does. I use it in late summer, or anywhere I am bass fishing under clearwater conditions. I do a dead drift with the occasional short twitch. The surprising thing is how fish take the fly. If you don't watch it constantly, you will miss a slight disturbance that means a bass has sipped it. I had a night last summer where smallmouth were acting like browns on Pennsylvania limestone stream during a trico hatch. One minute the fly would be there, then a gone in a little dimple. I missed several fish before I caught on.

I have tried other color combinations, and no longer tie it in any other color. White on white for this one. And rock bass and large bluegills love it as well as the smallmouth do...

UPDATE: I found a version of this fly that is more effective than white on white. Use light blue bucktail and blue holographic tinsel/flashabou. Pick colors that make it look like an adult blue damselfly. Works even better. I took 70 fish one day last summer until the one I had in my box had the hook break off. Still waiting for Orvis to call me with licensing information, but all my friends have started to use it so it must be good. 

What's in your vest?

I have gone through multiple phases in my fly fishing career in terms of dragging along gear and jiggery- pokery. My first vest wasn't- it was a nylon creel that slung over your shoulder. The drain holes were incredibly useful at allowing water to seep in and soak everything. It sucked, and whatever I needed quickly was always at the bottom of the junk pile. I graduated to a Simms vest- a gift that the person who gave it to me could not afford. I loved it, and still have it. Myriads of pockets, and over 10 years I got to the point where I could find anything in the dark. But the vest was problematic in the sense that fly fishing vests are not designed to house more than a few pounds of gear, and there really is no room for more than a modest sized canteen. And if you carry a raincoat and lunch you have to stuff it in the big back pocket where it pokes into your back all day. By the end of the day your shoulders are pretty stiff. I then went to the simple little vest pack with a tippet spool, clippers, and a single fly box. This was light and easy to pack, but it ruined trip after trip: rain and no rain jacket, hunger and no food, thirst and no water, and mad rises to a blizzard of caddis when there wasn't enough room for that particular fly box. And a lot of stumbling around without a light being eaten by mosquitoes because there was no bug repellent.

Last year, I went back to the kitchen sink approach but picked up a fishpond vest-pack with a hydration bladder. This thing has tons of room, and is designed to carry heavy loads. I resemble a pack mule on the stream, but this approach has saved the day so many times that I now swear by it. That fact that I am on the wrong side of 50 probably influences this: I can't go for hours without food or drink, and I have some prescriptions that should be with me. I would probably live, but why tempt fate? And I am not out there to rough it- things are rough enough back in civilization. And furthermore, I now do a style of fishing that is fairly new. I usually fish with a friend, and we spot cars at different access sites so we can do 8 hour wades to get less fished areas. Once you are on, you are on and there is no going back.

A reasonably complete list:

Rain jacket: I always carry one. The kind you can wad up in ball. But this occurred after three trips in a row where I got dinged. One storm was so bad that my socks were soaked from hat runoff. It also keeps off the chill when the wind comes up.
Hydration bladder: I once ran out of water, and was getting desperate enough to just take a few sips from the river. Was thinking seriously about getting a drink when I looked upstream and spied a huge dead beaver that had been ripped open by a predator. It was on top of a big log, and had been eviscerated. The remaining guts were hanging in the current. That ended that. Went back to the car for diet pepsi. Now I carry as much as can pack in the bladder. Everyone drinks.
Food: Time is too limited to waste going back to the truck. I eat on the stream and can fish longer and harder.
The first aid kit: waterproof matches, firestarters, a space blanket, bandaids, painkiller (aspirin for when the old guys have their on-stream heart attacks), chapstick, antibiotic cream, sting-stopper, gauze, a bit of tape, butterfly bandages, needles and thread, prescriptions, and a foot of flyline to extract hooks from humans using the pop-it-out method. I have never had to use any of this on myself, but saved an angler from a long journey to an ER to have an adams removed from his palm.
An LED headlamp- hardley weighs a thing and the batteries get replaced every spring.
Bug repellent: I once left this behind thinking it was too early for mosquitoes. It wasn't.
The leader kit: a ziploc with a bunch of tapered leaders, a knot tool, ferrule wax, and steel wood for polishing sticky ferrules on cane rods. Tippet spools. Amazing how many young anglers lose their entire leader and don't have a spare.
A beeswax candle (a reed curry trick) for lubing ferrules and maintaining a flame when you need it. Sometimes a small scissors. The scissors are an A.K. Best trick and can be used to trim flies and rebuild leaders.
Hemostat for unhooking and debarbing, and a ty-rite for holding small flies.
Magnifying glasses- the plastic kind with a leash that you hang from your neck. I stick them on my nose in front of the sunglasses. Looks stupid but saves time.
A bunch of wet lens wipes. It is amazing how your glasses can get crudded up with sunscreen and gink.
The split shot and strike indicators together in a wee little box. It is surprising how often these get forgotten, so it is on my double-check list.
Clippers on a lanyard- did you know you can sharpen clippers easily on a wetstone?
A hook sharpener. Again, easier than tying on a new fly after you hook bottom or a tree.
Tippet spools, including a 0x or 10 lb. tippet spool for whipping loops in the end of other guys fly lines who have lost their leader. See leader kit above.
Gink, and that shaker powder to dry off dry flies. The shaker stuff is amazing and saves you a great deal of time changing flies in good hatches as darkness approaches.
A fleece neckwarmer- amazing how this helps when the wind comes up or the sun goes down.
And the fly boxes. these will be dealt with in a separate post.
A small white towel for hand drying, and removing slime, gink, and effluvia from you and your gear. Amazingly useful.
Toilet paper in a ziploc bag. Forget this once and you will learn it's usefulness.
The single fine cigar in an aluminum tube. I can't smoke cigars while fishing, and my friend Dave H. burned through a brand new fly line. But there is nothing better that a $13.99 cognac-flavored Gurka smoked while sitting on a log in the sun, especially if you just released your first big trout of the year.
Cell phone: OFF. In a ziploc. Gee it was on all day, I guess we were in a dead zone. Sorry I missed the conference call.

