Invasion of the Knobfin Sculpins

 An alien has invaded CT's Pomperaug River and its tributaries. This creature lives in the holes and crevices of the bottom, eating native fish's eggs and young, devouring macro-invertebrates, and breeding like rabbits. This creature is called the knobfin sculpin, Cottus immaculatus; and it hails from the Ozark Mountains of Southern Missouri and Northern Arkansas. Small though it may be, the knobfin sculpin has wrecked havoc where it was introduced accidentally. The native minnow and salmonid numbers in the Pomperaug watershed have crashed, and the is indication that insects have been impacted as well.

Not long ago, Garth and I went to the Pomperaug with a dual mission: first, catch out lifer knobfin sculpins on hook and line. Then, observe the situation in that river and its tributaries and determine if the sculpins have in fact had a significant negative impact. 

The first goal was extraordinarily easily accomplished. The sculpins were very abundant. Looking around larger rocks in the stream bed I could see holes with little cleared out patches of sand or pea gravel at their entrances. I knew right away what these were, as I've caught slimy sculpins and mottled sculpin already and have experiences their habits. These were sculpin "dens" and there were surely fish under these rocks. Indeed, jigging a nymph in front of these holes often resulted in a knobfin rushing out and taking the fly. Garth and I each had our lifers with relative ease. 

Life List Fish #187: Knobfin sculpin, Cottus immaculatus, Rank: Species

Now, there are two ways to catch sculpins that live under rocks. The first, the polite method if you will, is what I just described. You knock on the door, gently wiggling your offering at the entrances of the sculpins' homes. The second method is a bit more rude. You can rip the roof right of their houses. If you are careful, you can lift in-stream rocks, revealing the sculpins underneath, and believe it or not they will still eat. I think that says something about just how ravenous they are. I should add, absolutely do not move rocks in CT streams that have slimy sculpins. They are a species of special concern in this state and such actions are highly detrimental. On the Pomperaug though? Have at it. De-housing invasives isn't exactly bad. 

After catching a few knobfins I set about trying to see what else might be kicking around. Garth and I both saw a handful, and I really mean a handful, of blacknose dace and juvenile white suckers. And I mean very few. In a river the size of that which we were on these species should have occupied certain niches heavily, such as tailouts, eddies, and backwaters. We didn't see as many as we should have. The only trout present seemed to all be of hatchery origin, and subsequently don't portray a successful ecosystem. I only observed adult white suckers in one spot, and not many of them. Fallfish or creek chubs and their spawning mounds were absent. No other minnows, darters, or shiners were observed. Insect levels seemed low. 

It truly does seem that the knobfins had invaded this habitat. They are the quintessential invasive. Thankfully, unlike some introduced species, nobody is so obsessed with fishing for them that they're inclined to advocate for their continued protection. There could be a problem, however, if someone thinks they'd make good bait and moves them elsewhere, releasing them when they're done for the day. No live bait should be moved from water to water. Live bait should not be released alive. Mottled sculpins need to stay where they are now and spread no further. If they are moved, the consequences could be shocking. The Pomperaug certainly is a different ecosystem now, and a much less healthy one. What exactly its future is remains unseen. With at least one listed insect, a seemingly extirpated brook trout population, and ever dwindling native fish biomass, it doesn't look good. 

 Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Leo, C, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, and Jake for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version.

Thinking About Baitfish and Trout

 I've noticed a general lack of baitfish knowledge among fly anglers in southern New England, and I think it stems from a lack of interest in small fish themselves. This isn't true of everyone, obviously, there are some guys that have a very extensive knowledge of baitfish and how to imitate them. However, rather than being interested in the fish communities present in the trout streams they fish, a lot of fly casters seem to focus on the fish species trout are known to eat. Perhaps the best example is sculpins. Trout love sculpins, right? 

Slimy sculpin

Sculpins are rare in Connecticut. We only have two freshwater sculpin species, native slimy sculpins which are present in a mere handful of notable trout streams, and invasive knobfin sculpin which as of this date are only found in one watershed. Yet I see people fishing large sculpin imitations all over rivers that just flat out don't have sculpins, to trout that have never seen a sculpin or anything like a sculpin. Of course fish are not that smart, so you can still catch a trout on a sculpin even if it has never seen one, but it takes a lot less time for fish to stop reacting positively to a streamer if they see a lot of it but never see the real fish it imitates. 

