This was my third Sunday in a row where I participated in a fly fishing competition. I left my house Saturday night and began the 4 hour drive to the Little Juniata River. My friend Dave allowed me to stay at his camper, so I spent the night there. I haven’t fished the Little J in a long time and have never been on this particular section where the competition was taking place. The meeting started at 6:30am and I found out that I drew the second session which meant I would be controlling another angler during the first session. I preferred this because I could get a good look at the water and come up with a game plan before fishing. While I was controlling the first session, I spent a few seconds flipping rocks and looking at bugs to get an idea of what to start with. I noticed a lot of dark nymphs under the rocks so I had a plan to start with a black perdigon.

This weeks comp was located on Fishing Creek in Pennsylvania. I don’t have much experience on this stream, but it looked a lot like water I grew up fishing. I drew a beat that looked pretty good from the road and I was excited to start things off. I used my typical set up with a perdigon and an emerger, but the flows looked really low, so I sized down to .12 pierre sempe and 7x tippet. Taking my learnings from the prior week, I was focused on improving my landing ratio by tying better knots and staying relaxed during the fight.

I’ve been dabbling with the competition fishing scene, I use this as a great way to observe much better anglers fish so that I can learn by watching them. I had done my first one about a year ago in the middle of winter and picked up a few things for sure. With a busy work schedule and life with 2 kids, I hadn’t signed up for anymore until I noticed 3 comps coming up in September that were close enough to drive to. I signed up and got into all 3 and was really looking forward to learning some new things.

We got to our next destination which was another tailwater in a completely different part of the state. Unlike the first river, this one is not known for a lot of fish, but it does carry the occasional big one. I fished with Ryan the first day and he started out in the front of the boat. We agreed to switch spots when the guy in front landed a nice fish. We started the day blind casting hoppers and pmd dries near the banks until we spotted heads to target. As we floated down the river, we had a few takes, but didn’t connect. In one section, there was a really nice trout coming up and sipping dries, Ryan moved into position and had a take, but didn’t connect. We worked that run a bit longer and got back into the boat. As we came into a really fast run, a nice rainbow came up and sipped Ryans hopper, he set the hook and landed a good fighting fish.

The next few days were just as incredible as the first. We were guided for 2 more days and rented drift boats on the final day before heading over to the next tailwater on day 5. We floated different sections of the river and went through some beautiful canyons, saw plenty of bald eagles, osprey, elk, mule deer, and even bighorn sheep! As we got lower on the river, there seemed to be a better mix of brown trout, on the first day it was pretty much all rainbows.

It was finally time for our 7 day fishing trip to Montana.  I’ve been out west mulitpile times for hunting and family ski trips, but only once to fish.  My friend Jim put together a great fishing itinerary that included 7 days of fishing, 6 of which would be guided. We would spend the first 4 days on a tailwater, 3 of which would be guided and the fourth day we would rent drift boats and go on our own.  After that we would head to another part of the state to fish another tailwater for 3 more days. 

This summer has been pretty brutal, with the high temperatures and low rainfall, options to fish are fairly limited close to home. The only real options are some popular tailwaters, so I called up a few friends, loaded up the driftboat and headed north. We got to the ramp around 8:00AM and shuttled the cars. We started the day in a run that is usually really productive. I used a single fly or a tandem rig with lighter flies and focused on using my casting technique to get the flies deep fast. This is something i'm trying to get better at without having to use heavier beads to get down low so that everything looks more natural to these heavily pressured fish. Jim, Dave, and I worked this run very thoroughly and were not able to produce any big numbers, which was suprising. I did land a nice rainbow at the tailout which took my single sulphur colored perdigon.

For the past 5 years, we’ve spent two days in the Catskills each spring as part of a work related trip. My friend Jim organizes this trip and is gracious enough to have his company, and a few other companies sponsor the 2 day event. The goal is to mostly dry fly fish, but somedays the fish aren’t really looking up. Friday was one of those days! We managed to anchor the boat up and do a little nymph fishing. The water we fish is one of the most pressured fisheries in the area, so I like to keep things small. I was using 5x sighter with 6x tippet and 18-20 was my go to fly size. As usual, my entire leader is just 50’ of sighter material attached directly to my tippet. Simple and small, but very effective at times, especially fishing bigger water. With this thin and light set up, I always feel more comfortable fishing a little farther away when I can’t wade any closer.

