Oxbow

My fly tying for the past few months has been purely bass-oriented. So heading up to fish for Smallmouth Bass on Oxbow reservoir on the Snake River for a couple of days was going to be a good chance to try out some of my new smallie patterns.

The fishing was stellar and the scenery was amazing. This is definitely a fly-friendly body of water that is worth mention.

Given the Smallmouth trophy management on this water (catch and release only for a good part of the year), it was relatively un-crowded and loaded with nice sized fish. I did the best with some slim profile Clouser style flies and just varied the colors as the day went on.

With the water as clear as it was, I could see most of the strikes, so it was probably even more exciting than fishing dry flies for trout. Just amazing…

The evening had a great topwater bite and I put my crease flies to work.

The Crappie were bigger than Brownlee and we got into a few of those as well


Of course the gear worked well and Brian and Cheech cleaned up (even when his little feetsies got too hot and he had to dip them in the cool water..)

In the end, it was well worth the 7 hour drive to get there. I’m already planning the trip for October…

Crapacos

I grew up fishing for Crappie along the shores of Brownlee Reservoir, an impoundment of the Snake River along the Idaho/Oregon border.

It’s basically the Crappie Mecca of the Western US. So, in the past few years, I’ve been wanting to get back up that way and go after Crappie on the fly. Given their size and numbers, they’re a perfect match for a light-weight fly rod.

So, we loaded up Brian’s boat and headed up north to give it a whirl. After a nutritious breakfast of Fry Bake Shoppe donuts, we made the drive to Huntington, launched the boat and headed downstream to find the Crappie. It didn’t take long to find the first fish. And the second. And the third….then we lost count. They’d take most any fly I guess, but I liked the “Mata Crappie” fly the best, cuz it got down fast, was good stripped or just hanging and was real buggy.

At one point, I had set one rod down (line in the water) to string up another rod. Then, as I was testing out the new setup, I realized my first rod had a fish on. Before I could put the 2^nd rod down, it too had a fish tugging away. It was tricky stripping in the line…

The rest of the day, we jumped around from spot to spot. Some were good, some were ok.

Cheech and Brian both ended up with a few decent Smallies.

We even fired up the live well and tossed in a few keepers as we went. The last spot we hit was a little inlet tucked away, inaccessible by anything but a boat. It was Crappie-land. You could seriously count on getting a fish or at least a hit on every cast. Sometimes, you’d have two fish at a time. It was fun times for feisty fish on a 4 wt rod.

Heading back to Ontario to the folks’ house, we decided the live-well dwellers would make good tacos. Or “Crapacos” as they’re now known. Lots of work to fillet that many fish, but tasty vittles they were, no doubt.

Top

32 degrees at the boat ramp and I'm not looking forward to the boat ride to the other side of the lake at 6:30 in the morning. Lucky for me, I brought some long britches and a couple of shirt layers. Things started off slowly as the Bass weren't all that interested in what I had to offer. They liked spinner baits and such, but I was sticking to the fly rod. My Zonko sliced and diced through all the bushes and reeds just fine. The 9 weight cast the heavy fly with no problem. One big hit, 45 minutes and no takers.

Enough of that, it's bluegill time and a much lighter rod. Fishing a 3 weight fly rod for bluegill is something everyone should experience. Even though they are smaller in size, they make up for it in tenacity and their demonic fights.

This particular lake is loaded (as most are) with big juicy chironomids. Suspending some juicy chironomid flies, like the Bungie Buzzer (video), in tight to the reed-line is a sure-fire bluegill take -- even in colder water.

.....that was the ticket. For the next few hours, it was fish after fish. There were even a good number of bass that had the same tastes. Even, Brian, my gear-slinging buddy opted for a 3 weight over the bait-caster and got into the action.

Muchos fish later, I decided to throw on a popper just for kicks. I wasn't expecting too much, but actually ended up with three bass on top and some wicked surface smashing hits. The fish seemed to be looking up. So with a little jaunt across the lake to an area a little more surface-action friendly, the topwater onslaught began.

It's hard to describe the awesomenicity of the way it all shook out, but basically the fish -- both bass and the 'gill's were uber-sensitive about the surface.

Pretty much any decently placed bug would ilicit a smashing strike. I ended up wearing out two poppers in the carnage.

By the time the storm rolled in, I lost track of how many fish I got on top. My fingers were raw from stripping line, having line stripped and lipping the fish. The poppers are now retired to my hat...

May Day Bass

We finally headed down to Utah's Dixie for a few days of spring bass fishing. With Brian's 21 foot "moving shoreline", it was another great trip. Day #1, started out with the feesh holding a little deeper. I kept to the fly gear and managed only a couple of touches early-on. Cheech and Brian were tearing it up on the plastics, so I switched over to the spinning outfit and got a couple on shaky heads with hula grubs and a robo-worm.

By mid-morning, the dragon-flies started to get amorous and the bass started to take notice. I switched back to the fly rod and poked a few on the dragon-fly.

From Bass Patterns

The hatch wasn't as strong as it was last year, but it was still fun to get into the top-water action.

The next day was fun as we got into some fish in the bushes shallow. I was able to have some fun with the "Zonko" weedless fly...

From Bass Patterns

And the fish liked it...

From Bass'n

From Bass'n

They also liked clousers along the rocky shores in shallower water.

From Bass'n

Finally, towards the end of the day, I was fine-tuning my finesse drop-shot techniques (first time ever trying it) and landed this guy:

From Bass'n

All in all, it was a great trip with some detours to In 'N Out to boot. I ended up catching more fish on my fly gear than with spinning gear, but it was fun picking up some new techniques when the fly rod isn't as effective reaching the fish. I think I'm starting to get over the fact that you can use something other than a fly rod to catch a fish. I think it just boils down to what you like and what works best. Bass are wicked fun to hunt!!

Tying Binge

Not much posting going on lately, but a lot of tying. Here are some of the latest...


AND...

Catch Up with Tigers

Man, I'm falling behind on my blog. Oh well, I haven't been fishing much lately anyway, as my fly boxes have been crying out to me to re-fill them and I've put my time in at the vise.

Be that as it may, I'll harken back to a chilly November morning heading up to Dead Man's Lake to go after some big Tigers. Early on, the fish were in shallow and a few were rolling. The lake was getting close to icing over so we knew it might be a mixed bag as to whether we'd get into them much.

Before El Cheecho got his line in the water, I'd hooked into this little feller on my 2nd cast. Nice 22 inch fish. The rest of the day was somewhat slower, as we stalked fish we could see roaming the shallows and tried to hunt them down. We wrapped up the day throwing some nymphs on the Middle and got into a few more fish as well. All in all, not a bad day...

From Sweetflies

Tiger Hunt

Catching big Tiger Trout at almost 11,000 feet in elevation is downright groovy. The hour-long rock-hopping jeep-trail ride and subsequent hike isn't so groovy (hat's off to Jed for the ride) but it's an adventure.... queue video recap....




The rewards are big, colorful and pretty toothy.







Throw in a lot of nice cutts and smaller Tigers lashing out at dry flies and it makes for a pretty fun time....