TR- Joel, Wolfgang and Dry Flies

Well, this is the time of year when the dry fly fisher finally gets
his due. Sure, there have been bugs floating on the water since the
early stoneflies of March but late May/early June has the water and
air filled with swarms of Sulphurs, Brown Drakes and other fishy
foodstuffs. Even when there is no active hatch or spinner fall the
fish have gotten used to looking up and a well placed Pass Lake or
Bivisible will often encourage their interest.

I got off work Saturday morning at 6am. Wolfgang and Joel were up for
the day from the Banana Belt. While bass fishing was tops on their "to
do" list, sleep was on mine. So after a quick breakfast at Champs,
they went to the Big River to try their smallmouth luck. I, instead,
went home to grab a few quick hours of sleep.

Wolf called at 1 pm, as per instructions, I assembled my stuff and
drove down to the park behind the hospital. There I found Joel and
Wolfgang sitting side by side at the edge of the river, a perfect
Norman Rockwell moment.

http://fishskicanoe.tripod.com/geopics/IMG_0044a.jpg

A little conferencing revealed that the bass were not particularly
aggressive so it was decided to take a trip up the River and see if we
could find some trout. As we drove up the highway it became obvious
that our planning lacked uniqueness. every bridge had at least on car,
some more. Almost as bad as opening day, with the exception that every
person I saw was holding a fly rod. The lower River being exhausted we
drove instead to the smaller water upstream. Finally the pullouts
began to pass by empty. And when we pulled into the parking area near
the point on the river that I had wanted to put them on it too was
empty.

Wolfgang was in the water and fishing first. When I told him that Pass
Lakes had worked well for me a few days ago his ears had perked up and
before I even had the line in my rod through the last guides he was
into some fish. He probably had a half dozen landed by the time I was
ready. Joel had originally rigged up for nymphs but as Wolfie landed
fish after fish, he snipped off the underwater bug and he too tied on
a dry.

When I finally got my rod ready, Joel was into his first fish and
Wolfgang was into sixth or seventh. Joel waded down and I went over by
Wolfgang and we waded up. Every once and a while Joel would call out
when he caught another fish. It sounded as if he were doing well. I
tied on a rusty Sparkle Dun and standing shoulder to shoulder with
Wolf promptly caught a couple little brookies.

We waded through a fairly narrow stretch. We took turns casting to the
occasional riser. Wolfgang's Pass Lake was doing a better job than my
Comparadun so I snipped it off and tried another fly. Now a smart
angler would have seen how well his partner was doing and would have
also put on a Pass lake. But I am a stubborn Norwegian with more than
a fair dash of arrogance and thus I felt that I could find a fly that
worked even better. So I ran the gamut, even going so far as to trying
a dry (a Hornberg) with a dropper nymph. I caught fish but for every
one I caught, Wolfgang probably caught three.

http://fishskicanoe.tripod.com/geopics/IMG_0047a.jpg

We had come to a part of the river where it was wide enough for us to
stand side by side and cast and talk. It made for a pleasant way to
fish. After a couple hundred yards of being "schooled" by Wolfgang I
gave up and re-rigged with a Pass Lake. I caught fish with a little
more regularity but I still didn't equal my partners efforts. Part of
the problem lay with my Pass Lakes. I had ordered some pre-dubbed yarn
over the winter. The black stuff was advertised as being for both wet
and dry flies. It had become obvious before yesterday that it made
great wet fly dubbing but its floating qualities were greatly
overstated. In short my Pass Lakes sank. Also the thinner dubbed
bodies gave a significantly different silhouette than Wolfgang's
chubby chenille bodied flies. and it was obvious that the trout
preferred the chunkier flies.

We had worked our way upstream only about 300 yards when we heard a
car door slam back at the parking lot. We had been fishing for about a
couple hours. Wolfgang decided that it was probably time for them to
head back and retreated downstream toward their car, after we had
exchanged good byes and plans for getting together again in September
in Da YouPee. Now a good host would have gone back to the parking lot
and said good bye to Joel too. I wasn't a good host. Instead I waited
for Wolfgang to leave then turned back upstream and started to cast
again. I didn't even hear them start their car and leave.

