doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Off topic: "For everything, there is a season..."

Lloyd3, I think the brown trout that came to the U.S were probably of the Loch Leven strain so will be all rather similar in appearance. U.K. brown trout are often river specific and although the same species they will often show distinctive traits due to isolation over time. That trout is from the River Derwent in Derbyshire. Ones from the Lathkill and River Dove, still in Derbyshire and not far distant, can be quite different in appearance. Fascinating fish to study. One of the most beautiful trout strains I ever encountered were in Norway and translate as 'the fine speckled trout'. Here's a River Dove one. Lagopus.....

Lloyd3 nice to see some trout pictures.
I have been fly fishing since I was 14 and now next month I will be 71 and cast right handed and reel left. I have used Hardy reels and Orvis reels made by Hardy and even Scientific Anglers system reels that were made by Hardy. All were reversible.
You play the fish on the rod and reel the slack, and setting up the drag is important.
On a few of my heavy duty reels for steelhead and salmon, they have a clutch plate and one has an anti-reverse handle that would let you get your knuckles banged up. The others when a large fish is on, you have to palm the reel.
When my eyes were good I used to love refinishing old bamboo rly rods with silk thread. Your hands had to be smooth or else you would fray the silk and ruin it. I made bamboo rods from blanks and later made graphite rods from blanks. Right now I have rods from 1 weight to 9 weight in graphite and 3-6 weight in bamboo. The smallest being a 5'9" Orvis Ultralight Fly that is fun to use. I used to have an 8' Orvis Nymph rod that was too much like a buggy whip but it protected 8x tippets, but hard to cast.

Lagoppus - A good friend of mine is involved with the Norbury Fishing Club on the Dove. Ever been there?

JDW,
My experiences parallel yours in so many ways. I cast and play the rod/line/fish with my 'power' arm and control the line and reel with my left, but will swap the rod from right to left while fighting a large fish as the situation requires. I started when I was 11 and learned to tie flies then too. I've been tying almost all of my own flies ever since and have developed some patterns that are extremely effective for myself and a few friends. That's something that requires very smooth fingers too. I used 300 grit sandpaper on my fingers before each session.
Regarding which hand to hold the rod in and which to manage the reel and line with.... It's up to the individual...period!

Tradition is nice but sometimes it isn't comfortable.
There was a time when I studied each and every fly-tying book and entomology book I could get my hands on. I memorized all of the taxonomic names for all insects and every stage of their lives and when they occurred on the rivers and streams I fished. I guess I'm glad I went through that stage - the right gear and the right clothing too... These days you'll see me astream with a very old vest, a camo ball cap, no net, old patched neoprene waders, and three small fly boxes in my vest pockets.
I'll be that white-haired old guy who's having a good time without a care in the world who might sneak a sip from a small silver flask every whenever he releases a nice trout or salmon.

Lloyd: I have an identical Pflueger 1494 round line guard on my desk right now. I favor the old Hardy's but the Pflueger's look great on cane! I'm going to put it on my 8040 and go cast it! Are you fishing Phoenix silk? Great stuff!

Matt

DAM16SXS, I can't remember the age, but an uncle gave me a bunch of fly typing material and an old vice. I messed with a few patterns and like you bought books, many books on fly fishing. My favorite nymphs when there was no hatch were ones with rabbit fur, there is just something about it in the water, in sizes 12-18 it resembles a lot of nymphs. In dry flies I liked the elk hair caddis type and the deer hair wings tied thorax style.
For years we used to go (and everyone else) up to the Beaverkill in N.Y. around Memorial Day and fish the famous pools for the March Brown hatch. Also loved to fish the West Branch of the Delaware, talk about finicky trout, you had to match the hatch or dredge the bottom. I always said a 12" brown in the Delaware outfought a 20" stocked fish.
To show you how much of an addict I was, I used to carry a seine with me. My friend would go upstream slightly and move rocks with his feet and I would put the siene in and see what the predominant nymphs were. During the March Brown hatch, in the morning and early afternoon it was fun to wade the middle of the stream and cast downstream to each bank for the browns scrounging for march brown nymphs getting ready to emerge.
A good sulpher hatch on the Little Lehigh in eastern Pa was something to see around Memorial Day also. So many flies on the water and so many fish rising. And then there is Penns Creek.

JDW - I even tried the tricorythodes hatch on the Battenkill. Talk about so many flies on the water... It was an exercise in futility. In a whole weekend I caught two browns less than 9 inches. AND I tied my own imitation Tricos on #24 hooks. That's when I could see well enough to do that...

I used to seine the shallows too - even deeper water to waist deep. I learned a lot by doing that - especially that the nymphs were drifting at all levels of the water column.

When there was a rise somewhere in the vicinity of your fly you lifted your rod just in case. Hell, I still do that now at dusk in the spinner falls.

On the Au Sable (Michigan) I have a friend who is tying tricos down to size 30. Not me.

I was fishing this afternoon and it was a pretty good one even with the rain. Using a Vince Cummings SuperLite glass rod and Hardy Featherweight reel. I've been fly fishing since I was about 14. Fifty-six years of casting and reeling with my right hand.

Dennis

Thanks for bringing back fond memories for me. I learned how to fish on the Mettawee River. Caught many Rainbow, Brown and just one Brook trout.