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By Anthony Naples, on May 29th, 2009
Just to follow-up a bit on a previous post about the Japanese Tenkara fly-fishing style…
Cork’s Outdoors presents a short video featuring Daniel Galhardo, of TenkaraUSA. Cork Graham and Daniel Galhardo do a little Tenkara fishing. And you learn a little more about the technique.
This past weekend, the world’s foremost authority on tenkara fishing, Dr. Hisao Ishigaki, gave a Tenkara fishing presentation at the Catskills Fly-Fishing Center and Museum. Dr. Ishigaki presented a lecture on tenkara’s history and technique, a fly-tying demonstration and an on-stream Tenkara demonstration.
The TenkaraUSA Blog presents a great write-up of the event.
By Anthony Naples, on May 26th, 2009
Cracker Live at Visulite Theatre on 2007-08-11 (August 11, 2007)
Another in the Live Fly Tying Music Series. Cracker is one of my favorite bands. Load up the show, tie some flies and think about fly fishing.
Fronted by alternative band Camper Van Beethoven’s David Lowery, Cracker has moved toward a more traditional country sound in their live performances, while still firmly rooted in an alternative attitude. While taking cues from country and roots music, with Cracker it’s hard to tell where irony ends and true homage begins.
Listen on the Live Fly Tying Music Page.
By Anthony Naples, on May 20th, 2009
Whirling disease researchers optimistic about Montana’s trout
May 20, 2009 — By Evelyn Boswell, MSU News Service
BOZEMAN — Whirling disease now infects about 150 streams across Montana, but researchers say they are still optimistic about the future of trout fishing in the state.
One of the most promising developments, they say, is the discovery of wild rainbow trout that are naturally resistant to whirling disease. Another is the mysterious rebound of rainbow trout in the Madison River, the first Montana river where whirling disease was discovered.
“There’s hope,” said Montana State University ecologist Billie Kerans. “There’s some hope for the trout in Montana. Not all drainages have responded the same way to whirling disease.”
Read the whole article at the Montana State University Website Whirling disease researchers optimistic about Montana’s trout.
By Anthony Naples, on May 19th, 2009
So what is this thing called Tenkara?
From dailygazette.com Schenectady, NY
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Morgan Lyle
It is making a comeback. Tenkara, a centuries-old Japanese style of fly-fishing that uses a telescoping carbon fiber rod, 10-foot line, tippet and fly — no reel — is beginning to show up on trout creeks and Web sites across the country.
read the whole story here Fly-Fishing: Tenkara interest growing
Well – I have recently just heard of this type of fly-fishing and I like the sound of it. However, I don’t have any experience at all with it, I’ve never even seen a Tenkara Fly Rod.
Luckily for me though I bumped into someone in cyberspace that does have Tenkara experience and he was kind enough to share a few words. So I’m turning it over to C.M. Stewart:
I like simplicity. The route that got me started fishing with a tenkara rod is complex, though. A couple years ago I saw a picture of a North Country soft hackle on an internet forum. I was struck by the elegant simplicity of just a wisp of hackle and a bit of silk thread. I had to learn more. Through research I concluded that I couldn’t fish them to best advantage with my 8′ 5-weight. I needed a longer, lighter rod. I researched loop rods (the kind used by Dame Juliana Berners and Isaac Walton, not the ones made by a company in Sweden) and horsehair lines. Researching horsehair line triggered links to tenkara fishing in Japan, because horsehair lines were used there as well. Conceptually, a tenkara rod is just like a loop rod, in that there is no reel or guides. The line is tied to the rod tip. No one fishes with loop rods anymore, but tenkara fishing is alive and well in Japan, and just beginning to make a presence in the US. (Conceptually, it’s like a cane pole too, but with a cane pole you can’t cast a size 16 elk hair caddis to a rising fish 20′ away using a line so light that it never hits the water and only the fly and a couple feet of tippet touch down without even a ripple.)
To me, the two main attractions of tenkara fishing are presentation and simplicity. The long, light rod and short, light line allow me to fish in ways that I just can’t with a shorter rod and a heavier line. My tenkara rods are 12′ long. My line, including tippet, is 13′ long, and is basically a long hand tied leader with a very long butt section of 10# test fluorocarbon spinning line, a very short transition taper, and 2′ of 6x tippet. (Some tenkara anglers prefer tapered lines like those sold by Tenkara USA. I like what is called “level line tenkara” even though I cheat a bit and put in a short transition taper.)
