Fly Fishing
Blue Liner Flows Review | USGS Stream Gauges
All water level data originates from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Surface-Water Data, which monitors over 13,000 stream gauges across the U.S. and more than 350 in Pennsylvania. The USGS has been transitioning to a new online interface over the past five-plus years. The updated look and feel have left some old features behind while adding new ones. I hate it.
So, I’ve been on the hunt for a desktop and mobile app that delivers USGS backend data through a clean, easy-to-use interface. Blue Liner Flows offers a solid solution for iPhone, iPad and Mac users, with apps built for both platforms. Most importantly, favorites and preferences sync across devices. There’s a free version, but I’ll be reviewing the $6.99 annual paid version.
Key features include: favorites, state selection, map view, latest data overview, discharge in CFS, discharge in feet, average annual discharge, various time views, weather forecasts, alerts, temperatures (station-dependent), turbidity (station-dependent), and other data specific to each gauge.
I found the app very easy to set up on my Mac. Once configured, all my favorites and alerts synced automatically to my iPhone. You don’t need both devices—an iPhone alone works just fine. I especially liked navigating between the state, favorites, and map views. It’s fast and intuitive. Most views display the key information I’m looking for, including directional arrows indicating whether water levels are rising or falling.
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The Fly Fishing Shows 2025
The Fly Fishing Show is a annual series of events for fly fishing enthusiasts, taking place across multiple locations in the United States from January to March 2025. These shows offer a comprehensive experience that combines vendors, education, entertainment, and shopping opportunities for anglers of all skill levels. Attendees can explore exhibitor booths featuring top fishing brands, guide services, lodges, and conservation organizations. The events provide free instruction centers where Fly Fishers International (FFI) offers complimentary lessons in fly casting, fly tying, and knot tying. Expert lectures by renowned anglers cover a wide range of fishing techniques and situations, allowing participants to enhance their skills and knowledge. The shows also feature the International Fly Fishing Film Festival at select locations, adding a cinematic dimension to the experience.
I like hitting all the vendor and fly tying both with Rick Nyles, Tim Cammisa, Ed Engle, Tom Baltz, Tim Flagler, Phil Rowley, Jonny King and more. The educational seminars offer a great way to hear from experts about many new or familiar locations to fly fish. Always plenty of great info for anglers of any level.
Visitors have the chance to win exciting door prizes, including fishing trips to exotic locations like Costa Rica, Belize, Iceland, and Chile, as well as high-quality fishing equipment. The fourth annual Consumer Choice Awards, held in association with Fly Fusion Magazine and Fly Fishing Journeys, allows attendees to vote for their favorite products and potentially win prizes in various categories. With locations including Marlborough, Edison...
Fly Fishing Getaway at Harman's Log Cabin Resort
Mornings at Harman's Luxury Log Cabin Resort are an exciting way to start any day, with mist rising off the North Fork and trophy trout waiting beneath the surface. This West Virginia fly fishing paradise has recently elevated its offerings, solidifying its status as a premier destination for fly fishing anglers and friends for a relaxing destination.
Todd Harman, PhilC, Curtis Fleming and Shane Becker
Harman's is a longtime partner of Paflyfish. You may recall the Harman's North Fork Invitational Fly Fishing event in 2013, where Shane Becker and PhilC from Team Paflyfish won the tournament, battling against many other nationally recognized challengers. It was certainly a memorable highlight for them and Paflyfish.
Over the last couple of years, there have been several outstanding updates to the resort. These exciting additions make it worth considering a getaway to this special destination, especially with the upcoming autumn season.
Resort Overview
Harman’s is situated within 300 acres of private wilderness next to Hopeville Canyon, bordering the scenic Seneca Rocks National Recreation Area and Dolly Sods Wilderness in West Virginia. With over twenty well-appointed modern cabins featuring hot tubs, outdoor rock fireplaces, and full kitchens. Wellness Retreats and features like rain and steam showers, outdoor steam and indoor infrared saunas, and large soaking tubs, so your non fishing...
The 10 Best Fly Fishing Rivers in Montana
By Brian McGeehan
Montana boasts perhaps the highest concentration of quality fly fishing for trout in the world. With a network of well-maintained roads and public access areas, fishing the best rivers, creeks, and lakes in Montana is logistically very easy. Compared to the remote and secluded rivers of Chile and Argentina, a Montana fly fishing trip is well within reach regardless of where home is. Additionally, Montana's best fly fishing waters have an abundance of experienced, professional fishing guides that intimately know the habits of these rivers, creeks, and lakes and the fish that swim in them. From consistent tailwater rivers like the Missouri River near Helena and Great Falls to wild and untamed freestones like the Yellowstone River near Bozeman and Livingston, and with all sorts smaller creeks and rivers in between, Montana has it all. To fish the best waters at the best times in Montana takes some planning, a little time, and a small dose of luck.
To help you plan your next great fishing trip, in no particular order, here are the 10 Best Fly Fishing Rivers in Montana.
