This variation is using long plastic chenille. Note the red wool butt as you can't place the chenille any further than half way without crowding the maribou tail. Interestingly, I caught a large rainbow with this fly. There are sunfish in the lake and maybe this triggered the response.
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We get about 6 weeks of brook trout fishing in the fall from Sept 1st to about mid October. Some of our district shuts down Sept 30 because of a very old idea of reproduction protection which in reality cannot happen in our lakes. It remains I believe to protect fish stocks for ice fishers!
Dazzle Dubbing Black and Red body with white Phentex shell back. This fly has been catching since the hatch right after our first frost. The phentex post aids in sighting and creating some noise when jerked.
Caught this one some time ago a couple of weeks after ice out. This is a third year fish in our neck of the woods. Always good fishing at the beginning before they are taken out. I wish more fishers would let them go. Now it is too hot for safe C&R
I have great hopes for this fly as soon our lakes open. The body is a piece of plastic Q Tip handle. Should float like a cork! I'll make a larger version for Bass.
I always start by making sure my favorite flies are well stocked in the boxes. If the flies from the past season are tattered, then they get dumped but some of them only need to be repaired.
The PT Nymph was again one of the best producers esp of brook trout. This one got a new tail, some added PT to the body, another round of herl and new shell back with legs. This year I am adding a translucent back which should reflect some light. It is made from "UV Knot Sense" I'm also stacking them loosely in a fly box I inherited from my long departed dad who is fully responsible for my addiction. It is a Cortland box and must be 60 years old or more. I find the tails get easily damaged any other way. Of course Mayfly nymphs only have three tails but you are better off to start with five. There will be three soon enough! I was able to fish several lakes at Pourvoirie Baroux. One of their lakes is pretty small, Verrat but I had barely got off the launch when I had this rainbow on. I was using a combo of a Coney Leech and a Yellow Hammill's Killer. The Leech got the fish.
There were also some sizeable Brook Trout there as well. They also liked the black Coney Leech but the Vampire Leech has many shades of colour along with the chartreuse bead. The Brookies liked that particularly. Water was still cool at 57F so they were not too far down. Baroux is an interesting place but doesn't hold a candle to Kenauk or Chevreuil Blanc in our area. Not sure if we will go back. I had organized a trip for nine to go to Chevreuil Blanc for three days but another member of the OFS had organized a trip for two nights to Bing Retreat for six at the same time. Bing is located near Westport, Ontario.
I was only able to go for one night at Bing. When I arrived a very good fisher had been skunked for a whole day of fishing! Imagine paying to fish and getting skunked. Well, I can well imagine because it happened to me at CB last year and that was for 2 1/2 days! Earlier at CB there was a party of 6 fishers and they had only landed 6 fish over three days. This recent group did much better. One fellow had caught a six pounder and a four pound Rainbow. This is a hint that the fishing in our area, even on private water which we know has adequate numbers, has something negative going on. The last three years we had drought and this year we had too much rainfall. This is not Climate Change but Climate Variety which may be the same thing and maybe responsible for making the trout grumpy. At Bing the trout (mainly Rainbows with some Brookies) are mostly in the center of the lake. This is fairly common in lakes with pan fish hogging the shoreline. It may be that the pan fish and smaller minnows are eating all the shore food so the pickings are scarce. Obviously, the larger trout will hunt for minnows and pan fish along the shoreline but they may be doing that more at night than when we are fishing. Normally in monoculture lakes (one species), casting to shore and retrieving is a staple method of flyfishing. Some of the fellows were doing this and catching. Of course, you would end up catching a lot of bluegill which is most annoying. This girl above was caught casting a Grey Adams with my 3wt to the center of the lake over 80 ft of water! There must be something of interest coming up from the bottom to have them there. All in all, I landed nine fish, lost two in 1 1/2 days of fishing, half on the dry fly, the very best way to fly fish. The Black Coney Leech was my best wet fly. Most of the other people were catching on black leech patterns. Leeches are a desirable and easy food in the fall as trout bulk up for the winter. BTW, the Minky below did not catch a fish. Back to the drawing board for that one! |
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