Fly Fishing for Striped Bass
Rich Murphy
Wild River Press, 2007
457pp

The claim that any book is “definitive” has always caused me to dismiss the reviewers glowing claims that inevitably follow – and I’ll not use the term in this review – but Fly Fishing for Striped Bass by Rich Murphy comes close to meeting this ideal. I’ve had the pleasure of chatting with Rich at the Somerset show in the past and marveling at his beautiful and innovative fly patterns. When I asked him if he’d ever caught a tautog on a fly (something I’ve tried to do for years, without any luck) he responded with a tone suggesting that it was downright easy.

Looking at his crab patterns, it doesn’t surprise me that ole Mr Tog would fall for ‘em. Anyway, this book, is simply put, a pleasure to read or just peruse. Replete with color photos on every page, it’s a coffee table book that reads just as well. In its 9 chapters, FFfSB starts with an intriguing chapter that follows the migration of “Sax,” a fictional, fifty pound cow bass on her migration up the coast.

Other chapters describe the various techniques for flats, rocks, bays, etc as well as Rich’s excellent flies and other gear. Murphy, a driven, rail thin runner and type A angler is highly intelligent and you can sense his intense focus on every page. The book can be difficult to read in a bit too many sections and sometimes it seems that Murphy tries a bit too hard by half to find a sophisticated voice, writing too many passages like this:

We know from Chapter 2 that a major physiological change happens in her eyes at sundown – the color receptors or cones on the surface of her eye’s retina retract and contrast detecting receptors, or rods are deployed in their place. This enhances her capacity to detect subtle changes in the contrast gradient of the water column around her caused by the movement of her prey or predators…My surface night patterns are configured to generate a significant and/or unusual acoustical air/water intersurface rip, and like my subsurface patterns, to develop a long and sinuous horizontal profile to as maximize their silhouette against the night sky.

If you can get past some of this wordy verbiage, however (Tom Pero admits that editing the book was a challenge), there is a tremendous amount of useful information. I particularly found his water temp charts by season to be fascinating. Murphy also covers fly fishing the coast of California for stripers, a region often overlooked in other striped bass fly fishing books. This is a big book and not cheap to buy but I’d highly recommend it, especially if you’re a bit past the stage of beginning striper angler and are looking to learn some more innovative tactics and outside conventional fishing methods.

My old felt wading boots of six years were getting a little long in the tooth this past winter. With Maryland and other states banning felt soled boots it seemed like a good opportunity for some new boots.

I picked up the Simms Guide Boot at the Fly Fishing Show at Somerset from TCO Flyshop. I have had plenty of time in these boots over while in the past few months.

The Vibram rubber soled StreamTread with HardBite Star Cleats are awesome! I was really worried this combo could not stack up to my old felts and studs, but not so. I could get around easily even during the high waters this spring on the Little J and First Fork.

The leather construction is very solid. Simms put a lot of time into the design of the support and you can really feel the difference. The Simms Guide Boots are easy to put on and feel great even have been in them for all day.

I really like the speed lacing design and quality of the of the laces. Seems small, but my old boots the laces always seemed to come undone.

Really unmatched quality in the construction and comfort these wading boots provide.

Net Net: Awesome boots, worth the investment and get the HardBite Star Cleats.

This spring the water levels in the region have almost been biblical. I have had to change my plans and cancelled several trips as result of the high water conditions.

I regularly use and enjoy the USGS Real-Time Water Data website as the best way to keep up with this data. With these conditions I have been considering building an ark. To help me quickly keep up with the water levels away from my computer I started using the River Reader app by James Graham for my iPhone. I get a straight-forward way to get a quick graph of my favorite streams as the rise higher and higher each day.

There is a favorite list which you can create. The charts give you a few different time periods to view and a quick map to see your push-pins.

For $0.99 it is a quick and easy way to keep up with your favorite streams. A special drought version will be in view I am sure by the summer.

I have heard there is similar app for Android called River Flows, but don't know a lot about yet. Please comment if you are using it. Thanks @funcfish for the tweet on this!

Last fall I decided to retire my old vest. Not that new things are always better, but my approach to fly fishing had change since I purchased my old vest 20 years ago.

More recently I find myself hiking into many spots and need to be a little more nimble. I am not fooling myself, I do realize nimble and me parted ways many years ago. Damn carbs! It seemed I was overstuffing my vest with loads of fly boxes and too much extra gear. Quite frankly casting was a bother as I had eight - ten different boxes crammed in all over my vest. One big final new requirement was being able to bring my camera and reach it with relative ease.

Of course I did a lot of research on the Internet and ultimately made my way to over to a fly shop and get the touchy feely thing going. Stopped into TCO Flyshop while on one of my daughters college road shows (please pick PSU, please pick PSU) and got some help from Chris. He was a big help and I settled in on the William Joseph Confluence chest pack. Now this pack has been out for a couple of years, but I still get asked a lot about vests and chest packs.