Things I just don't bother with:

The hooky thing that slips over your fly rod trip that hooks the branch and cuts the fly free from the tree branch. These are awkward, and putting rod tips up into the shrubbery is a great way to lose a tip and end your fishing, or at least require a trip back to the truck for another rod. Just point your rod at the tree and pull. Carry extra tippets and flies, and you can also learn how to roll cast. Leave tree pruning to licensed foresters.

The little monocular telescope: I always am afraid this will get dunked, so it hides in a ziploc in the back of the pack and rarely sees the light of day. I supposed if there were more topless girls in canoes I would reconsider this. But this is Michigan, it's cold and conservative, and there aren't any usually so it hides back there. And if the rise is not obvious, just wade closer. Same is true with other things you might want to see better.

Reel lube: if you drop your reel in the sand, dunk it then lubricate the moving parts with Gink. You can carry a wee tube of reel lube, but it will explode and render everything slippery.

A fisherman's priest. I do not club trout. Only a complete douche-nozzle would carry a priest. But in fairness, maybe people carry them for protection from drunken canoe paddlers. I can see both sides of this.

A tweed hat. Only a complete double-douche would wear a tweed hat. There is no excuse for this. If you want to wear a tweed hat go to England and fuck around on the Test or Itchen. Or better yet, go to France where you can wear a beret. They have trout there. Really.

A coffee pot. A famous writer (who writes well BTW) often builds a fire and makes coffee. I am usually trespassing so hanging around a smoky fire drinking coffee is not a good idea. Once tried a thermos- the lukewarm soup was almost as nauseating as seeing the eviscerated beaver.

Any laminated card showing knots, hatch schedules, solunar tables, or other nonsense. If you don't know what is going on, at least observe and you might learn something. But don't stand in the middle of the stream reading stupid-ass cards. You had all winter to practice knots and familiarize yourself with stream entomology.

The little trout fish counter: If I have lost count, it has been a very good day.

The stream thermometer. The temp is what it is. So, if it is only 45 F at 1000, are you just going to go home? You can, but I would fish nymphs until you see a hatch.

The silver flask with scotch. To me, being drunk on a trout stream is an oxymoron. Besides, there is rarely enough scotch left from the night before to fill my flask.

Intangibles:

My lucky green Bryn Mawr College hat. It went over a waterfall in the Chattahootchee, and I went after it. It is that lucky.

My little wood giraffe (about an inch high). I found it in a University of Michigan parking lot. Everyone should have a giraffe hanging from their vest. It is whimsical, and amuses small children in canoes.

My eagle claw gold good luck hook. It made it into the leader kit, and stayed there for 20 years. It is now a mass of rust and the little card is illegible, but I still like it.

The net: Every time I forget the net, I hook one of those "oh shit, no net" sized fish. I often leave it behind deliberately to improve my chances, unless I am fishing the UP. There, only a moron would not carry a net.

Screwdriver: useful for punching holes in rental canoes while the drunken frat boys are lying in a stupor up on the bank. Just kidding.