I learned the hard way that with a line longer than that I couldn’t net a fish, because the rod bends – a lot. It was a nice fish, too. I learned the hard way to use light tippet. Before I could get a real tenkara rod I used a graphite panfish pole, which looks the same but isn’t nearly as strong, and I broke the rod on what would have been the biggest trout of my life. The line is not just dapped, it is cast, and it casts beautifully. Because the line is short, and so light, I can fish with just the fly and a foot or so of tippet in the water. That’s pretty handy when fishing in tricky currents or eddies. (Yes, you can do that with your 9′ rod, but I can do it 20′ away.) With no line in the water, there is never any line splash, I never line a fish, and drag is minimized. I am convinced that improved presentation more than makes up for the limited casting distance. I catch more fish now than I ever did with my fly rod.
I was initially attracted by the presentation, but what I now like most is the simplicity. Fishing (like life) used to be a lot simpler. I didn’t need a ton of stuff to fish and a second mortgage to pay for it. In a way, tenkara takes me back to those simpler times. I can concentrate on the cast and the take and not have to worry about the stripped in line wrapping around my legs or trying to get a fish onto the reel. To land a fish I just raise the rod tip. An 8 or 9 inch fish pretty much comes right in. An 11 or 12 inch fish races around a bit and jumps (even the browns, it seems), but succumbs pretty quickly. A 15 or 16 inch fish gets my adrenaline pumping, because I’m just not sure who’s going to win the fight. Much bigger than that and the fish will always win, because with no reel I can’t let it run. That’s OK with me, though, because I always remember the big ones that got away.
-C.M. Stewart
The first American tenkara tackle company just opened for business: Tenkara USA. Their rods are typically 12-ft long but “telescope” to a mere 20-inches. Now that’s a travel rod. Tenkara USA’s sells its rods for between $130 and $160 (and they are guaranteed for life). The furled lines sell for $20.
The Catskill Fly Fishing Center and Museum (CFFCM) will present a talk and demonstration of Tenkara Fishing by Dr. Hisao Ishigaki at the CFFCM in Livingston Manor, NY on Saturday, May 23. For more information, please call the CFFCM at 845-439-4810.
By Anthony Naples, on May 14th, 2009
Trip Report: Spring Creek, Centre County, PA – Date Fished May 12, 2009
The Sulphurs are Here!
I’m sure we all have a favorite hatch – for me it’s the Sulphur Hatch on Spring Creek. There are several reasons for this: first nostalgia and second the fact that it is a great hatch on a great stream. The nostalgia comes from my time at Penn State. Spring Creek is where I learned to Fly Fish and the Sulphur hatch was the first good mayfly hatch that I ever fished successfully.
If it was only nostalgia though it wouldn’t be of much interest to others – so be assured it is a great hatch to experience on one of Pennsylvania’s most productive wild trout streams.
On this particular day we arrived at the creek around 10:30 AM. The air temps were in the high 50′s to low 60′s through out the day, and the sun was shining. The stream was in perfect condition, with a nice full spring flow – but not to high.
 E.dorothea (left) and E. invaria (right) I think!? It can be hard to say sometimes. With the hope of finding hatching sulphurs we headed upstream looking for good “Invaria” water. The early season “Sulphurs” on Spring Creek are Ephemerella Invaria – (Ephemerella Rotunda and Ephemerella Invaria have recently been grouped as one species, Ephemerella Invaria). Invaria nymphs prefer fast moving currents and prior to emergence may seek pockets of slower water adjacent to the fast water.
I snapped the picture at the left hoping to get a good record of the coloration of Spring Creek’s sulphur nymphs. The two nymphs that I found are clearly different – the slightly darker nymph on the left was definitely smaller than the other one. So I’m saying that is the dorothea – although I’m not willing to bet on it. However, regardless of a positive identification – you could tie some nymphs to match the picture and be all set.
After a short walk we found what looked liked a perfect stretch of riffles and runs, with plenty of instream rocks and pockets – perfect water to look for the invaria hatch.
Well it wasn’t long before it started. Beautiful little invaria duns began to emerge sporadically – and all around us the fish were taking the duns from the surface. I’d estimate the best hook size to imitate the duns was a size 16 – but a sparsely dressed 16. These particular inavaria duns have quite a bit of orange to them – on other streams they can be much more pale-yellow. It was pretty clear that the fish were taking the fully emerged duns from the surface. They may have been taking emergers too – but I never really had much success with any emerger patterns. That wasn’t a problem though because I was taking fish consistently on top with dries. This surprised me a bit – in the past I’ve caught many more fish on the emerger. Perhaps this was due to timing – maybe since it was early in the emergence period, the fish hadn’t been fished so hard yet, and hadn’t seen every possible Sulphur dry-fly pattern created. I’ll never know why – but I guess that is what makes fly-fishing so challenging. It seems to never happen the same way twice. The hatch was consistent – but not blizzard like – all day. There was a brief increased flurry of sulphurs during the warmest part of the day at approx. 3:00 PM.
