Teaching the Guide

I have been a Fly Fishing guide for the last six years and I learn more about the sport from my clients than I could ever figure out myself. One of the most important lessons I have learned over and over again is what it means to be on the water. As a guide our primary focus is to put fish in the net for the client. This is very important, but for most clients is a secondary perk of the trip. This is especially true for people who are trying the sport for the first time. They are paying for an experience and for a guide and experienced fly fisherman it is easy to forget about the other aspects of a great fishing trip besides the number of fish caught. One of my favorite lines to clients when we reach the river is "welcome to my office", which I can take for granted some times. My clients always remind me how lucky I am to do this for a living when they do one of the most frustrating things for a guide and all beginners do this and you cannot blame them for it. When you are guiding someone you are constantly watching their indicator for any movement and when it does move and there is no reaction by the person you wonder why. I will look up and they are staring at the environment around them and you can't get mad because that is part of their experience. They are just happy to be on the water and I need to be reminded of the value of that from time to time. So thank you to everyone I have taken out recently for that.

As for the fishing, the Casselman river is done as far as trout fishing. When I was on the river last week there were few trout left and the harvest season had not even started yet. The Casselman does have a good population of rock bass and some nice smallmouth if you are looking for a place to fish for those species. A small streamer in crayfish colors will be your best fly to catch these fish. Hatches on the Savage this week can best be described as sporadic. Sulphurs and little yellow sallies account for the greatest volume, but there are still some March Browns and on cloudy days BWO's . I have had my best fishing recently with big sculpin imitations at low light in the morning and evening. The North Branch and the Youghiogheny were blown out for most of the week because of the rain that those watershed received, but hopefully I will have a report on them next week.

Bug soup on the Savage Tailwater

Hatches are in full swing on the lower Savage. Sulphurs size 14-16, Little Yellow Sallies size 18, March Browns size 10-12, and Blue Wing Olives size 18.With these bugs add in various caddis in green and tan and you have the bug soup that is the Savage right now. I have fished it twice so far this week and one day bugs were prolific and the fish were rising everywhere. The other day bugs were sporadic and the fish were rising only occasionally. This is why I love the Savage, every time you think you have it figured out it will throw you another curve and send you back to the drawing board. The Savage is at 60 CFS and around 54 degrees and should continue like this for the next week or so.

Tools of the trade

There are many things I carry with me on the river, but two are very important when it comes to solving mysteries a seine and a fish pump. The seine will tell you what is in the river to help you narrow down fly selection to some searching patterns, but the pump will tell you what fish are really eating. Today was a classic example of how these tools can make or break a day on the water. I hit the Savage around 11 am and was picking up a few fish on the march brown nymph I was using, but nothing to right home about. I finally caught a fish big enough to pump usually around 13 inches is a good size and its stomach was filled with size 20 green caddis emergers. There were caddis flying around, but not enough to surmise that the fish were keying in on them. That is why the fish pump is so important! I ran into another problem after looking through my fly box I found the perfect pattern in the wrong color. I always carry about a dozen sharpies with me just in case that happens. I colored the fly and preceded to lose count of the number of fish I caught. It just goes to show you that a few simple tools can be the difference between no fish and tons of fish.