I had tied on a Bivisible just after Wolfgang left. I had done well
with that fly last fall down in the Driftless. It is the first pattern
I tied and caught fish with many years ago. Wolfgang had opined that
it seemed the fish preferred flies that rode high that day and a
bivisible rides higher than any other fly I tie. And the fish seemed
to like it well enough. My second or third cast brought the biggest
fish of the day up for a look. At 10" he wasn't a monster but he put a
nice bend in the 50 year old fiberglass rod I was using for the first
time that day. (An old rod with a Herters reel seat but marked Johnson
on the shaft. It also had HDH marked as a line weight and has a nice ,
if slow, action. It took me awhile to get a feel for it and it made me
think about my casting, but that isn't a bad thing.)

I continued to catch fish as I waded upstream. Nothing big but at
least another dozen bright little brookies came my way. I even caught
a small 4" brown, a somewhat rare occurrence on a stream which seems
to be counteracting the current wisdom and is seeing an increase of
brookies at the expense of the browns. When I reached the top of a
long, flat riffle I stopped. Up stream was a long series of still
pools, many were edged and bottomed with springs but the water itself
was featureless. When I'm in the right mood fishing these places is
fun but today, a dry fly day if there ever was one, I didn't want to
make the effort to change my tactic to find fish that weren't coming
up to a floating fly.

So I turned and headed back, skittering my Bivisible ahead of me as I
waded. I hooked a number of fish this way including some from under
some floating tree trunks that had evaded me on the way up. By the
time I made it back to the parking lot it was probably nearing 7 pm.
The last half hour had seen increasing bug activity. There had been no
organized hatches during the afternoon, just the odd bug and rise. But
now there were swarms of caddis patrolling the water. And I knew that
before it was dark that there would be Sulphurs and other flies
joining them. So I continued downstream and soon came to first riffle.
I had clipped off my waterlogged Bivisible and now tried a small gray
caddis. A few splashes but no hook ups soon had me hooking that to the
fleece patch on my vest and tying on another. I spent a while trying
different patterns when finally I tied on a #16 Parachute Adams.

As I was playing around with different flies the hatch of bugs was
increasing. There were two or three different mayflies in the air.
along with the occasional Sulphur there was a few bigger brown bugs,
probably brown drakes, and quite a few medium sized grayish mayflies
of undetermined provenance. On my first drift over the spreading rings
of a rise my Parachute Adams got sucked down. From then on it was
almost constant action. A few nicer fish were making themselves shown
and I hooked and landed a fish that was probably close to a foot. I
waded a few hundred yards downstream, through a stretch of riffly
water and then turned and looked back up stream. All the water I had
waded was covered with rising fish. The air was full of bugs. The
water was full of bugs. The sulphurs were swarming with authority,
huge clouds hovering over particularly attractive (to them) patches of
water. In the deepening dusk I worked back up to the car. With all the
competition my Adams wasn't being attacked quite as often but it still
was almost a fish on every other cast. I briefly hooked a bigger fish
but a splash and he was gone. I found myself at the back of the pool
by the parking area, standing in a riffle looking up at the willow
shaded pool. The sun was down but the sky had plenty of light left in
it. Then I noticed the still water at the edge of the riffle being
disturbed. What at first I took as roiling water from a submerged rock
soon made itself apparent as a fish. Its wake worked back and forth at
the face of the riffle. Maybe it was taking submerged nymph, maybe it
was plucking off hapless baby trout, but whatever it was eating had it
excited. It never rose and I never saw it. A good fisher would have
clipped off the #16 dry and tried a bigger nymph or a small streamer.
But, as I pointed out earlier, I am a stubborn Norwegian, and the
small dry stayed on my leader. After a half dozen or so casts the fish
quit prowling and probably moved off into deeper water.

I continued fishing up, again passing the parking area. The rises had
settled down considerably, easing back to the soft rings that bespoke
fish feeding a dead flies drifting in the current. I took a few more
small fish, the fly outlined faintly by the band of light that glowed
in the northwest. Finally I couldn't see my line on the water and the
gurgling of the rapids would have drowned out any sound of a rising
fish so I called it a day.

I waded back out to my car, started it and drove the 20 miles back to
town, listening to jazz on Public Radio. The clock at the bank in the
little town north of Merrill said 10 pm as I drove past it. And
suddenly I was very, very tired.


hth

g.c.

"George Cleveland" wrote in message
...
Well, this is the time of year when the dry fly fisher finally gets
his due. Sure, there have been bugs floating on the water since the
early stoneflies of March but late May/early June has the water and
air filled with swarms of Sulphurs, Brown Drakes and other fishy
foodstuffs. Even when there is no active hatch or spinner fall the
fish have gotten used to looking up and a well placed Pass Lake or
Bivisible will often encourage their interest.

