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Fly Fishing

Post-Isaac Fishing

September 5, 2012
Fishing, Fly Fishing, Saltwater
5 Comments

Got a last minute call from a friend looking for a partner to make a run in his new boat that he built, maybe scout some areas out for this upcoming winter. Sought the approval from the wife and got it without too much apprehension. I think she was ready for me to be out of the house after spending some quality time together riding out Isaac.

We headed down to the coast, not really knowing what was going to be open or what to expect fishing-wise. I often hear people praising the fishing just before and just after landfall, suggesting that it is one of the best times of the year to go. We really just hoped to have some good clarity so we’d be able to sight fish for reds.

Little’s boat is pretty badass, amazing to think he designed and built it himself, out of his garage. He has a thread of the build on microskiff.com – http://www.microskiff.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1345433649

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Luck would have it that the ramp at the place we intended to launch was open, though we were one of only a handful of trucks in a parking lot that would normally be packed any other Labor Day. We launched/fished an area that saw a significant surge as the storm rolled through. Folks had been real busy cleaning up their homes/businesses, debris lined the road and utility crews were a common sight. I’m not gonna lie, I felt a bit guilty that we would be going fishing, but I’d imagine the money we spent launching and at the gas station on the way down was welcome.

Fishing was pretty good, all things considered. Clarity in spots was decent, other spots not too good, no where was excellent, but we were still able to see some reds and boat a few as well.

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It didn’t take long for Little to connect with a bull. It proved to be his personal best, the biggest on the day, and biggest for the boat thus far at 28lbs. Usually we don’t see bulls in the marsh until late Fall, maybe Isaac helped speed up that migration. Maybe it was luck, he did have a 10 on his tail(my lucky number).

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Props to Little for hooking up with the big red. I’d like to think it was my excellent poling skills, but I’m sure the bottom of his new boat would say otherwise. My biggest on the day was probably around 10lbs, not a true bull, but not a slouch either. Something that surprised me today was how much harder redfish fight when they have some deeper/open water to run. Maybe it’s the oxygen, but reds the same size in the marsh usually give up a lot sooner than they were on Monday.

Had a great time fishing with Little, his new boat is awesome, perfect for chasing bulls in Louisiana. Hopefully I’ll get the invite again this winter when we hit prime time.

The Redfish Intruder

August 14, 2012
Fly Fishing, Fly Tying, Saltwater
4 Comments

For August’s fly of the month, Blake shows us how to tie up the intruder pattern that I caught a few fish on last time out in the marsh. Supposedly, having an articulating point lessens the leverage that a fish normally has using long shanked hooks, thus the experiment with an intruder fly in the marsh. It caught a few different species too, including the normally tough to hook sheepshead, so it may have it’s place in the inshore fly box.

Materials:

-Hook – size 1 octupus hook tied using 65# braid to a long shank eagle claw hook (make this one a cheap -hook as it will be cut off directly behind the fly)

-Estaz chenille

-Brown feather from a pheasant

-Brown craft fur

-Gold body braid

-Black ostrich herl (or something like it)

-Ice dubbing

-Dumbbell eyes

1. Mount front hook in vise. Using your choice of string, tie in the back hook onto the shank of the front hook. Wrap the string down all the way to the eye of the front hook. Insert the string tags through the eye, then wrap them back towards the bend. The fold through the eye just adds a little strength to the connection.

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2. Tie in dumbbell eyes about one eye length back. Here, I run a line of superglue on the eye tie in and down the shank of the hook to further strengthen the back hook connection.

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3. Tie in the estaz and create a bump at the rear end of the fly. This helps keep the materials from collapsing. I also tie everything down all the way to the dumbbell eyes so that I don’t get a lumpy body.

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4. Tie in a brown feather off a pheasant skin. Any feather can be used here. I like this feather because it is soft enough to move in the water, but stiff enough not to collapse. Tie in by the tip, palmer, and tie off. Don’t cut the excess as we will tie it in along the shank to avoid a bump.

