By Matt Yancheff ("Swattie87"- Images Courtesy Author)
I often see a common question come up early in the learning curve for anglers looking to get into small stream, wild trout angling: How do I find good streams to fish? It can be an intimidating first hurdle to overcome, but once over it, the way is open to a very rewarding angling experience. It requires some homework, often good for a cold evening in the dead of winter with your beverage of choice. You’ll swing and miss sometimes, but the home runs you hit will be well worth the strikeouts.
Below is the method that I’ve developed and relied on, and that has led me to many good small stream days in the woods of Pennsylvania:
1. Locate via some simple Googling, the following three lists published, and regularly updated by the PFBC: 1) Natural Reproduction List. 2) Class A Wild Trout List. 3) Wilderness Trout Streams List. They contain different...
By Matt Yancheff ("Swattie87"- Images Courtesy Author)
I often see a common question come up early in the learning curve for anglers looking to get into small stream, wild trout angling: How do I find good streams to fish? It can be an intimidating first hurdle to overcome, but once over it, the way is open to a very rewarding angling experience. It requires some homework, often good for a cold evening in the dead of winter with your beverage of choice. You’ll swing and miss sometimes, but the home runs you hit will be well worth the strikeouts.
Below is the method that I’ve developed and relied on, and that has led me to many good small stream days in the woods of Pennsylvania:
1. Locate via some simple Googling, the following three lists published, and regularly updated by the PFBC: 1) Natural Reproduction List. 2) Class A Wild Trout List. 3) Wilderness Trout Streams List. They contain different...
The Ranting Angler started with a blog in May of 2021 by Dave Rothrock. Dave is a frequent poster on Paflyfish and often attends the Spring Palfyfish Jamboree. He goes by the name @OldLefty . The blog was a way for Dave to share his knowledge of fly fishing gained from many years of fly fishing and guiding. Over the years, Dave made multiple appearances on the Suffering Outdoors YouTube channel with John Kolb. The videos John and Dave did together drew a lot of interest and fanfare. The idea to start a YouTube channel was born out of a meeting in a sub shop in Williamsport, PA while eating cheesesteaks. Dave and John decided to join forces to create The Ranting Angler channel to publish future video content relating to fly fishing.
Joel and I got out between rainstorms to fish and film with the flies from this month’s The Native Fly Box and lucked into one heck of a small stream wild brown! Things are starting to really heat up on the trout streams and we’re going to try to get out as much as we can. Thank you to all of you that subscribed to the Native Fly Box and to all of you who subscribe and watch here on YouTube.
May and early June are unquestionably my favorite weeks for fly fishing. Warmer weather with lots of exciting hatches makes for fun days and even better evenings. I especially enjoy the spinner falls that occur on some of the larger streams. My trips to North Central Pennsylvania have provided me the best luck with some of these late evening spinner falls. Being that the big spinners don't show up until after dark, they are not the easiest to identify, and one trip in 1989 I capitalized on this unique seasonal challenge.
"So Dave, how’s it going?" This was the booming voice of Ron "Trout Dog" Kolman. Ron is somewhat of a local legend for about 50 yards of guardrails along Route 872 on the special regs section of First Fork in Potter County. We were staying up at Greg Sipos's camp for one of our annual spring pilgrimages to God's Country. Both of them were kind enough to take me under...
Many times the rising fish you see in the winter are taking midges. I’ve done well in the winter fishing midges on warmer afternoons. It’s great covering rising fish fish in the winter since I become tired of dredging the bottom, doing the chuck-and-chance-it to unseen fish. I could never stand watching fish rise in front of me without giving them a try. Tying Midges
Midges are not hard to tie. I use a small sized emerger hook which is a wide gape 2x short curved hook. For dries, just add a thread body and a few fibers for wings or a wisp of dubbing for pupa:
Hook: Emerger hook size 20-28
Body: Thread (black, cream, brown, white, olive) to match naturals. I always try to catch a few insects with my net before I select a fly. If I can't capture a natural, I'll usually try black first.
Off The Path Outdoors is a creative project by Travis Deitrich from Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. He has been trout fishing all his life, but it wasn't until seven years ago when he went on a trip to Potter County that he got into fly fishing. With the help of some members of his father's hunting camp, he quickly learned the ropes of the sport and hasn't looked back since. Travis started some of these social media channels to share the new places he has been discovering. I find them really fun and inspiring, and I'm sure you will too!
Tom Rosenbauer learns from George Daniel why euro nymphing is so effective for catching trout and how to do it!
Innovation is an inherent aspect of every sport, and fly fishing is no exception. One of the most prominent and productive techniques currently utilized in the sport is known as European Style Nymphing.
Euro Nymphing is a fly fishing technique that originated in Europe, particularly in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and France. It involves the use of weighted flies without a strike indicator, and the angler relies on feeling the fish biting or seeing the line twitch to set the hook. This technique allows for more efficient fishing of the river's bottom, resulting in more fish being hooked.
But what exactly is European Style Nymphing, and why should you try it the next time you go fishing?
The answer is simple: Euro-nymphing offers one of the most intimate way of getting to know a river. It is an...
While most Pennsylvania fly fishermen target river smallmouths during the summer, bass can be successfully targeted all year and the "pre-spawn" is among the best times, especially if you're after large fish. When water temps hit the mid 40s - this would usually coincide with mid March here in the southcentral part of the state - river smallies become noticeably more active and move up out of their winter hibernacula. These winter locations are usually the deepest part of a river, often the low, deep, slack water in front of dams. As bass become more active, they start to spread out a bit but still tend to eschew current.
By this time of year, they start to feed quite a bit more but, unlike summer when most of the bass lay up in front of boulders and mid river structure and aggressively hit poppers, my experience has been that pre-spawn bass are shoreline...
ChatGPT is an innovative technology that has been in development for years. Artificial intelligence (AI) was once limited to science fiction and academic circles. However, it has become widely available to the masses in recent times. AI systems are now used for a variety of purposes, such as producing prize-winning art, writing college papers, developing recipes, proofreading texts, and much more.
As a self-learning model, ChatGPT can answer complex questions. I was curious to know how knowledgeable and precise ChatGPT is about fly fishing. Therefore, I asked a reasonably straightforward but subjective question about fly fishing patterns in Pennsylvania.
The questions I asked:
“List for me the top ten fly patterns for Pennsylvania.”
The answer:
As a language model, I do not have personal opinions or preferences, but I can provide you with...