The Madison River
Originating in the wild country of Yellowstone National Park and home to native Westslope cutthroat, rainbow, and brown trout and mountain whitefish, the Madison is Montana's most well known river. Flowing through one of the most scenic valleys in Montana and flanked by the towering Madison, Gravelly and Tobacco Root ranges, the Madison River boasts some great fishing lodges and some of the most experienced guides in Montana. The impressive scenery, high trout counts, potential for trophy fish and proximity to Yellowstone make this a must fish river for every serious fly fisherman. The Madison River offers an amazing diversity of water and can vary significantly in its character as it travels on its course from Yellowstone National Park to the Missouri River.
The Missouri...
B-52's and the attack on First Fork
"So Dave, how’s it going?" This was the booming voice of Ron "Trout Dog" Kolman. Ron is somewhat of a local legend for about 50 yards of guardrails along Route 872 on the special regs section of First Fork in Potter County. We were staying up at Greg Sipos's camp for one of our annual spring pilgrimages to God's Country. Both of them were kind enough to take me under their wings and teach me how to fly fish some years earlier.
Over the years, I learned Ron's inquiry was usually more of a competitive interest and not to be misconstrued with my wellbeing. All part of the usual banter I learned was part of fly fishing.
The casual evening was busy with sulphur duns on the water, and as the sun started to set, we tied on our traditional #16 rusty spinners for the anticipated spinner fall. By casual evening, I mean fierce competition to see who could catch more trout. The primary measure of any angler's worth versus their friends is the number of fish, of course. The first of us to make it to the Century Club was an award better than any trophy served up to a little kid playing soccer on Sunday afternoon.
After a day of trout triumphs, we fell into the Wharton Inn for a cold one or ten and a replay of our great fishing heroics. This usually involved a big trout that was on the far bank, behind a rock, in a bad drift, that eventually you schooled. You know...
When Big Bass are Easy: Mastering Pre-Spawn Bass Fishing Techniques
By Dave Weaver (Dave_W)
While most Pennsylvania fly fishermen target river smallmouths during the summer, bass can be successfully targeted all year and the "pre-spawn" is among the best times, especially if you're after large fish. When water temps hit the mid 40s - this would usually coincide with mid March here in the southcentral part of the state - river smallies become noticeably more active and move up out of their winter hibernacula. These winter locations are usually the deepest part of a river, often the low, deep, slack water in front of dams. As bass become more active, they start to spread out a bit but still tend to eschew current.
By this time of year, they start to feed quite a bit more but, unlike summer when most of the bass lay up in front of boulders and mid river structure and aggressively hit poppers, my experience has been that pre-spawn bass are shoreline denizens. In part, this is simply due to the higher, cloudier, water conditions so often prevalent in March and April. However, this preference for specific shoreline locations makes locating pre-spawn river bass more predictable. When you catch a bass, there's usually more in the same spot. Often these are large females staging to move to eventual spawning sites later in May.
Post written by David
Finding these spots starts in summer. If you've got a bass river nearby, walk the bank during summer and familiarize yourself with the shape of the shoreline when the water is low and clear. Come high water, you'll know where to go. Perhaps the ideal pre-spawn location would be a point of land that projects out into the river, especially if there are large chunk rocks or boulders on it. Oftentimes there are river willows or vegetation that grow on the point in summer, but that often has water flowing thru it this time of year. If downstream from this point, there is an eddy (there almost...
John's Brown Bass
By
Dave Weaver
Photographs and artwork courtesy of the author
Harper’s Ferry is a quiet place where the gentle hiss of river current is the only consistent sound, especially at night. It was a century and a half ago on the night of October 16th, 1859 as less than two dozen men, led by the messianic abolitionist from Kansas, John Brown, crossed the Potomac and slipped into the town streets to initiate what Brown believed would be the end of slavery in America. A staunch Calvinist who believed that he was on a mission from God to end slavery, Brown intended to bring to life his favorite passage from the Bible: “Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins.” The sin of slavery would be paid for with Brown’s own blood if need be.
Thomas Jefferson said that the view from Harper’s Ferry Virginia (now West Virginia) where the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers join was so “stupendous” as to be worth a trip across the Atlantic just to see its beauty. Thirty-three years after our third President’s death, this little town saw played out what was arguably the seminal event leading to the Civil War – a drama seen through the lens of terrorism or martyrdom. Today, bass fishing is fabulous in and around this tiny town so woven into the fabric of our nation’s past. For those fishermen with a historical bent, it’s easy to miss the strikes of hard-hitting smallmouths due to the irresistible temptation to gaze at nearby Maryland Heights where Stonewall Jackson’s guns blasted the town into submission in 1862 (and forced the largest surrender of Union forces in the Civil War); or the stately stone Harper house; or the old railroad bridge; or the fire engine house where Brown and his holdouts took cover; or any of a host of intriguing sites. A fisherman in the river is surrounded by bass under the surface and three states on the shorelines. So much to see, catch, and think...