Once I made the switch I really enjoyed using the chest pack this season. First I had to repack all my fly boxes and gear, which in itself was a good thing. (See blog post here.)

The front of the pack has plenty of room for all my essential small gear. The zippers are awesome. Nothing worse than trying to keep things contained and getting held up on stuck zipper. In the front zippered section I can load up plenty of spools of tippet, split shot, a small knife and sunglasses.

The main front compartment is designed for fly storage. William Joseph provides a foam fly holder, which I keep loaded with several of my go to flies, nymphs and streamers. About the only thing I didn't like with the pack is the mesh that is inside this compartment to separate items like fly boxes and the foam board. Often the flies on the foam would easily fall off and get stuck in the mesh separator. There is room for a couple of fly boxes. I think I found myself with three of varying size in the front. Two zingers and small side pockets were well thought out.

The back compartments had plenty of room for my camera, rain gear, and an extra fly box or two. Most importantly I could unbuckle the side straps and spin the pack around to get to these items. I used to pull my arm out of its socket trying to get my camera in the old vest.

I found the pack very comfortable even in the warm months and easy to move around. Casting is much easier now. What has worked best is the convenience of all my essential flies and gear right in front of me easily zipped up and secure.

Pro's: Comfort and convenience
Con's: Design of mesh separator

Update from William Joseph
The 2011 Confluence Pack will be continued with a few minor upgrades. Mostly the front pockets will have new earth magnets holding the pockets together instead of the zippers. Pretty cool!

One of my favorite fly-fishing books is back in print after several years. Trout Streams of Pennsylvania: An Angler's Guide, 3rd edition by Dwight Landis is must have book for anyone who spends any time fly-fishing in Pennsylvania. .

Landis provides an amazing amount of detail covering the most important streams across the state. Inspired by the streams and their surrounding landscapes, he wrote this 1st edition of this Pennsylvania fly-fishing guidebook in 1991 at a time when there were very few books of it's type.

His book was one of the inspirations for Paflyfish.com and I personally pack his book with me as I trek out on my fly-fishing jaunts.

The reprinted 3rd edition (no changes) can be found at many local fly shops and online Trout Streams of Pennsylvania: An Angler's Guide, Third Edition.

An interview with Dwight on Paflyfish can be found here.

Much like Discovery Channel's "How It's Made" Ross provides a more personal tour to show the entire process of machining and manufacturing of the Ross Reel.

Spirit River Flies have been posting a few “getting started” videos for beginning fly tiers over the past month. These brief eight minute YouTube videos can be found on the Spirit River Flies Channel. They cover how to tie each fly from beginner kits they sell. Seems like a great way to provide new tiers the know-how to get started with easy to learn methods for some popular flies.

The Spirit River Flies channel can be found here.

I was looking through some pictures my friend LukeC had posted on Flickr. I really admire his photography as they are mostly beautiful pictures of bugs, fish and tying flies. All good things any angler would enjoy. He caught my attention when he posted a picture of a screen capture from an iPhone for an application called The Hatch V2.0. Anxious to learn more I download the application immediately.

The Hatch for the iPhone and iPod Touch was recently released by Cory Pratt. The application provides hatch charts for you to carry with you while on the stream and includes some photographs of insects. With the recent update there are now 33 states and 300 rivers. Six of Pennsylvania’s more popular streams have now been added including: Fishing Creek, Letort Spring, Little Lehigh, Penns Creek, Slate Run and Spruce Creek.

The application provides a very straightforward way of selecting your month, state and river to access a very thorough hatch list.

The Hatch works off line so it will function if you are using an iPod Touch too. The hatch information is relatively brief and concise. If you have Internet access, there are additional suggested imitations via a link that takes you to Flyrecipes.com.

There are still more insect photographs and streams to be added, but Cory admittedly is asking for comments and feedback at his website which can be found at here. Found at the http://iTunes.com/apps/thehatch" rel="external" title="">iTunes store for the price of $0.99 your can take The Hatch with you on the stream. There is a free "lite" version to try out too!

Some of LukeC’s pictures are used in The Hatch application and more of his wonderful fly-fishing photography can be found here on Flickr.

What an intriguing concept…Biodegradable Tippet material!!! I was actually very excited to try this Bioline tippet. It will break down within 5 years in the environment as opposed to around 600 years for mono…now, think of how many times you lost tippet and leader on snags. And think about how many fish broke the tippet at the leader knot due to a poorly tied knot. Multiply that by how many people you see on the streams doing the same thing. That is a lot of line for nature to get tangled in.

I tested the 5X line. I initially put it through some unscientific knot strength tests. I was impressed…It held up as well or ever better than the Orvis and Frog Hair that I normally use. It was a little greater in diameter, though. The Bioline tippet measures .008” in the 5X compared to .006” in the Orvis SuperStrong and Frog Hair…a difference that is even visible to the naked eye. But how would that affect the fishing?