Moreover, a lot of the flies being used to imitate sculpins are way, way bigger than the vast majority of sculpins found in the water they are being fished. Three inches is a gigantic, rare slimy sculpin in CT. I have never seen one. I only know of one place that routinely produces 2 inchers. Everywhere else they pretty much max out at just a bit over and inch... very small. Think about that when you are pawing through your streamer box. The best sculpin pattern in there probably isn't even a sculpin pattern. A good sculpin pattern for CT, one that actually imitates the fish itself, is going to be tan or light olive, a little bit mottled, slimmer than most commercially available sculpin patterns, and a bit less than 2 inches long. Flies that I like are Domenick Swentosky's Bunny Bullet and Rich Garfield's Sirloin. 

Bluntnose minnow

Notropis sp.

Other than sculpins trout anglers seem to flounder around trying to identify common trout forage. The years of hearing fisherman call fallfish, juvenile suckers, and common shiners "chubs" have made this incredibly clear to me. I believe being able to identify fish is one of the most important skills an angler can have, yet most anglers are shockingly bad at identifying fish. I have my own struggles, but I at least put in an effort. The photo above this paragraph says "Notropis sp." because that's as narrowly as I could identify that fish with the photos I took of it. Notropis are a notoriously difficult genus to identify, and that fish was caught in an area with a few different species. In CT though we have only one species, spottail shiner, and trout do eat them. It is very helpful to know what they are, where they live, and what they look like for some trout fisheries around here.  I consider them a baitfish of notable importance to trout fisherman. In Southern New England there are really not too many species of small stream dwelling fish, so it doesn't take much to learn about each one. 

The species that are of particular importance to trout anglers are the aforementioned slimy sculpin and spottail shiner, as well as tessellated darter, creek chub, fallfish, bluntnose minnow, cutlips minnow, common shiner, white sucker, blacknose dace, longnose dace, alewife, banded killifish, and brook trout. Knowing the range extent, behavior, habitat preference, and what flies imitate these fish will put you a step above the rest. The range and habitat will dictate where you fish their imitations, the behavior will dictate the action and weight of the fly and how your present it. Species like tessellated darter hug the bottom and move along as their name suggests, by darting about with pauses in between. Alewives swim continuously suspended off the bottom in schools and are found in some large lakes or in rivers with access to saltwater. 

This beautiful winter wild brown took a streamer in a crystal clear, mirror surface run on a bluebird day. If you match the forage, it becomes easier to fool difficult trout in less than ideal streamer conditions.

Unfortunately, streamer fishing seems to draw some amount of thoughtlessness. Perhaps that's because it appeals to a more restless sort of angler than other methodologies; the sort of angler that would rather flog the water all day with a massive fly than sit and look at a piece of water for a while and think about the best approach. There's also a contingency of anglers that throw on a streamer as an after thought. The trout aren't rising, nymphing is slow, I'll just throw on a big woolly bugger. That's no more likely to be successful than the previous example.

There are a lot of very good streamer anglers out there too, pushing the limits of both action and imitation. What inspired me to write this post was a cumulative effect of conversations with other anglers and reading some other writings. This certainly isn't all original thought, though I've tried to add my own twist to it. I can give a huge amount of credit to Joe Goodspeed, Domenick Swentosky, Blane Chocklett and others for making me think about this stuff at all. When I started streamer fishing I was chucking Headbanger sculpins and Zoo Cougars in rivers that, well, don't have any sculpins... and Double Decievers in rivers that don't have any broad-bodied baitfish. When I think about it now I realize just how silly that was. It isn't at all surprising that it rarely produced any notable fish. Over time I started to pay attention to the action of my flies, and that was an important step. It wasn't until more recently that I actually started matching my flies to the forage present in each stream I fish, even though I've been mircofishing and studying small freshwater fishes for quite a few years now and knew full well what was present. 

If you ever want help identifying baitfish, always feel free to send pictures and ask. I'll also be setting up an online class either late in the month of February or in early March about common Connecticut trout stream baitfish. I also happily run on long tangents about this sort of thing in the field with clients, so if you want to learn more book a trip and I can really show it to you in practice. There are also tons of other great resources and guides if you don't live in Connecticut or Rhode Island, all it takes is a little bit of digging. 

