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It is the second week of August. Somebody turned the heat up,
way up. The temperatures have been in the high 80's by the
time the noon hour comes. With the humidity the heat index
is even higher.
I still head to the lake, as it is more fun than setting inside.
I know that what I am going to get is more casting practice than
anything else. I am getting better with my left-handed casting.
I can get 40 to 45 feet of line out with reasonable accuracy.
That means if a fish hits the fly, I was accurate.
We have had several rain showers come through. We have not had
the flooding problems that other folks have had in parts of
northern Iowa and some of the adjacent states. What they are
going through is no fun at all. The rivers are up some. The
ponds are full and it takes a few hours for all the water
to soak into the ground in low places.
The one thing I can tell you is that the cracks in my garden
are not there anymore. I am sure the cracks are gone in the
fields also. The grass looks like it does in May and June
and is growing that fast.
Top water fishing has not worked very well for me this year.
I have tried a lot of poppers, grasshoppers and other floating
flies, but the fish have not responded to them. I have used
several other flies and have not had many fish take them.
I have put my thinking cap on and wondered what I might come
up with to tempt the fish.
I decided to tie up a few different flies. These are going
to be bead heads with a fairly good size bead head on them.
I tie several flies in a soft hackle style using some of
the punch yarn I have. The change is that I use a dry fly
hackle at the front of the fly and not a soft hackle. I want
the fly to push more water while it is being moved. With that
much hackle you need the bead head to get it down.
This is not entirely new to my tying. I have done a few Woolly
Buggers with dry fly hackle to use when the water is dirty. I
think they throw off more vibrations when they are moved to
help the fish key in on them. They have worked better for me
than the soft hackled buggers in dirty water.
The summation of the week is fairly short. I did manage to
catch a few fish each day. It took a very long cast and a
long wait to let the fly drop. Then a sharp one-inch strip
with a five second pause between the strips. Some times I
got the fly out far enough that I would get a fish to hit.
I would feel resistance when I stripped the fly and would
do a hook set. I managed to land about half the fish I hooked.
I got bluegill, crappie, bass, green sunfish, small carp
and one small channel cat doing this. Not a big number of
fish any day, but still fun getting them.
I am going to have to tie up some more of these flies and
try them on the weekends when I am in some other ponds. I
do tie these on size 10 and 12 hooks. I use four wraps of
the dry fly hackle on the front of them.
Hope you can get out on the water. ~ Rick
(Written 09/11/07)
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