Don's sculpin

Well, as a moderator of this board, I think if I saw the pattern posted by a troll, I'd be inclined to delete it. (but first I'd copy it).

Personally I think it is silly, even bordering on kooky to try to keep a fly pattern secret. I know several of you folks have a high respect for Don Douple. I know up until now I held his fishing prowess with high esteem over talk from the likes of Chaz and others dropping his name. But now he'll only be the guy who refuses to give up his sculpin pattern rather than the guy who invented it.

Oh well, I guess ya gotta be known for something.

Maurice
 
Hey Guys thanks alot for helping out with Don's sculpin,but I think I'll just buy a couple when I go to the LL,that way I won't
start anymore trouble, for now. :-o
 
Be prepared to fork over $5.00 per fly.
Maybe thats why they dont't want the pattern out on the web?????????
 
$5 a fly and you'll get it caught in the nearest tree on your first cast!

On the same note as JayL, I'm in that generation, or close to it, and feel the same way. I got frustrated when i first started fly fishing. Actually looked for a mentor but wasn't able to find one until recently. However for our generation everyone is too proud to do so. They want to do things on their own and if they fail they just give up. And with something like fly fishing, i see these as crucial years. I can see the sport taking off for the younger generations like myself, but it needs help from the generations that have been doing it for years. I see the likes of the bass shows on OLN being taken over by consistant fly fishing shows and more and more kids taking up the sport. I just started less than a year ago and never met anyone else my age that fly fished. Since I've put the word out that I do, I've probably met half a dozen other guys at my church alone that do so also. I'm trying to organize a social group to get more people in my area into the sport and plan to do so in the next month. I would love to do my part in waking the sport up from the "old man sport" mentality. yeah i sit at home and tie my own flies a few days a week , and my wife calls me an old man for doing so, but I want that to change. I can see the sport taking off like the PGA first tee program. Having kids start out doing so and starting like wild fire. I've gone 10 different ways in this post but I think from the few months of experience I have in this sport, I feel it's teetering towards explosion and just needs someone or something to push it. I will fly fish the rest of my life and it only took 6 months and some wise people from this site to take me there, if only I can do that to someone else in the future.




(wanted my 100th post to be worth it I guess)
 
$5 bucks a fly??? I am going to add snorkel and finns to my flyfishing gear. I'm cheap. I won't snap off green weenie that i hate and are easy to tie.

Maybe I should bronze the sculpin and put it up with the "good" china.


Oh, and what is the "proper" way to fish the sculpin?
Inquiring minds.....
I caught one this weekend on a caddis nymph. It looked alot like Don's. He wouldn't tell me the recipie either.
 
Don's a good guy, a very skilled angler. He's contributed a lot to flyfishing and stream and wild trout conservation in PA.

At the show in Carlisle last year he was selling a kit, with materials, instructions etc. for tying his Sculpin. He's caught some huge trout with that fly.
 
ryan, the sculpin is an odd fish with no air bladder. Therefore, it spends all its time hugging the bottom, scurrying between rocks. It likes to raid redds for the eggs. I would toss this upstream and let it settle, then strip it in short, jerky bursts. I'm thinking pocket water and riffles. If it isn't too big a secret, maybe someone in the know can tell us how it intended to be fished.
 
To hell with the secret $5 sculpins.

Anyone have any good patterns that they would like to share? Keep in mind, I WILL share them with people. If it's your own pattern I'll call it 's sculpin. I will not, however, pay you a dime!

Also, I know sculpins are common on the LL. what about the tully and some of the smaller freestone streams in the SE. Are they that common?

Jay
 
I wouldn't be afraid to fish it along the bottom of a long deep pool in short strips...from tail to head. This is where I see them most of the time.
 
JackM wrote:
ryan, the sculpin is an odd fish with no air bladder. Therefore, it spends all its time hugging the bottom, scurrying between rocks. It likes to raid redds for the eggs. I would toss this upstream and let it settle, then strip it in short, jerky bursts. I'm thinking pocket water and riffles.
Click to expand...

Yup!

Ed Shenk's describes his technique of fishing a sculpin as "Sculpinating" which is similar to what Jack describes with short bounces of the fly on the bottom keeping in contact with the fly at all times.

If you want to read a good book loaded with history about the Letort and big fish, get a copy of Ed's book, "Fly Rod Trouting" and read Chapter 9, "The Flies Trout Love to Chew". In that chapter he describes his sculpin technique. An even better idea is IF you are in the vicinity of Carlisle on a weekend, stop by Cold Spring Anglers fly shop. Ed is known to hang out there on Saturday's and you could buy a copy and get him to inscribe it too!