 

Grubbies on the Fly

 Grubby, or little sculpins, are a fairly abundant species throughout New England Coastal waters. They are a small sculpin species that inhabits rocky inshore and even inter-tidal habitats. Nobody really fishes for grubbies. They're too small to eat, for the most part, and aren't big enough to be called a game fish by much of anyone. I think they're pretty cool though, and every once in a while I try to catch some. 

Grubbies are very aggressive by nature and will eat just about anything that fits in their little mouths (actually pretty big mouths compared to their body). This included small nymphs dangled and bounced around the rocky crevices grubbies occupy. 

On a recent quick jaunt in Southern RI, I spent a little time fishing for these charismatic, little goobers. There were as many around as I'd ever seen, literally hundreds, though their exceptional camouflage made them difficult to see until a fly was introduced into the environment and they all came running to try to eat it. Young of the year winter flounder were also present but too small to catch on a size 16 hook. I've begun carrying tanago hooks again at all times so I stop having possible lifers like that slip away. Next time I'll use those. But the grubbies could sometimes get enough of my nymph in their mouth that I could hook them. Not often enough, but sometimes. 

At times, as many as 7 or 8 of the little buggers would be after the fly. They'd materialize seemingly out of nowhere, but in reality they were so well hidden that hundreds could hide within the rocks and vegetation. It was nice to have the opportunity to see a whole lot of them, because their color varied hugely. It's very cool to have not only a diversity of species around, but diversity within one of those species.

Being a life lister, there are loads of species I will only target once, and grubbies could have been one of those species. I do think, however, that catching just one of a species doesn't quite tell their story well enough. Sometimes going out and catching a bunch is warranted. Even if they're just tiny grubbies.

Until next time, 

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

And stay safe and healthy.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Leo, C, Franky, Geof, Luke, Streamer Swinger, and Noah for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version.

Edited by Cheyenne Terrien

Memories (Western Pennsylvania Pt. 1)

We were going to Ohio. We had a fool proof plan to get on loads of new species around Cincinnati, with a local friend, Jake, as our guide and a good few days at our disposal. Then Covid, or more accurately Connecticut's policies regarding Covid, threw a monkey wrench in the gears. I double checked state listings while we were en-route and Ohio had been added to the list of CT's travel advisory states. I couldn't justify quarantining for 14 days upon returning home. I had things to do. As did Noah. The trip came to a screeching halt outside of DuBois, Pennsylvania as we tried to figure out what to do now.

If there's one thing that Noah and I are good at it's on the fly adjustments. In no time, we had a plan B. Jake started to get ready to drive out to meet us, and we changed our destination to the town I was born in and where I lived until I was eight years old: Franklin, Pennsylvania. 

For me, this trip had suddenly turned into a homecoming, an exploration of water I could be living near had my life followed just a slightly different course, waters I spent my early childhood around, but none of which I fished, or at least remember fishing. The middle Allegheny watershed also happens to be some of the most fish-diverse freshwater in the country, so although we wouldn't have a local guide that knew the ins and outs of the fishery as Jake knows his area, lifers were assured for all three of us. But for the first few hours it was up to Noah and I to do some scouting before Jake got there.

We drove through the bucolic upland areas of northwestern PA before steadily dropping in elevation, following the watercourse of a small tributary of the Allegheny. When it made a more abrupt drop in elevation, the road turned to dirt and we followed it to a pull off. Though I'd been here many times before I didn't quite recognize it. It was the same place but time had altered my memory. We then walked down a trail that was steeper than I remembered, past an old stone furnace that was smaller than I remembered, to as stream that was narrower than I remembered. There, I flipped slab rocks that were smaller and lighter than I remembered and found fewer and smaller salamanders under than than I remembered. That, I'm confident, was the only thing that really had changed. My memory of the quantity of sleek black salamanders that would dart out from under those stones is so vivid. Is it coincidental that my most vivid memories from early childhood are of amphibians, reptiles, fish, and insects? I think not.

Northern dusky salamander (I think?)

