 One of my visions when I started "Irish Flies" was to pass on my passion for the sport to as many people as I can. A great way for me to do that is through video. As much as I enjoy writing this blog I understand in today's day and age people read less and watch more. Through the marvels of modern technology I can now carry a small, lightweight video camera on the brim of my hat and film my exploits. With the addition of my GoPro Hero 4 camera I now have the ability to bring live fishing action right to your monitor. Now, I will be the first to admit I am no Cecil B. DeMille, and this whole video editing thing is new to me, but I think you will enjoy the stuff I am working on. BTW, did you realize by the time you upload, edit, add effects, compress and then upload the finished product to You Tube or Vimeo you invest about an hour of edit time for every minute of finished product! I hope that time gets shorter as I get more comfortable with the camera, the software and the editing process. I did have a ball working on this first one. The first video is about 6 minutes long and was shot on the White Clay creek as I Nymphed up a few Stockers. The funny thing about video is you can not hide a thing. If a cast looks like crap, it will look like crap on video. If you break your wrist too much (which I did) you will see it. Even if you fish for nearly 20 minutes with the line looped over the butt section of the rod and didn't even notice it (look for it, you will see it) it will come out on the video. I learned a lot shooting and editing this first one and there will be many more to follow. Please take a minute to check out the O'Neills Irish Flies You Tube Channel, if you are inclined subscribe to the channel and you will get an notification each time I post a new video, or just keep up with the blog as I will post a link to each video here. I hope you enjoy "Nymphing the White Clay" As always comments welcome. Till Next time...
Tight lines To visit the Irish Flies You Tube Channel click HERE
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 Below is the PDF that describes the proposed rule changes for the Delayed Harvest Artificial lures Only (DHALO) section of the White Clay Creek's Middle branch. If I understand this correctly the Fish and Boat Commission's proposed rules will allow kids under 16 to bait fish the DHALO section year round, it will allow all anglers to bait fish during the "harvest" season and lowers the size limit of harvested fish from 9 inches to 7 inches. If you would like to comment, and I hope you do, please click here. I have already made my comments to the Fish and Boat commission and hope everyone reading this will do the same. Till next time...
Tight Lines  Well, here we are a couple of days past Christmas. I hope everybody has had a safe, fun Christmas Holiday and that everyone received all of the fly fishing gifts from Santa they were looking for. My Christmas was great and the best "fishing" gift for me came from my son Tyler. The Fishpond Nomad net will be out to good use, trust me. Thanks buddy for a great, and needed, present. With the hustle and bustle of Christmas not what it used to be for my wife and I (our kids are 21 and 19) and being SEVERAL years away from grandchildren the holidays, for us, are a simpler time. After the big day I got to spend a little time the White Clay on Friday and Saturday. I was hopeing to take advantage of the Holiday Stocking that the White Clay Fly Fishers have been doing the past several years. Things were done a little differently this year. In the past the club would do one stocking of several hundred to sometimes over a thousand fish typically right before Christmas. This year the river will be stocked three times; once in October, December, and February. Knowing the river was full of fish had me rigged and on the water by 11:30. I have been playing with a winter time rig that I learned from my buddy Eric Stroup www.ericstroupflyfishing.com in fact during his last Face Time Fly Fishing show he spent a little time discussing this very subject. During the winter take 3 flies (the maximum number allowed by the state DNR) and place them fairly close together. The Idea is to grab the fishes attention with a smorgasbord of food in close proximity to each other. A single Zebra Midge needs to bump them in the nose sometimes before they will eat it. Certainly they will move no more than a few inches, maybe a foot, to eat such a small meal. That is why you need to be extra diligent to be sure you have covered 100% of the hole you are fishing before moving on. On the other hand a fish is more apt to move several feet if it knows it has the opportunity to fill his gut. I usually will fish a big attractor like a Walt's Worm or a PFN and trail a small Nymph and a Midge, or 2 Midges of different color. This technique has worked quite well for me in the past, especially on stocked fish. One word of caution, be sure to cast an open loop or you will have a mess of tangled spaghetti in short order and be sure to use barbless or de-barb all of your hooks. With 3 flies no more than 18" apart the opportunity to hook the body of the fish with one of the other flies is heightened. I hit the river solo on Friday and fished from about 11:30 till they shut off at about 4:15. Water temp was 36 degrees and at the warmest part of the day there was a pretty steady Midge hatch coming off. Steady enough for me to switch to a dry and stick a couple before the bugs shut off causing the fish to follow suit. With the water at 36 degrees I decided to fish the deeper pools and cover the water thoroughly before moving on. I pre-tied two rigs, the first had a #14 PFN on point with a #20 Black Mercury Midge and a #22 olive Al's Rat as trailers. The second rig was a #10 Walt's Worm on point with a #18 Flashback PT and a #20 Frostbite Midge as trailers. I have done well with all of these flies on the Clay in the past ant Friday waI no different as I landed fish on all 6 flies. 
This guy ate the PFN
That is the Mercury Midge in his jaw
Swimming away to be caught again
The highlight of the day came at around 3:30 when several fish started to rise on the far bank from where I was fishing. It stopped as fast as it started, lasting only about 20 minutes. I had just enough time to switch my leader to a dry on 6X. I chose what is quickly becoming my favorite Midge dry, the CDC Puff. This is my buddy Rick's pattern and it is as effective to fish as it is easy to tie. A hook, thread and 2 materials. 
That is a size 22 Puff in his mouth
Saturday was to be much different than Friday. First off I was fishing with 2 good friends. Jim Stephens whom has been taking private tying lessons for some time now and has become a good friend and my partner in crime Ed "one boot" Hays. We met at around 11:30 and quickly realized there were MANY more people fishing today, the weather was beautiful, the temp was in the 50's and everybody had the same idea. Ed had a few new streamer patterns he wanted to fish so he decided to fish down. Jim and I were Nymphing and fished up. I had already decided to spend the bulk of the day in the area I had the most luck the day before...stake my claim if you will. I don't normally like to do that, but I knew there were fish there and if I was not fishing over them somebody or many somebody's would be. I started with the same rig I had the most success with the day before. In the beginning I actually spent more time talking as several of my old customers that were on the water. Conversations with Dennis, Ray, Bill, Rob, and Adam were a good way to rest the fish in "my" hole and it was nice to catch up with these guys. The fishing was tough and I was having no success with any of the flies that worked the day before. At one point I watched a fish move 6 inches to his left as my rig drifted past him. When the rig was safely past him he moved 6 inches to his right back to his preferred lie. I sent a text to Ed to ask how he was doing and received this picture in return. 
At this point I had been fishing for 3 hours and only had one fish landed and another LDR (long distance release). I have switched flies to every combo imaginable and just couldn't get the same results as yesterday. Finally as a last ditch effort as I blankly starred in to my nymph box I decided to do something I NEVER do. I picked a single fly, one I rarely if ever fish, tied the single fly under the indicator and cast it out. 
Second row from the bottom, second fly from the right. There is only one in the entire Nymph box!
On the first cast I was tight to a good Brown. I had just enough time to fish my way up through the run one more time, which I did landing 3 more fish. Who would have thought, fishing technical all day and the Green Weenie was the top producing fly! 
At the end of the day we all compared notes and it turned out to be not too bad of a day. When you are on the water with good friends is it ever a bad day? Off to tie Weenies. Till next time
Tight lines... |
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