Christening of "The Box"

I had an experience early last week in which an older friend gave me all of his fly fishing equipment. He'll never fish again. It was a ceremonial event, at least in my mind. We both knew this day would come, we both weren't looking forward to it, but time and age are cruel mistresses. I'm honored to receive his gear. This is a man who learned to tie and fish from the great Joe Humphreys. He was at Penn State when Milt Eisenhower was there. He's got stories of Ike stopping by the college to meet his brother before heading out to the region's legendary spring creeks. He's been tying as long as he's been fishing.

I don't take this lightly. The closest thing I can liken it to is when Johnny Cash gave Bob Dylan his guitar...except while I have no problem likening my friend to Johnny Cash, I ain't no Dylan.

Still, he gave it to me. Fly tying supplies, hand made rods (the only graphite I'll fish with!), old click pawl reels lined with Cortland 444 DT lines that are still quite usable, boxes of leader material, and the crown gem of them all-a hand built Richardson fly box filled with his flies.

Most of his flies were rusted out, and it pained me to throw out so many flies, but I was able to salvage quite a few, and I've been fishing this past week with a mixture of his flies, my own ties (which are getting better!), and ties made by a friend of mine.

I've been told the best I can do for this fellow, who I'll never ever be able to pay back but I'll sure try, is to send him pictures of my fishing adventures. He takes pleasure in knowing that his stuff is still being used, so here you go old friend. This stuff is built to last, don't be surprised if my own children use it some day!

Frustrating Weekend.

I found this weekend to be incredibly frustrating. My wife was very gracious, as she let me go fishing three nights in a row. Thursday night began with me skipping out on band practice to hit up my local favorite.

Here's the deal. I fished a stretch that last year I did very well on, but haven't fished that much this year yet. Last year it was easily 95% brookies/5% small browns. Something happened this year. In the two hours I fished, I only landed 5 trout (well under par), and 4 of them were browns. I don't like the idea that browns may be pushing out the brookies in this stream. Further sampling may be needed.

Friday night I fished another freestoner. It's listed on the Class A as a solid wild brookie stream. I can't understand this stream. I had a stellar day on it a few months ago and it convinced me that this stream is indeed a Class A stream, but since that day I haven't had great fishing on it. I couldn't have asked for better conditions on Friday night. A bit overcast, water was a little stained, but you could still see well, but the strikes were low. If I took you to this stream, you'd think every hole should have trout in it, but I had to work very hard for every strike. The biggest concern again-mostly brownies, only one brookie.

What is going on? Are the brookies just being stubborn? Are the browns taking over and pushing out the native fish? I've never known a scenario where the brownies will rise and feed more willingly than brook trout. I pray that things aren't shifting to favor the brown trout population, but I fear that is the case.

Saturday night I drove 30 minutes to fish a spring creek-this time intentionally seeking wild browns. I arrived at the stream, geared up, heard "scattered showers" on the weather report, stepped in the stream and the sky opened up. I'm not one to be scarred off by a little rain, but this was no "scattered shower". I sat under a canopy and waited for 45 minutes for the rain to end...when I left it was still dumping buckets.

Frustrating weekend for shizzle.

Long Overdue

I know it's been quite some time since I've made a post. Part of that is laziness, part of it is being insanely busy, part of it is I feel like I rehash the same experience time and time again. "Oh I fished for brookies last night, caught x amount of fish, it was fun." I'm a small stream fisherman. It's what I do. It ain't that exciting to most people, but it's what I love. Squatchin' around in the woods, catching natives, it's perfect to me.

So in early June I headed up to Potter County (God's Country) with the family for a week long vacation. This was the highlight of my summer so far. You can see my photo dump from the trip below. Since this was a family vacation, my fishing time was limited. My wife wasn't keen on sitting around the cabin all day every day with a toddler and a 4yr old while I'm out pounding the streams. I promised my wife I would not do this to her. Instead, I got up at 5:30am every day on my vacation, fished any one of the multitudes of small streams that are within a 10 minute drive of my cabin, and was back in time to eat breakfast with my wife and kids. A few days I snuck out for a couple of hours in the afternoon.

I've been fishing this area of the state as long as I can remember, and I've been fly fishing it since I was 16 years old. In all of my years of fishing, I have never seen the fishing so good.  Every single stream had great flows. The temps were perfect. Most of the days, the skies were overcast, if not a little drizzly. Every pool held fish. Every run produced strikes. When I think about fly fishing in Potter County, I dream of weeks like this.

This summer is a rare event in the life of a North Eastern fly fisherman. The solid amount of rain, the relatively cooler temps ("relative" is the key word...we just had a full week of solid heat indexes of 100 degrees), it has produced a fishing experience that I've not seen in quite some time. You'll forgive the lack of posts from me...I've been busy fishin.