dkile

The US Youth Fly-Fishing Team will be holding it's Spring Northeast Educational Clinic from May 7-9 on the banks of famed Big Fishing Creek in Lamar, PA with the historic Sieg Center being our lodging, and base of operation. Offering clinics will be the following friends and fly-fishing greats : Joe Humphreys, Eric Stroup, George Daniel, Lance Wilt, Kurt Finlayson, and Brian Kimmel with a few more to be announced. Batting clean-up will be yours truly (I will teach how to apply ketchup and mustard to a hot-dog). The weekend will kick-off with an AWESOME educational session, led by Amidea Daniel, on the hyrdrologic cycle; stream entomology, and team building. That session alone will be worth your time! I have seen it twice now and I am still awestruck.

In addition: All attendees will be the head honchos at the Fly Fishing Film Tour on Friday Night-at the State Theater in downtown State College.

If you are a young angler, or know of a young angler who would cherish the opportunity to hang with a bunch of like-minded fishing dudes, to learn an incredible amount pertaining to fly fishing. see some cool vids, great eats and just some amazing hang time with some of the best America has to offer--SIGN UP!!!!!!

You'll be meeting young anglers, some of whom are members of the US Youth FF Team; some of whom will be members of the team; and some who just love to fly fish and learn about fly-fishing.

For more info: http://usyouthflyfishingteam.com/springclinic.htm

See ya there!

Coach Williams

In our previous post we discussed the characteristics of a fly rod. The reel is the next important piece of hardware and serves a much different role than with spin casting. With spin casting a reel is the centerpiece to bring in a fish. Not so much with fly-fishing for trout. When fly fishing for trout in PA the reel primarily holds all the line. With larger fish the fly reel plays a greater role in playing and landing the fish.

The finer fly fishing reels are machined from solid bar-stock aluminum. These higher quality reels will last decades. Most cost hundreds of dollars and in some cases are works of engineering marvel.

Less expensive reels are made from die cast alloys and perform with less precision. There are many fine products in this class that will last the fly angler for years. My old standby Lamson reel is over 20 years old and is still serving me very well.

Several entry-level fly fishing kits provide plastic reels. These plastic reels might be adequate to get familiar with the sport, but don’t necessarily hold up very long.

Aside from a reels defining fit and finish are the materials used in the drag construction. Simpler spring and pawl drags just put a light resistance on the fly line as as it is played off the reel. A higher quality disc drag system provides a smoother, even tension when you apply pressure to the fly line. This can become very important when playing and landing larger fish.

Bigger is not always better, a reel matched for the rod and type of fishing is the way to go. Most trusted manufactures are very clear which reels work best with those criteria.

Our next post gets back to throwing feathers and our fly line.

The Southeastern Pennsylvania Region was dealt another major snowstorm this past weekend. This leaves many just a little anxious to get outside even more than normal. It looks like the Greater Philadelphia Outdoor Sportshow in Oaks, PA on February 25-28 is going to offer us some much needed fun. There are plenty of great fishing, hunting and outdoor programs announced for the show. A little closer look revealed a very good line up for fly fishing anglers.

I am a big fan of Bob Clouser and I am excited to see he has seminars scheduled for Friday of the show. Bob is from Harrisburg and is best known for creating the world famous Clouser Minnow fly pattern used for catching numerous types of fish. Among his other notoriety, Bob is also highly respected for his smallmouth fly-fishing prowess on the Susquehanna. He will be holding seminars on how to tie is famous his Clouser Minnow and casting weighted lines and flies.

Other fly-fishing seminars throughout the weekend will be delivered at various times by Lefty Kreh and Ryan Sansoucy.

A variety of fly-fishing vendors will be on the exhibit floor including Temple Fork Outfitters, St. Croix Rods, Main Line Fly-Tyers, and Delaware River Shad Fishermen's Association.

Kype Magazine will be sharing a short film in the Fly Fishing theater.

Tony from TCO Fly Shop shared with me they will have a “huge” booth with Simms, Sage, RIO and other cool products.

Bryan Kelly from Kelly's White Fly Shop is setup to have a booth and I am sure able to share a lot of exciting knowledge about smallmouth fly-fishing on the Potomac River.

The show will be host to a variety of other outdoor sports activities, which should prove to very entertaining. There seems like all types opportunities for those interested fresh water and saltwater fishing by the world Fishing Network (WFN). There will be plenty of hunting...

How do you throw a feather?

You don’t.

You tie the feather to something heavy and then a toss the two of them together. This is the principle behind casting with a fly rod. See how easy fly fishing is!

I wish my friends Ron and Greg would have explained this to me when I first started fly fishing. I think it would have saved me some early embarrassing moments of fly fishing.

The principle purpose of a fly rod is to deliver the fly line out towards a trout with a fly somehow attached to the situation. More about bad delivery and stupid fly imitations later on. The principle of spin casting is just the opposite as the weight of the lure carries the line to the fish.