After the prior weeks exploration trip, I knew the insect life was pretty abundant in the river so I decided to do a later float and hopefully get into some bug activity the last few hours of the day. The kids had t-ball in the morning and once that finished, I headed for the river. We had the boat launched by 1:30pm and did the same float as the prior week. My father in law, as well as my friend Jim joined me on this trip.

My friends Adam and Jim joined me on the float, we met at the boat launch around 6:00AM and got everything set up for the long float. Once I set up the boat and anchored it up, I went out with a sculp snack jig streamer while I waited for the other guys to get set up. I started jigging the streamer slowly on the bottom and had a hard take that I managed to hook into. First fish of the day before we even launched the boat, great start to the day and it was a nice wild brown too.

With a few warmer days earlier in the week, I planned a trip to do a little streamer fishing on a popular tailwater. I talked my dad into joining, as well as my friend Jim who is always up for an adventure regardless of the weather. Not that it would have made a difference in my decision to go fishing, but I was pretty surprised that the water temps where peaking around 38 degrees. My original guess would have been lower 40s, but either way, we were still going to go.

I’ve always found that a little competition helped drive me to push harder than I normally would, regardless of what I was competing in. When I found out there were fly fishing competitions, I’ve always been intrigued to try, but a little intimidated by the process of signing up and trying to figure out all the rules. All that being said, I finally decided to give it a try and knew this would be a great way to watch some excellent anglers and try to learn some new tactics through observation.

New year, same story. Headed to PA again to fish because most of the water around me was completely blown out from all the recent rain. I looked up flows on the river app and found one stream that seemed somewhat fishable. I decided to head there to practice for an upcoming competition I signed up for. I’ve never done an official competition before, only some charity comps for project healing waters, so I have to change my set up to be legal for competition.

My battle with the Salmon River in New York continues. I don’t know what it is about the river, is it the size, is it the species of steelhead, or is it simply cause I suck at fishing? I don’t know but I’m trying my best to figure it out. I have had some epic days steelhead fishing on the river and some really shitty days, but I haven’t been able to understand why. Before I get into the chronicle from the past weekend’s trip, I want to quickly discuss the method of fishing I chose and why I avoid other tactics.

Most of my chronicles are focused on fishing, however I recently went on a trip with my father and an old friend to grouse hunt in New Hampshire. Growing up, if I wasn’t fly fishing, there was a good possibility I would be grouse hunting or at a skeet shooting competition. I met a lot of great people on the skeet field, and one of those people is Dr. Gary Trilli. We’ve been in contact since I moved from Pittsburgh about 20 years ago and finally found some time to get together and hunt.

Another early morning trip to PA for some wild fish. I left my house around 4AM so that I could have a little time to night fishing. We had a little bit of colder weather the day before, but the high was supposed to be back up to 80 degrees. The flows were low and water was crystal clear. My friend Jim met up with me and we were pretty excited to do a little night fishing to start.

Three years ago, I started fishing a lot more at night for trout, mostly because we had our second child and that was the best time to go without feeling guilty about leaving my wife at home all day. In the past three years, I have done quite a few trips, not only on my drift boat, but also wade fishing areas from State College to the Catskills. It will be interesting to see how much has changed when I look back on this article, but this is where I stand today.

My friend booked a room for a few days in New York and invited me to join him for some steelhead fishing. I couldn’t make the whole week, but I was able to break away from work to fish one day. I try to fish this river as often as I can, it’s one of those places that continues to make me doubt everything I think I know about fishing. Some days are phenomenal and other days I work my ass off and don’t even move a fish, let alone hook one. Growing up in Pittsburgh, we fished the Erie tribs a lot and those steelhead were pretty cooperative with basic trout tactics. Get some good presentations in prime water and you will certainly hook fish and likely good numbers of them.

It’s so easy to get into a comfortable rhythm, fishing the same section of water, with the same patterns and presentations that worked so many times before. The one thing I’ve focused on the last few seasons was getting out of my comfort zone by fishing new water or committing to a different presentation style. On this trip, I decided to float a new river that I’ve heard about from a few friends, but never actually fished it myself.

Found some time to do a little daytime fishing so I headed to a PA freestone. I met up with my friend Adam who recently moved back up north from Texas. We got to the stream at sunrise and were the first ones in the parking lot. We rigged up and headed to the water, flows were a little high after the recent rainfall and water temps were in the upper 50s.