Sooo, if you add all this up it amounts to a bunch of weight, and most of it is used rarely. But it is better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. Like I said, I rarely use most of the stuff on myself. But I have saved the day for many fishing buddies and complete strangers who found themselves in tight spot. And once on the stream, nothing will stop me.

the great twitch

I was fishing with my friend Matt, who is the greatest hunter I know. So great that he was able to convince other people to pay him to go to Africa for about 5 years and hunt. And he hunts cape buffalo with a single shot .375 magnum. We were fly fishing on the north branch of the Ausable on a very hot day, and decided to fish hoppers. But we did not have any, so that sucked. I tied some by clamping my vise to the only flat surface available- the arm of one of those aluminum lawn chairs with the vinyl weave that gives you a striped butt. These were hideous miscreant hoppers. Misshapen deer hair heads, lousy uneven dubbed bodies, and wings that looked like I was really trying to imitate a WWI Sopwith Camel. But it was what we had. And they worked like a charm on creek chubs. I would do a delicate presentation, and chub would eat the fly. This went on for hours. We were talking about a creek chub fry. I was younger and prone to anger, and finally plopped the fly down as hard as I could on a bunch of risers. One struck, but it turned out to be a keeper brook trout. I realized I was on to something, and tried it again. Another trout. Not being satisfied, I tried twitching the fly across the surface. This worked even better. I finally resorted to fishing it like a popping bug. This got several more keeper fish. Went back to the delicate presentation, and chubs were on it like pirhanas in B movie. Back to the popping, and more trout.

I finally came to a one of the neatest pools I know- a short run fans out into what is almost a pond, and that late in the summer there were water lilies. In a trout stream no less. There was only one thing to do. I tossed the bedraggled hellion bug as far back in the pads as I could, and twitched and crawled it out. It was like bass fishing. A 12 inch brookie (big in these parts) leaped out of the water, was hooked, and promptly sheared the tippet. And of course it was my last hopper. But it was a good lesson.

The upshot of all this is that dead drifts are great, and often work, but I finally got pissed off enough that day to start fishing the hopper so it acted like a real hopper, and not some stupid-ass moribund ditched Sopwith Camel thing. That was when I started catching trout. Any fool would have realized it- next time you go summer trouting waste an hour of your time catching hoppers and throwing them into the stream. They hate this and usually kick and thrash pretty hard. That day left an impression on me, and after that I always tried twitching the fly whenever I fished terrestrials. It works like a charm. Not always, but I have lost count of the number of times where I have fished a pool for many long minutes with dead drifts, and then had someone rocket up from the deep after the first cast that included moving the fly. And lately I have extended the concept to fishing early season hatches. It doesn't work as consistently, but it can move the odd fish that has refused everything else.

Bonus points to readers who can identify the literary allusion in the title.

The big fat Borcher's parachute

One of my biology professors was a bird guy, and he would often use bird examples. During a behavior lecture he showed a slide of a shorebird incubating a massive football-sized plastic egg that it preferred to its own clutch sitting unattended nearby. This was his way of showing us the idea of super normal stimuli- an object with a key attribute that triggers a behavior. The more pronounced the attribute, the stronger the response. A bunch of people asked him how a bird could be so stupid, and he thought for a moment and asked how many wonderbras and maraschino cherries were sold in the U.S. that year. Anyway, the next pattern may work because I tie it so fat and heavy that trout prefer it to the naturals.

The pattern is the Borcher's drake. It was invented by a guy named Ernie Borchers from the Grayling Michigan area, and that is all I know. It is, ahem, a version of the adams, but a damned fine variation. The Borchers drake represents a wide range of dark colored mayflies, and is especially effective during the Hendrickson hatch. Wow, sort of a dark Adams! Does this sound familiar?

Tail: two moose mane fibers, pretty well splayed.
Body: Several long fibers from a turkey tail.
Hackle: Brown and Grizzly mixed, tied parachute around a white deer hair post.
The trick: tie a giant fat body that would make A.K. Best cringe.

I got to know this pattern via Todd Fuller. My wife had hurt her feet, and was having a hard time wading that year. I wanted to take her fishing, so we booked a float trip with Todd in an Ausable River boat. The day was cold and spitting rain, and I asked him how we would be fishing. He replied, dry flies. I am thinking, yeah, right. So needless to say, we got in the boat, he tied on some Borchers, and we got into fish immediately. The damned things would not float 15 feet before being hammered by trout. It would have been a record for me had I any skill at hooking fish. Her feet got better and we now wade, but still fish with Todd when we can.

The truth was that although I had fly fished for 30 years, I had never fished dry flies to any great extent. I viewed dry flies as a prissy technique practiced by pantywaists who were long on equipment and short on physical strength. The guys in the tweed hats who doesn't seem to get on the river before noon, and have their wives set up a table with wine, pate, and crackers next to the BMW. Our lunch would be something like BBQ flavored Lay's potato chips and ding dongs. They never invited us over, so we fucking hated them. Jealousy, of course. Of course, there was one good thing about them. They never fished more than 100 feet from the access, so once you got away from the canoe launch you never saw them again. And I would catch big trout on streamers and wet flies.