John Browns's Bass - Part 2
Part 1
Some years prior to this bloody drama, likely in the summer of 1853, railroad workers on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad gathered some smallmouth bass from somewhere in the fish’s native range in the Ohio River basin. According to some accounts, these fish were placed in water buckets near Pittsburgh, taken eastward by train, and eventually released in the upper Potomac near Cumberland, several dozen miles upriver from Harper’s Ferry.
Today such introduction of non-native species, frowned on as it is, wouldn’t be considered beneficial and the new invaders would likely be targeted for eradication, much as the “snakehead” fish are targeted today in the lower, tidal reaches of the river where they have been illegally introduced in recent years. In the nineteenth century, however, a different ethic prevailed and in the case of smallmouth bass, the long-term results have been positive. Like the striped bass, the range of the smallmouth followed the expansion of the railroads and we fly rodders are better off for it. Although relatively slow growers (an eighteen-inch river smallie is typically eight to twelve years old in this part of the country) the newly introduced bass spread rapidly through the Potomac River system, finding the habitat much to their liking.
The State of Maryland actually owns the entire width of the Potomac River but in the Harper’s Ferry area, license reciprocity is in effect and you can use a Maryland license along the Virginia and West Virginia shores. While drift boat fishing is popular in this area and some excellent local guides can show you a great day, I like wade fishing with a fly rod. The habitat around Harper’s Ferry is ideal for the foot-bound angler, although finding parking areas can be difficult in the immediate area...
Some years prior to this bloody drama, likely in the summer of 1853, railroad workers on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad gathered some smallmouth bass from somewhere in the fish’s native range in the Ohio River basin. According to some accounts, these fish were placed in water buckets near Pittsburgh, taken eastward by train, and eventually released in the upper Potomac near Cumberland, several dozen miles upriver from Harper’s Ferry.
Today such introduction of non-native species, frowned on as it is, wouldn’t be considered beneficial and the new invaders would likely be targeted for eradication, much as the “snakehead” fish are targeted today in the lower, tidal reaches of the river where they have been illegally introduced in recent years. In the nineteenth century, however, a different ethic prevailed and in the case of smallmouth bass, the long-term results have been positive. Like the striped bass, the range of the smallmouth followed the expansion of the railroads and we fly rodders are better off for it. Although relatively slow growers (an eighteen-inch river smallie is typically eight to twelve years old in this part of the country) the newly introduced bass spread rapidly through the Potomac River system, finding the habitat much to their liking.
The State of Maryland actually owns the entire width of the Potomac River but in the Harper’s Ferry area, license reciprocity is in effect and you can use a Maryland license along the Virginia and West Virginia shores. While drift boat fishing is popular in this area and some excellent local guides can show you a great day, I like wade fishing with a fly rod. The habitat around Harper’s Ferry is ideal for the foot-bound angler, although finding parking areas can be difficult in the immediate area...
Conquer the Cold: The theory of bigger being sometimes better
There are no absolutes in fly fishing and that’s why I refer to this approach as a theory. While this “theory” produces good results, there will be times you will have to adjust your way of thinking as there are no absolutes in fly fishing. What I’m referring to is trying to get inside the mind of a wintertime feeding trout. Think about it, wintertime is a period when these cold blooded critter’s feeding habits slow down as water temperatures drop. In many river systems, trout begin to drop back into the slower moving bodies of water in an effort to expend less energy. Although their metabolisms may slow down, feeding is still on their mind and the wintertime can be the right time for the angler to venture out to the river. Often the most popular sections are void of anglers and I’ve had several days where the action would rival a May sulphur hatch. A wintertime feeding trout may not always mirror its springtime foraging behavior, but trout still need to eat and a larger presentation may be the ticket. Sometimes all trout need is a little encouragement so I often call upon larger patterns to create that desire.
By larger, I’m referring to nymph patterns as large as #4 and small as a #10. Yes that big-even on spring and limestone streams. Think about this, trout feel sluggish and less motivated to continuously chase small food items down during these cold winter months. Instead, it seems logical that trout would be willing to spend less energy chasing down larger food items. Move less and obtain more calories! Large stonefly, caddis, egg and worm patterns are my usual wintertime suspects. Nymphing is normally my first choice as I can slowly present the flies. Streamer tactics also work well but only when trout are feeling up to the chase. The idea is to present a pattern that can fulfill a trout’s hunger with only one energy surge. In many...
Green Drakes - May Madness for Fly Fishing
I say observe as I usually find myself on Penns Creek fishing while a huge Green Drake hatch is coming off and I am doing anything but catching a lot of trout. The mixed hatches that occur during this time of year are exciting and frustrating as many anglers would agree.
So this year I am going to stop practicing the fine art of talking to myself during the hatch and I might even throw on a sulphur or a should I dare say an emerger on during the madness?
The Green Drakes can start showing up around May 20th and are complemented by the Coffin Fly spinners which provide equal splendor during this time of year. So sit back and get ready to enjoy the show.