FlyBlog - FlyBass Web Log
Keep up with smallmouth bass fly fishing and other observations throughout the season and beyond. We share periodic mindless ramblings of fly fishing and often non-related thoughts.
Get the Latest at FlyBassBlog.com
Check out our new flybassblog.com and get in on the latest news, fresh off the water. We’ll continue to post here, but you can get more audio and video on our independent blog site.
Vote for something really worthwhile this year!
 On an outdoor related topic, I have a brother who is a famed wildlife artist: Bruce Miller. He won the 1993 Federal Duck stamp competition with this entry!
He is up for Ducks Unlimited Artist of the Year for 2009 and you can help him win this prestigious award! His entry is a beautiful painting of his great black lab Jake. Jake was a licker. He was also one of the most handsome dogs I've ever seen. He hunted hard, right up to the very end and went away at the age of 11.
 As a tribute to Jake, Bruce created this beautiful rendition of him doing what he loved most in a painting entitled: "Ready At Dawn". We should all be fortunate enough to honor our lost loved ones in such a cool manner.
For Bruce, Jake will always be his favorite dog. Like most of us, there’s usually one pet or animal that really becomes a part of use and has more true meaning than most of the humans on the planet.
Jake was friendly (he didn’t care for cats, but we can’t hold that against him). He was a fabulous hunting dog, rock solid in the blind - with an excellent nose and instinct for finding and retrieving down birds.
I even wrote a song about him called “Come On, Jake!”. I’ll play it for you on a video someday. In the meantime, if you’ve ever been close to a dog that liked to lick, you know Jake. Just put your head down his way and get ready for a heapin’ helpin’ of sloppy smackers.
You can vote for Bruce and Jake by clicking HERE.
 It Can’t Be That Difficult..
December 10th, 2007
We recently completed a FlyBass.com survey where a couple hundred of you completed a survey asking the burning question:
What’s the hardest part about fly fishing?
The answers were a little surprising to us.
You may not be surprised to find that “Selecting the Right Fly” was numero uno followed by “Consistently Catching Big Fish”. (Apparently not enough of you are visiting http://flybass.com ; > ).
Take the new survey (on the home page) and click the link to view the results of this survey.
Fun Waits for No One
Sounds kind of dumb, ya think?
What does it mean? It means just that: Don’t wait around for good times to come your way - make them happen for you and your friends and loved ones!
When your day comes and people talk about you, what will they say?
“Man, he worked nine hours a day for XYZ Corp and got a gold watch!” or
“He was a fine upstanding citizen in the community”; or
“He worked like the devil, we didn’t know him real well, ‘cause he worked all the time...”
I’d prefer to hear them say, “I’ll tell you one thing, that Son-of-a-Buck had good time! He knew how to enjoy life! Yeah he worked and made his way, but his main focus was on having fun, especially in the outdoors! He was a good husband and father - and showed them and many others - that being happy is the best way to live a life!”
Enjoy The Season!
Just get out there and do it.
August 3, 2007
Guess what? It’s August!
Can you believe it? Sorry to say this folks but the summer is slipping away, once again. Have you put in enough time on the water this season?
As my slogan goes: Fun Waits for No One!
Here’s a shot (by my daughter, Sienna) of yours truly waiting for the Whites (see below). I think this is far less predictable than a steelhead run. One night it’s a snow storm, the next night “nada”.
August may be the best month to fly fish smallmouth on many of our midwest rivers. The hoards of winged marauders have lessened and the nights will start to cool slightly in a couple of weeks. Low water has concentrated fish and generally you can expect decent to excellent fly fishing this time of year.
Remind yourself to make the time to enjoy our wonderful outdoors. Immerse yourself in the sights, sounds and aura of nature while casting for the finest freshwater game fish around. More and more folks are realizing the potential of our sport and turning their attention away from other fly caught species.
 The main theme in the posting is this; Another season is waning. I’ve had a ton of fun wading this summer (for about an hour and a half several evenings a week) in July and August. I average, maybe 2.5 fish per outing, but they’ve been good sized. I’ve taken them largely subsurface and found a number of patterns that produce: Here’s a few:
- Bunnies - Weighted Strip Leech type patterns, size 2 in white, gray, black and combos of the aforementioned.
- Crayfish patterns - I’ve used the Clouser crayfish pattern generally dead drifted below a float.
- Clousers - Deep Minnows - The standard in this area (and perhaps the world) is a chartreuse and white Clouser, sizes 2 - 6.
- Conehead or Dumbbell Head Wholly Bugger - type patterns in all kinds of colors.
- Poppers - I’ve been using black a lot this summer with good results, see inset. That’s just gray squirrel tail and grizzly hackle.
- Light Cahill parachute size 10 and 8 - for the fleeting white miller hatches.
Invasion of the White Wulffs!
July 28,2007
We’ve been spying some light ephemeron leukons hatches over the last couple weeks. Last evening things finally got interesting! We arrived on the water late, around 8pm to witness a very heavy spinner fall with Whites everywhere on the water. The fish largely ignored the spinners. At 8:45pm the hatch started up in earnest, like a snow storm. We took only a couple of fish on a Light Cahill #10 parachute, but I believe better nights are in store.
