Good friend, great fishermen, & intense fly tyer John Collins has teamed up with Mike McAuliffe of Rise Form Studioto redux one of my favorite, not to mention that of many trout, steelhead, & salmon.....JC's Electric Caddis.
If you don't know it or have seen this for the 1st time.....TRY IT!! The beauty of this fly is in the versatility of being able to changing up the colors to give it a different look. With the availability of different wire & tube colors, nowadays, you can come up with some very nifty variations on the theme, like all the hot Steelhead Candy colors you can think of(hint-hint).
So, please take some time and check out this fly tyed by the man himself......or else the "Jungle Cat" will pounce on you, fool!!
If you are interested in any other flies John Collins ties and want to give them a whirl on your local streams, he has an array of flies available for purchase at MyFlies.com.
One of the cooler things about fly fishing, I think, are the photographers out there who document trips and such. In this day and age of social networking, I think everyone has their own personal "fish porn" page. Only within the past year or so, have I been comfy with bringing my non waterproof point and shoot Canon out on the streams. The only device I leave behind is the digital leash of a cell phone. As much as it would be neat to upload the latest rainbow trout I've caught in Musconetcong in real time, I'd rather not. The closest I get to the water with a phone is usually post trip where I rile up my friend's thirst with a pic of myself, streamside, with an icy cold barley pop of some sorts.
Of course, some of us "have" to bring their digital leash into the stream because there may be lil' ones involved at the homefront and God forbid the little guy takes a handlebar to his grill piece because older sister wasn't paying attention while she was pedaling along with the latest Dora the Explorer song in her head and you, my friend, weren't there on the other end when it happened to get that MMS pic from wifey of your teary eyed toddler.
On the other hand, that cellphone of yours may provide you some luck as it did to my friend John Parise. In the middle of fishing the Big Flatbrook near Branchville, NJ he gets an MMS pic from his buddy who had just caught a huge ass striper a few moments before. While that exchange goes on with his right hand, the left hand is just holding the rod while the caddis pattern drifts very slowly into some very trouty water and then.............WOOOOOOSH!!!!
To get back on topic, I really like photography and it does seem to go hand in hand with fly fishing. The subject matter is quite limitless, but I really would be torn as to what I want to do when out on the stream, especially one where I've never have been, like the Loyalsock. Do I fish it hard?? Or do it photo it hard?? I find myself doing that on a much smaller scale doing things for this blog and taking pics for my album on Facebook. So, I have to give a lot of credit to my photographer friends who also fly fish. My head would explode at the decision of taking stellar pics of someone landing a brute brown during a hatch or jumping right into the hatch and possibly landing a similar brute of a brown.
As mentioned before, it's good to have a few professional photographers as friends. They not only make you look like you know what you're doing, the also can shed "new light" on things that you'd normally blow off or not notice at all. So, to have Tim Geist, whose work has been featured in The Drake, along on the Loyalsock trip was a complete thrill.
I could geek out and drool over every bit of camera gear he had (he wasn't joking when he told me he was bring 500lbs of camera gear) and get tips on shooting with my Canon 40D, which I have to mess around with more, before being comfy enough to bring it on a stream, which means I probably won't be fishing. The choices......arrrrgh! Tim has managed to capture the essence of Uncle Vin's cabin in such a way that I haven't seen. I knew he would have a field day taking photo of the contents within and out of the cabin, but the things he chose are very cool.
He has started an album about the Loyalsock on his dot.com website at T.C. Geist Photography. Please check it out.
Lately, things have been been a bit askew a far as planning trips & getting some footage in on the streams. April's theme was certainly the rain which put a damper.....no kidding on the "damp" part of it.....on things. Even the Loyalsock Trout Jam was a wash.
Tim Geist , Steve Fogel, Erik Schroeder, & Kyle Majikas were on hand for the weekend. It had rained a bunch a day or two before we arrived, but we decided to take a chance and see if by Saturday (April 30th) it would calm down enough to see some action. Most of the time beforehand was spent on the smaller tribs of the Loyalsock, such as the Hoagland Branch. A normally more calmer stream was also ripping along pretty well.
Photo: Tim Geist
Things did look promising on the tribs on Saturday afternoon after a morning spent cruising the state roads in the Loyalsock State Forest trying to get to another trib called Rock Run. We never made it there because the road had washed away, so we doubled back to try the Hoagland Branch, yet again. The warm springtime air above the stream was alive with small caddis, midges, olives, & the 1st signs of Hendricksons. It brightened the day as well as giving us some hopes of seeing some fish look up as documented by Tim's photos.
Photos: Tim Geist
As the evening approached, we headed out to our home pool and the Hendricksons were out en masse. The flow of the Loyalsock from Wednesday evening till the hatch had dropped from 6ft down to just below 4ft. As we watched the hatch roll down the "Sock", it seems that we were the only ones watching it on the stream. Not one trout was looking up. No boils. No sips. Not a stir anywhere. As the last of the hatch rose from the stream, we all looked at each other and I proclaimed that what we just saw was "Fly Fishing Blue Balls". A beautiful thick hatch, great temps, clearing water, and one big fat Нет / Nyet like they would say in Russia.
Photo: Tim Geist
With that observation we headed back to camp and proceeded to catch an epic barley pop hatch.
