Fly of the Week: Ant's Retriever

A very popular fly right now, at least here in PA, is the Golden Retriever, which is the same as the fly below, except it uses only tan and/or gold colored material. The pattern below is a little more flashier and is a great attractor pattern.

The secret to this fly is that it is essentially a Wooly Bugger, but with different materials. Fish it the same way as you would a bugger.

Erie Trip Day 2: the saga continues

Saturday started early for me. About 1:30am to be exact.

That's the time that I woke up and noticed that the air mattress that I was on was flat. I woke up because my back was freezing from being on the ground. It was low 40's that night, so it was cold!

To cold for me to crawl out from my sleeping bag (rated to -20, thank God) and mess around with the mattress, so I roughed it until morning.

Lake Erie Steelhead trip Pt1

Here is the report of my weekend trip to Elk Creek for my inaugural search for some steelhead. I have to apologize for some of the photos; I don't have a waterprood digital camera, so I had bought a waterproof disposable one. Lets just say, big mistake.  So if your looking at getting the Kodak waterproof disposable, keep looking. Half the photos taken didn't turn out and of the one's that did, a third looked horrible. Luckily I took my digital with, just not when I was wading.

But anyway.....

I'm Back!

The trip was excellent, but it's good to be back at the homestead. now I have some lies... I mean reports to type, some pics to sort through, and will begin to bring everything together tomorrow and start posting here.

Stay tuned!

Off to the races

In less than 12 hours I will be on my way to be up to my neck in steelhead (hopefully. ) I hope everyone has a great weekend. Pics and report to start Monday.

Fly of the Week: Grey Comparadun

The Comparadun is relatively modern fly (given the age of fly fishing, that is.) This fly made it's first appearance in the book Hatches by Bob Nastasi and Al Caucci in 1975 as a "no hackle dry fly"(my quotes, not theirs.) It is a mayfly imitation and can be tied in sizes 10-20.

We're gonna need a bigger box.

Gather everything together for my Lake Erie trip in a few days and I put together my fly boxes. If I don't have something in here that will work, I'm hanging up my waders for good.

The great part is that these boxes have compartments on the other side and one is of the boxes is stuffed full of egg patterns in various colors. Fish on!

New Addition to the Famliy

I won a Sila Flex fiberglass rod off of eBay the other day, and much to my surprise it showed up on my doorstep today. I figured that I wouldn't see this baby until after I got back from my trip this weekend at least.

My skunking is over!

After having a really productive spring and summer, my luck had sort of fizzled out the past month or two.

But with one glass rod that I already had and another one on the way from ebay, I bought an a new Medalist 1492 because I heard that a 6-7 wt line will really give a glass rod it's feel.

And like a kid with a dollar in his pocket, I was twitching like a goat with an itch to get out and use it.

So I set out today with the new reel, the old rod, and two kids in tow.

Don't you just love the system

It appears that the the PA Senate has adjured for the year without agreeing on a compromise for the Marcellus Shale Gas Extraction severance tax, even though PA Senate Leaders had a written commitment from earlier this year that a tax would be passed by October 1st.

But instead of sticking around and doing the jobs that my fellow PA'ers elected them to do, they are leaving Harrisburg (our capital) to go back to their constituents and campaign so that they can keep the jobs that they failed to do.

You see, there was a lot more than just the Marcellus Shale tax on the books that was supposed o be finished this year, but they didn't get to it. And since they didn't get to it, and this is an election year, and they decided to call it an early.... year (how many of us have that option?) all of the un-passed legislation is now dead and must wait until after the beginning of next year for the new PA Congress to begin the process again.

Let's just say I can't wait until the incumbent PA Senators come through here asking for my vote. I look forward to looking them in the eye and asking why I should vote them back into a job that they never finished.

But on a lighter note, less than one week until my Steelhead trip to Erie. I'm already starting to drool.......