Sunfish around Harrisburg area

[Swattie87]

I appreciate the advice! I think I am going to start tying rigs at home. Do you tie everything from the tippet to leader? Or do you expect for the leader to generally be ok and just tippet added? I know tippet sizes are based on depth of water, right? I generally keep leader size around 9ft and then tippet a few more.
Also gonna look into the stonefly flies as well. Any recommendations on type or color?

I use a braided furled leader and then connect tippet to that. Sometimes when fishing small flies I have to step the tippet down (say 3x to 5x) to get it to present like I want, but not more than once. But to answer your question I just tie from the egg to the nymph beforehand at home. So saving two knots, one from the egg to the tippet between them, and one from the tippet to the nymph. Which to me isn’t a big deal when it’s warm out but is when it’s cold!

As to stoneflies, nothing in particular. Just big and heavy. Like size 10 or 12 with beads and weight in them. Use it to help sink and “anchor” the rig, and minimize to some degree the need for split shot. I’ll admit I don’t tie much, haven’t been bit by that bug, yet. I like the Lively Legz ones, FWIW, and supporting a local PA business. Great guys and great service. Good quality to the flies if you get the barbless hooks, and reasonable prices. I’ve had a couple of their regular hooks break, when crushing the barb ironically, never when fighting a fish. They offer most of their stuff in barbless now, so solution, buy that, and I do.

 

[jifigz]

Best stonefly pattern I have ever used is the Pat's Rubber Legs/Girdle Bug/***** Creek/take your pick at whatever other name you wanna throw at a very similar pattern.

My further advice to you at this stage is to skip the double fly rig. If you are new(er), just save yourself some headaches and fish a single fly. Tie on whatever fly you want, run the lightest tippet you can because it sinks faster and easier, and use some split shot and a single bobber. Make sure that you are down near/on the bottom. You want to at least try to mend to keep that fly from going too quickly.

As for indicators, the air-locks, Oros, Trout Magnet foam floats, NZ style, etc should all work well. Get something that is easily adjustable for depth.

 

[TimMurphy]

Hello,

If you are going to fish a single fly don't forget the IPW or a Squirmy worm. Fish it just like a real worm.

Video: How to Tie the Infamous Pink Worm - Orvis News

When I got the email from Joan Flagler of Tightline Productions pointing me to this week's video, I responded, "Tim's just trying to **** people off now, isn’t he?" Of course, I was kidding, but I. . .

news.orvis.com

Regards,

Tim Murphy 🙂

 

[jifigz]

Squirmy Wormy is a good fly, but I prefer the San Juan for a couple of reasons. 1) I enjoy tying them more. 2) The San Juan sinks at a much faster rate than does the squirmy.

The squirmy flat out catches fish, though.