I've fished the Letort since I was a kid and the stories in this book still drive me crazy!

And jayL:

Sculpins are VERY common in many streams but usually not in the numbers found on limestoners although I venture to guess a hungry trout would slam one on any creek since they look as much like food as any Woolly Bugger I ever fished. I've had good luck with them on Letort Spring Run, Big Springs, Falling Springs, Green Springs and Trindle Spring Run. Coincidentially they all happen to be limestone streams with the word "Spring" in their name so maybe that's it!
:)
 
http://www.westfly.com/patterns/wet/whitlocksculpin.shtml

http://globalflyfisher.com/streamers/fish/muddler/grandison7.htm

http://www.danica.com/flytier/bobpetti/whitlock_near_nuff_sculpin.htm
 
ty Scratch.

And thanks for sharing, guys.
 
>Don's a good guy, a very skilled angler. He's contributed a lot to flyfishing and stream and wild trout conservation in PA. >

Although I never knew Don anywhere near as well as either Troutbert or Chaz, I'd say that in my experience, he's a real good guy who has done much for the sport and in his day, for the TU mission in PA. I certainly wouldn't want to see anything done that detracted from Don's ability to generate income with this fly of his. He's one of those guys who, IMO, has given far more than he's taken.

It does though, open up this larger question as to whether fly patterns are more like lasagna recipes (as somebody so aptly put it..) or more like an acknowledged patentable item like a new version of Clorox 2 for even whiter whites.

As I recall, this is a road that Jim Teeny trod in a much larger way a good many years ago when he actually patented his nymph series. There were a lot of hard feelings among his contemporaries over this. Not so much that they all wanted to tie and fish Jim's nymphs, but rather that there was a feeling he had violated a major tenet of the sport. At the time, his business was hurt rather than helped by his actions. Although he seems to be doing pretty well now.

It's an interesting question though. How much commercial influence is healthy in the sport, in all its aspects from stream access to fly recipes? And how much is too much? It seems to me a pretty delicate balance...
 
I think his fly is more like a darter than a sculpin, and should be called so...A sculpin has a very defined head, aka The Muddler...Where's the darter has a tapered body..They are both bottom dwellers but there are more darters here than sculpins, and I've been lookin at em for 30 + years..
 
Ah hem.....back in the 70s, there was a guy named George Kovacs that supplied many shops in the Lehigh Valley with flies. George was an excellent tier and quite a salesman to. He had a fly called the Ashey Pale that he sold for a pretty penny. Supposedly, it was constructed of secret materials that were extremely hard to find. Old George sold a ton of these flies and all the while he was handing them out he'd be putting on a line about how he guarantees this fly with a money back policy, and he's never had a single fisherman bring one back. Along with the money back promise, he'd also mention that he doubts he will ever get one back because the worst fisherman in the world could catch fish with this fly.

Well, I fished that fly for 15 years and never took a trout on it, even though I "discovered" what the secret materials consisted of. Maybe I'm a little slow, but one day I was setting streamside pondering this Ashey Pale situation, and finally came to the conclusion that old Geo Kovacs was the slickest fly salesman around. I doubt any single fisherman ever wanted to take credit for being the first fisherman to ever return the Ashey Pale back to George Kovacs. I know I didn't. :lol:

Ol' Festus gots a feeling that somebody on the LL prolly has a few of Ol' Georges genes floating around in his veins. :-D :-D Before ol' Festus pays $5 for a trout fly, he'll go buy a jar of Mikes Pink Shrimp Salmon Eggs and go put a real hurtin' on Mr Trout. :-D :-D :-D

Besides, the Muddler Minnow rates as one of the slickest ad campains in fly fishing history. Who the he11 ever came up with the idea of imitating a bottom dwelling creature with deer hair must have been drinking some bad arsed whiskey. :p
 
Festus, I really enjoyed that story. It sounded like the start of a short story in a magazine. Maybe you can make some money on the side, without patenting any flies!
 
Ol' Festus has been published. Betcha ya didn't know that eh? :-D
 
jayL,
Good article - thanks. As a high school teacher I see these kids every day that have been overpraised all their lives.
Fly fishing teaches humility, patience, attention to detail, and appreciation for the beauty of the natural world. Rivers, streams, beaches and small wild trout teach us that we as individuals are, in fact, very small.
 
Don't know or care about Don's but if you are looking for a sculpin pattern that works try Ed Schenks. @ http://www.danica.com/flytier/eshenk/eshenk.htm
Tight lines,
Buffalo
 
Does anyone know of a site with directions for tying spun deer hair heads?
 
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