But after fishing with Todd I realized that dry flies can be effective and fun. I decided to get into this. I bought a Mercedes at a garage sale and a wine/pate cooler (I actually bring diet pepsi). I looked up the Borcher's pattern and tied a bunch of them. But they did not work well. I did much better during the Hendrickson hatch when using nymphs or emergers. Several years passed. I ended up on another trip with Todd, and one of his flies ended up in my wife's hat. I did not remember this, and only noticed it several weeks later when finally organizing some of our gear (yes, another day of dry fly mayhem with hordes of trout). I looked at the thing, it it hit me: my Borchers drakes were thin and elegant, his were fat. I could not figure this out and finally cut off the body with a scalpel to see what in the heck was underneath. The answer, of course, was the deer hair that made up the parachute post. It takes a surprisingly large amount of bucktail to make a parachute post, and Todd had cut the hair butts off at an angle and length that left a big fat underbody. So fat that you could barely get the turkey tail fibers wrapped up to the tie down point. His bodies were almost hunchbacked.

I tied some fat ones with a buctail-wing-post underbody, and they worked like a charm.

A. K. Best makes a cogent and persuasive argument in his books that mayflies have a thin and waxy body that in most cases is best imitated with quills. He notes correctly that trout have now been fished hard for over a hundred years, and their descendents are likely way smarter than the original inhabitants and we should tie our flies as close to the naturals as we can. He is probably right, but this pattern works and I think it works because it represents a supernormal stimulus. Trout are watching a parade of bugs drifting over their heads, and big fat one drifts overhead that is simply too big and juicy not to eat. It looks like an extra tasty version of the naturals they are keyed in on, so the leviathan rises ...

I use this pattern in the early spring when Hendricksons and black stones are flitting about. But it ought to work as an attractor pattern in your neck of the woods, or any time dark mayflies are hatching. Give it a try.

The Lake Erie King- some useful information and ranting

Another dry fly pattern that is not mine, I probably tie it wrong, and it has a stupid name in that it has nothing to do with Lake Erie. I learned about the pattern in 1985 when I signed up for a fly tying magazine. It was a weird situation: the mag was having a hard time staying afloat, and issues were sporadic. I think I got three issues, a bunch of letters whining about their problems, and then maybe a fourth or fifth issue about a year later. But one of the articles was about "The Lake Erie King".

The pattern was "discovered" by Chauncy Lively who found a bunch of them in a bin in a fly shop up in Grayling, Michigan. He published an article about it in 1985, and the article was later published again about 2005 in a newer fly tying magazine, thereby hosing my best secret pattern. My memory is going to dust, but supposedly the pattern got its name from the original tyer, who lived on the shores of Lake Erie but would travel north to fish trout in northern Michigan. Stupid name, and the origination is probably apochryphal. But the pattern kicks butt.

This is a simple fly and if you wanted to view it as one of the billion variations of an Adams you can. It is an Adams, but with two changes: a peacock herl body, and the wings are grizzly tips that sweep back at a 45 degree angle. For those who insist, here is the entire recipe:

Tail: brown and grizzly hackle fibers, mixed.
Body: peacock herl
Wings: grizzly tips, tied flat and swept back at a 45 degree angle. Look at a deer fly.
Hackle: traditional, brown and grizzly mixed.
Thread: chartreuse (this was my idea) next time you swat a deer fly successfully, look at it's eyes.

This is the buggiest looking pattern in the history of fly fishing, or at least one of them. It resembles a deer fly, which is why trout probably eat it with abandon. Use it on late summer mornings and you will be filled with joy. There are two things to remember when tying it.

1. You can make the wings longer and thinner (my preference) or shorter and wider. I have seen it both ways and either is correct. Lively tied them longer and thinner.

2. The pattern does not last long unless you use a thread trick. Cover the hook shank with an even layer of chartreuse thread, and leave a long tag end hanging out the back. When it comes time to tie in the herl, twist the herl strands around the tag thread for strength. Wind it all together for a more durable body. It is easier to do than explain. Or just use the chartreuse tag thread in a reverse spiral rib.

Now the rant. One of the things I hate most about fly tying is the vast number of yahoos that get drunk, and devise some miniscule variation of a traditional pattern, post it on the web, and then they then name after themselves. The jim-ed special- an adams with red tail! Or the jim-bob killer- a brown hackle with two strands of krystal flash as an overwing! Such brilliance and innovation demands that their names be remembered forever as tying masters of highly original patterns. Not. Everyone should just stop doing this. But as much as I hate the trend, the Lake Erie King is so effective that I overlook it's obvious relationship to the Adams, and issue a dispensation to the guy who tied it and the guy who promoted it. Tie one, tie an adams, and then compare. What is brilliant about this one is that two or three material substitutions can result in a quick change from an Ephemeroptera to a Diptera. That is a whole different order. And the fly is responsible for one of my best Michigan dry fly days, and it even attracted the biggest brown of the day on Wyoming's Green River.

Tangerine Dream- Bob Smock's sulfur dun

I fish only with about half a dozen dry fly patterns. That's it. For the next couple weeks I will talk about them, and discuss the reasons I think they work and why I like them.

