#theartofskunk

-- First 2014 Outing --

It's been a very long, cold winter here in New England and most other parts of the country. In the seven plus years I've been fly fishing, I don't remember the local streams being as frozen over and unfishable as they have this winter.

With Matt (aka Troutdoors) home for spring break, our first order business was to get out to the river and wet a line. We checked flows and they were rising so we knew the spring thaw had finally started.

The title of this post, #theartofskunk, comes from Ariel over at Atom Fly Fishing, who coined this hashtag about 2 years ago. It's become an unfortunate label to many of my Instagram posts, so if you looking for some fish porn in this blog post, leave now.

The stream still had ice on the larger pools and some soft shelf ice, but it was open and flowing nicely. That is all we were really hoping for.

Water temps were 36 degrees, so even dredging some nymphs through our favorite lies produced nary a bump. I was trying some recent ties of a natural pheasant tail trailed by a zebra midge. Switched to a small black stone. After snagging and breaking it all off I put on a reliable, go to fly for this stream, the beadhead prince nymph. 

Pheasant Tails & Beadhead Prince Nymphs

Zebra Midges

#theartofskunk lives on. As our first outing every year, we usually have this same result. 

It felt good to rig up the 3 weight, stand in some flowing water and toss a line after this long cold winter.