I can remember one day, I was fishing on Cripple Creek in S.W. Va at a place called Raven Cliff. A nice place with frequent mayfly hatches and spinner falls. This day in particular I was casting upstream into a narrow space along a fallen tree into a flood dam. There were limbs everywhere but that sweet patch of swirling water was too good to pass up. My first cast I dropped my #16 adams in as light as I could. Strangely enough, my tippet about 12 inches above my fly, draped across a strand of spider web and just dangled back and forth about 8 inches above the water. It was one of those impossible lucky casts into a tight spot and I didn’t wnat to screw it up. So, I’m thinking… how can I get my fly to drop straight into this perfect spot? Well… ten seconds of thinking was all that fish could stand. A 12 inch rainbow came almost completely out of the water , all but his tail, and dispatched my fly with heavenly force. The real challenge was getting this guy out of all that cover, but I did manage to horse him in. That was, by far, the strangest but coolest catch I believe I’ve ever had.
I was pan fishing on my favorite lake and had caught a small bluegill. As I was bringing it in a large bass bite the bluegill. In the process of the strike the bass became hooked as the bluegill traveled up the line thru the hook hole. As I was fighting the bass, another bass came up and bite the gill on the line. Although the second bass did release a few seconds later I did have three fish on a single fly.
Mine was a slow double. I was fishing a beadhead nymph under an elkhair caddis attractor. A 14" brown grabbed the nymph and started running back and forth across the tiny spring creek. The fish was in close so the EHC was zipping around about a foot above the water. A second 14" brown jumped at the EHC and missed it only to jump and grab it on the next pass. The result was a double on the attractor-dropper combination but hooked about 15 seconds apart.
David
Several years back I was fishing, Spruce Creek, in central Pa. as a guest. It was late July and very warm. Charley Mecks book called for #22 black tricos which I tied ahead of time. On a deep bend I threw out a #14 mayfly and an 18 in. “missle” brown came up from deep and “nosed” the fly, then swam away! I proceeded to offer a half dozen of my best ties in sizes 12 thru 18 and each time that trout “nosed” it then swam away! Finally, with many explicatives, I tied that #22 black trico on. The big brown came up, “nosed” it, paused forever(5 seconds), then lunged forward and devoured it… Great fight, brought to net, good release and lesson learned about tiny flies! 
A number of years ago I lived at a small lake in northern New Jersey. One evening after all the swimmers had left, I went across the street to the beach to do a little fishing. On one of my first casts, I made my backcast and started to come foreward, but the fly was stuck. My first thought was “oh rats, I’ve snagged a tree.” Then I realized that I was on a beach and there was nothing but sand for 100+ feet behind me, and I can’t cast that far. So, I turned around and walked back to my fly, and there flopping around in the sand, was a bat, my fly in its mouth. Not thinking very clearly, I reached out, grabbed the bat, smoothed its wings back, and removed my fly from its mouth. I put the bat down, it looked at me for a second, I swear I heard it say “thanks,” and it flew away. I never thought until I got home about the diseases, including rabies that bats carry, but everything worked out well for both of us. By the way, I stayed on the beach for a while and caught a couple of sunnies, and a very large Crappie.
Bob … 8)
RW here,
A 55 Buick. It spooled me. Nuff said
RW
reached the river - worked the area before stepping in - nada. So as I’m entering the river, line and fly dragging, the fly gets hung up 1/2 way across in the rapids. I step back to untangle it and there’s a 10" rainbow on it.
I went fishing at my favorite oxbow lake here in Louisiana. I pulled up in my boat to one of my favorite spots for blue gill. I was using a local fly called a Jitterbee tied on a #10 hook. I was using a 2 weight fly rod. Right as I made my first cast and wet my fly for the first time a bass fisherman (ugh!) pulled up next to me in his $30,000 Blazer bass boat. He said he had fished all evening the day before and all morning and had not gotten a bite. He asked me if I had done any good. Just as I got out the words ?I just got here and wet my fly? I felt a tug on my rod. After about a 10 minute bout on my 2 weight I pulled a 3 ? pound bass into my little skiff! I never saw the guy again?
A Seagull with a Clouser Minnow while fishing the IRI jetty in Delaware. It rose to my back cast. :oops:
The fellow I was fishing with gave me a quick demo on the proper C/R technique for seagulls. :lol:
Dave.
When I was a kid, I say around 10 or so, I used to like to explore the woods as much as fish
My father used to tell me, “You can’t catch a fish if your fly’s not in the water”.
