mnbandy

I had the pleasure of a few days off around the 4th of July, and the good furtune to be able to enjoy those days at our cabin at the lake. Even better, the weather was perfect - sunny but not too hot, and very little of the stifling humidity that Minnesota summers can bring. My wife gave me a nice fly-tying bench for a combination birthday-anniversary present (it was too extravagant to count as only one present, you see), and I broke it in with a few wooly buggers that our local bluegills and largemouth bass (and rock bass) have been enjoying (?) this summer. I headed out with the goal of cathcing enough mid-sized bluegills for a meal for two, and maybe a bass or two for some c&r action.

The fishing was good...not as frantic as early in the summer, when everything is biting on anything, but the larger blugills and largemouth were hitting poppers, and other sunfish and big rock bass were hitting the wooly buggers. I believe rock bass are so named because, once hooked, they fight exactly the same as a rock of equal weight would fight. If you've ever fished for cod, it's a lot like that, except about 50 times smaller, of course.

Anyway, I got 4 nice eating size bluegills, released a couple very large ones for another day, and enjoyed a delicious dinner.

Sunday, I got up early to spend an hour on the water before we had to start packing up and going home. Again, hoping to catch enough for lunch. The day before, I picked up an old (though cheap) bamboo flyrod with an older "Oren-o-matic" automatic reel at a flea market - I rigged it up, using the old fly line that was still on it, and fished with it for a while. A little challenging with the action of that rod, but still fun to get it some "live" use after it had been gathering dust for who-knows-how-long. I ended up with a half-dozen "eater" bluegills, and came back in to discover my hour on the water had actually been close to three. Fortunately, the promise of another meal of fresh bluegill filets offset my wife's concern for my delaying our departure.

We're headed up again this coming weekend, and I've purchased some sinking line to make a more concerted effort to catch some pike and bass off the weedlines...

Happy summer to all...