sport recreation

The Joy of Fly Fishing in New Brunswick

Tying A Few Flies For New Brunswick Chain Pickerel Action On The Fly

Posted: 21 Feb 2011 05:49 AM PST

Look out Chain pickerel, we have some extremely hard to resist flies that have your name on them. But fear not as we always practice CPR, catch, photo and release and sometimes a little kiss just before we send you back to family and friends again.

chain-pickerel-with-casey Hey, we’re trying to take a picture here.

Casey and Jamie have taken me fishing so much in past few years I could never say thanks enough but in that time they have never done any fly fishing for pickerel so you can imagine my surprise when Casey emailed asking if I have any flies for chain pickerel. I am so looking forward to 2011.

My first adventure for pickerel on the fly was with my fishing friends Roland and Paul. We headed out on a little body of water I won’t mention here but we were in our float tubes. At the beginning it didn’t look like we were going to catch anything making us wonder if there were any fish in this place.

Once we reached the opposite side from where we launched our float tubes we had our first attack and then it was non-stop for hours and hours. We didn’t hook into any large pickerel on this trip but we did get into numbers that had us laughing for most of the day. I showed Jamie this little spot as we passed it on our way to do some trout fishing on the fly and I am sure we will be there with the float tubes this year.

Some of the flies we used on that trip were small brook trout dry flies, the same kind that I caught my very first pickerel with. They worked really well. Of course we had to a few Atlantic salmon flies, like the Mickey Finn. They worked as well but the three of us really love the top water action so we went back to top water flies like deer hair bugs and poppers I tie for the smallmouth bass I fly fishing trips.

I am going to be tying a few of the flies I have mentions, enough for Casey, Jamie and myself but I have also been looking online to see what other flies I might want to tie that will attract more chain pickerel.

Wooly Bugger Leech Pattern

I really like the wooly bugger, leech pattern and so does the chain pickerel here in New Brunswick but they didn’t last very long as we were fishing without any leader and I lost the only two wooly buggers I had. So I will certainly be tying a few wooly bugger patterns for the three of us, however this time around I will be sure to use some fluorocarbon leader and maybe keep those flies longer than one cast each.

Tip For Fishing The Wooly Bugger – It took me a little while to figure out the best retrieve for the wooly bugger but the minute I got it right I had immediate action. Kind of like the pickerel was looking at the leech and wondering why it didn’t swim right. Once I started giving it about 6 inch stripes and pausing they would strike and strike hard.

I am going to start with the wooly bugger and I will tie up a hand full of those. Then I will look up a pattern for a popper for next week and tie some of those. At that time I will add another video showing how it’s tied. Untill then enjoy the video and hope to see you on the water.