tjm

Beyond my skill set. I've never caught a fish on a fly/indicator rig. But as always. I'm curious; what is meant by leading fly and trailing fly? Is the lead fly closest to the indicator in the dropper position of traditional wet fly rigs and the trailer at the end of the leader as the point fly would be in a wet fly rig or vice versa? and by indicator, are you referring to a suspension device?

Did they ever get results from this study?

How are you fishing those beadhead midges? are they bottom bouncers? I've only ever used two midge patterns, one called a "small chironomid" 50 years ago had ribbed thread body and a puff of "floating yarn" as gills and the other is Griffith's Gnat. Both surface flies. Both caught lots of trout. Simple ties.

I've seen a couple of "house" cats kill full grown cotton tails. Wife has a mama cat that feeds her babies grey squirrels. We had a tomcat that caught doves, stalk them til they flushed and jump head high to snatch them out of the air. did that several time one summer. When we first moved here we had feral cats killing our game hens until I shotgunned 17 of them. The last one belonged to a neighbor about 1/2 mile away, because he described it to me a couple days later. "Cats kill approximately 2.4 billion birds every year ... the domestic cat has contributed to the extinction of 33 species worldwide" Get rid of your grubs and the armadillos will leave.

At first glance at that picture, I thought "Hippy Stomper", which I guess if I was going to do the suspension thing might be my first choice, but they aren't quite the same http://www.andrewgrillosflyfishing.com/tying-the-hippie-stomper/

In an area where they travel, put a wood floor in any working cage trap and put a wing fence (20' long and 12" tall plank) up on both sides of it to funnel the first armadillos into the cage, once the wood gets saturated with armadillo pee other armadillos will have a reason to enter the cage.

All those nests were full of deer eggs too, I imagine. I have weird non-nesting deer, they just lay down here or there for a nap and move on when the nap is over. Don't know how they ever hatch out those spotted fledglings with all that moving around. Maybe I just never found their nests because they are so high in the sycamores. Spots blend in with the tree's spots, I bet that's it.

Jump shooting ducks from a tandem canoe is a vague memory from the years back east, late '70s maybe. Bill and I took turns in the bow seat.

You need to call in and tell them that birds have nests and mammals have Dens. A deer den should be approximately 5' high by 4' wide and 10-12' deep, with rushes instead of straw on the floor.

You'll get better yeast or sour-dough bread with a hard wheat flour than with all purpose flour. 50 years ago King Arthur was the best, I haven't baked in the past several years so, don't know if it still is. All purpose flour is fine for baking powder biscuits or sausage gravy or fish -breading and that sort of thing.

An organized crew can strip-salvage a car in ~5-7 minutes I've heard. But they have tools for dismantling the vehicle and transport for the stolen stuff. An escape plan. Squatters/homeless/troutbums in a van don't. The tire slashers might be people that don't want to share the fishery, that's what happens out west. An unknown vehicle or out of state tags can result in slashed tires on some rivers.

It's all in perception though, we fear the unknowns more than the known; and you may have just drawn his attention to the time of day and reminded him of an appointment, I've parked on such places to kill time while waiting. For example, I would not park anywhere in St.L. metro area and leave anything I wanted in the vehicle based on stuff I've seen in other cities, yet I leave my car in river accesses with only little concern.

a kayak could conceal a boat load of drugs, or whatever? several strangers together, he may have perceived you as the thugs Having spent some time Boston ca 1970 where they could strip a car in minutes or hot wire it while you were putting coins in the parking meter, (I actually saw that happen) cities always worry me more than homeless people with no tools or "salvage" crews. Secure parking is an attended pay by the hour enclosure, public parking anywhere is risky. Buy insurance, keep valuables in the vault at the bank and don't sweat the other stuff. YOLO

July 2021, I had to look it up because I thought he was older than I.

I saw a young guy kayak/wading a few years ago in high top cowboy boots, I bet he didn't get much gravel, but I noticed they didn't drain very well either. I've tried a lot things over the years, and next to the Academy shoes I posted, the best I've had were high top Converse, pretty much the same fit, fairly fast dry and lace up support. The (middle aged) kids bought me Chacos sandals with continuous strap that would come in third and another pair meant for water shoes with an elastic kinda boot top that I didn't like. I haven't really worn waders since they stopped making them from canvas, don't like the tight fitting things, what ever they are made from. Wear boot foot hippers when it gets cold, and it's getting hard to find them with a calf harness.

On the CDC oil and not, I watched an hour long show last night, (most video I've watched in years but they are funny) Tom Rosenbauer vs Tim Flagler in a tying demo of a Last Chance Cripple using biots and CDC and answering questions as they tied, both these guys insisted that oil was not the reason for using CDC but that the fine mini-barbules that cling to/sit on the surface tension and trap tiny air bubbles are the reason. They said that almost all commercially available CDC has the oil washed out. Reckon they know?

I see random caddis on RR frequently and often catch trout there on caddis imitations at the surface. But as i said in another post, I have never seen an impressive "hatch" of any insect on the streams I've fished. Sure the tiny BWO seem to hatch all afternoon some days, but I think they do it three minutes of emerging and thirty minutes in between another three minute emergence. I think Ozark streams have relative low fertility. I've read that some caddis swim to the bottom to lay eggs; @Gavin seemed to include EHC (with CDC) with soft hackle wets, and mentioned LaFontain's work, LaFontaine did a Diving Caddis and the Green Butt soft hackle is a diving caddis pattern. so it occurred to me that maybe Weilenmann intended his CDC & Elk that way. Thinking about caddis, three or four times on RR I've seen a large white moth emerge mid stream, wings as big as a nickle. 15-50 in a few minutes and a year or three between sightings, I never figured this bug out, any ideas?