One thing I knew was that I'd never fished this place, but we were about to. At a glance it looked almost completely lifeless. It wasn't exactly brimming with minnows and dace like some streams, and it took some really close inspection before fish revealed themselves. Actually it took Noah one cast with a jig for a brown trout to come flying out from under a big sandstone slab. It didn't connect but now we knew they were there. And eventually we found a large hole with some chubs in it as well. Unfortunately, they weren't a new species, but the creek chubs we'd caught plenty of other places before.

Semotilus atromaculatus

As Noah continued to fish a tungsten ice jig, which revealed that not only were there trout in this stream but a few quite large ones, I decided to hone my focus on the shallow tailouts, the sort of water darters and sculpins love.

It took some legitimate patience but eventually I found some sculpins. They were tiny, and if I could catch one it would be in the running for the smallest fish I'd ever caught. It took extremely minute adjustments, but I managed to get two to eat a tanago midge and caught the second. It looked tome to be a slimy sculpin, a species I'd already caught in CT. This may indeed be the smallest fish I've caught on hook and line at much less than an inch in length. Absurd though it may seem to many of you, I'm very proud of this. 

Noah then finally connected with one of the wild browns he'd been dueling with. I rushed up to see it and I'm glad I did. I can't believe, all those years ago, I'd had no idea there were fish like this in this little creek. 

We headed back up the trail, not un-pleased as we'd just found a spot Jake would likely get this lifer brown trout in. I was just in a very strangest mindset at that time. This was the first time in my life I was going back somewhere that had been such a big part of my life after such a long time away. It was surreal. I was looking forward to seeing more of the places I remembered, but was also oddly apprehensive. 

 Until next time,

Fish for the love of fish.
Fish for the love of places fish live.
Fish for you.
And stay safe and healthy.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Leo, and Franky for supporting this blog on Patreon.

Extreme Rhody Fishing

If you recognize the guy in the photo above, it's probably because you've seen him say "WHAT'S UP YOUTUBE!" at least a time or two. Leo Sheng is currently a full time fishing youtuber. More than that, he is a life-listing, multispecies fishing youtuber. That is his job right now. That's how he keeps the lights on and the refrigerator stocked. He has been putting out quality content on his channel, Extreme Philly Fishing, for long enough to build quite the following, especially considering the type of fishing he is doing. Multispecies and life-list fishing, though it is growing, isn't the largest demographic. But within that group, Leo is a recognizable figure and an important voice. So how did Noah and I end up on a cliff in Rhode Island, looking out over a piece of water we though might hold some interesting saltwater species even in the dead of winter, with Leo Sheng talking to his audience about the fish we were there to seek via GoPro next to us?

That's a long story. 

Suffice to say, Noah and I had both been watching Leo's videos for years, somehow or another he found some of my social media stuff, and eventually we were messaging each other on a pretty regular basis. Ultimately, Leo, Noah and I fish for pretty much the same reasons. This text, ripped right from the Extreme Philly Fishing channel description, says it all: "Ultimately, this Channel is all about pursuing and collecting DIFFERENT SPECIES OF FISH! Recall, folks: every fish is unique, and every Species has its own role in nature! There is no such thing as 'trash fish.'"

We were going to get along just fine.
Leo wanted to do something unusual and mysterious this winter, and Noah an I had just the thing. The shoreline of CT and RI historically has had many winter fisheries. From whiting and tomcod to cod and pollack, there were productive fisheries in the surf and inshore zones of our states. Human activity has taken its toll though, and these fisheries are basically non existent now. Whiting, or more accurately hake, are almost completely gone from our shores. Beaches where whiting would wash up in such large numbers that locals would only need to walk the shoreline with a basket to get enough for dinner now appear totally lifeless. Bridges that were once tomcod hot spots may not see a single angler all winter. The beaches where surfcasters once sat by a fire at night, watching for rods with salted clams to bend under the weight of a cod, may see dog walkers and surfers in the winter, but rarely a fisherman. We only have ourselves to blame for this. Humans lead to the decline of these fisheries, and humans are now the ones forgetting they were there at all instead of demanding we get what was taken from us by the draggers, long liners, and polluters back.
But there are still whispering of some of these fish being around. Every once in a while some brave soul searching for their last beach front striper of the season will catch a cod, or some tomcod will show up in a net somewhere. They can't  all be gone. So, while other saltwater fisherman were either at home lamenting the fact that there is nothing to catch out on the beach or sucking it up and paying for a trip on a cod boat, Leo, Noah and I ventured to the space between to see if we couldn't find some sort of fish in the cold January surf.

