Five tips for your first day fly fishing

Mark your gear
Easy enough to do, but often overlooked is marking your gear with a phone number. There is nothing worse than losing a flybox or leaving your vest in the brush and then driving home. Simple solution is a putting you phone number on all you gear with a Sharpie.

Practice casting
Take some time and tie a small piece of red yarn at the end of your fly line and give it a go in the backyard before you head out. This works well if this is your first time out or you have not gone out since last June. Confidence is king.

Know your knots
Practice and know when and where to use some of the basic fly knots. An Improved Clinch and Blood knots get me through many situations. Check out Grog's fishing knot index for more help.

 

Great list. This may go without saying, but when you practice casting, tie the yarn to the leader, which is then tied to the fly line.

Fly lines don't fly the same way without a leader.

Streams or ponds with panfish can be a great place to work on your casting. Picking line up off the water is different than picking it up off the law, and the sunnies are usually happy to hit a dry fly.

 

Great list. This may go without saying, but when you practice casting, tie the yarn to the leader, which is then tied to the fly line.

Fly lines don't fly the same way without a leader.

Streams or ponds with panfish can be a great place to work on your casting. Picking line up off the water is different than picking it up off the law, and the sunnies are usually happy to hit a dry fly.

 

Great list. This may go without saying, but when you practice casting, tie the yarn to the leader, which is then tied to the fly line.

Fly lines don't fly the same way without a leader.

Streams or ponds with panfish can be a great place to work on your casting. Picking line up off the water is different than picking it up off the law, and the sunnies are usually happy to hit a dry fly.

 

It should be noted that the section of the Susquehanna that will come under catch and release regulations extends downstream to the Holtwood Dam.
Dave W

 

Very nicely done Dave but after writing that I think you should change your avatar to a smallie :-D

 

Save the trophy mounts and just go C-P-R with that trophy fish. Mounts do nothing but collect dust anyway! :-D

 

The problem is excess nutrients in the watershed due to agriculture. you don't need to be a rocket science or spend millions of dollars to come to this conclusion. Shenandoah River in Va is experiencing similar problems. Doesn't anyone at the PAFBC think outside of the box?

 

Mounts do nothing but collect dust anyway!

I second that. Great article also, extremely well written!

 

I thought I read somewhere that it included the Conowingo pool? Which would be below the Holtwood dam

 

C & R regs aren't going to improve the fishing. The only thing that's going to make a difference is catching the polluters that are causing all the problems in the watershed. There is a reason that the Susquehanna River was listed as the most endangered river in the US a couple of years ago. It's a very polluted river in spite of the water clarity.
As for PFBC and DEP, I think they know where it's all coming from, they are just refusing to do anything about it.