Fish and Flies - from the Great Lakes

Here are some photos of my last trip to New York with a very special client and friend. Matt Grove and I decided to bag a smallmouth camping trip to try our hand at intercepting a few large browns on their run up the rivers from the lake. Over a simple breakfast conversation and some insight from a few locals we made the decision to head to a smaller creek instead of one of the big name creeks. We had 2 days that we will never forget, Matt got his first steelhead, and largest brown trout on a fly. We had fish working and moving the whole time, we managed to get multiple steelhead, lots of browns, and a few very large salmon. It was a trip that will be hard to repeat, but worth trying to every year :)

Now for the good stuff, here are a few new and or variations of some flies that I have been woking on.

Squirrely Stone, a new fly that has worked wonders in the great lakes so far this year.

Egg in the Basket Sculpin, new twists and tweaks to an old staple.

Sculpin Fly Pattern. A great way to fool some steelhead!

Beast of the East 2016

It was yet another adventure out in Warren PA fishing for musky with the crew. However this time we prevailed, between the two boats we moved 9 fish in two days. We had the same crew as last year, but this year we came to play. We were about 3/4 of the way through day one, Austen had a fish on first thing and lost it, I had 2 eats but couldn't connect. Corey was in the back of the boat throwing my rod with a Black/Red/Orange Triple Roamer and a fast sinking line, when I just heard "got one". I love hearing him say that, because I knew it was a musky and it was a good hook set before I even turned around. That was the only fish we landed but it was good enough to put us in 3rd place overall and 2nd largest fish of the tournament.

Late September Early October

We finally got some water! That really got the fish moving, they are starting to school up for the winter, but that doesn't mean they won't eat a fly. We had some killer days towards the end of the month despite the low and clear water. A few trips had to be postponed from all the rain, but we were ok with that. It meant the fish would be back on the banks and some of the grass was kicked off the bottom. We have a few more trips this month, so we are hoping the weather stays a bit on the warm side.