NEW WEBSITE UP

www.laurelridgerods.com

Yellow Creek Trout Club

I have been fishing the club recently due to convienience and proximity to school and have been yielding excellent results. The club is owned by Steve and Joe Renosky of Renosky lures, and during the winter months this place is nothing but dormant! Some huge rainbows, browns, brooks and even a few tigers populate these waters. During the summer the carp fishing here is phenomenal as well. With the water being so cold dead drifting nymphs and egg patterns have been producing well, but when the water gets a few degrees warmer a streamer or swinging wet will be the go-to. Both of these fish seen here were taken on a size 14 flashback pheasant tail.

Sili Shiner

Sili skin is some sweet looking stuff once you can use it. This fly is pretty simple to tie.















Using a Saber Salmon Hook, Size 4
















Wrap Lead to the start of the hook eye to keel and swim naturally once finished.
















Tie in marabou and flashabou tail, in this case white and pearl are used.















Wrap back to the start of the tail after you tie in the Pearl EZ body.
















Push the tubing back and secure at tail, whip finish and put some head cement on the back part.















Fold over the sheets of sili skin and cut at the fold to make a symmetrical shaped minnow body















Peel backing off of material and place it over tubing evenly















Fold sili skin together on itself and sqeeze down the entire length to secure it and shape a minnow body.















Add prismatic eyes for a finished look, and trim body to look even underneath if needed.

Tippets

Tippets are by far the most important piece of tackle that you will have on the stream. When fishing for steelhead I find it very advantageous to use Flourocarbon due to it's refactive qualities (or lack thereof) when submerged. It's important to let your presentation hang vertically in the water column so that the fish see the flies first and not the tippet. But when you want to buy flourocarbon you are usually paying an arm and a leg with some spools running to 15 dollars. I just wanted to post about some flouro I found to be really productive, and inexpensive.


Cabelas Flouro

Cabelas manufactures this for Segauar, and at 7.49$ a spool it's hard to beat.

November 11th Trip

Wow haven't done this forever, but figured id' take some time out to post. Made the third trip of the winter season on November 11th with a fellow board member. The conditions were less than favorable but still managed some hookups. Very low and crystal clear conditions didn't allow for much error in fishing. The fish were very skittish but plentiful, and seemed to turn on at certain times of the day. Hot flies were white/pink glo-bug size 16, and white opalescent estaz egg. Some older fish on the upper parts of the tributaries already, but wise to the game I didn't manage to break the over 10 mark that usually comes with fishing in Northeast. All in all a great day to be out on the streams though.
Here are some Pictures:

Nymphing Indicators

It's been forever since I have actually had the time and to be more honest, the motivation to blog. I plan on trying to update this site more. I figured I'd ease back into this with one of my favorite fishing techniques that accounts for about 90% of my tight lines. But, with so many options for nymphing what can really be constituted as the best method? It's hard to say. As usual with most fly fishing scenarios, in different situations some techniques work better than others.

Ill start talking about Indicator selection then get more in depth as time goes on:

Indicators come in all shapes and sizes, colors and styles. As a general rule they are usually teardrop, round or pill shaped, and come with a variety of attachment options. I have used probably about 50 different kinds of indicators in my quest to find the ones that suit my needs for steelheading the best. I will say firsthand, Fish Pimp indicators are the crappiest accessory to fly fishing ever invented. Actually managing to keep the indicator on the line while hooked up is more of a challenge than landing the fish.

I keep at minimum these two styles of indicators on me.

http://www.floatmasterco.net/ to me has the best indicators on the market today. They use a dense foam that will float a ton of shot with tungsten nymphs. These are developed by our friends one state to the West at Steelhead Alley Outfitters. These floats come 5 to a pack and come with some durable surgical tubing for a pegging setup. These indicators are unique because they utilize the "right angle" setup that has come into so much use for me the past 2 years. It's helpful because it keeps the fly tracking straight under the float rather than having to mend and "check" your float every 3 seconds.

I stumbled upon my second choice after a fly shop that I frequent displayed them on the front counter. What I thought looked like transparent gum balls actually turned out to be a viable choice for an indicator. Westwater's thingamabobber comes in second for a spot in my box. The best thing about these is the lightness being that it uses trapped air instead of foam. It makes a nice entry into the water with minimal disturbance. Secondly the fact that it's transparent allows light to pass through it and not cast as much of a shadow, probably looking more like a bubble rather than a solid floating down the stream. In clear water, this indicator would be an excellent choice. They can be purchased at http://www.westwaterproducts.com/.

Easter Sunday

Well since my family had Easter last week figured I'd hit the streams up. Definetly had a good day of solitude. Didn't see another angler anywhere until about 2:30. With the season winding down the fresh fish are a little harder to come by, but with some looking you can get into some. I started out at 20 mile in the morning, there were fish there, but the water was very slushy. Once the afternoon warmed up and burned off some of the slush the bite turned on for about an hour. I was in the middle sections of 20 mile and walked almost the entire length, did more sweating than I did catching. Found the most number of fish in the middle section of the stream lots of dark fish with some freshies mixed in. Had most fish respond to a pink san juan worm but caught a few on eggs too, sluggish bite due to the cold water and snowmelt. For the first time I can honestly say not one smolt caught either! Ended the day at the Walnut Project waters. The flow was a little higher and off color, but there were definetly fish there too. Fished the vacant manchester hole for about 2 hours and managed 4. All in all exactly 10 fish landed, ill take it on any day.

Some Notable Pix

This is the biggest one I caught so far this year, long and hefty Boga'd at 13.9 (I think it was smaller) despite the fact the water was so cold this male put up a great fight. Sorry for the bad Pic, self timer shot.

Still some fresh fish! Good Luck. This one was taken on a white sucker spawn with a krystal flash tail.