The Fly Fishing in Show in Somerset, NJ - 2010

Saturday was a fun day spent at The Fly Fishing Show in Somerset NJ. I met up with a lot of friends, sat in on some interesting seminars and enjoyed an awesome vendor trade floor. There was so much stuff going on it reminded me of being on Penns Creek on a late May evening with about three different hatches happening all at the same time.

The trip started at the Letort in Carlisle early Saturday morning. No we were not actually fishing, but caught up with some forum members I really admire Dave “Fishidiot” and Josh “3wt7x”. I enjoyed and appreciated a leisurely bus ride setup by the guys from the Cumberland Valley TU.

Once there we scouted the trade show floor. It was a great set-up with over 250 vendors, a couple of casting areas and a small casting pond. As you can imagine the usual suspects were there with Sage, Scott, St. Croix and many other traditional product vendors throughout the trade show floor.

More pictures on the Paflyfish Facebook Fan Page found here.

A variety of fly shops from the region had booths offering what seemed to be a lot of very good deals. I enjoyed catching up with a Chris and Tony at TCO Fly Shop. They had a rather large well-stocked setup. Jonas from The Feathered Hook was good to see and had me laughing.

Jumped over to the hotel side of the event where all the seminars were being held. I stopped in on Jim and Ernie from Laurel Highlands Guide Services where they shared a very good seminar on the Yough. Bryan Kelly from Kelly's White Fly Shop started the afternoon with a knock out presentation about smallmouth fishing on the Potomac. Both seminars have me ready to hit some bigger water this year.

I had a chance to spin through the floor one more time and caught up with Mike Heck as he was tying flies and talking it up with a bunch of fans about his awesome book Spring Creek Strategies: Hatches, Patterns, and Techniques

. Would have loved to have caught up with Dave Rothrock, but he was a man on the move making presentations. Next time Dave!

There was a good crew of PaFlyFish members including: Fishidiot, Gfen, Pcray1234, 3wt7x, Heritage Angler, Tim Murphy, Rolf and Wetfly. Plenty of other events and seminars that were too numerous to see in the one day I was there.

We had nice trip back with on the bus with the CVTU crew that included a dinner stop at Cabela’s with just one more chance to drain any cash that was left in my wallet.

Great show put on by Chuck Furimsky and staff. Definitely one fly-fishing event you should not miss.

 

are you required to yell "incoming!" or "fire in the hole!" before casting? I'll just yell it anyway cuz its funny.

 

oh and not to be picky but I believe it's "staple" not "stable"... may be I'm wrong...

 

After putting time and effort into getting a dry fly just right, it always seemed like a shame to me, to go and matte up the hackles with some thick, gooey floatant. And I don't think that any of that stuff floats the fly all that well anyway.
So, I started using a liquid type called orvis super float. Just a quick dunk of the fly , and off you go. And flies treated with that stuff floated like a cork.
Unfortunately, it contained a carcinogen - and Orvis quit making it.
So, I decided to give this home made stuff a try - after reading about it in one of George Harvey's books.
And though it's not quite as good as that old super float, it still works better than all of the other floatants currently on the market IMO.

One drawback to it however, is when you fish in cold weather. The stuff will get quite thick in temps under 50 degrees or so. To counter this, I just keep the bottle in my shirt pocket so that it's closer to my body heat. And that keeps it fluid.

 

Not to put a damper on your recipe, but lighter fluid has a few carcinogens as well.

 

"Charlie don't surf!"

 

THey had a similar concoction at a fly shop in Montana last year. They called their home made concotion "Fly-agra".

 

Back in the 80's, Orvis marketed what was almost certainly a combination of TCE (trichloroethane, a dry cleaning fluid and general industrial solvent) and silicone. They called it "Superfloat" and it worked fantastically. You dipped your waterlogged or fish-slimed fly once in the stuff, false cast once to evaporate the TCE and leave the silicone and away you went, high floating down the line. But by the mid-80's. it was gone and no longer available. I don;'t know whether Orvis got environmentally conscious or if they started getting complaints from people who had newborns with three eyes...

TCE is pretty nasty stuff, a known carcinogen. During my summers in college, i worked in a copper mill. I swept floors and helped out where necessary. A lot fo the stuff we swept up was lubricants from the cold draw extrusion process and it really gunked the brooms up.
But we had a big vat of TCE. Dip the broom once and it was clean as a whistle.

I think I'll stick with my green Mucilin, Frog's Fanny and fake chamois cloth. I don't need another eye...

 

Frogs Fanny has a warning on it's bottle - saying not to breathe any of it. That would be pretty hard to do IMO - unless you wear a filter mask - because it just seems to fly around everywhere when you dab it on the fly. They also tell you to wash your hands after handling it. I guess it's not completely kosher either.

FWIW - mucilin also makes a liquid floatant that you dunk the whole fly in. I've used it too, but don't think it works quite as well as the home made stuff.
I also have no idea what it's composed of either

 

reason i only use "Jack's Flystuff" all natural and floats em like a cork. permanent.

 

Friends-

I fished with Bill on a very rainy day last year on the Delaware. I had a very difficult time floating a fly that day, more trouble than I ever recall having using FF and Aquel.

Bill did not experience the difficulties I was having so early this year I queried as to his magic formula. I mixed some up, and I have never had a fly float as well.

Yes, the stuff is flammable. Yes, it requires a good container. And yes, there are probably some things we should not be breathing. But I will recommend this mixture highly. It works great.

Nice pic of Bill at the top, maybe next time he will put his shirt on.

JG

 

if your not even suppose to breath it in, why would you want to subject a fish to put it in its mouth if your gonna c&r? just asking, seems weird.

 

I fish a good bit with Dryflyguy and his formula does work well especially in the rain. I am set to convert as the Frogsfanny has definitely been breathed and the effects are not comfortable. It is extremely important to have a good bottle to carry it in, I recommend an old glass bottle that is used contain head cement that seal thoroughly after continuous use.

It is true that lighter fluid contains carcinogens but then so does gasoline, something I am having trouble avoiding. I suspect, like most things, if this is used carefully and the fly is allowed to dry thoroughly before presentation the overall negative effect will be comparatively nil.

 

I keep my Mucilin formula in a Sally Hansen Hard As Diamonds nail polish bottle after I've used it all as a head cement and cleaned the bottle with acetone. The brush makes a neat applicator. I hope Oboma's EPA doesn't find out.