 Hair-Wing Thorax Sulphur I managed to catch fish on a variety of different patterns but one style seemd to be particularly effective: The Hair-Wing Thorax Sulphur. I tied some of these up after reading Swisher and Richards’ Selective Trout. They mention that flies tied with a single clump deer-hair wing were more effective than the fan-wing Comparadun style flies. However, the clump wing flies often landed on their side. To combat this tendency I added a sparse thorax-style hackle (clipped on the bottom). Well the fish seemed to like it – at least on this day.
Hair-Wing Thorax Sulphur:
Hook: Standard Dry-fly
Tail: Cream Hackle Barbs tied in divided
Dubbing: Pale-Yellow and Sulphur-Orange Wapsi Superfine mixed. For a thorax-style fly the dubbing is applied all the way to the head of the fly.
Wing: Bleached Deer-Hair tied in a single clump and swept back
Hackle: Cream tied “thorax-style” (wound sparsely and widely-spaced from behind wing through thorax area and trimmed on the bottom).
 Nicely Spotted Brown Caught on the Hair-Wing Sulphur Thorax So was anything else hatching?
Actually – yes. There was also consistent caddis action all day that fish were responding to. Several caddis were part of this – one was about a size 16 with a drab gray/olive body and gray and black speckled wing. I never got a close up look at the other caddis but it was smaller – maybe a size 18 and it appeared to be a tan to light cinnamon wing color.
Caddis larvae were present in abundance – in addition to those pictured, there were also some that were basically the same, but more bright green.
 Free-living Caddis Larvae Light Cahills (Stenacron interpunctatum) also made an appearance. These were large – I’d say a size 12 verging on size-10. I didn’t get a picture, but the underside of the dun was pale-yellow and the wings were a transparent bright-yellow with black veins and speckles. These never hatched in great numbers but popped up through-out the day. Fish could be seen taking the duns.
 Cahill Nymph  Cahill Nymph Underside  Gratuitous Trout Picture
By Anthony Naples, on May 8th, 2009
 Didymo: picture from WV DNR website (click pic to go to the Didymo (Rock Snot) Fact Sheet) Sometimes it can be too easy to ignore things when they are not so close to home. Didymo is one of those things – I’ve never seen it in the streams that I fish…yet.
Well didymo is in the news again – it is showing up in more and more places. I came across several articles recently confirming it’s presence in yet more streams.
A fourth West Virginia Stream is Confirmed to have Didymo.
Invasive Algae Didymo Confirmed in Seneca Creek
The invasive algae known as Didymo has been found in Seneca Creek near its confluence with Whites Run, according to Mike Shingleton, Assistant Chief, West Virginia Division of Natural Resources, Wildlife Resources Section. An angler fishing in Seneca Creek had earlier sent DNR a picture of what he believed was Didymo. DNR personnel investigated the Didymo report and collected samples from Seneca Creek. Whites Run was also inspected in its lower reaches, but nothing resembling Didymo was observed. The Seneca Creek samples were sent to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources for confirmation. All samples contained Didymo.
In 2008, Didymo’s presence was confirmed from Elk River, Gandy Creek, and Glady Fork.
Read the whole story at the West Virgina DNR Website
Also Didymo was recently confirmed in the Esopus in New York State. Previously, didymo had been confirmed in the Batten Kill and in the East and West branches of the Delaware River.
DEC Confirms Presence Of Didymo In Esopus Creek
Aquatic Algae Discovered in Popular Recreational Waterway
Monday, April 27, 2009: New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Commissioner Pete Grannis today announced that didymo, an invasive species, has been confirmed in the Esopus Creek in Ulster County.
This is the first known presence of this aquatic algae, also called “rock snot,” in the Esopus and the third confirmed location in New York State…
DEC collected samples and confirmed the presence of didymo in the vicinity of several public access sites along a 12-mile stretch of the Esopus from the “Shandaken Portal” (which transfers water to the Esopus from Schoharie Reservoir) to New York City’s Ashokan Reservoir.
Read the whole story at the NY DEC Website
I guess the message is to assume that Didymo can be anywhere and to take the necessary precautions. What can the conscientious angler do?
The basic precautions consist of washing , disinfecting and drying all equipment. Including waders and wading shoes. Consider replacing any felt soled waders with the new “sticky” rubber soled (and cleated if you’d like) wading shoes or waders. I have a pair of Aquastealth rubber soled (with cleats) wading boots from L.L.Bean and they work perfectly – no slipping.