For complete tying instructions on flies that work during this hatch go <<HERE>>.
Go Time and/or No Time?
A funky summer’s bass fishing!
July 15, 2007 - This summer’s definitely had its ups and downs. My area of the Mississippi north of Brainerd, MN has been very inconsistent, especially for the preferred top water action.  Subsurface has been the best, as is typical, but low water and hot temps should get these fish going nuts, real soon.
Here’s a a photo of a brief sojourn to a secret bass lake in the north country known for numbers of decent largemouth. The bass are going in both lakes and rivers now. Concentrate on shallow lake areas and cover and you may be in for a big surprise.
Mid summer is a mid bummer for most game fisherman. Not Us! This is Go Time at it’s maximum! Get out there and take advantage of the hot low water conditions today and spank some bass. Don’t forget to play them guickly. Use a stout rod and work them in fast to aid in their ability to recover.
July 15, 2007
Midsummer in Minnesota. We’ve been hit by unusually hot weather. Bad for some of the lake fishing, great for rivers smallmouth and muskies. Wade fishing is great right now with low water river conditions. Many of the smaller bronzeback streams are actually being stressed. The larger rivers like the Mississippi and the St. Croix are doing well. Top water will work intermittently. When in doubt go below with Clousers, Bunnies, Wholly Buggers, Crayfish patterns, etc. Muskies are following and occasionally hitting bright colors: white, yellow, chartreuse, orange, black and white (let’s see, did I miss any?) Now is the time, get out there and get yours! Don’t forget about some dynamite largemouth bass lake fishing with surface poppers.
Mid-June Classic Northern Lake Fishing: Rainy Lake (MN and Canada)
Mid - June in the northern tear states can mean some excellent shallow water action if the proper conditions exist. Those conditions are warming water, approaching 70 degrees (or higher) and the right bottom structure. On a recent trip to famed smallmouth waters Rainy Lake in northern Minnesota and southern Ontario, water temperature made a huge difference. Anglers fishing the south side of the lake in Minnesota had little action in cooler water in the low to mid 60’s.
We found fish in transition zones where sandy beach areas met broken rocky areas with scattered rock on the bottom. Fast dropping ledge rock was largely devoid of fish. By carefully eyeballing the shoreline and selectively fishing only small areas that fit the above criteria, we managed to have some excellent top water action on foam poppers.
This time of year all over the midwest, there are excellent hatches of large dragonflies. Keep your eyes peeled for rivers and especially lakes hosting these hatches. In my area of northern Minnesota, they are all over - mainly black. We used this black foam popper with great success where ever we found dragon flies and either largemouth or smallmouth bass. Grizzly hackle and gray squirrel tail worked well - simple and effective.
 A Legend Comes to Minnesota
We met the master!
There is no bigger name in fly fishing than Lefy Kreh. At the recent Midwest Fly Fishing spring symposium and exposition in Minneapolis, Lefty “Bernard” Kreh appeared for a couple of casting demonstrations. At 82 years young, he’s can still throw those bullet loops and enliven a crowd like few others. He was hanging out in the 3M and Temple Fork Outfitters booth between casting. Of course he found a nice looking gal with whom to demonstrate casting; and had no problem snuggling up with her as he tried to improve her form. She had pretty good form to begin with if ya know what I mean. My brother and I slid into the TFO booth for a brief howdy and got to chat with him for a while.
Lefty is without a doubt the most accomplished fly fisherman in the world having caught just about everything imaginable on a fly. He also is a prolific writer. If you don’t own any of his books, I strongly recommend his Bible on Saltwater Fly Fishing and Lefty’s Little Library of Fly Fishing is a delight to have on hand for reference to anything related to our sport.
Casting for Success
Learn to really cast this year!
The single most important aspect of fly fishing, in our view, is casting. It’s also the key ingredient missing from the arsenal of most fly fisherman. While most fly fisherman view selecting the correct fly as the key issue in being successful, I believe it is casting and manipulating the fly and flyline. At a recent seminar we attended, local Minnesota fly casting expert Bob Nasby said it’s an all too common mistake. He said most fly fisherman could cast much better and increase their odds for success by becoming more proficient. Nearly everyone fails on the backcast. Without a properly executed backcast, the forward cast will nearly always fail.
You can get away with substandard casting on small trout streams. However, when the wind comes up or you find yourself on a bonefish or tarpon flats, poor casting will reduce you to a quivering mass of humility. Take the time this winter to really learn how to control your backcast to properly execute a sixty foot straight cast. If you can hit sixty feet confidently, you’ll be able to hit thirty under challenging conditions. You will then be more prepared for tough condition so common on big water and in the tropics. There are a multitude of casting resources. I got my start with Doug Swisher. He’s got several levels of fly casting DVD’s available and they’re chuck full of live fish catching excitement. Don’t overlook the master: Lefty Krey, his techniques, while different than Swisher’s, can lay the best foundation for a lifetime of effective casting.
|
