Two Days – Two Trips – Three Grads
Trip One: It has been a busy week for the FATC. Two back to back Graduation trips had Kenny working a little harder than normal. The first graduation trip was on Wednesday May 29th at Montauk State park as the FATC welcomed John Muckerman as an official grad of the fly-fishing class. He was joined by Sid Aslin and Tim Klotz on this day. John has fly fished a little before and did a great job. Kenny went through all the techniques in the morning and in the afternoon the two worked their way down from the Spring to halfway down the river (concrete steps) before the storms rolled in. With lightning and thunder in the background the four decided fishing was over and just in time as the rains came down. But fish were caught throughout the day and lots was learned. The park was almost empty which surprised us, and we had the place to ourselves. The water was just slightly faster and higher than normal but very fishable. The guys ate an early dinner at Hicks BBQ and yes, John had the initiation meal of Ory’s Spud. Congrats to John!!
Trip Two: The second trip on Thursday saw eight FATC members head to Montauk with two graduates. David Maloney and Steve Baker were ready to graduate and joining them was Bill Lowry, Miles Meyer, Don Varner, Bill Byington, Sid Aslin (again) and of course, Kenny. We normally only do one graduate at a time but two jumped on this trip and made Kenny work a little overtime. Both Steve and David were new to fly fishing but caught on fast – with Kenny either yelling or smacking them in the head. Kenny even wore his new fly-fishing t-shirt that says, “I’m Your Mama Now, Maggot”. It was well received – ha. On this day the weather was much better, and the gang fished until around 5pm. Again, the new grads did well, and Steve caught a nice 16 inch rainbow to compliment his day (see picture).
In the pictures above check out the special nippers that Bill Lowry had (Feathercraft sells them). They are not only nippers with needle but they have attached to it a threader for those small flies that are hard to get your tippet through – pretty cool. Both trips the major flies used were midges, pheasant tails, soft hackles, san Juan & cerise worms, and some special attractor Euro flies. The parks are getting crowded, so weekdays are best. The water is back down to normal but very few rises so you need to go deep to get them. Watch your mends keep the drift – dead. Good luck
Now dem are some gigantic spuds.