The first is Bob Smock's version of the sulfur dun. The sulfur dun is my absolute favorite hatch because they go off in May, on long afternoons. None of this 15 minutes before dark crap, they hatch all afternoon, and have the decency to wait until after lunch. It is the first fishing of the year that doesn't lead to snow that puts you back in the bar by 4:00 pm with hot drinks to ward off hypothermia. The scientific name is Ephemerella dorothea, and there are dozens of patterns. Most authors talk about matching body color to the dun found in local streams, and they do vary a lot, from a bright yellow to some hot orange ones I saw on the Rapidan River once in VA. Sulphurs, aside from their angler friendly hatching schedule must be very tasty to trout. When they appear, trout start feeding right away. None of this bugs on the water but no rises crap you get with the Hendricksons.

Bob Smock was a tyer from Grayling Michigan, and was known for making shadow boxes of classic Ausable River patterns. He passed away recently, but his son carries on the tradition and builds elegant Ausable River boats. Fish from one before you die.

The pattern uses tangerine hackle. You can't buy it, and have to make it yourself using Rit tangerine dye. Before you write this off as rantings of a crackpot, listen.

I was fishing with Todd Fuller, who guides clients on the North Branch of the Ausable up by Lovells. We were, of course, catching fish. I love fishing with Todd because he puts up with a lot of flies in his hat, my deliberate choice of the wrong rod, and my frequent missed hooksets. Brook trout were rising so frequently that even I was catching them, and I was using the Smock sulfur. We were drifting, and it was a hit about every minute, or faster. For some reason, I decided to change flies and pulled out an ersatz Smock sulfur that I had picked up at a local shop in Grayling. Kept fishing. Deadsville. Todd then stated, "Jeff, you have not had a fish rise in 10 minutes. You need to change flies". I impudently told him that I was using the correct pattern. His reply: "no I think you need a true Smock sulfer. The one you are using is the wrong color". I looked, and it was true. My store-bought hellion was a bright lurid orange, the sopping one drying on my vest was tangerine. Todd tied one of his on for me, and there was a rise on the first cast. My wife witnessed this, and swears it is true.

I took some to Pennsylvania, and the browns at Fisherman's paradise hit it so madly that I think the other guys thought we were using bait. That is a place where there is intense fishing pressure, but nearly every riser came up for them.

At this point, you have probably skipped to the recipe. My friend Paul C. posted it for me, and he got it right from Bob Smock. Glug a couple of ounces of vinegar into a pot, and add a quart of hot water. Not boiling, but hotter than from the tap. Paul likes 140 F. Stir in the dye packet, drop in a white neck or saddle, and let it soak for 20 minutes. Do not panic when it starts looking almost brown. You want a dirty orange. The fly uses tangerine fibers for the tail, a yellow poly dubbed body, and tangerine hackle. I tie them parachute style with a white post, but you could probably tie them in a traditional style if you wanted.

I have no idea why this pattern works with tangerine hackle. Maybe it is supernormal stimulus like a maraschino cherry. Maybe they view it as three or four duns all tangled together. Maybe it is more visible. But this is one case where I don't care.

I know of only a couple orange dry fly patterns. Gary LaFontaine had one called the flamethrower that used flourescent orange and cree hackle wound together in a variant style, a cream body, and an orange tail. There are also one or two weird orange ones in George Leonard Herter's book "Professional fly tying, spinning, and tackle making manual". I think one was called the fish hawk and it was just an orange floss body with a badger hackle. I tied some as a kid and they never worked. And LaFontaine himself did not write about the flamethrower with the same enthusiasm he described most of his other patterns. So orange is just not a color for dry flies. Without any history, how did Bob Smock figure it out so perfectly? I wish I had known him.

Perdition

Robert Traver had a wonderful essay in "Trout Madness" entitled :sinning against spinning. I should have listened.

I decided to head down to the Maumee River for another fruitless quest of trying to figure out how to catch smallmouth from that river. I did something I have not done since about 1989- took a spinning rod as a backup and some sure-fire plugs. I reasoned that I could still fish if the wind came up, and there is a spot that I wanted to try but could not fly fish effectively. Oh I paid dearly for this heinous breach of ethics.

