Streamside on Line

In this issue:

  Articles, news and fly tying tips are gratefully accepted. Please e-mail them to Roy Cubbler. Thank you.

As you no doubt know by now, the PA Fish and Boat Commission is proposing a Simplification of Trout Regulations, to take effect in 2006 if approved at a Commission meeting later this year. Commission staff has proposed two alternative “focuses,” one which would concentrate on limited harvesting of Trophy Trout, the other centered on strictly Catch and Release angling.

At state council’s March 5 meeting, the Trout and Salmon Management Committee presented its recommendations for comments on these proposed regulations as follows.

Overall, the Catch and Release alternative is preferred as the appropriate fisheries management tool to protect and enhance wild trout populations.The Trophy Trout focus, while limiting harvest to one trout per day 16 inches or larger, would eliminate protection of the more mature breeding stock, particularly since harvesting of Trophy Trout would be allowed after Labor Day during the fall spawning season. Combining the current Heritage Trout Angling and Delayed Harvest Fly Fishing Only regulations into a single Catch and Release FFO regulation is viewed as a positive step forward to enhance angling opportunities on DHFFO streams throughout the year. Contrary to what has been stated by PFBC, fisheries personnel, a a great many of these stream sections do support hold-over trout populations during the summer months.

As stated above, eliminating the current Catch and Release regulations in favor of a new Trophy Trout ALO designation is considered a step backward in trout management policy. Catch and Release Artificial Lures Only has been shown throughout the country to be one of the most effective measures for protecting and enhancing wild trout populations, both in total biomass and in trout population structure.

Changing the current Catch and Release regulations on privately-owned stream sections could adversely impact angling access to some of these waters. Many landowners have provided access on the basis that no harvesting would be allowed, and a change to Trophy Trout harvesting might very well result in posting of land.

The elimination of wading restrictions, currently imposed on several streams, is not viewed as a problem except for that period in the fall when trout are known to be creating spawning redds. Likewise, the elimination of nighttime fishing restrictions is seen as a positive step, except that some private landowners might object to allowing access after dark. 

While hooking mortality with barbed hooks is unquestionably greatest when fishing with bait, using lures with multiple barbed hooks undoubtedly causes its share of mortality also. Since barbless hooks (or hooks with pinched-down barbs) are preferred by a majority of fly fisherman, perhaps the PFBC should consider retaining the barbless hook requirement at least on the proposed Catch and Release FFO streams.

While state council applauds the PFBC’s move to simplify trout regulations, we trust that Fisheries Management will see the wisdom in recommending the Catch and Release alternative when the Commission meets on March 16. We also commend that part of the overall plan which retains the Wild Brook Trout Enhancement and Delayed Harvest Artificial Lures Only regulations as currently constituted. 

It is critical to our mission to encourage as many of our members as possible to write to the PFBC to express their comments on the proposed Simplification of Trout Regulations. If enough letters are received prior to March 16 when the Commission has scheduled a special meeting to review this proposal, there is a good chance that Fisheries Management might change their recommendation from a Trophy Trout alternative to a Catch and Release approach. There will also be an official public comment period after the proposals have been acted on at the March 16 meeting. Remember, the previous proposals to eliminate Delayed Harvest FFO, and to change Delayed Harvest ALO regulations to allow bait fishing, were defeated by the large number of letters received opposing these changes. 
Your letters should be addressed to:

Dr. Douglas Austen
Executive Director
PA Fish and Boat Commission
P.O. Box 67000
Harrisburg, PA 17106-7000 

The article above comes to Streamside courtesy of Fred Bohls, President, Coalition of Concerned PA Anglers (of which DJL is a member).

Spring may be here according to the date on the calendar but it sure doesn’t feel like it. I have yet to get out to wet a line and start curing a bad case of cabin fever. At least we were able to float stock French Creek’s Delayed Harvest Fly Fishing Only (DHFFO) area on March 5. Thanks to Todd Palmer for dispersing the float boxes, Larry Heimes for running the ground crew, Bob Bonney, our local Waterways Conservation Officer, for all his help and cooperation in not keeping the floats crews waiting and, of course, all the volunteers who braved the snow and cold to come out and help. It went off without a hitch and in record time. This year, because the dirt road down to Sleepy Hollow Camp was impassible, Larry tried a new float from Cooks Glen Road down to Sheeder Mill Bridge. Larry reported that it went well with no problems. This float covers almost 0.8-miles of stream and is a good way to disperse the trout downstream from one of the most popular put-and-take locations.

