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.
Last edited by JDW; 04/25/17 07:15 PM.