I agree with wrench, one fly seems to always be better than two. But, if I am going to fish more than one fly, either fast or half fast, I go to a three wet fly rig. Basically the same as the Brits have used for centuries. First dropper/bob fly, second dropper and point fly. Problem I always have with the term "hopper dropper" is that the dropper fly is always nearest the rod and if the hopper is not the dropper it must be on the point (at the bottom), so the term should "hopper as the dropper" as they are normally used.

So, you are saying the CDC & Elk is meant to be a wet fly? pulled under?

: It looses the oil, almost any natural material from fly tying sources has been washed enough to remove natural oils, but the thing that makes CDC different (according to the guys on a fly tying forum that think it wonderful) is that it has a network of tiny fibers that trap air and cause it to float, as @Gavinsaid, until they don't, the they need special drying and special floatant. Apparently they don't do well with standard floatants. I think it was also said that you can cut CDC without damaging it's feather characteristics. And the puffs are slightly different than the feathers but it's not simple. There are yarns that give the Lafontaine look, Needloft plastic canvas yarn might be closest to what he used. Mylar tinsel puts some flash in wet flies with out much complication and using Sulky Holoshimmer thread can give an interesting look. Where does simple end?

We've eaten supper several times at Sunrise Family Restaurant in town and they serve breakfast, maybe late at 0700. Easy to find at the stoplight. There are other places but they seem to and go in Cassville. If I didn't eat breakfast at home I usually just do McDonald's. Our daughter said the food was good at the "new" Lodge in the park was good, official name is Emory Melton Inn & Conference Center On the flies, I think caddis are in the creek year round at least as larvae, for sure all the nymphs that are there in summer are also there in winter, Little Grey Flies aka Baetis, PMD, PED, BWO depending on which fellow I talk to, hatch off and on all winter; fellows tell me their flies are #24 & #26 but to my eye they often look like #20s, and I suspect there are midges too, I catch an occasional fish on something like a Griffith's Gnat. I see Chamois Worms and SJ Worms and Mop Worms catch fish there too. I just open a fly box and pick what ever catches my eye that day. I have long thought that if trout ain't smart enough to know cedar needles from caddis worms then they won't know that my fly is the wrong shade of pink or that it doesn't have fan wings.6 or 8 days last winter I did well with big gaudy slip wing dry flies in size 12 or 10 that had come with a used fly box I'd bought fish jumping for them before they actually hit the water. Wish I had more of them but I'm too lazy to tie big stuff like that. Not patterns that I recognized, but reminded me of the gas station flies you used to see back in the '50s. Honestly though Tim grew up fishing that park regularly, still fishes it I think, and has been selling flies and tackle for it for about forty years, I bet he gets lots of feed back from customers on what worked best today, if anybody knows or can guess what's going to work there on any given day it is likely Tim. I think I'd ask him to make up a box for me, let him pick the flies for the date I was going to be there and mail them to me.

I'd ditch the CDC, if it was me. Grouse, quail, and other upland birds have worked perfectly on simple subsurface flies for hundreds of years. The title of that book was "Simple Flies" and the only thing wrong with that book is he listed 52 patterns and to keep it simple no one needs that many patterns. 10-12 simple patterns in suggestive styles will catch all the fish you can carry any where. You can put legs on that herl nymph by tying three turns of any soft hackle or by tying in a beard/throat of hackle fibers. You can tie in two microfibetts (paint brush bristle) for tails, wrap half the herl body and at that point tie in a small wing of hackle fibers (half the shank length and slanted back in wet fly fashion) then wrap the rest of the body. Or you can tie the whole herl body and but stop about two eye lengths back from the eye and tie in a collar of black ostrich herl. That's five variations on the simple herl body nymph. You can also leave out any weight and use a cock hackle to palmer over a full herl body. Grizzly or any shade of dun works for me, now that simple herl body is a dry fly. You can also use an eraser to strip all the fuzz off a couple of peacock herl then tie all the above with the stripped herl. I think those are called "quill body". I think CDC is best used in complicated dries that require special floatants, as used in the EU. A few years ago Marc Petitjean made CDC very popular, but he sold the stuff and had a whole line of specialty tools that he sold so that you could use it in dubbing loops to tie his patterns. They work but they ain't magic and they ain't simple. He sold the stuff so well that others wanted in on the profits and pushed other uses of CDC that they could sell. If you are a duck hunter save all that CDC and sell it. The breast and flank feathers are better suited to flies and if you tie tradition dries you may want to keep a pair of matched wings for quill slip wings. As they say on the internet; "just my opinion." @fishinwrench I think if you leave the CDC off that fly in the image that it will fish as a dry. I tie thread bodies with simple hair wings that fish in the surface film. It's my thought that the CDC gets soaked and sinks the fly. Fishing it wet though is a good solution too. Any time my dry, whatever it is doesn't catch I tuck cast it up and across and/or jerk the fly under to let it drift to a swing position the swing it as a wet. Easier than changing flies and it's caught a lot of fish over the years.

canvas boots aren't much heavier than sneakers, just higher topped and better ankle fit, and drain better

Mayfly hatch in mid July in Mn. Kind of stuff the match the hatch writings are based on?

Even a logging boot won't stop a broken whiskey bottle. I've stepped on two bottles by accident, one ruined a brand new set of boot foot canvas waders ca 1980 as I waded into a stream that I fished dozens of times before and one was in a patch of knee high buck brush 1985. Both times I was lucky enough that my foot wasn't ruined but both time the boot was. Both the loggers and the wader boots had steel shanks. Bottles cut up the sides. So while I'll agree that no shoe or sock can keep gravel out 100%, I don't think anything less than Kevlar high top uppers offers glass protection.