0700- On my way, decided to stick with the fly rod. Tradition! Skill! Aesthetics!
0730- Changed my mind, decided to explore vast areas by using the spinning tackle.
0731- dash lights coming on, no radio or fan. Turned for home.
0800- car dies on route 23, barely make to the prison exit.
0800-0830- no phone number for roadside service. Call wife who gives me the numbers. No pen and paper. Trace numbers with finger in mud on side of car.
0830-0930- waiting for tow truck just outside of Federal prison near Milan. Corrections officers inform me that I am on Federal property. Tell them its OK because I am a federal employee, and nearly end up inside rather than outside. They were actually nice and quite helpful once I told them the story.
0930-1000 ride to service. Had to endure comments from driver like "wow, never had to tow a Honda before. Thought they were good cars". Yep, I've towed, Fords, Chevys, Dodges, Fiats, Saabs, ..., and even a Bentley but never a Honda."
10-12:30 sit in Firestone store. No glasses to read mags, had to watch talk shows.
12:30 on my way with a new alternator and with 500 bucks less than I started the morning with.
12:45 call to little princess telling her that her car is fixed. Berated for allowing battery to be disconnected and kicking in the radio anti-theft disabling system. Now she has to go out and punch in a key code. Oh the humanity.
1:00 arrive at weirs rapids, start fly fishing.
2:00 Nothing, decide to go back to the car and try the spinning tackle.
2:01 Step off a ledge into water over my head. The first serious dunking of my fly fishing career. Actually a swim. No danger, but the only thing that stayed dry was my hat. Horror of horrors dropped the rod but grabbed it on the way down. Water was murky, and it was only 30 feet from a spot where I had waded previously.
2:20 strip off filled waders, discover pants are around ankles, and I am in a State park. Indecent exposure citation avoided, but it was close.
2:21 A person I did not want to talk to really wanted to talk to me and be my friend. undoubtedly a misinterpretation of incident at 2:20.
2:22 While drying off, discover hordes of mosquitoes are still extant in Ohio in September.
2:30 discover that brand new soaked fresh can of Copenhagen has swelled and exploded inside waders. Oh and look at all the wet remote control keys on the sopping key ring! And what were those receipts anyway?
2:45- decide to try another spot and wet wade. Drive to spot, arrive at 3:00
3:01 discover the plants growing beside the car are nettles. Yet another amazing discovery this day: even brown dried up nettles can sting.
3:05 discover that although air temps are near 80 F, it is too cold to wet wade. There are mosquitoes here too.
3:06 realized that my wading boots fit better with socks and waders
4:00 nothing. Not a strike, swirl, rise, take, or even a look see. Bait guys just downstream are skunked as well.

Decided to give it up and come home. I will never touch a spinning rod again.

Good points: I got some cool aquarium rocks. The car really needed a new alternator, and I was fooling myself that it was just a low battery from not being driven. Better me than my wife or daughters stuck someplace. I have a job and can actually pay for car repairs. So many do not. I did get to watch a show with Rachel Ray and got a good recipe for potato medallions wrapped in prosciutto. Filled princess car with cheap Ohio gas to take the sting out of having to reprogram the radio.

Now the fishing part. I need to talk to someone who fishes the Maumee to find out how they do it. Maybe even a guided trip. The river has a good reputation for bass, but I can't connect. In three trips the best I have done is two small fish and a sullen look by a larger one before he took off for Lake Erie. The mystery of the Maumee remains unsolved.

Giardia

My sister and I went fishing on Chatooga River. She was young and new to fly fishing, and I should have known better. We had no food or water with us. About 2:00 pm we were pretty dehydrated, and she told me that she was going to get a drink from a spring pool that flowed out of a pocket along one of the banks. The following conversation is true and verbatim:

me: Don't drink from that. You will get Giardia. We need to drive back for water.
her: What is giardia?
me: A ciliate common in streams. You ingest it, and about two weeks from now you have massive diarrhea. It will be so severe and debilitating that you will lose 20 pounds. The medication that treats Giardia causes nausea and will exacerbate your weight loss because you won't be able to eat.
Her: So you are telling me that this is likely to happen if I drink that water?
me: Yes.
Her: But this Giardia, it is completely curable, right? You do get better and there are no long term effects. You just lose about 20 pounds and maybe more due to the nausea.
me: Yes.
Her: You are sure about this.
me: Yes.

She threw her fly rod to the side and dove in. I nearly fell over laughing. We both drank. Neither of us got Giardia. We now take food and water. We still laugh about it.

The little spring was then christened "Giardia springs". Fast forward 10 years.
me: I'm going downstream. I want to fish the giant pool.
Her: I want to fish up from the bridge. Meet me at Giardia springs at noon for lunch.
Me: OK, see you there at noon.

Tormenting my sister, and oh, strike indicators

One of the best things about having this blog is that, not only can I write whatever I want, it is also an excellent mechanism for tormenting my youngest sister. I introduced her to fly fishing and arranged her marriage (sort of) to a way cool fly fishing guy so I do have some license. She does cast better than I do, and has fished more exotic places than I will ever see. So she does deserve it.

We went a-fishing on the Chatahoochee River this spring. It's a tailwater fishery that holds trout all year, and has stocked rainbows and some wild browns (she told me this, so it must be true). The river is characterized by long stretches of slack water interspersed with shoals. Shoals are strange- imagine a giant playing pickup sticks with great slabs of bedrock and you get the idea. You can be standing in ankle deep water, and in front of you it drops to a depth of 10 feet.