The Exceptional Value petitions filed by the Green Valleys Association for the lower part of French Creek and for the Pickering Creek are moving along. French Creek’s petition is mired down in review in a PA DEP review of the biological and chemical data. They have indicated it will not be before the fall of this year that they will complete the review. Apparently, other priorities are taking precedence. The Pickering Creek petition has passed the completeness review given by the Environmental Quality Board and is moving on to the next step. Although, there were over 100 co-petitioners including our club, three townships, West Pikeland, Uwchlan, and Upper Uwchlan, did not sign on to the petition. Their fear was that achieving EV status would hamper growth related needs in their townships. How this will affect the outcome of the petition for the Pickering has yet to be determined. Keep your fingers crossed because there is a long way to go.

The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission has set forth a number of new proposals for regulation changes. Notably, they are proposing that the DHFFO areas be changed to Fly Fishing Only Catch and Release exclusively year round. This would definitely be a bonus for fly fishermen when conditions are favorable for holdover trout during the summer months. More information on their proposal can be found on the PFBC website. Appropriate letters of support or comment will be required. I have yet to thoroughly review all the proposals and will keep our membership informed via email to all that are on our email list (if you are not, you should be).

Our Learn to Fly Fish Course is coming up on April 23. At this writing, and most unusually, we are behind in registrations. My theory is that long, cold, wet winters produce a hibernating effect that can only be cured with warm, springtime conditions. The class can accommodate 40, so if you have a relative, friend, or neighbor that is interested tell them to sign-up now. The course is a great value and also one of the ways the club raises needed funds for its operation, education and conservation activities. Registration forms are on our website.

We have seven hearty club members that have signed up for the fishing trip to the Hungry Trout in Wilmington, New York in late May. This has been a joint trip with the Long Island Flyrodders organized by Gil Padovani, our webmaster. I have personally gone on this trip almost every year since 1991. It is a wonderful trip, reasonably priced with great scenery, fabulous food, great accommodations, an abundance of fly shops, good fishing and good friends. Although every year has been different from a fishing standpoint, with some years great and others a blowout, the camaraderie and experiences standout as some of the best I have had. For me, it has become one of those things I have to do. 

“Somehow it was what I was looking for, a connection of some kind. I remember thinking, okay, it’s over, I’m back.” -quote taken from John Gierach’s Trout Bum, last paragraph, last page.

Until our next issue, tight lines!

On the stream improvement front we are currently in the permitting phase for a new project on the upper end of the DHFFO area. This project will be to stabilize the south bank along the upper fly stretch and will most likely keep us busy for the next two years. As you can see from Photo #1 this area has been hard hit over the last 8 – 10 years. In order to give an appreciation of the work required to complete this project I have enhanced the photo to depict what the project area will look like once the project has been completed. As you can see from Photo #2, it will take many tons of stone and a strong volunteer turn out to complete this project. 

          
Photo 1 - Current Bank                  Photo 2 - Stabilized Bank

Complicating matters is the remote location of this work area. However, we are currently working with Warwick County Park to have access to the area via an existing dirt road. This should allow us to move the stone to within 50 – 100 yards of the project site with equipment such as a Bobcat. 

As in past years, we will plan our workdays for one Saturday a month from June through September and we will be looking for plenty of volunteers to help out on this project.

Frank Wilson, a founding member of our club, passed away in January. He was in his early 60’s. A number of club members attended his viewing and memorial service including myself. I didn’t know Frank that well, except that he was an exceptional fly fisher. We went on a few day trips together and, as I remember, he always seemed to pull out a pattern that worked when nothing else would. When I called him on the phone for a simple question or request we always seemed to talk for an hour or more… “So how are you doing Bob” was his intro. I remembered never to call him at dinner time.