Well this wasn’t lost on me so I decided I would just walk along the stream bank with my line out.
You can guess what happened :idea:
Boy that sounds familiar. My very first trout was at 7 years old, fishing on Potts creek in the Jefferson National Forest, VA. Standing in the middle of the creek wearing old cowboy boots that were way too big but I thought looked way cool, completely board with having never caught anything. I had my line in the water for about 20 minutes swirling in the current when Dad said that it was time to go. As I began to reel, Voila!
When I was about 7 or 8 (54 years ago).I was laying on my stomach on a large flat rock beside the river catching bullheads. I had a 2 foot weeping willow stick rod, about a foot of line, a split shot, #14 hook and a worm. (even at 8 we kids knew the hook sizes) I was jiggling the bait when a carp the size of a schoolbus flashed into view and grabbed that hook. I held on for about 10 seconds then had the stick yanked away . We watched the carp in deeper water drag that stick around for about 10 minutes before it caught on an obstruction . The carp then went nuts and managed to free himself. Exciting stuff to us kids.
I was just a young man when I first fish the Manitou River on Manitoulin Island, I was just learning how to cast a fly rod. There was a caddis hatch occurring and I promptly put on the smallest browm dry I could find. The black flies and mosquitoes were pretty bad but I wasn’t going to give up. There was a large mid-stream rock that had a nice speck rising. I made a few casts and missed the mark, the next cast was perfect. As the line loop unfurled the fly hung motioless in the air for a second or two, then the fly started to come back towards me. I thought, “WOW this fly fishing is something else”. A large dragon fly had caught the fly in the air at the end of the cast and was flying back towards me. It dropped the fly about 10 feet behind me and a 6 inch speck inhaled it. I got the 6 incher, never got the big one by the rock though.
A buddy and I decided to go on a late spring fishing trip to his farm house just north of the town we live in. It has a couple families living around it, all very older folks that do not fish the spring fed pond. The only fishing the pond receives is from us. My buddy ALWAYS uses purple plastic worms (has done it for 10 plus years) on a zebco 33 and always does tons better than me. I usually use a popper or some sort of spider on a 5wt. This is a pretty big pond so we use a bass buggy with a trolling motor. We go to the deepest part of the lake and he jigs his traditional bait straight down. Bang! he reels it in and its a decent fish. I tell him its pooping something. He raises it up and looks at it a little. He pulls it out, which makes me squirm a little, and he holds it up like its some sort of trophy and exclaims “Whadya know a purple worm”.
When I was a kid about ten years old, 56 years ago, was trolling for bass in an old wooden boat that we actually had to row cause we didn’t have a motor way back then. Was using a big red and yellow “bucktail” fly that my dad gave me at the end of my (gasp!) bait rod and catching a fair amount of bass that day. Pulled into shore for lunch and the line I had out, about thirty feet, just slowly drifted up to the boat while I was unloading my lunch goodies. My fishing partner said I’d better reel in my line or it would get all tangled up. By this time some of it, including the fly, had drifted under the boat, which was in about two feet of water shoreside. When I got to almost the end of the line it felt like the fly had snagged under the bottom of the boat. After about two tugs it suddenly tugged back. When I got the last couple feet of line out from under the boat attached to the fly was an almost two pound “yellow ned” perch - the biggest one I ever caught! The bigger perch in this lake had mostly yellow instead of whitish bellies; so, everyone I knew back then refered to them as “yellow neds.” Must have been a local thing and I never asked why.
Best day ever? Caught a cool rainbow at Lees Ferry at 5 in the morning on a foam ant. It was as big as my hand and forearm.
Second best?
Went to a local city pond that had aparently just put in a billion bass and bluegillz.
I used a gold bead head olive bugger the whole time on 4.b floro. Caught bass that would have been only viewed on ESPN so many times I forget how many. Caught bluegill the size of dinner plates more than three times and some the size of sandwich plates too many times to recall.
Did all this on my “modified” Wally-World 5/6 wt SA greenie with the Dancraft chapmagne aluminum reel
seat.
No really. There was one blugeill that was as big as the yellow pages. !!!
I don’t know how printable mine is, but it’s a great story to tell around a campfire or bar table.
