Gary,
My good friend from Pittsburg gets up there quite a bit. He'll change flys every 5-10-15 casts until he finds a pattern size and color that seems to catcth their interest. Once he's got some looks on a particular fly, he narrows it down to what the fish sees in the fly. I've seen him end up fishing traditional wets and emergers in sizes much smaller than anyone around him is using and always outfish anyone.
One trip, the water was so low and clear we all ended up at what today would be considered almost a deserted Manchester pool. The guy to my left was the only one catching any fish and he was pulling them in regularly. We figured out he was using a #12 black woolybugger so we adjusted flys, then Oby had me figure out how much weight he was using (2 #6 micros) and finally he asked the guy what kind of tippet. It was our intro to florocarbon.
dances (Richard Ross) grabbed his keys and was off to the shop to buy us all tippet and soon Oby took his usual 1st place position but the guy was a cop who needed to report so we'll never know who would have come out the winner by dark.
I've noted a couple of things many debates have gone on for a long time about on fishing forums and they include color, size shape, flash proportions, etc. I can tell you without doubt I used to be a George Harvey enthusiast as George swore color wasn't such a big deal and used to tie with pink hackle so he could see his flys. After the past few years of being introduced to locals at various streams who always had the edge, I've learned to add a bit of orange ostrich herl to the upper thorax on my March Brown wets on Pine Creek, refuse any green but an olive tinted light green saddle and chenille for buggers below the tubes on Elk and to add a black bead behind a larger copper bead on little PTNs way up at 20 mile.
The only small steelie I can remember us catching was the stockie my son caught above the Legion Pool which was his first fish on a fly. Maybe it's because we rarely come up as a group until November and the smaller fish are scattered, I don't really know. Best of kuck!
From: "Garry V. Wiles" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Subject: RE: [VFB] IOFF flies
Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2005 16:41:09 -0400
At 03:08 AM 10/26/2005, you wrote:
>over, all's well. Besides, the best steelhead fishing is just
>getting started up in Erie! With all this rain I should be on
>fisherie.com to check out how wild the fishing is right now and what
>bizzare flys are being employed.
>
>Murf
Been there, done that, already. Made my first trip this season to the PA section of Steelhead Alley, a week ago Monday. My report was on the stream reports page of fisherie.com. It's most likely in the archives section already. My conditions where very low and very clear with very spooky steelhead. Got alot of walking in as well as studying parts of the streambed for future reference. For me, the biggest change this year has been the success of BLACK. Most of my patterns are of the chart/white/pink variety as well as the normal trout nymphs and bastard-ized trout/steelhead nymphs as well. I haven't fished a minnow streamer pattern at all, but I think it's going to be another pattern in my arsenal for next trip (planned for mid-November). I did catch one nice sized trout (Jack steelie) just about legal sized, but wastn't bulky at all, she went back. I could've fished all the ones out of her hole on Walnut as well, but they were all fo the DINK size and knowing I caught one, I felt justified in passing the rest up as catchable. My buddy caught a really nice hen on Elk with a black nymph type thing (I don't know the pattern he used) and she took a while to land, swam head down and away for a long while and didn't want to give up. She went home to feed a family of 4. I do practice C&R, but Poor Richards does a good job of smoking them as well, and I've developed a weakness for their Cajun Smoked Steelhead, and I will bring a few of them home this season!!
I'd love to meet you up there one day Mr. Murf!!
Garry Wiles
Da'Burgh, PA
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