I outfished her about 10 to 1 for one simple reason. No, not because she gave me a "where to fish" orientation and gave me all the good spots (she did), but because we were fishing nymphs with strike indicators, and mine was set up for steelheading, and hers was set up for trouting. Hers was a small delicate indicator at the line-leader connection of a nine foot leader, with a weighted nymph. I had a massive bubble indicator 7 feet down my leader, and below that was two feet of tippet with the same weighted nymph pattern and a massive split shot about 6 inches above the fly. Her nymph floated naturally, mine sank to the bottom within a second, and floated straight downcurrent right in their faces. They saw, they ate, and were caught.

Steelhead techniques work magically on resident trout. The setup is simple. A long leader, a highly buoyant indicator, and a big split shot about a foot above the fly. Cast quartering upstream, and fish the indicator just as you would a dry fly. You need a drag-free float, and if you achieve it the fly will sink fast and drift along exactly underneath or slightly ahead of your bobber. The fly precedes the whole works so the trout see the fly first, and it is moving exactly as a real nymph would drift. I did not figure this out myself. I just watched my friend Tim (the most dedicated steelheader ever) and copied his rig.

The secret to all this is in the technology. The indicator must be big and buoyant and the weight must be heavy enough to sink immediately. I used to use Thill ice fishing bobbers, but now prefer the new thingamabobbers. These are plastic bubbles, and I use the biggest ones available. You need something large to support the weight of a bead head nymph and a BIG split shot. The shot can be 6 to 12 inches above the fly, or even higher if fish are feeding mid-current. The shot should be big enough so that the indicator barely supports the whole shebang.

The second issue with this is depth. Guess the depth, and position the indicator so your shot will be about a foot above bottom. If you are getting strikes, fine. But ideally you want the shot to bump bottom occasionally. Not dragging constantly, or it will hang, but the occasional bump. You can scale the size back if you want, but it is surprising how well the big and heavy approach works even in small streams.

The final issue is the cast. I like a long rod (9 foot minimum), and I roll cast the thing almost exclusively. If you can, do a tuck so the shot hits the water first. This gets it down even faster. Someday I will figure out how to do this in a non-random fashion.

I love this type of fishing, probably because it reminds me of my childhood. The zebco 33, giant red and white bobber, and a gob of worms on an Eagle Claw baitholder snelled hook clipped to a cheap brass snap swivel. But the steelhead approach works for trout every place I have tried it.

Bombproof

Nobody writes about backing, and it's more important than you think. For beginners, backing is the dacron or synthetic line that lies between the fly line and spool. It has two functions: 1) to give you line in case a big or powerful fish runs out further than the length of the fly line, and 2) it allows you a faster rate of retrieve by making effective spool diameter larger. No one pays any attention to backing, and they should.

The first problem you face when choosing backing is "how much, and what strength"? This is sort of done for you in a general way in that a lot of reel manufacturers have published information on their web sites or in the reel booklet that will tell you about what the reel can hold. Most of these estimates are inexact in the sense that your results may vary, and if it is a large-arbor reel the manufacturer is lying through their teeth. I worked in a fly department at a sporting goods store, and it was a constant joke. Large arbor reels would have about half the advertised backing capacity.

First, let's talk about strength. Most backing sold today is either 20 lb. or 30 lb. test dacron. It comes in colors. Stick with white, it never bleeds color onto your fly line. The choice is obvious: it's a tradeoff between capacity and strength. You can fit more of the stuff on your spool if you go lighter. I am a biased proponent of the heavier and less of it school. This is a bias because most of my fishing is in freshwater. I rarely have a fish that runs into the backing, and when they do it is generally a salmon or steelhead in a river where the next bend is much closer than 100 yards away. So I have that much line out I am hosed anyway. In that case the 30 lb. test is easier to handle and I think that it increases the odds of getting my fly line back if the fish gets into the wood and I have to put the pressure on. The other extreme is saltwater bonefish flats. My experience with them is limited, but they make you feel like your fly has hooked an F-18 Hornet on a carrier deck and the little dancing guy next to the catapault has just done the launch gesture. There, they can and will spool you and the 20 lb. is preferable. The problem is based on the fact that I read that most fly lines have about a 25 lb. breaking strength. So thirty is better if you have the capacity.

There is a foolproof way of installing backing. Have they fly shop do it and let them deal with getting the right amount on the spool. If the guy has to cut off thirty yards, that's their problem. The only foolproof way of doing it yourself is to wind the fly line on the reel first, attach the backing, and then wind backing on over the line until the reel is filled. Then pull it all out and wind the backing on first. Filled is when you still have enough room to crank the reel without the fly line rubbing on the reel pillars. One thing to note- if you have multiple fly lines for that reel and no extra spools (my situation still) set it up with the heaviest line. It is surprising how much more space a WF-8-F line will need compared with even a 7 weight. And double taper lines are way thicker still. That way all your lines will fit without rubbing.