Frank was a gentleman, quiet but cordial and always was willing to help out with club activities. Over the years he was a presenter at a number of our meetings, always willingly demonstrated his skills as a fly tier at our two fly tying meetings each year and was a casting instructor at our Learn to Fly Fish Course. Frank had a condo outside of Jackson, WY and fished the west extensively. I wish now I had taken him up on his offer to “come on out” and fish with him and explore his secret places. I regret this lost opportunity and his passing at such an early and vibrant age. The League extends our sincerest condolences to his spouse and two daughters. We will miss him and all that he offered.

--Bob Molzahn--

Easter Sunday report
Easter services were held at (where else) Spring Creek, 550 bridge and up, to be exact. Services commenced promptly at 11:00 and were sparsely attended, just Brother Freeman and myself. The weather was good, 40s, solid overcast, no rain (all day), stream was on the high side and just slightly green. It seems that fishing on holidays can be good or bad, depending on what holiday it is and on what day it falls. It turns out that Easter is a great holiday to fish. While the majority of anglers spent Easter getting preached to about their sins, hunting Easter eggs, and biting the heads off of chocolate bunnies, the bugs still hatched and the fish still rose; in squadrons, as it turned out.

I put in at 550 bridge, made a few casts on the downstream side just to thumb my nose at the butthead property owner who kicks everybody off that stretch. Immediately spotted a palomino tracer trout, felt obliged to catch it, and of course couldn't. I did pick up a couple unseen browns from the same run, chased the skunk right off the bat. So I nymphed through 550 run, further educating a few of Pete's pet fish; they ate an even mix of #14 Cress Bug and #18 tailed Serendipity. For the first time ever, I wore both sunglasses and 1.5x reading glasses around my neck, having struggled to see small flies and thin tippets the week before. It worked out great aside from getting the croakies all tangled up, I felt like Flip Pallot, or Craig.

About noon I moved up into the big, long glide pool above 550 run. Know where I mean? Just downhill from the house where sheep stand on the front porch and try to go inside when the owners let down their guard. Yeah, that's the place. So I'm strolling upstream along bank, dodging the refuse that flows downhill from the previously mentioned house, and don't you know the pool is just stiff with rising trout. At closer inspection, the place was stiff with olive mayflies too. I have to admit to thinking, "can't you guys just stop rising, move up in to that run, and start dredging sucker spawn off the bottom instead?" But no such luck there, and I was obliged to hang up my perky yarn strike indicator and beloved Dinsmoor split shot, and retie with a long 6x tippet and a.. can I say the word.. OK, here goes..“dry fly.”

It's not that I don't like fishing dry flies. I do. It's just that the activity lies outside my comfort zone. When fishing nymphs, I feel like an efficient predator, picking my way through rocky chutes and across bouncing riffles, casting, reaching, mending, slipping casts into a pocket here, a slick there, snatching out fish like a heron. And then somehow, when I tie on a dry fly and wade into a long pool full of rising trout, I mysteriously transform from a stealthy hunter to a bumbling hippopotamus. Ever see that Looney Tunes cartoon that features the tutu-clad, ballet-dancing hippo? She tries real hard but the stage always ends up collapsing underneath her.

So I try to ease into the water, slip on the muddy bank, slide into the creek with a splash, send shock waves across the pool like miniature tsunamis, and hang my first cast in the trees behind me. The fish keep rising, impervious to the streamside dunce. But I persist, my feet settling firmly into the silty bottom, my backcasts avoiding the foliage, and after a while, my fly bouncing happily down the current. Having established myself in the game, the deal now became trying to track my fly on the water and to determine if and when a fish might have eaten it. I'm standing in a olive colored stream, on a dull gray day, trying track the progress of an olive and gray speck among thousands of other similar specks. After a few drifts, I raised my rod to cast and came tight to a fish. That's good and all, but not as gratifying as realizing that I actually had a bite to begin with. So I really bore down, scrutinized where my fly landed and tracked it like a hawk. As often as not, the fly I was watching would flutter its wings and fly away. Then a fish took a natural several inches from the speck I was tracking, and a few seconds later the end of my line started swimming away. Guess I was tracking the wrong speck again. I landed him, not sure who was more surprised.