I got off work Saturday morning at 6am. Wolfgang and Joel were up for
the day from the Banana Belt. While bass fishing was tops on their "to
do" list, sleep was on mine. So after a quick breakfast at Champs,
they went to the Big River to try their smallmouth luck. I, instead,
went home to grab a few quick hours of sleep.

Wolf called at 1 pm, as per instructions, I assembled my stuff and
drove down to the park behind the hospital. There I found Joel and
Wolfgang sitting side by side at the edge of the river, a perfect
Norman Rockwell moment.

http://fishskicanoe.tripod.com/geopics/IMG_0044a.jpg

A little conferencing revealed that the bass were not particularly
aggressive so it was decided to take a trip up the River and see if we
could find some trout. As we drove up the highway it became obvious
that our planning lacked uniqueness. every bridge had at least on car,
some more. Almost as bad as opening day, with the exception that every
person I saw was holding a fly rod. The lower River being exhausted we
drove instead to the smaller water upstream. Finally the pullouts
began to pass by empty. And when we pulled into the parking area near
the point on the river that I had wanted to put them on it too was
empty.

Wolfgang was in the water and fishing first. When I told him that Pass
Lakes had worked well for me a few days ago his ears had perked up and
before I even had the line in my rod through the last guides he was
into some fish. He probably had a half dozen landed by the time I was
ready. Joel had originally rigged up for nymphs but as Wolfie landed
fish after fish, he snipped off the underwater bug and he too tied on
a dry.

When I finally got my rod ready, Joel was into his first fish and
Wolfgang was into sixth or seventh. Joel waded down and I went over by
Wolfgang and we waded up. Every once and a while Joel would call out
when he caught another fish. It sounded as if he were doing well. I
tied on a rusty Sparkle Dun and standing shoulder to shoulder with
Wolf promptly caught a couple little brookies.

We waded through a fairly narrow stretch. We took turns casting to the
occasional riser. Wolfgang's Pass Lake was doing a better job than my
Comparadun so I snipped it off and tried another fly. Now a smart
angler would have seen how well his partner was doing and would have
also put on a Pass lake. But I am a stubborn Norwegian with more than
a fair dash of arrogance and thus I felt that I could find a fly that
worked even better. So I ran the gamut, even going so far as to trying
a dry (a Hornberg) with a dropper nymph. I caught fish but for every
one I caught, Wolfgang probably caught three.

http://fishskicanoe.tripod.com/geopics/IMG_0047a.jpg

We had come to a part of the river where it was wide enough for us to
stand side by side and cast and talk. It made for a pleasant way to
fish. After a couple hundred yards of being "schooled" by Wolfgang I
gave up and re-rigged with a Pass Lake. I caught fish with a little
more regularity but I still didn't equal my partners efforts. Part of
the problem lay with my Pass Lakes. I had ordered some pre-dubbed yarn
over the winter. The black stuff was advertised as being for both wet
and dry flies. It had become obvious before yesterday that it made
great wet fly dubbing but its floating qualities were greatly
overstated. In short my Pass Lakes sank. Also the thinner dubbed
bodies gave a significantly different silhouette than Wolfgang's
chubby chenille bodied flies. and it was obvious that the trout
preferred the chunkier flies.

We had worked our way upstream only about 300 yards when we heard a
car door slam back at the parking lot. We had been fishing for about a
couple hours. Wolfgang decided that it was probably time for them to
head back and retreated downstream toward their car, after we had
exchanged good byes and plans for getting together again in September
in Da YouPee. Now a good host would have gone back to the parking lot
and said good bye to Joel too. I wasn't a good host. Instead I waited
for Wolfgang to leave then turned back upstream and started to cast
again. I didn't even hear them start their car and leave.

I had tied on a Bivisible just after Wolfgang left. I had done well
with that fly last fall down in the Driftless. It is the first pattern
I tied and caught fish with many years ago. Wolfgang had opined that
it seemed the fish preferred flies that rode high that day and a
bivisible rides higher than any other fly I tie. And the fish seemed
to like it well enough. My second or third cast brought the biggest
fish of the day up for a look. At 10" he wasn't a monster but he put a
nice bend in the 50 year old fiberglass rod I was using for the first
time that day. (An old rod with a Herters reel seat but marked Johnson
on the shaft. It also had HDH marked as a line weight and has a nice ,
if slow, action. It took me awhile to get a feel for it and it made me
think about my casting, but that isn't a bad thing.)