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5. Using your favorite method (split thread, loop, brush …) spin up some craft fur and palmer it right in front, and up against the feather. I used the split thread method used here in these videos. http://www.theweeklyfly.com/TWF/tyer/marcpetitjean/ . I split the thread, insert the craft fur though the split while still attached to the backing, then cut off the backing, then spin as seen in the video.

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6. Tie in the body braid  and tidy up the hood shank by wrapping down all the extra materials.

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7. Lay down a layer of hard as nails, then wrap the body braid to a spot behind the dumbbells that will give you enough room to finish the head.

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8. Tie in estaz and create a bump. Tie off.

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9. Again, tie in a pheasant feather and palmer.

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10. Again, spin some craft fur in a loop of some sort and palmer.

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11. Next, spin some herl in a loop. I again use the method seen in the petitjean video. Wrap this right up against the craft fur.

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12. Next, dub the head. I tie a clump of dubbing behind the eyes on the bottom and top of the hook and then dub around the dumbbell eyes using figure 8 wraps. Part off thread.

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13. Cut off the front hook right at the rear of the fly. Finished Fly, so far it has caught reds, drum, and sheepshead.

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Back on the River

August 13, 2012
Fishing, Fly Fishing, Freshwater, Kayak Fishing, Warmwater
1 Comment

Started a new project at work and it has my schedule all out of whack. This explains the latest trend of one post a week for this site. With the new project I’m putting in more hours, more hours means more money, but less free time, so it is kind of bittersweet. I didn’t think I’d be able to fish at all this past weekend, as the contractor works 7 days a week, but this new project is also weather dependent and we had some serious storms roll through over the weekend, dumping a lot of rain on the job site, so my services would not be needed.

Earlier in the week Kevin Andry sent me a message to see if I wanted to do a river float this weekend and initially I had to turn him down. Friday I called him up to see if he still wanted to go, provided we could find somewhere that wasn’t blown out. Luckily he was still game and the watershed I wanted to hit dodged most of the rain that came through.

I woke up Saturday to the sound of thunderstorms and I was worried we wouldn’t be able to head out. A quick check of the weather showed my house and to the south was surrounded by red on the radar, but where we were headed, looked clear. So we met up and pushed on to the put in, driving through rain, holding out hope that we wouldn’t get absolutely soaked while on the water. The skies were overcast as we put in, the water was a little higher and dirtier than it normally is in the summer. The area had only gotten a little over 2 inches of rain over the past week, at least that is what the downstream gauge indicated, who knows what had happened upstream. The good news was the float was definitely doable and we took off down the river.

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Kevin and I started throwing poppers early on, the action was slower than anticipated though. I picked up the spinning rod to see if something subsurface would get their interest. Not too long into throwing a black spinnerbait I had a good bite. It was a nice spot, sitting right in front of a downed tree, which made things pretty interesting for me because the current was taking me right into that tree. I was able to keep him from running under and getting tangled in the branches and lifted the bass into my boat. It was actually bigger than I thought it was when it was on the line, a 2lb 3oz beauty. This is only the second Kentucky bass I’ve caught over 2lbs, the other came on a spinnerbait as well. Took some hero shots then sent it on it’s merry way.

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The rest of the day would continue to fish slow whether I had the fly rod in my hand or the spinning rod. Kevin stuck it out with the poppers and caught fish here and there, we never really figured them out though, just one of those days. The weather held out on us and the sun even came out later in the day.

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As we were loading up at the take out we realized that Kevin didn’t have any long straps in his Suburban and I didn’t pack any in my boat, so there was no way 2 boats were going on top of his vehicle. We could either take 2 trips or figure something else out. Luckily river trips are clean trips and at Kevin’s suggestion (gotta note that in case his wife reads this) we threw the Coosa into the Suburban. It actually was a nice fit with just a small portion of the boat out of the back glass.

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Not a whole lot of fish caught overall, but still it was a great day to be out on the water. One that I really didn’t expect to make earlier in the week, which made it all the better. I am thankful we didn’t head down south and try to chase redfish because we would have been rained out in a hurry. We’ll have to make this float again in the Fall, when the temps start to come down, see if the bite has picked up.