I put the tippet through the paces in a variety of situations trying to test the limits of the tippet. I started by casting big deer hair poppers and bulky deceivers for bass on Keystone Power Dam with a 7 wt rod. I was amazed at how well it turned over the big flies. Where I normally would have fished a 2X or larger, the 5X showed no sign of being under gunned.

I fished it with dries on the Yough. It handled appropriately sized flies very well. The flies turned over easily. The tippet performed as it should all the way through the drift, as well as when executing reach casts, curve casts, and even slack line casts.

The Yough, being known for some good fishing with micro caddis and midges gave me a good opportunity to fish over some picky risers with a #20 black caddis. Obviously not a situation where you would normally use 5X, but in the name of research, I was willing to try for those fish with the Bioline. I was able to land 1 nice brownie, but the thicker diameter tippet had an obvious affect on the drift. In the past when changing to a smaller dry fly, I would occasionally forgo adding a finer tippet in lieu of getting in an extra cast or two…I would not do that with the Bioline. While it drifts an appropriately sized dry fly nicely, it does begin to affect the drift with smaller flies.

I also used the Bioline in numerous situations tossing streamers and drifting nymphs. This is where I really liked the Bioline tippet. I lose many more flies (and tippet) when fishing underneath, so the ecological advantage would naturally be increased. I lose many fish on the strike when fishing with streamers in the excitement of a vicious hit from a charging trout…the knots held fast. I was also happy to find out that the tippet was very good with abrasion resistance when bouncing nymphs off the rocks. I had some of those big Yough browns take me deep into the structure, rubbing against the rocks and gravel, plus getting clumps of seaweed attached to the tippet, and I had no problem bringing them to hand. I am excited to take some of this to Erie for steelhead this year where it has not been uncommon for me to break off 20+ times in a day.

Looking for more perspectives, the PAFF famous, and gadget guru, “Bruno” was gracious enough to fish with it several times (Yeah, like it was a real stretch to get him to take it out fishing!) He and I hit Slippery Rock on a beautiful August evening in hopes that White Flies would bring up the stream’s hard fighting smallies. We were throwing big bushy flies. I had on an Orvis tapered 7 1/2‘ 4X leader with about 1 ½ ‘ of Bioline tippet. I found that, because the 5X tippet was a slightly larger diameter than the 4X leader, I was getting twisting on the leader rather than the tippet from casting the size 10 comparadun. So even though the leader had more strength, the extra mass of the tippet, and assumed stiffness, transferred the twisting up into the leader.

An unexpected advantage was astutely noted by Bruno...that the line had a funky color as the light faded which made it easy to see. This really helped when changing flies and tying knots in low light conditions.

Pros:
Biodegradable – Obviously the primary selling point for Bioline
Knot Strength – Par with the famous brands
Abrasion Resistance – Held up well against the rocks
Castability – Turned over very nicely, even when fishing large flies or making situational casts
Color – Easy on the eyes when tying knots in low light

Cons:
Size – The size difference, when compared with standard tippets, is visible. There is a slight loss in performance when using smaller flies. Also a heavier leader would need to be paired with it to prevent twisting
Stiffness – With the extra diameter size comes a corresponding increase in stiffness compared to other 5X tippet I have used. While this is a detriment when fishing “long and fine" it actually helps in other aspects such as turning the fly over and preventing piling.
Cost - $9.99 per 30 yard spool – a little more than I normally spend
Longevity per cost – It has a shelf life of 5 years in its sealed package…not bad. After opened, it will hold 100% of its strength for 10-12 months. While I go through a spool of tippet in approximately that time span for my commonly used tippet sizes, the fringe sizes of tippet that I use only in certain circumstances would not be at full strength by the time I got to the end of the spools.


Overall evaluation:
Bruno summed it up nicely when he said, “The fact that it degrades in such a short period and its performance has me sold. I keep putting it on the end of the leader- nuff said.” The Bioline performed very admirably in all but the extreme circumstances. With the very nice performance, good castability, strength, abrasion resistance, in addition to the environmentally friendly aspect of Bioline, it is a product that is well worth the investment.

Bioline can be found at GreenTackle.com - http://www.greentackle.com/bioline-fly-fishing-tippet.html

There are a good number of hats left from the Jamboree. If you are interested in purchasing one Email Maurice at moechi21@gmail.com and we can begin the process.

We experimented with some different colors this year. We have one left that is orange(tangerine) that would be good for fishing during hunting season and even a couple pink ones for the ladies out there There is a Navy color that looks like a dark denim.

And as always the all tan and two-tone with green, blue or charcoal visor.

The normal price shipped is $20 to your door.

On Sale Now While Supplies Last for $15.00!!