Caught my first 2 largemouth bass on a fly rod.
Caught on a natural-colored worm pattern under a strike indicator.
One was about a 2lber and the 5-wt handled it easily.
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Caught my first 2 largemouth bass on a fly rod.
Caught on a natural-colored worm pattern under a strike indicator.
One was about a 2lber and the 5-wt handled it easily.
I think you will be surprised how much a fly rod "kicks butt" on fish! I have caught some bass and catfish while bream fishing and was amazed how quickly a fly rod will whip a larger fish. A fly rod is the only way to fish!
How do you catch Catfish on a fly rod?Quote:
I think you will be surprised how much a fly rod "kicks butt" on fish! I have caught some bass and catfish while bream fishing and was amazed how quickly a fly rod will whip a larger fish. A fly rod is the only way to fish!
I had one idea but it's not very sporting, but then again it might be fun. There is a little local lake where a "ranger" throws out fish food most days a 4pm. I was down there one day when he came along. Standing quietly on the dock as he tossed the food . . . You should have seen the HUGE fish come and eat!! . . I have been wondering what pattern would work when he's feeding!! I do have a 9 wt rod, that might be fun!
-wayne
A clipped deerhair pellet work for us in situations similar to what you describe. :roll: What has worked in the "wild" for us has been a small very dark woolybugger mostly and sometimes a baitfish immi, like a surfcandie or white wooltbugger. Others that do it a lot have better probably. :wink:
And congrats of the "first"! 8)
....lee s.
I spent my college years fishing the farm ponds and river bottoms in NW Tennesee. It was the first place I ever saw anyone fly fishing. My buddy never did convince me to take up the fly rod. I took me another 15 years before I started. I wish I'd taken it up sooner I would have loved to fish Reelfoot with a fly rod. That's all I do now. My favorites are bass and sunfish. I think you're hooked. Wait till the weather warms comes and the bass start taking top water patterns on a regular basis, or you hook into a bull bream that will put a bend in that 5 wgt.
Ah, yes, sounds like a classic case of man hooks fish, fish hooks fisherman if I've ever seen one. My prescription: keep catching fish 'til the urge goes away (warning: this may be a permanent therapeutic regimen, a complete cure may never be acheived :wink: )
waynep: when the pellet hatch is on, I will toss unweighted hare's ears sized to match the hatch or as previously suggested, small clipped deer hair pellet flies for catfish. the rest of the time I've been doing fairly well on black wooly buggers, large stonefly nymphs, and crayfish patterns. I think they take the stonefly nymphs as helgramites or immature crayfish, but they take them and that's what counts.
waynep,
I was not fishing for catfish when I caught them on the fly rod. A friend of mine was camped at the campgrounds and asked me to come over and go out on his boat and help him catch bluegills for him to use as bait for "jug fishing" for catfish at night. We would run the shoreline with our fly rods fishing for the bluegill using small woolly buggers and bead head hares ear flies and by the end of the day, the live well would be full of smaller bluegill for his jug fishing plus we would catch 10 to 15 catfish that would run 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 pounds each. This was on a large lake (several thousand acres) and the fish are not fed like in small ponds. The catfish were running the banks just like the bluegill and evidently feeding on the same food source as the bluegill. I was using my 5 weight and had no problems landing the catfish. We also would catch a few largemouth bass doing this. I even had one largemouth come up and take the bluegill I was bringing to the boat. We have done this several times during the summer and really had a good time.
waynep,
You could also quickly create a foam fly that looks like the pellets the ranger tosses. Michaels and other craft stores carry a small white foam "marshmellow" that's close to the right size and could be turned smaller (check the articles on FAOL that describe turning foam flies).
Color it to match the pellets using permanent markers or start with foam about the same color.
It's an odd way to match the hatch but it's not that much different than casting a mayfly pattern in the midst of a regular mayfly hatch...the fish know "food" will be there and respond to it. Pellet, insect hatch, one is man-based chumming and one is nature-based... :-)
I live only like and an hour and maybe a hlaf away from Reelfoot and have never fished it. I WILL get there this spring and jig for some crappie and big "sunnies" and also fish for some big ol bass :)Quote:
I spent my college years fishing the farm ponds and river bottoms in NW Tennesee. It was the first place I ever saw anyone fly fishing. My buddy never did convince me to take up the fly rod. I took me another 15 years before I started. I wish I'd taken it up sooner I would have loved to fish Reelfoot with a fly rod. That's all I do now. My favorites are bass and sunfish. I think you're hooked. Wait till the weather warms comes and the bass start taking top water patterns on a regular basis, or you hook into a bull bream that will put a bend in that 5 wgt.
I latched into a huge bluegill yesterday that was a fight on a midweight spinner rod. I sure wish I had got it on the fly rod. That joker fought like a 2.5lb bass. Of course he weight nearly 2 lbs himself!!
I was about an hour or so from Reelfoot there in Martin. We never did fish for bass, mostly interested in slab crappie or the saucer size bream.
I remember using crickets to catch the bream, and small minnows for the crappie. It should make for interesting fly fishing. I know we used to fish right up against the cypress knees and under the branches for both.
I was at my local fly shop two weeks ago, and the owner was buying a Japanese fly rod called a Tenkara from one of his customers. It set him back $200. The guy showed him how it worked and how it would be fished, and the first thing that came to my mind were the old 10-12 foot cane pools that a lot of the old timers used on Reelfoot and rigged much the same way. On my way home a bulb went off and the more I thought about it the more the rod resembled the telescoping graphite or fiberglass rods used for panfishing. So I ordered one from Cabela's for about $24, and I'm going to rig it up like its more expensive brethren and see if it will work. It might be something to keep in the back of your mind if casting gets a bit tough on the lake.