Another thing about dry fly fishing in March is that you freeze your ass off. Standing immobile in thigh deep water is not the same as lightfooting along through ankle deep riffles, my toes turned to ice and I had to pee like crazy, but I just couldn't stop casting. I thought back to frigid winter days spent on the Salmon River, chucking and ducking like a robot, hoping against hope for the tug of a steelhead. What ever happened to those waders with a zippered fly?

In any event, there must have 15 to 20 trout rising within easy casting distance at any one time. And gradually, the previously bumbling hippo began to transform; casts laid out smartly and dropped the fly onto the water with just so much slack, it became apparent that my fly did in fact look slightly different from the naturals, a trout rose to intercept the speck I was watching, and I came tight to him. I landed the fish, dried the fly, worked out line, picked a riser, and caught him after a few drifts. And so it went for the better part of three hours. Amazingly (to me), I used the same fly the whole time, the thing was both indestructible and unsinkable. It was a #18 comparadun; wispy dun tails, dubbed light olive body (so as to match the underside of the naturals), and a dyed dark-dun, coastal deer hair wing. After catching a fish, I would need to wash and dry the fly and the best way to do so was to press it between folds of my undershirt. A drawback was that the only place my undershirt was exposed and accessible was right underneath my chin, tough to see. I must have hooked the fly in my shirt a dozen times. But in the end, I clipped off the fly, popped it into its own compartment in the box, ready for retirement and to serve as a reminder of Easter 2005.

Lessons learned:

Registration: Runners – register today. You can download forms from GVA’s Website (www.greenvalleys.org) or pick up a form from one of the local business partners listed on the website.

Pledges: Make your efforts count for more. GVA invites both teams and individuals to help support the Walk/5K Run by asking for pledges from friends and associates. Collect $20 or more and get in free. Let potential pledges know that the funds will be used for the continuation of our work in protecting 155 square miles of watershed area – your drinking water. A sample pledge letter is available on the website and can be printed for your use.

Profitable non-profit partnerships:
Non-profits: Don’t miss an easy – and enjoyable—opportunity to raise money for your worthwhile causes! In the spirit of community partnership, Green Valleys Association is offering non-profit organizations a 50-50 split. 

Here’s how it works: Non-profit organizations form teams and collect pledges in support of the team’s commitment to participate in the 5K run or one of the Walk/Run for Your Watershed hikes taking place on Saturday, May 7, 2005. After the team participates in the event and turns in its money, a check for 50 percent of total funds raised will be made payable to the team’s non-profit organization.

From The Art of Fly Tying published by The Freshwater Angler

Many people credit Izaac Walton with the beginning of fishing with artificial flies. In reality, the origins date back thousands of years. The earliest written account is from the third century A.D. when Aelianus described a Macedonian method of fishing: They do not use natural flies for bait, but instead, they fasten crimson wool around a hook, and fix on to the wool two feathers that grow under cocks’ wattles, and which in color are like wax. In 1496, an Englishwoman named Dame Juliana Berners described dressing a hook with the same materials as the Macedonians used.

Interest in fly tying blossomed in the 1880’s as fly tiers in Europe and America were tying both gaudy, fanciful wet flies and increasingly exact imitations of natural insects. But in America, those wet-fly patterns gave way to more realistic flies, as native Eastern brook trout were slowly replaced by the brown trout. Brown trout, imported from Germany, were far more selective than brookies, and as a result, tiers were forced to create patterns which more closely resembled the natural insects in the trout’s diet.

In the 1950’s, feathers and fur from exotic and endangered species which had been standard materials for fly tiers, became more and more difficult to obtain. Tiers turned to other sources of natural materials, and patterns no longer called for owl, condor, or imported jungle cock feathers. In the 1970’s, the introduction of synthetics such as Antron and Mylar revolutionalized fly tying. New colors were developed in synthetic threads, dubbing, and wing materials.

