Spring Rains and New Flies from the Vice

I took a short trip back to the park and big river to try my luck again on the trout that were stocked on 4/19ish.  I was met by very high and off colored water.  There were many folks fishing, however no one was catching.  The creek was swollen, fast, and off color. 

I tried a for a bit and despite seeing some large carp mating in a slack section of eddy near the bank, could not get any takes in the swift water.  I learned my new reel has a tendency to slip small euro line between the frame and spool, and how to quickly fix it, before driving back to the mouth of a smaller catch and release tributary nearby.  My thoughts were this smaller flow might have better clarity.  I was wrong.  I should have done North into the Catoctin mountains instead to hit the smaller mountain streams.  

At least I got some casting practice with the new setup.  It is a Cortland 10foot 6 inch 3wt.  Casts like a dream compared to my broken off 5wt.  

I had tied some new flies during the week including my own version of an orange perdigon I named "The pumpkin Perdigon".  I had good luck with the orange color so thought this would also be a good pattern.

I also tied up a few squirrel dubbed caddis type jig style flies.  The body was dubbed from a fox squirrel cape I had bow killed and tanned poorly.  There was some slippage, so I shaved off some body fur, placed it in a electric coffee grinder with a pinch of tan nymph dubbing, and blended it.  Seemed to make a fine grey body dub. 

I also lacked a good fast sinking stone fly jig head pattern, so with some brown ribbing I had for legs, I tied up some of these in size 14.

I also wanted some high floating sulfur dry flies I could use with a dry dropper and a friend of mine had had good luck with these parachutes tied with snowshoe foot.  I only had cream rabbit fur, so i used that and will hope it floats as well as the foot fur.

The second one I added a little hackle.

Now I just need to get back out where the trout are and some better conditions.

This weekend I will be traveling to my Mom's house for Mother's Day weekend.  I would love to hit my old farm area of the White Clay Creek, but I will be busy doing yard work for my 95-year-old mother.  

My next opportunity might be the following week as I will be attending the Baltimore shoot on Thursday and there is the little gunpowder falls creek nearby as well as me having to pass the mighty Susquehanna.    I will see what the schedule allows with my new rod.