I continued to catch fish as I waded upstream. Nothing big but at
least another dozen bright little brookies came my way. I even caught
a small 4" brown, a somewhat rare occurrence on a stream which seems
to be counteracting the current wisdom and is seeing an increase of
brookies at the expense of the browns. When I reached the top of a
long, flat riffle I stopped. Up stream was a long series of still
pools, many were edged and bottomed with springs but the water itself
was featureless. When I'm in the right mood fishing these places is
fun but today, a dry fly day if there ever was one, I didn't want to
make the effort to change my tactic to find fish that weren't coming
up to a floating fly.

So I turned and headed back, skittering my Bivisible ahead of me as I
waded. I hooked a number of fish this way including some from under
some floating tree trunks that had evaded me on the way up. By the
time I made it back to the parking lot it was probably nearing 7 pm.
The last half hour had seen increasing bug activity. There had been no
organized hatches during the afternoon, just the odd bug and rise. But
now there were swarms of caddis patrolling the water. And I knew that
before it was dark that there would be Sulphurs and other flies
joining them. So I continued downstream and soon came to first riffle.
I had clipped off my waterlogged Bivisible and now tried a small gray
caddis. A few splashes but no hook ups soon had me hooking that to the
fleece patch on my vest and tying on another. I spent a while trying
different patterns when finally I tied on a #16 Parachute Adams.

As I was playing around with different flies the hatch of bugs was
increasing. There were two or three different mayflies in the air.
along with the occasional Sulphur there was a few bigger brown bugs,
probably brown drakes, and quite a few medium sized grayish mayflies
of undetermined provenance. On my first drift over the spreading rings
of a rise my Parachute Adams got sucked down. From then on it was
almost constant action. A few nicer fish were making themselves shown
and I hooked and landed a fish that was probably close to a foot. I
waded a few hundred yards downstream, through a stretch of riffly
water and then turned and looked back up stream. All the water I had
waded was covered with rising fish. The air was full of bugs. The
water was full of bugs. The sulphurs were swarming with authority,
huge clouds hovering over particularly attractive (to them) patches of
water. In the deepening dusk I worked back up to the car. With all the
competition my Adams wasn't being attacked quite as often but it still
was almost a fish on every other cast. I briefly hooked a bigger fish
but a splash and he was gone. I found myself at the back of the pool
by the parking area, standing in a riffle looking up at the willow
shaded pool. The sun was down but the sky had plenty of light left in
it. Then I noticed the still water at the edge of the riffle being
disturbed. What at first I took as roiling water from a submerged rock
soon made itself apparent as a fish. Its wake worked back and forth at
the face of the riffle. Maybe it was taking submerged nymph, maybe it
was plucking off hapless baby trout, but whatever it was eating had it
excited. It never rose and I never saw it. A good fisher would have
clipped off the #16 dry and tried a bigger nymph or a small streamer.
But, as I pointed out earlier, I am a stubborn Norwegian, and the
small dry stayed on my leader. After a half dozen or so casts the fish
quit prowling and probably moved off into deeper water.

I continued fishing up, again passing the parking area. The rises had
settled down considerably, easing back to the soft rings that bespoke
fish feeding a dead flies drifting in the current. I took a few more
small fish, the fly outlined faintly by the band of light that glowed
in the northwest. Finally I couldn't see my line on the water and the
gurgling of the rapids would have drowned out any sound of a rising
fish so I called it a day.

I waded back out to my car, started it and drove the 20 miles back to
town, listening to jazz on Public Radio. The clock at the bank in the
little town north of Merrill said 10 pm as I drove past it. And
suddenly I was very, very tired.


hth

g.c.

Nice TR!!

Had the pleasure of spending time with Joel and Wolfgang this year, always a
pleasure..

George Cleveland wrote:
Well, this is the time of year when the dry fly fisher finally gets
his due.
snipped excellent example of a TR

Sweet - it sounds like you all got into your share of fish. Up this way
we have a "it's my turn" rule, and no one who has already caught a fish
is allowed to catch another until everyone is even. I suggest you envoke
that rule next time out with Wolfgang.
--
TL,
Tim
---------------------------
http://css.sbcma.com/timj/

On Sun, 4 Jun 2006 16:18:46 -0400, "Tim J."
wrote:

George Cleveland wrote:
Well, this is the time of year when the dry fly fisher finally gets
his due.
snipped excellent example of a TR

Sweet - it sounds like you all got into your share of fish. Up this way
we have a "it's my turn" rule, and no one who has already caught a fish
is allowed to catch another until everyone is even. I suggest you envoke
that rule next time out with Wolfgang.


