mrl0004

I had been wanting to hit up a certain creek for a while now. After reading several smallmouth reports earlier today, I couldn't wait any longer. I also needed to break in the BVK properly. So as soon as I could scoot out the door from work, I bolted. It was A LOT lower than the last time I was there. Jumped in the water and after weeding through several red breasted sunfish, I had my target. It was small, but it was brown.


Made several casts and had another bite.


The fish were incredibly active. For every smallmouth I caught 4 or 5 sunfish. Moved upstream a little and stuck an interesting fish.


I changed flies a lot and often. Mainly because I would lose one, or I just got impatient, but I also wanted to experiment a little. I used crayfish, clousers, one bugs, zonkers, and white wooly buggers. Caught a fish on all of them.




As the day was winding down, I knew I needed to start making my way back while I had some daylight. As I neared some shallow riffles, there was a massive caddis hatch going on. This is only a small section, bugs were literally everywhere.


Guess what the only fly I didn't have with me was? Of course, I don't normally carry caddis flies on bass creeks. I made a few more casts anyway and my wooly bugger disappeared from sight and I set the hook. I was treated to brief circus acrobatics and finally landed this beauty. The first one I've ever caught that had this nice of a pattern.


After several snapshots, I sent him back on his way.


When I got back to my car, it was covered in caddis flies. They were swarming above it and dozens were resting on it.


Also found one of these guys, and noticed several others.


I didn't catch any monsters, but I did see a couple. Apparently I have a long way to go when it comes to being stealthy. All in all it was a good outing, but I am still chasing that 3lber or better........

Phil from Maine

Congrats on an active day of fly fishing!! I will be going over to look at another fly tieing kit a guy is trying to sell to me as he does not know to many that still ties them any more.. I'll prolly be getting a decent deal.. I currently have around 4 seperate kits already though..

mrl0004

I have just got into fly tying. When you say kits, what do you mean? I have a LONG way to go as far as accumulating materials. So far I have only tied foam poppers and clouser minnows.

Phil from Maine

What I mean is you can purchase kits to allow you to get started with tieing the flies, streamers, and ect.. They come with a vice to hold the hooks with as well as tinsel, feathers, fly head cement, and the likes.

How big a kit depends on how much you want to spend on them. I am not 100% sure but I think e-bay has them as well as amazon and the like. But basically all a kit is, is something that can get you started with. Then if you want to continue tieing then you can purchase other stuff to go with it. Then like a lot of hobbies you normally end up just keep adding to it. The more stuff you get the more variety you will have to tie with.

mrl0004

Oh ok. I wasn't sure if you meant a tying kit (vise, bobbins, misc tools) or a fly kit (fur, feathers, etc) for a certain fly. I have been steered away from the tool kits, and have instead bought that stuff al la cart. The materials kit would be useful for me. I probably spent $30 the other day on material just to tie clousers!

buckhunter14

Very cool man, some nice smallmouth in there!

How do you like the TFO rod?

Fly tying can become addictive, and save alot of money in the long-run.

mrl0004

Thanks. The TFO rod is nice. It does exceed at distance which is what it was designed to do. It's a lot different than my redington 5wt, so I will have to get used to casting with it before I truly see what it can do.

Fly tying is enjoyable, but it seems that I have very little time to sit there and tie them. Especially starting out, because it takes me a while to tie one!

Gangly

Awesome job mlr, beautiful fish! Glad you were able to get out and put the new rod to use. Again, great job!