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Dfishinfool's Guide Service
To book a trip with any of the guides below please call Don Mathews at 330-565-5457. He handles our central booking calendar at steelheadschool.com You may also call the guide of your choice at anytime with questions or to check on availability.
Guide Don "dfishinfool" Mathews
330-565-5457
All guides listed below are self employed. We have joined forces. We believe that by networking together on the stream our group of local guides can give the best steelheading experience possible. We guarantee it. Feel free to call any of us at anytime to check on availability or to just talk fishin. Don't be fooled by the NEW wave of guides in Ohio. These guys are your true local steelhead pro's.
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Guide Jeff Novak |
330-984-7406 |
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Guide Mark DeFrank |
724-317-8582 |
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Guide Dick Keagy |
330-646-8150 |
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Guide Travis McAllister |
330-399-2746 |
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Greg Lum |
About Mark |
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Mark is a master tier and oversees all fly orders. He has 35 years experience, 18 of which are commercial and competition tying. He holds several prestigious awards, and routinely instructs many satisfied novice, intermediate and advanced tiers. His latest contribution to Steelhead Fishing is being listed in John Nagy's newest Steel Head Guide 4th edition. Mark has 5 hot patterns published in the book, with his Blue Steel Caddis being honored in Nagy's NEW Dirty Dozen. Mark is a fly tying prodigy. |
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To fool the most difficult of Trout and Steelhead, Mark has created many of his own patterns and is continually improving old ones. In 2005 Mark closed his retail Fly Shop in order to devote more time to tying and guiding - the aspects of Fly-Fishing in which he excels and most enjoys (now he gets to fish more!). Send Mark email: mark@defranksflies.com |
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Mark has teamed up with Dfishinfool's Guide Service |
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Mark teamed up with Don Mathews & Jeff Novak of Dfishinfool's Guide Service instructing Steelhead Schools. The classes are a 3 day all inclusive venue, which includes proper gear, building leaders, placement of split shot, nymphing techniques, fly tying for Steelhead, touring & mapping steelhead alley showing access points & discussing weather affects of all the Lake Erie tribs. Each student has guided fishing instruction applying what they learned from the classroom.
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| From Don "dfishinfool" Mathew's website: "Wow they say time goes faster the older you get. This year was a blurr to me. Lots of changes in my life this year and I'm betting there will be many more in 2009. I have big plans for 2009. Looking back, the spring of 2008 found steelheadschool.com with a smaller but more experienced team of guides. We had some hard choices to make but we listened to our guests feedback. We knew a smaller team would leave us short handed in April. Then I got word from Jason Gregory that he wouldn't be guiding with us. Jason is a first rate guide and we sure miss him here at steelheadschool. We wish him well knowing he will do good where ever he goes. Despite the chaos we managed to pull it off. Our spring season went well and we did more trips and landed more fish than ever before but we all looked like zombies with the load of trips we carried. Another problem was we had turned away far too many trips because of the lack of available days due to the smaller team of guides. We vowed not to turn anyone away in the fall, so we turned to old friends and went on the hunt for new talent to help us out. We needed some QUALIFIED new guides. I'm sure some of you are familiar with Mark DeFrank. Mark started helping me with guide trips in the late 90's. Running his flyshop in South Western Pa always limited the amount of time he could get away to guide. Although he lives several hours from the stream and he's not a local he knows the water well and never has let us down on a guide trip. Mark has since closed his flyshop and now is making a go of it tying flies commercially and guiding. When we explained our situation he agreed to come up and help us out on our busier times on the Alley. He is a welcome addition to have back on the team. We couldn't have pulled off the Fall run without his help. He will be helping us out this spring with the school and guide trips." Mark moves up to the Alley for months at a time to help us out. | |
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Every year Mark attends Dunbar Sportsman Club for their annual fly tying classes as the head instructer. The classes start on the first Monday in February and run for 8 weeks with three skill levels of classes offered. The first class of the night is at 5pm for beginners. The 6pm class is for novice tiers and the third at 7pm is for advanced skill levels. Mark explains the different types of materials and demonstrates with simple patterns for the beginner to get comfortable
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using their tools and various tying techniques. The novice and advanced students learn more involved patterns, which include some of Mark's special patterns. Mark evaluates the classes after the first week to get an idea of how advanced the students are and adjusts the following weeks patterns accordingly. Many times a student will request a specific pattern they are having difficulty with. The classes have an open forum nature, and Mark brings a vast array of materials to accomodate the classes requests. A nominal fee of $6.00 per class is required to cover the supplied materials. A small portion of the fee goes to support club trout stockings in Dunbar Creek catch & release flyfishing areas. |
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DeFrank’s Flies Master Tier and Owner Mark DeFrank recently took third place out of 360+ entries in the Fly Tyer Magazine 30th-Anniversary International Fly-Tying Championships. The Championships were conducted with the cooperation of the Catskill Fly Fishing Center and Museum. For this contest, each tier was required to submit two flies: one mandatory pattern and one “tiebreaker” fly of the tiers choice. The selection of mandatory flies included the Royal Wulff, Hair-Wing Blue Doctor, and Flashtail Whistler. The tiebreaker could be an established pattern or an original fly. The only real rule is that the tiebreaker fly must be a pattern that would be used for actual fishing. For his mandatory fly Mark tied the Royal Wulff and his Wiggle Hex was submitted as the tiebreaker.
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In February of 2008 Mark was honored to be the topic of a feature article published by the Herald-Standard of Uniontown, PA, written by Rod Schoenor, highlighting his recent accomplishments. |
Sometimes Mark will go to great measures to get to the Steelhead....like Ice surfing down Conneaut.....NOT a good idea.....it broke! |
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FLOW CHARTS |
OHIO USGS FLOW |
PA USGS FLOW |
| Yough River at Ohiopyle |
| Yough River at Confluence |
NY USGS FLOW |
MD USGS FLOW |