In the narrow stretch that was what we did. Its just that poor
Wolfgang would almost immediately catch a fish and then he'd have to
wait for 5 or 6 minutes before he got to cast again and then after one
or two casts he'd have a fish and then wait another 5 minutes. After
the water broadened and we could both fish is when his expertise
became glaringly obvious.


Or maybe he was just lucky. ;^)

g.c.


Who doubts the latter.

George Cleveland wrote:
Well, this is the time of year when the dry fly fisher finally gets
his due. Sure, there have been bugs floating on the water since the
early stoneflies of March but late May/early June has the water and
air filled with swarms of Sulphurs, Brown Drakes and other fishy
foodstuffs. Even when there is no active hatch or spinner fall the
fish have gotten used to looking up and a well placed Pass Lake or
Bivisible will often encourage their interest.

I got off work Saturday morning at 6am. Wolfgang and Joel were up for
the day from the Banana Belt. While bass fishing was tops on their "to
do" list, sleep was on mine. So after a quick breakfast at Champs,
they went to the Big River to try their smallmouth luck. I, instead,
went home to grab a few quick hours of sleep.

Wolf called at 1 pm, as per instructions, I assembled my stuff and
drove down to the park behind the hospital. There I found Joel and
Wolfgang sitting side by side at the edge of the river, a perfect
Norman Rockwell moment.

http://fishskicanoe.tripod.com/geopics/IMG_0044a.jpg

A little conferencing revealed that the bass were not particularly
aggressive so it was decided to take a trip up the River and see if we
could find some trout. As we drove up the highway it became obvious
that our planning lacked uniqueness. every bridge had at least on car,
some more. Almost as bad as opening day, with the exception that every
person I saw was holding a fly rod. The lower River being exhausted we
drove instead to the smaller water upstream. Finally the pullouts
began to pass by empty. And when we pulled into the parking area near
the point on the river that I had wanted to put them on it too was
empty.

Wolfgang was in the water and fishing first. When I told him that Pass
Lakes had worked well for me a few days ago his ears had perked up and
before I even had the line in my rod through the last guides he was
into some fish. He probably had a half dozen landed by the time I was
ready. Joel had originally rigged up for nymphs but as Wolfie landed
fish after fish, he snipped off the underwater bug and he too tied on
a dry.

When I finally got my rod ready, Joel was into his first fish and
Wolfgang was into sixth or seventh. Joel waded down and I went over by
Wolfgang and we waded up. Every once and a while Joel would call out
when he caught another fish. It sounded as if he were doing well. I
tied on a rusty Sparkle Dun and standing shoulder to shoulder with
Wolf promptly caught a couple little brookies.

We waded through a fairly narrow stretch. We took turns casting to the
occasional riser. Wolfgang's Pass Lake was doing a better job than my
Comparadun so I snipped it off and tried another fly. Now a smart
angler would have seen how well his partner was doing and would have
also put on a Pass lake. But I am a stubborn Norwegian with more than
a fair dash of arrogance and thus I felt that I could find a fly that
worked even better. So I ran the gamut, even going so far as to trying
a dry (a Hornberg) with a dropper nymph. I caught fish but for every
one I caught, Wolfgang probably caught three.

http://fishskicanoe.tripod.com/geopics/IMG_0047a.jpg

We had come to a part of the river where it was wide enough for us to
stand side by side and cast and talk. It made for a pleasant way to
fish. After a couple hundred yards of being "schooled" by Wolfgang I
gave up and re-rigged with a Pass Lake. I caught fish with a little
more regularity but I still didn't equal my partners efforts. Part of
the problem lay with my Pass Lakes. I had ordered some pre-dubbed yarn
over the winter. The black stuff was advertised as being for both wet
and dry flies. It had become obvious before yesterday that it made
great wet fly dubbing but its floating qualities were greatly
overstated. In short my Pass Lakes sank. Also the thinner dubbed
bodies gave a significantly different silhouette than Wolfgang's
chubby chenille bodied flies. and it was obvious that the trout
preferred the chunkier flies.

