An Ontario-based fly fisherman has become hooked on fishing the Clarion River.
Rob Heal, host of “The New Fly Fisher” TV series, spent a day last month fishing the river when he snagged his biggest catch of the day -himself – as one of his casts caught his left ear.
“It can happen to even the most experienced fly fisherman,” he laughed. “A gust of wind came up and it hit me, and there it was.”
Although Heal said he didn’t see the river at its “potential” for fishing, he liked what he saw.
“Had the conditions been more stable we would have done better.” Heal said. “I saw enough big browns when we were in the Johnsonburg area. We drifted about 7 miles for three days in a row, and we moved one massive brown. I hooked and fought a couple more and lost them.”
Heal said he saw enough fish in the Clarion River that he is confident when it settles down and becomes stable there would be a lot of potential.
“The river was running at three times its normal flow, but there are not three times the fish,” Heal said. “They are much more dispersed. It makes the fishing a lot more difficult.”
Fly fishing, Heal said, is more technical than most people realize. “The traditional fly fishing is very romantic. We are waiting for the fish to jump out and take the fly, but that is very little of it. That is surface fishing.” said Heal, a Nova Scotia native.
Heal said he was using “big water tactics” on the Clarion River.
“In reality, a trout’s diet is 80 to 90% sub-surface,” he said. “When we are fishing big water, we are using high-density lines, which are ‘sinking lines.”‘
The lines he describes using are about a 25-to-30-foot tip of the sinking portion of a fly line.
“You still cast it just like you would a dry fly,” Heal said. “The first 30 feet will sink. There are different densities so that they sink at a rate from an inch and a half to 2 inches per second to 6 to 8 feet per second.”
The bait was not traditional.
“We were throwing big baitfish imitations,” he said. “Some of the flies we were using were 6 inches long.”
The “streamers,” he said, don’t necessarily represent a specific baitfish.
“These are fairly generic attractor patterns,” Heal said. “Some of the others mimic actual baitfish. There are flat-liners that are made to swim sideways. That way, it looks like a wounded or distressed minnow. That is what a predator fish will key in on.
“What we would consider as an apex fish, a 4-to-6-pound range brown trout will eat up to half their length in baitfish a day. So if it is a 24-inch fish, it will eat six 4-inch fish. What we try to do by throwing these is eliminate the smaller fish and go after a trophy.”
“The same fish that eat these will also key in on flies,” he said.
Heal came across some rising fish that were keyed in on the Clarion River’s surface.
“They were taking flies off the surface. That’s what we hope for. That is the reason we do it,” he said.
“We came across some rising fish yesterday, but they were in an extraordinarily difficult place. That is why fish get big. What we were dealing with was a back eddy and it wasn’t possible for us to get to them. There were a dozen fish between 12 and 15 inches in there.”
For the expedition on the Clarion River, Heal used a full-framed raft with a bottom designed for fishing. The raft is actually a rowboat.
“I have been all over the East, but Pennsylvania and Vermont are some of my favorite places, although the people of Pennsylvania are more down to earth,” he said.
“This area is stunning. I have been blown away. Our crew actually filmed the old growth forest.”
Heal said while he was fishing the Clarion River, two other crews were fishing in Canada.
“This segment is one of the first eight shows, so it will probably air in January or early February 2022,” he said.