We chose to start in Jamestown Rhode Island. In the winter most fish push into deep water, and the cliffs of Jamestown would give us access to that, with holes as deep as 164 feet deep not far off the shoreline. Diving videos Noah found showed abundances of sculpins, most likely shorthorn sculpins.  These are cold water species. Lumpfish, little sculpin, and rock gunnels are also possible wintertime visitors to these waters. The cliffs make for a dramatic landscape and good fishing at times, but are also dangerous. People have lost their lives fishing in this area. Caution is mandatory.

Visually the place looked desolate, though a few species of diving ducks and a lobster boat working pot to pot told us there was life. Putting bait in the water hammered that point home. Our offerings were getting messed with, almost certainly mostly by crabs, but there were some incidences that had us wondering. We can say with near certainty our bit never got in front of a sculpin, for they are not shy, and being like saltwater frogs (a big mouth and stomach with appendages) they would have taken our baits with little hesitation and a lot of rod tip fanfare.

After a few hours we decided it was time to move. After a stop for salted clams we were soon walking out onto the West Wall. I'd been out here on colder days, in fact the latest I'd ever caught a little tunny was on the wall on November 7th, 2017, and that was a much colder, windier day. But I'd never been in January. Rumors of cod brought us here. One of the historically productive cod beeches, Matunuck, was just down the road, and every now and then a cod does get caught still from this mile long strip of rock. Funny enough, we weren't the only nut cases out there, just on the other side of the inlet another fisherman was leaving as we arrived. We fished out there on the long wall until sunset, and it wasn't without its brief moments of excitement. Noah and I both had definite takes, he on the salted clams, me on the fly. It was a little disorienting, being out there in that famous tunny and bonito spot, fishing my 10wt with a fast sinking line, and getting multiple blatant takes an one brief hookup on a half and half. What it was I will never know. Another mystery fish.

We skunked there, but I left feeling excited that we had clearly found some sort of fish out there. These winter fisheries are mostly gone, but not completely. Every now and then a pollack swims into casting range or some tomcod venture up a creek. I would like to be there to meet them.
But if they were coming in the next two days we'd be fishing with Leo, we weren't going to be in the right place. The weather really threw us a curve ball.
Until next time.

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, an Leo for supporting this blog on Patreon.

A Lifer Sculpin and No Snakes

Today (Thursday) my mother and I headed to Rhode Island with the objective of looking for a very hard to find snake. Smooth green snakes had a naturally spotty range made even more spotty by urban sprawl. Although they are still abundant in a handful of locales they are lacking in numbers overall. And as if being rare weren't enough, their habitat and behavior make them even harder to find and photograph. They are wicked fast, like hanging out in vegetation the same color they are, and don't sit still when handled. The best way to find them in a good scenario for photography is by lifting board and bark and rocks. Though the area my mom and I searched was great habitat (and we covered a lot of it), we failed to find either a basking snake or anything really ideal to lift that one would like hiding under. I heard a number of things make a break for it in the brush, but what those things were I will never know. One was certainly some kind of snake.

A coyote raided turtle nest.

So, we skunked out. No snakes! But it would be silly not to have a backup plan, and I did. We paid a visit to a favorite breachway of mine after lunch and I targeted micros. At first I was after rock gunnels. It just wasn't happening the tide was too high to fish the places I wanted to, and the bergalls kept getting in the way. 