We had worked our way upstream only about 300 yards when we heard a
car door slam back at the parking lot. We had been fishing for about a
couple hours. Wolfgang decided that it was probably time for them to
head back and retreated downstream toward their car, after we had
exchanged good byes and plans for getting together again in September
in Da YouPee. Now a good host would have gone back to the parking lot
and said good bye to Joel too. I wasn't a good host. Instead I waited
for Wolfgang to leave then turned back upstream and started to cast
again. I didn't even hear them start their car and leave.

I had tied on a Bivisible just after Wolfgang left. I had done well
with that fly last fall down in the Driftless. It is the first pattern
I tied and caught fish with many years ago. Wolfgang had opined that
it seemed the fish preferred flies that rode high that day and a
bivisible rides higher than any other fly I tie. And the fish seemed
to like it well enough. My second or third cast brought the biggest
fish of the day up for a look. At 10" he wasn't a monster but he put a
nice bend in the 50 year old fiberglass rod I was using for the first
time that day. (An old rod with a Herters reel seat but marked Johnson
on the shaft. It also had HDH marked as a line weight and has a nice ,
if slow, action. It took me awhile to get a feel for it and it made me
think about my casting, but that isn't a bad thing.)

I continued to catch fish as I waded upstream. Nothing big but at
least another dozen bright little brookies came my way. I even caught
a small 4" brown, a somewhat rare occurrence on a stream which seems
to be counteracting the current wisdom and is seeing an increase of
brookies at the expense of the browns. When I reached the top of a
long, flat riffle I stopped. Up stream was a long series of still
pools, many were edged and bottomed with springs but the water itself
was featureless. When I'm in the right mood fishing these places is
fun but today, a dry fly day if there ever was one, I didn't want to
make the effort to change my tactic to find fish that weren't coming
up to a floating fly.

So I turned and headed back, skittering my Bivisible ahead of me as I
waded. I hooked a number of fish this way including some from under
some floating tree trunks that had evaded me on the way up. By the
time I made it back to the parking lot it was probably nearing 7 pm.
The last half hour had seen increasing bug activity. There had been no
organized hatches during the afternoon, just the odd bug and rise. But
now there were swarms of caddis patrolling the water. And I knew that
before it was dark that there would be Sulphurs and other flies
joining them. So I continued downstream and soon came to first riffle.
I had clipped off my waterlogged Bivisible and now tried a small gray
caddis. A few splashes but no hook ups soon had me hooking that to the
fleece patch on my vest and tying on another. I spent a while trying
different patterns when finally I tied on a #16 Parachute Adams.

As I was playing around with different flies the hatch of bugs was
increasing. There were two or three different mayflies in the air.
along with the occasional Sulphur there was a few bigger brown bugs,
probably brown drakes, and quite a few medium sized grayish mayflies
of undetermined provenance. On my first drift over the spreading rings
of a rise my Parachute Adams got sucked down. From then on it was
almost constant action. A few nicer fish were making themselves shown
and I hooked and landed a fish that was probably close to a foot. I
waded a few hundred yards downstream, through a stretch of riffly
water and then turned and looked back up stream. All the water I had
waded was covered with rising fish. The air was full of bugs. The
water was full of bugs. The sulphurs were swarming with authority,
huge clouds hovering over particularly attractive (to them) patches of
water. In the deepening dusk I worked back up to the car. With all the
competition my Adams wasn't being attacked quite as often but it still
was almost a fish on every other cast. I briefly hooked a bigger fish
but a splash and he was gone. I found myself at the back of the pool
by the parking area, standing in a riffle looking up at the willow
shaded pool. The sun was down but the sky had plenty of light left in
it. Then I noticed the still water at the edge of the riffle being
disturbed. What at first I took as roiling water from a submerged rock
soon made itself apparent as a fish. Its wake worked back and forth at
the face of the riffle. Maybe it was taking submerged nymph, maybe it
was plucking off hapless baby trout, but whatever it was eating had it
excited. It never rose and I never saw it. A good fisher would have
clipped off the #16 dry and tried a bigger nymph or a small streamer.
But, as I pointed out earlier, I am a stubborn Norwegian, and the
small dry stayed on my leader. After a half dozen or so casts the fish
quit prowling and probably moved off into deeper water.

I continued fishing up, again passing the parking area. The rises had
settled down considerably, easing back to the soft rings that bespoke
fish feeding a dead flies drifting in the current. I took a few more
small fish, the fly outlined faintly by the band of light that glowed
in the northwest. Finally I couldn't see my line on the water and the
gurgling of the rapids would have drowned out any sound of a rising
fish so I called it a day.