There is a lot of kinetic energy and physics that is involved, but don’t worry we will get to that later when we cover casting. The good news is that we will cover that before we get to the entomology and biology if you were asking.

To do all this line tossing you need gear that will support that kind of physics. Before we start picking our rod let’s look at the whole fly delivery engine thing one more time. We discussed our rod, but as you can imagine there are many different sizes and types of rods. They are most often differentiated by length and weight. Since we are just getting started most common trout fly rods are between 7’ and 9’ here out East. The most common weight is between 4wt and 6wt. Don’t send me hate mail yet remember I said common.

Most popular modern rods are made of graphite. The very early fly rods were made of bamboo and these handcrafted rods are still highly regarded by many anglers. We are not going to talk about bamboo now because I would then have to go deep and talking about kilts. I think they are silly unless you are drinking scotch then who really cares anyway.

In principle the smaller the fish the smaller and less weight you need in your rod. For bigger fish the...

Calling the Susquehanna River “increasingly impaired,” the board of commissioners of the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission (PFBC) today called on state and federal environmental agencies to expand efforts to determine the sources of pollution which are contributing to the demise of the river’s smallmouth bass fishery.

The board’s resolution, passed at its quarterly meeting, urges the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to step up their investigations, saying recent data confirms a serious problem exists. Commissioners cited evidence from a two-year water quality study coordinated by the U.S. Geological Survey and partially funded by the PFBC which found stress factors such as elevated water temperature and low dissolved oxygen concentrations during the critical May through July development period for smallmouth bass. The Commission contributed $400,000 to the study in an effort to discover the causes behind the fishery’s decline.

Problems were first detected in the middle reaches of the river in 2005, when PFBC biologists found unusually high numbers of dead or distressed smallmouth bass. They later determined that the affected fish were suffering from infections related to a common soil and water bacteria Flavobacterium columnare, or Columnaris. The disease is considered a secondary infection brought on by environmental or nutritional factors that stress fish, weakening their ability to cope with the bacterial agent. The same bacterium was discovered again in 2007 and 2008.
In other action, Commissioners:

• Approved a long-term lease agreement with Erie County’s Lawrence Park Golf Club to install fish passage structures at two impediments in Fourmile Creek to facilitate the movement of steelhead upstream. The structures will be funded with grants from DEP’s Coastal Zone Management Program and the Department of Conservation and Natural...

The off season is a great time to look at old books and to explore new ones as well. Some of the early books I read when I was getting started with fly fishing are still good reads and should not be overlooked. The more recent ones hold fresh insight to many of the locations and changes to many of streams in Pennsylvania.

Before you start striping any line or emptying your wallet you might want to take a look at The L.L. Bean Ultimate Book of Fly Fishing by Macauley Lord, **** Talleur and Dave Whitlock. It is one of the best all around general fly fishing books there is for any new angler to the sport. Their book provides essential information about flies, bugs, gear, concepts, traditions and everything from Atlantic Salmon to the zug bug.

A lot of good first hand information can be found in Flyfisher's Guide to Pennsylvania (Flyfisher's Guide Series) by Dave Wolf and Trout Streams and Hatches of Pennsylvania; A Complete Fly-Fishing Guide to 140 Rivers and Streams by Charles Meck. Both books are carried by seasoned anglers. They not only help in the where, but try to make sense of the what before you get into a stream.

Reading some of the Pennsylvania fly water type books is how I got...

Saturday was a fun day spent at The Fly Fishing Show in Somerset NJ. I met up with a lot of friends, sat in on some interesting seminars and enjoyed an awesome vendor trade floor. There was so much stuff going on it reminded me of being on Penns Creek on a late May evening with about three different hatches happening all at the same time.

The trip started at the Letort in Carlisle early Saturday morning. No we were not actually fishing, but caught up with some forum members I really admire Dave “Fishidiot” and Josh “3wt7x”. I enjoyed and appreciated a leisurely bus ride setup by the guys from the Cumberland Valley TU.

Once there we scouted the trade show floor. It was a great set-up with over 250 vendors, a couple of casting areas and a small casting pond. As you can imagine the usual suspects were there with Sage, Scott, St. Croix and many other traditional product vendors throughout the trade show floor.

More pictures on the Paflyfish Facebook Fan Page found here.

A variety of fly shops from the region had booths offering what seemed to be a lot of very good deals. I enjoyed catching up with a Chris and Tony at TCO Fly Shop. They had a rather large well-stocked setup. Jonas from The Feathered Hook was good to see and had me laughing.

Jumped over to the hotel side of the event where all the seminars were being held. I stopped in on Jim and Ernie from Laurel Highlands Guide Services where they shared a very good seminar on the Yough. Bryan Kelly from Kelly's White Fly Shop started the afternoon with a knock out presentation about smallmouth fishing on the Potomac. Both seminars have me ready to hit some bigger water this year.

I had a chance to spin through...