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.