Today, in an age of man-made materials and high tech equipment, fly tying shows no sign of reduced popularity among those who fly fish. The art provides relaxation, pride, and enjoyment.

According to the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA), fish and shellfish should be an important part of everyone’s diet because such foods contain high quality protein and other essential nutrients, are low in saturated fat, and contain omega-3 fatty acids. However, nearly all fish and shellfish contain traces of mercury, and as a result, the FDA recommends that certain members of the population should be especially careful in what types of fish and shellfish they consume, and how much of each. The FDA and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have published a pamphlet advising women who may become pregnant, are pregnant, women who are nursing, and young children to avoid some types of fish and to eat only certain amounts of those fish and shellfish which are lower in mercury contamination.

Individuals who fall into the categories iterated above should not eat shark, swordfish, king mackerel, or tilefish. They should limit their consumption of fish deemed lower in mercury content to 12 ounces (2 average meals) per week. Young children should eat smaller portions. Safer fish are shrimp, canned light tuna, salmon, pollock, and catfish. Albacore tuna has more mercury than canned light tuna.

Those who consume fish from local fresh water streams or costal waters should check local advisories. If no advisories are available, eat up to 6 ounces (one average meal) per week, with smaller portions for young children. Do not consume any other fish during that week. 

The FDA website, www.cfsan.fda.gov or the EPA website, www.epa.gov/ost/fish contain listings of mercury levels in fish. 

For further information on risks of mercury in fish and shellfish, call the FDA’s food info line toll-free at 1-888-SAFEFOOD.

Jerry Girard, a collector of “fine fly fishing tackle,” was the presenter at the March 28th meeting of DJL. An expert in antique fishing gear, Girard mesmerized his audience with his knowledge, enthusiasm, and his extensive collection of tackle gleaned from various periods of the American fly fishing experience. Girard maintains that one cannot consider the future unless he understands the past, and this is especially true when it comes to fly fishing. He is well versed on the developmental progression of the science the materials and the equipment used in each phase of fly fishing over the years. One piece of information seemed to surprise (but please) most of those in attendance: According to Girard, many people turn first to New York and the Catskills when they seek information rep-resenting the roots of fly fishing in the United States. He maintains that those who seek the truth would do far better to turn to Philadelphia where they will find the true starting point of American fly fishing. The City of Brotherly Love may even claim credit for the nation’s first organized fly fishing club. 

Girard’s information was gobbled up by his attentive audience. His slide presentation was interesting, but it was his display of ancient rods, reels, flies, lures, and literature which garnered the greater response. This was one of those evenings that one hated to see end. In a single hour or so, Girard whets the appetite of his audience. It is obvious that he has day’s worth of information tucked away in his mine. He proves beyond a shadow of a doubt his contention that fly fishing is an art, an historical continuum, a science, and a philosophy. Well done, Jerry Girard.

We welcome the following new members: 

John Collins, George Kile, Doug Macbeth, Bill Daley, Ray McKinley, Michael Dougherty JT, Richard Wildermuth and Robert Edney

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Joe Vasile is the treasurer for DJL, and his training makes him a perfect man for the job. Joe is an accountant who is retired from the comptroller’s office of Campbells Foods. He has been a member of DJL for “more than ten years.” Joe and his wife, Jane, have five adult children. His work as treasurer is not the end of the service to our club. Joe has assisted with stream stocking and various stream improvement projects; he is also a member of the Board of Directors.

Joe enjoys all kinds of fishing, but he has gotten to the point in his fishing experiences that he pretty much sticks to using flies to entice his quarry onto his line. Of late he is doing quite a bit of small mouth bass fishing in the Schuylkill. Joe’s brother is involved in a fishing project in Alaska, so Joe gets to travel to our northernmost state from time to time to stay in his brother’s cabin. The target there is the beautiful Alaskan Salmon. He has also participated in the annual Hungry Trout trip.

Every year, when the club sponsors the Fly Fishing Course, students receive a handbook of information. This year, those books were produced and assembled by Joe Vasile, and for that, we thank him profusely. Joe, for all that you have done (and continue to do) for the Dame Juliana League, this edition’s Spotlight is shining on you.