Bahamas - Chub Cay

Well I admit, it has been way too long. I mean way too long. I've been busy... fishing haha. I realize now, that it's a lot more difficult to capture photos and movies when you are the one in charge of landing all the fish. I mean my hands are usually pretty full... So these photos have been borrowed by the core of people that have been sharing fishing adventures with us across the Atlantic. 

The first group of pictures are from Chub Cay a small island in the Bahamas island chain. We spent 5 full days fishing had a few opportunities to catch white marlin but came up a little short. We did catch a pile of dolphin, or as you may know them as mahi-mahi. 

Fishing Creek, PA (07/11/2013)

The past few weeks have been filled with excessive rainfall and it has kept me busy observing all of the flow levels on the USGS database.  Most days you could still fish but the conditions were not optimal by any stretch of the imagination.  When I've gone out to Spring Creek we have had a lot of fish but nothing gigantic like Jeff hooked into on Thursday.

Due to the precipitation that we received in Central PA on Wednesday night I checked some of the stream gauges and decided that we would take a gamble and check out Fishing Creek.  The numbers were not insane but the fish we hooked into were healthy to say the least.  The first fish of the day was a nice brown trout and then we worked further up the stream and I heard Jeff say "I don't even know what to do with this trout."  Knowing him and our fishing conversations, I knew it had to be a hefty trout because I've never heard him say that when he hooked up with a fish.

After making my way downstream to him, I caught a glimpse of this trout's body and knew this was potentially the fish of the summer.  He was using 4x tippet so he was nervous to apply a significant amount of pressure onto the fish, so he let it make a few runs and applied minimal side pressure until we got his head out of the water.  Once Jeff got its head out of the water, I knew the Nomad hand net was about to be engulfed by this huge brown trout.

I was glad to be a part of this big brown as I netted it for Jeff but the conversations that were had about this fish kept us busy for the remainder of the day and into the night.  We reminisced stories about the fish like it was Bill Brasky from Saturday Night Live.

Enjoy a few of the pictures of this toad of a brown trout! Special shout out to my dad Greg Hoover for capturing these photos, he was clicking that camera like Marty Stouffer.

Jeff and his big brown trout

Nomad net saves the day again! 

Spring Creek Before the Storm!

Jeff Scipione and I hit up the streams today before all of the rainfall arrived in Central PA.  We fished Spring Creek and had a lot of activity fishing sub-surface.  Initially the morning started off slower then what we thought but we ended up hooking into a bunch of healthy trout.

We started off taking fish on inch worms and sow bugs and then the rainfall started to drizzle.  I quickly switched to an aquatic worm and fish destroyed the pattern.  Several of the initial takes from the fish almost took the rod out of my hand and made the hook ups very easy to land the trout.  As the rain started to pour down on us the fishing picked up and we were slamming into trout.  Soon after, the grumbles of thunder and the realization of the two-inches of precipitation that was on its way forced us to call it a day.  If only it could've held off for a few more hours, but we always need the rain this time of year to keep the streams healthy for the remainder of the summer months.    

Shown below are only a couple of the larger fish that we caught, but stay tuned for the rest of the fish that are on Jeff's camera!

Enjoy!

  

A Morning on Spring Creek!

The summer is almost officially here and in full swing and Spring Creek is in great condition.  I took the opportunity to fish several sections of Spring Creek and had a great day of subsurface fishing.  The patterns I fished was a wet ant, inch worm and a variety of Czech nymphs.  All flies yielding nice fish and the only thing I had to worry about was the constant stare from the adult ducks tending to their young in the slower moving water.  

Attached are a few of the pictures of some nice trout that I picked up throughout the morning and afternoon.  I haven't uploaded a few of the underwater shots that I took, so stay tuned to see how they turned out.

Enjoy!

Salmonfly Hatch in Colorado

Below is an email that we received from one of our good fishing buddies, Luke Massaro.  After reading his email and enjoying his pictures, he found a way to make me extremely jealous of his time spent on the headwaters of the Colorado River.  Enjoy and thanks to Luke for the update! 

"Boys,

I had the opportunity to spend two days on the headwaters of the Colorado River fishing the hatch of all hatches, the Salmonfly hatch.  It was truly a sight to see fishing the mouth of Gore Canyon where the Colorado River gets to take a breath after rushing through class IV and V rapids farther up in the canyon. My first thought after hiking up into the canyon and seeing the Salmonfly hatch in action was, "Man these flies are huge!" And for good reason, the flies that I was seeing buzzing around like Chinook helicopters had been maturing for three years and had finally made their migration to the surface.  Fishing dry flies this big at size 4-8 reminded me of the 17 year brood of Cicadas that hatched in PA back in 2011 and the Salmonfly hatch is a similar phenomenon where the entire ecosystem thrives off of one insect for a three week period.  At 2.5 inches long, an adult Salmonfly is quite the meal for a brown trout or bird. Dry-dropper rigs and high stick nymphing the fast water proved to do the trick and bring up sizable brown trout that were keyed in on Salmonflies. While I forgot my camera in the truck on day two as a result of shear excitement, I did manage to snap some pics on day one to capture the hatch.

Cheers,

Luke"

"Howling at the Hatch"

Sulphurs are still going strong on the Little J...

I find it hard to believe that I would frequent the Little J over Spring Creek in the early hatches of the 2013 fly fishing season.  Every angling experience that I partake in on the Little J presents multiple opportunities to get into great fish.  The last two evenings have had abundant spinner falls and the dry fly activity has been great.  

On Monday, I could not fish all evening as I had to call it quits around 6:00PM, but the nymph fishing was very productive.  I started the afternoon fishing an inch worm due to the increased winds the last few days and caught a bunch of fish.  After that I switched to a sulphur nymph once I saw a few duns and picked up a few additional solid brown trout.  

One other notable observation that I made was due to the low water conditions and that these trout have be subject to a lot of dry flies, you may want to use a smaller diameter tippet.  A no brainer, I know but sometimes I find myself being a creature of habit and I forget to take specific variables into account.  With that being said I typically use 4X tippet but recently have had trout rise up completely vertical to refuse to eat dry flies.  After making the switch to a 24 - 30 inch 5X tippet segment, fish began to attack my fly once again.  Try it out, as I'm sure most would be able to make these distinction but it is often worth trying if you find yourself experiencing similar refusals in shallow or slower moving water.   

Below is a group of photos of some of the fish that ended up in one of Kevin Best's beautiful Nomad hand net.  

March Browns on Pine Creek

My father and I had one of the most memorable afternoons on the stream this past weekend fishing Pine Creek.  We stopped into the Slate Run Fly Shop and Wolfe's General Store to get one of the best homemade sandwiches money can buy to eat for dinner after fishing.  If you ever fish Pine Creek, stop into their shop and make sure to get a sandwich and check out their fly shop downstairs.  

After we got our dinner, we headed straight to Pine Creek and had a lot of fun fishing some bigger water.  Both of us got into nice fish and once the March Browns started popping I switched to a dry pattern and started picking up fish after fish.  It was an amazing afternoon on the stream and what was even more fun was that I had the chance to share this experience with my father.  Even afterwards a fisherman came up to us and said you guys put on a clinic and this unnamed fisherman enjoyed my response, saying "Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in awhile."

Below is just a snippet of some of the beautiful brown trout that Pine Creek has to offer.  There are certainly a lot larger trout lurking and there was one trout that I hooked into earlier in the day that I never got to see but it snapped me off within seconds of hooking into it.  Reason enough to go back and see if we can get into that trout again!

Enjoy a few of the photographs from our trip to Pine Creek!