I waded back out to my car, started it and drove the 20 miles back to
town, listening to jazz on Public Radio. The clock at the bank in the
little town north of Merrill said 10 pm as I drove past it. And
suddenly I was very, very tired.


hth

g.c.

George,
The first fly I tied on when I clipped the nymph off was a size 16
Parachute Adams.
I fished that same fly for the next 2 hours. Only replacing the soaked
one for a dry one.
I stopped counting fish caught after about 16 or 18. I must have cought
about 30 beautiful Brookies and missed another 30. What a great
afternoon. Thanks George.
Joel

George Cleveland wrote:
On Sun, 4 Jun 2006 16:18:46 -0400, "Tim J."
wrote:

George Cleveland wrote:
Well, this is the time of year when the dry fly fisher finally gets
his due.
snipped excellent example of a TR

Sweet - it sounds like you all got into your share of fish. Up this way
we have a "it's my turn" rule, and no one who has already caught a fish
is allowed to catch another until everyone is even. I suggest you envoke
that rule next time out with Wolfgang.

Rules are for people who don't know how to get along with one another.
If George and I suffer from that problem, I've see precious little
evidence of it.

In the narrow stretch that was what we did. Its just that poor
Wolfgang would almost immediately catch a fish and then he'd have to
wait for 5 or 6 minutes before he got to cast again and then after one
or two casts he'd have a fish and then wait another 5 minutes. After
the water broadened and we could both fish is when his expertise
became glaringly obvious.


Or maybe he was just lucky. ;^)

Indeed. Lucky in having stumbled (lo these many years ago) on an
extremely (if unaccountably) effective pattern and, if Saturday's
performance is to be believed, a particularly productive version of it,
lucky in having the service of a most excellent and gracious guide,
lucky in that said guide spent a good deal of time changing
flies.....during which intervals SOMEBODY had to fish.....and, most of
all, luckier than anyone has a right to expect in having so many
amiable adult companions with whom spend so much time at play in the
fields of the Lord.

Who doubts the latter.

Never doubt it......I never have.

Thanks for yet another marvelous day, George and Joel.

Wolfgang
who, greedy as the next guy, only wishes that his luck could have
extended just enough to exterminate the virus that jumped up and bit
his ass a few days ago and has not yet let go.

Wolfgang wrote:
George Cleveland wrote:
On Sun, 4 Jun 2006 16:18:46 -0400, "Tim J."
wrote:

George Cleveland wrote:
Well, this is the time of year when the dry fly fisher finally gets
his due.
snipped excellent example of a TR

Sweet - it sounds like you all got into your share of fish. Up this
way we have a "it's my turn" rule, and no one who has already
caught a fish is allowed to catch another until everyone is even. I
suggest you envoke that rule next time out with Wolfgang.

Rules are for people who don't know how to get along with one another.
If George and I suffer from that problem, I've see precious little
evidence of it.

The roffians up here are very different. They all taunt me mercilessly
as they catch fish after fish.

In the narrow stretch that was what we did. Its just that poor
Wolfgang would almost immediately catch a fish and then he'd have to
wait for 5 or 6 minutes before he got to cast again and then after
one or two casts he'd have a fish and then wait another 5 minutes.
After the water broadened and we could both fish is when his
expertise became glaringly obvious.


Or maybe he was just lucky. ;^)

Indeed. Lucky in having stumbled (lo these many years ago) on an
extremely (if unaccountably) effective pattern and, if Saturday's
performance is to be believed, a particularly productive version of
it, lucky in having the service of a most excellent and gracious
guide, lucky in that said guide spent a good deal of time changing
flies.....during which intervals SOMEBODY had to fish.....and, most of
all, luckier than anyone has a right to expect in having so many
amiable adult companions with whom spend so much time at play in the
fields of the Lord.

Yeah, well I have that too, so phhhhttttt.

Who doubts the latter.

Never doubt it......I never have.

Thanks for yet another marvelous day, George and Joel.

Wolfgang
who, greedy as the next guy, only wishes that his luck could have
extended just enough to exterminate the virus that jumped up and bit
his ass a few days ago and has not yet let go.

Well, that's what follows greed. ;-)
--
TL,
Tim
---------------------------
http://css.sbcma.com/timj/