Then, wading through some sandy areas, I noticed I was spooking a bunch of little flatfish. Some were definitely juvenile summer flounder, the rest were hogchoker. I started targeting them, which was very, very frustrating. These little flat fish may turn out to be extremely hard for me to add to my lifelist. I eventually had to call it quits and head back towards the car. But I did decide to walk along the edge of the breachway instead of the road on the way there. I found some more hogchokers hanging around a few rocks, but in trying to catch them, I ended up catching something very different. I saw come out from under a weed covered rock a pair of very stout fish with big heads and mottled coloration. They were clearly sculpins of some sort. And, true to the ravenous nature of many sculpins, they pounced on my tiny tanago hook fly. I hooked it and immediately lifted it's incredibly minuscule body out of the water. My heartbeat increased rapidly as I carefully waded back to dry land, worrying all the way that the fish would free itself, knowing full well this could only be a new species no matter what sculpin it turned out to be. I quickly got it into the photo-tank, before which time it did indeed throw the hook, and got as many photos as I could. Then I went back out and tried to get the other one, which was bigger. I did, and I got it safely into the photo tank too, where I was lucky enough to get one key photo, though I didn't know that until I got home. These are the results from both fish:

Specimen #1

Specimen #2

Now, for the aforementioned key photo of the larger of the two sculpins: 

Why, you are probably asking, is this the key photo? It is a bit less well focused than the rest and doesn't seem to show some key parts of the fish in any detail. 

Well, it shows one specific part of the fish in enough clarity for me to confidently identify the species. These two fish could only really have been either shorthorned sculpins or little sculpins, also called grubbies. It was much more likely that they were grubbies because they are more common than shorthorned south of Cape Cod Bay, and shorthorned sculpins are rarely in very shallow water in the summer up north. So it would stand to reason that in Southern New England in a spot with water temperatures just above 60 degrees, these would most likely be grubbies. But weirder things have happened in this spot than a shorthorned sculpin showing up in late June... just 25 yards away, I'd caught a barrelfish on the fly... so it could go either way. Except I got a good enough shot of the larger specimens anal fin with rays extended to get a count of 10. 

Grubbies have 10 or 11 anal fin rays, shorthorned sculpins have 13 or 14. 

So, life list fish #133 for me is the little sculpin. It had been far too long since I got a new fish to add to the list. What a relief! Only 17 to go before I reach my year end goal of 150. 

Lifelist fish # 133, little sculpin/grubby, Myoxocephalus aenaeus. Rank: species

If you enjoy what I'm doing here, please share and comment. It is increasingly difficult to maintain this blog under dwindling readership. What best keeps me going so is knowing that I am engaging people and getting them interested in different aspects of fly fishing, the natural world, and art. Follow, like on Facebook, share wherever, comment wherever. Also, consider supporting me on Patreon (link at the top of the bar to the right of your screen, on web version). Every little bit is appreciated! Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, john, and Christopher, for supporting this blog.

Going Into a Florida Trip With 96

A few nights ago Noah and I went out at night, fishing some small streams, looking for redd raiders. A lot of things like to eat trout eggs, and including a bunch of different fish species. Some of those species, like creek chubsuckers, longnose dace, slimy sculpins, tessellated darters, central mudminnow, and others that either both or one of us had not yet caught. With flashlights and careful, slow wading, we searched the stream bed in the dark hoping to find something we hadn't caught. And we did, in one run that had a couple redds in the tailout we found sculpins.

Life list #96 (species): slimy sculpin, Cottus cognatus. 

This species is listed as "of special concern" in CT, and as such should care should be taken if one is caught, be it on hook and line in a minnow trap. Handle carefully and release quickly. In some states sculpins are a popular fish to use as live bait. Under no circumstances should this be done here! Nor should nighttime spotlighting micros if you don't have an intimate understanding of the fish species, the stream, and how to identify and avoid redds or cyprinid mounds.  After quick photo sessions both Noah and I watched our beautiful, charismatic little sculpins return to their nocturnal routine. We left that stream shortly afterwards to look for a darter for Noah, no such luck. At least not finding one big enough to catch without a tenago hook.

So, I'm going into a Florida trip with 96 species and hybrids. Catching four new species in four days in Florida should be about as easy as catching one new species in a year here in CT. But I don't want to shoot myself in the foot before I even get there. Next time I report, it will be from the land of the exotic invasives, hopefully with some crazy new fly caught species.

If you enjoy what I'm doing here, please share and comment. It is increasingly difficult to maintain this blog under dwindling readership. What best keeps me going so is knowing that I am engaging people and getting them interested in different aspects of fly fishing, the natural world, and art. Follow, like on Facebook, share wherever, comment wherever. Every little bit is appreciated! 
Thanks for joining the adventure, and tight lines.