Rather than re-listing all the precautions needed to reduce the spread of Didymo in this post I’ll direct you to a good resource that has all the info you’ll need.
Also for some more complete info on Didymo check out the USDA link below – there are links from this site to many other places to get info.
By Anthony Naples, on May 5th, 2009
Fished on Friday May 1st, 2009
Well the weather report looked bad – possible rain in the morning, probably thunderstorms in the afternoon. So we went fishing anyway. Thankfully we didn’t let the weatherman dissuade us from our trip. He had it right about rain in the morning, but the afternoon turned out to be beautiful – it was sunny but cool. And the fish were cooperative. It was one of those days when everything comes together.
As soon as we got out of the truck, at the Yellow Creek Fly Fishing Only Project Area, the sun came out and the rain stopped – but the water was pretty high and discolored. The site of the discolored water did not make me happy – I never seem to have much success when the water is off color. But these misgivings proved unwarranted as we looked upon our favorite fishing hole. The fish were rising. A lot of fish were rising. It was a nice little caddis hatch – not a blizzard type hatch, but a consistent parade of fluttering caddis popped off the water, and fish continued to hungrily rise to them, all afternoon and into the evening.
There were several different caddis coming off - most were generally light colored and maybe a size 14; a smaller number were dark gray or black and more of a 16 or 18. I was never able to catch any of these bugs though, so I can’t give a better description. I’d love to know what color and size they really were – I think we could have had one of those truly stellar days if we’d had a good match. As it was we did okay, catching fish on a variety of different patterns.
 A typical fish for the day - notice the nice blue color on the gill-plate  Caught on a Yellow Sally On the surface I caught fish on size 12 and 14 Elk Hair Caddis with tan and gray bodies, size 18 black caddis, and a size 14 Elk-hair Yellow Sally was good for a few too. Due to the rising fish I didn’t fish underneath much – but a size 12 Peacock and Partridge Soft Hackle, fished on a rising swing, was good for some hookups. Every change of fly would bring a few lookers – and usually a taker.
 E.E. and the Old Ranger fish the rise. The Old Ranger is casting his vintage late 40s Glass I have a hard time just fishing – I’m always trying to learn something. This trip drove home a few good lessons (I seem to continually learn, forget and then re-learn the same things).
Lesson Number 1: Don’t let the weatherman tell you what to do.
If we had heeded the weather man’s warnings we would have missed a memorable day on the stream. Whatever the weatherman says – just fish!
Lesson Number 2: Always have plenty of caddis in the most common sizes and colors
Of course, I know that a caddis hatch is always a good possibilty – so there’s no excuse in not having the right color or size. Do yourself a favor sit down tonight and tie some caddis dries in assorted colors (Tan, gray, olive) and sizes (12 – 18). Most caddis I see are best imitated using a light colored wing – but occasionaly I’ll also see some fairly dark brown or gray caddis, so be prepared for both.
Lesson Number 3: Don’t be afraid to improvise
One of our crew – after losing his best hatch-matching caddis imitation – in a trout’s lip – got out the scissors and improvised. He trimmed down what I think was a size 12 Gray Wulff and made an awesome caddis emerger. This fly worked well. It not only caught rising fish – it brought some fish out of the depths as an attractor fly. The modifications consisted of cutting off the tail, trimming off most of hair-wings, and trimming the hackle. What was left of the deer-hair wings floated flush on the surface and the body of the fly hung suspended beneath the water. The result was a decent caddis emerger not unlike the Vermont Caddis:
Vermont Caddis Recipe:
Hook: Standard Dry Fly Hook 12-20
Body: Hare’s Mask Dubbing to match natural (tan, olive, black, etc.)
Hackle: Brown and Grizzly mixed (one size smaller than normal for hook)
Fish this fly without floatant – so that the hackle lies flush and the body is suspended vertically under the surface.
Lesson Number 4: Don’t forget to enjoy the surroundings! With a blog post in mind – I made sure to look around me and notice things, so that I would have some pictures. Well – I should remember to always do this. Here’s a few bits of nature that we enjoyed.,
 Mallard Ducklings  Purple Trillium  Fungus Amoung Us: What the heck is this thing? Oh and don’t forget to stop at The New Frontier Restaurant after your day of fishing. The Restaurant is located on Rt. 36 about 100 ft from Yellow Creek. It has good homestyle cooking at good prices. I’m a sucker for the Hot Roast Beef Sandwich with fries and Gravy. If you’re there on Friday try the all you can eat fish dinner.
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