Unboxing of two Gurgle-pops from Randy Knapp

Randy Knapp sent me a couple of samples of a Gurgle-pop redesign that he has found to work well for him.  He emailed a great story, too, which I will be posting soon on the "Flies With a Story" page. 

(The original design is here.  His modifications can easily be made off the base design.)

Wait until you read the story he sent me!  And the pictures of an outrageous fish, of a sort you would not expect to catch on a dry fly.

In the meantime, here are a few pictures of my "unboxing" of the package he sent me this week:

The most obvious modification is the use of double strands of thin rubber.  It gives lots of action.  I've always used just one strand of thicker rubber.

The other modification is the hook and body length. Randy has used a longer hook while keeping the body short.  He finds this gives him a nice hookup.  Should be killer on those bluegills that strike short!

Geez, it looks like I need to cut my fingernails...

Six classic wet flies tied by Paul DiNolo

I have just created a page in the "Flies with a Story" section of fishingwithflies.com, with pictures and pattern information for the six classic wets tied by Paul DiNolo (see my prior post for more information)

Here's the link to the new page:

http://www.fishingwithflies.com/SixClassicWetFlies.htm

Paul DiNolo to have an article published

My friend Paul is expecting an article he wrote about wet fly fishing to be published in September's On The Water magazine.  Paul is a frequent contributor to the magazine, and is known especially for his knowledge of small stream trout fishing. 

The magazine has two editions.  One edition concentrates on New England fishing and the other on New York and New Jersey.  Both appear to be more oriented toward salt-water fishing.  For example, of seven articles in the August issue, six are salt-water oriented. This orientation doesn't surprise me, as the magazine's headquarters are in East Falmouth, MA, on Cape Cod. 

You can buy a copy or subscribe to the magazine by going to their Web site, http://www.onthewater.com/. Back issues are available and their Web site also includes a "where to buy" list.

In preparing his materials for submission to the editor, Paul asked if I would photograph a selection of classic wet flies which he tied and delivered to me in the fly-box pictured below.

On my Web site's Flies with a Story page, I plan to post the individual images of each fly soon, along with some text and tying instructions from Paul.

Fished a new spot on the Merrimack

There's no doubt about it, the Merrimack in New Hampshire is "big water".  This new spot for me is south of Manchester, NH. It is a favored spot for my friend Alberto, who has been hoping to show it to me for a couple of years.  But the river so swollen in the spring that it is often not until August that the water becomes wadeable, and last season I don't think it ever was.

This was a weekend morning and Alberto had family commitments.  I thought I would try it myself.  I was a bit intimidated by the water, having not fished it before.  I will be better the second time, but there were no other fisherman and I had the place to myself for a couple of hours before some kids arrived to walk their dog along the rocky beach.

In this shot I am essentially in the middle of the river, looking downstream.  The biggest fish were caught in the little open areas between clumps of grass.  They would attack and dart back into the grassy cover, fly in mouth.

The smallmouth were plentiful, but not big.  Shown here is a typical size.  In the slow moving area I caught two sunfish, shown here as well.  But I don't know what kind they are.  They're not Bluegills and they are not Pumpkinseeds.  I've caught Rock Bass before in water like this, but they usually have bigger and red eyes.  Can anyone identify them?

Nothing worked on the surface.  But coneheads, beadheads and weighted nymphs and streamers were very effective.  Pictured below are the flies I used.

First day-trip of the season to northern New Hampshire [2010Jul24]

I took a drive way up into northern New Hampshire last Friday with my fishing buddies Paul, Steve and Jim. I don't do as many of these marathon day-trips as the others do, but several trips spread out over the summer is lots of fun.  On this day, we were together 14 hours.  I figure it was about 6 hours of driving, 6 hours of fishing and a couple of hours eating three meals.

As is our tradition, we stopped from breakfast on the way up. Poor Boys is a new spot. Breakfast was very good. It's off exit 5 on route 93, in Londonderry, NH.

The fishing was very good too, especially the Ammonoosuc. Most of the fish are small native brooktrout. The one shown here is a bit bigger than average. I think in four hours of fishing in this spot (before moving onto the Peabody for two more hours of fishing) we each caught over 50 trout.