There are lighter and heavier strengths of backing. Gel-spun is very strong but thin for its strength. It's pretty specialized stuff and you see it mostly on big saltwater reels used for monstrous fish like marlin. There, every yard they can pack on counts. Gel spun is thin and much more likely to cut you so I don't use it. But I don't fish for marlin. At least not yet. One sort-of-forgotten backing is 12 lb. dacron. Joe Brooks (a famous fly fishing writer and columnist) recommended it for light freshwater fishing. I can't believe it isn't more popular because it is the perfect way to get a useful amount of backing on 1 through 4 weight reels. But you don't see it much in the catalogs, maybe because modern reel designs have smaller arbors. But it is worth considering.

One of the most overlooked bugaboos in fly fishing is the fly line to backing connection. There are a bunch of ways to do it, but whatever method you choose it needs to be smooth and strong. I think the most traditional connection is a nail knot, followed in popularity by a loop-to-loop connection. These are great, but you need to be sure that your knots slide though the guides and tip-top smoothly. If they don't, you face a broken tippet (sad), lost fly line (sadder), or a popped guide (end of fishing unless you have a backup rod).

I have my own system, and I have never seen it used by anyone else. This one has been tested on Chinook salmon on Michigan's Muskegon River, and it has never failed. On that river, you will see your backing more times in one day than you will in several years of fishing anywhere else.

I start with a nail knot and attach the backing to the fly line. I leave a very long tag end, about two feet. I then go up about 6 inches and put in a second nail knot. Then, I do it again. The end result looks weird- a series of nail knots connected by 6 inch lengths of dacron that are sort of loopy. It actually looks stupid until you watch it go out the guides. It rides smoothly, and the fly line stretches it tight. It is secure, and acts as a shock absorber at that critical connection.

At this point, you are thinking "that sounds reasonable, but what about changing fly lines?" Well the answer is simple and only slightly out of the box. Cut the dacron about 5 feet from the fly line, and put your loop to loop connections in the dacron. Loop to loop? I make the loops using a double surgeon's knot. Yes, I can tie a bimini twist, but I would argue that a well tied surgeon's knot is better than a badly tied bimini any day, and the strength difference is not worth worrying about. This setup does look silly, but nobody sees it unless there is a big fish thrashing about and they are looking at that and not your rigging. And it is far sillier to be seen chasing fly lines down the river.

About this blog

Wow. Another fly fishing blog. I think there are only about 8 billion already. They range in style from pure fish porn to political rants with the occasional trip report or musing. This one hopes to be different. It started when I was curating my late father-in-law's fishing tackle. He owned a book- it was something like "fly fishing: top secrets of the pro's" or something like that. It was published when Eisenhower was president. I sat down with it one evening hoping to review it to see how fly fishing had changed since that time. To my surprise, it hadn't changed much. The same stuff we read about today in all the slick fishing mags was being written about then. How to find the biggest trout (wow! Fish woody cover next to deep runs and pools!). You too can match the hatch. Nymphing is hard but you can catch a bunch of fish. Fly rods are long, but sometimes short ones can be useful in certain situations. Match your line to your rod. If natural colors aren't producing, try something gaudy. OK, there were a few things then that you don't read about today. Especially the delightful recipes for dry fly floatant that involved carbon tetrachloride (banned for years due to its toxic nature). But almost all of it was the same, with a few technological improvements. Substitute the words graphite, flourocarbon, and DT-5-F in the right places and you could have something right out of any of the current publications. I want to change that.

The beauty of fly fishing is that it works on any level. It can be as simple or complicated as you want, and even simple catches fish. I chose complicated. I like the intricacy, it takes my mind off the bad things I see in the world and helps me focus on the good and the beautiful. I tie strange flies that usually don't work. I mess with bamboo rods and have a shop devoted solely to them (how that happened is a wonderful story for the future). I fish graphite when I feel like conditions require it, or even if I imagine they do. I have a Fenwick fiberglass rod that is one of the few things remaining from my youthful sporting life, and I may try to own another.It caught a fish on its first cast. I have an entire shelf full of books about fly fishing. I have more materials than I can remember (fly shop proprietor: Hey, you bought three packs of this stuff last week. What are you tying with it? Me: damn!) I made it as complicated as fly fishing can be, and it is all fun. And my day job is studying fish- my life is sort of like Jacques Cousteau and "The Deadliest Catch" collide head on. Complicated is good, especially when you want it that way.

This blog is about the obscure corners of the sport, the unknown, and most of all the unknowable.You may find some fish stories, fly patterns, tying tips, weird observations, natural history, political rants having to do with conservation, humor (at least three people have told me that some of my discussion group posts were funny, and the rest were too polite to say otherwise), and mindless philosophical rants. There may be product reviews, but this will never be a tool of the fishing industry. There may be fish babes, but only as a last resort to increase readership.Most of the things you learn will be useless. I will raise more questions than answers. I may take reader questions, but only if they are truly weird and obscure. There will be one and only one hunting story each year, and it will provide incontrovertible evidence that I should stick to fly fishing. Stay tuned.