About all I’ll say it that after I landed this one, the pool became affectionatly known as The Hoffa Pool among the folks who fish with me. I think it was on a Puke Fly. REALLY!!! :shock:
Pound for pound, the gamest fish that swims. (Dr. James Henshall)
I read the Dr.James Henshalls classic book on bass fishing when I was 12 years old (about 48 years ago) The fighting qualities of the smallmouth bass is what eventually led me into flyfishing from the realms of the bait fisherman. Even though I fish too much for trout lately the smallmouth won my heart way back when I first started to fish. In those days I used an old metal rod with a wooden handle and someone gave me an old Pfleuger baitcaster that didn’t work. (Did they have “freespool” way back then?) What follows is a true account of my first encounter with smallmouth…
As a 12 year old boy I used to take the steetcar to a far away pond in a large park located in the west end of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I was born and raised in the east end of this city and until I got my bike at 14 I had to save my allowance. (10 cents a week) to travel on public transit. One time I lost my ticket and had to walk home from this place. (about 10 miles).
Well, on my 12th birthday my older brother who was already working gave me a bamboo spinning rod (only bamboo I ever had)and I believe it was a “Gendron” spinning reel spooled with that funny line that was so completely different from the thick black braided stuff we had been using up to that point. (By the way that braided line was a huge improvement over the thick green stuff that I had used even earlier on my “hand line”.)
That summer the local newspaper the “Toronto Star” was sponsoring a contest where they would release tagged bass with cartoon comic character names and a monetary value stamped upon the tag. Top prize was $100 (very significant for a guy on $.10 a week). After very thorough research and a lot of allowance saving I almost landed “Popeye”, one of the hundred dollar fish. Here’s what transpired…
Step 1 A trip to the public library where I discovered Henshall’s book.
Step 2 Discovering Henshall’s revelation that despite the effectiveness of the classic bass flies and the new fangled French spinners, the best way to take a trophy smallmouth was with soft-shelled crayfish or small leopard frogs. Being a typical kid from that era I knew exactly where to get both of those bass tidbits. Since all the crayfish I caught had hard shells I settled on a jar full of small leopard frogs.
Step 3 Beg for an advance on my allowance as I needed to rent one of the boats offered at the pond.
Step 4 Row out to the middle of the lake. (I figured this had to be where the fish were because I never could catch anything in normal casting range from shore.)
Step 5 Tie on the hook and impale the frog.
Step 6 Ask my brother who was my fishing partner, “How do you tie knots in this monofilament stuff?”
Step 7 Since my brother did not know the answer I invented a knot. (Always worked fine with the braid.)
Step 8 Cast out far behind the boat. ( Boy this spinning stuff is way better than setting down the rod, pulling out line and twirling it over your head to launch it propelled by a heavy sinker.)
Step 9 Being observant. Hey Dave did you see that big bass jump behind the boat? Wow, there he goes again. Holy smoke, my rod tip is going crazy I think that fish just ate my frog!
Step 10 Masterfully playing the fish to the boat on my new tackle.
Step 11 Realizing I had no net. (Henshall didn’t describe “lipping bass”.)
Step 12 Listening to the advice of the recently immigrated boat rental guy. "Grob dee line, Grob dee line!
Step 13 (Wouldn’t you know the fatal step would be #13.) I “grobbed dee line.”
Step 14 Once again being very observant I see no fish and dee line is very curlee.
Step 15 Crying in my beer (root of course)
Step 16 Returning Dr. James to the library before he was overdue. I couldn’t recall if he had written a chapter on knots but at 10 cents a week my allowance couldn’t take the hit of a hefty overdue fine.
Anymore old timers around with stories of interesting angling experiences from your younger days?
My son and I were fishing the mouth of Sheep Creek where it goes into the Big Susitna River, about 40 miles north of Wasilla, Alaska, in the fall of 2004. It was a fairly cool day, about 15 degrees, and the fishing was pretty slow. We had caught a grayling or two. My son was sliding on some ice that had backed up into a slough and all of a sudden he jumped up and said, “AAAgggghhhh” like he was startled. This was pretty unusual for him, being raised here in Alaska and being exposed to a lot of critters, fish, hunting etc. I walked over to where he was looking down through the ice and there was a burbot, a kind of freshwater cod-looking fish, trapped under the ice in barely a few inches of water. He said, “Dad, what is that?!!” They are pretty strange looking if you have never caught or seen one. We proceded to try to break the ice with rocks, sticks and the like and finally succeded in breaking through, even though it was about 2 inches thick. We finally got a hold of the wriggling burbot and I took a picture of my son with it. He took it over and released it into the Big Susitna and off we went. I guess it wasn’t a catch in the sense of fishing but a fun fishing trip none the less. 8)
Happy Trails,
Dean