Good morning folks,
It's been a little while since my last post, but I have a good reason. Much like the rest of the country, Georgia has been getting an awful lot of rain lately. Since my last post, I've only been fishing twice. I got skunked both times. I've been spending some time learning to tie flies and packing for my upcoming move to a new apartment. We've been pretty busy at work recently and on top of that, there's only a few weeks left until school starts back. Where did the summer go?
I took the kayak out to Lake Lanier the Saturday before last. The morning was very overcast, there was a pretty stiff wind on the lake and the water had a pretty good chop to it. I had my 2 weight TFO rod and fought the wind with every cast. The fish must have been down deeper than I could get with my floating line. After 3 hours on the water I only had two soft strikes. I didn't hook up once. I threw every fly I had that my two weight could handle. Then started throwing the flies that it couldn't! Finally, I tied on this big, black streamer-/woolly bugger-type fly that I bought too long ago to remember and noticed bass nipping at its tail. I'm a fan and follower of the teachings of Tom Rosenbauer and the Orvis Fly Fishing Guide Podcast and one of his most often reiterated pieces of advice is that if the fish are showing interest, but make a last second refusal, change size first! Well, that's all well and good, but I didn't have another size of that pattern. After about 20 minutes of watching the small fish try to school with my fly, I paddled back to the launch and called it a day. Skunked. But, with a plan.
I spent the next few days listening to the rain fall and researching fly patterns and tying recipes (when I wasn't at work, anyway). I decided to try my hand at tying up some woolly buggers, but most of the recipes I could find were for larger hooks, sized 6 through 10. I wanted something smaller. I determined that I could follow the instructions I had found, and just scale it down to a smaller hook. Then, I stumbled upon instructions for tying wooly buggers on a size 14 hook and I decided that it could be done, pretty easily. I bought the needed materials (I thought tying flies was supposed to be cheaper than buying them?) and spent an evening at the tying vise. I'm a beginner at fly tying, so it took me a few hours to come up with a half dozen flies, but it's a very easy pattern to tie and probably a very good one for a beginner like me to get started with. I've read that black, brown and white are the three preferred colors for wooly buggers, so that's what I tied. I didn't use bead heads, but did put lead under the body to weight the fly down.
So, armed with a half dozen, newly tied mini-buggers, I hit the lake again this past Sunday. The weather seemed a bit more cooperative, big clouds about, but mostly sunny and not nearly as breezy as the weekend before. I spoke to a couple gentlemen bank fishing and learned that the fish weren't biting. In the two hours they had been there, they only caught one fish a piece, both catfish on bait. I pushed off from the boat launch and started to paddle back to one of my most productive spots so far. I stopped and fished some along the way, but got no bites. I was amazed at how few fish I could see in the water. Normally, it seems, you can see bream and small bass swimming amongst the rocks in the shadows. I paddled into a grassy area to fish around a fallen tree that has produced good bites in the past. Not even a bite. At one point, the best fish I had seen in a while showed themselves. In about 2 feet of water there swam three carp that were each, easily, 18" long. Swimming directly under and around my kayak, with I good net, I could have grabbed them! They showed absolutely no interest in my size 14 wooly buggers.
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| Size 14 Mini Bugger |
I paddled on to fish around the rock dam where I've had some luck before. I pulled up into a small inlet where I've caught a few bream in the past, and dropped my anchor right in the middle of the mouth. From this spot I could fish almost the whole inlet. There's a sloping dirt bank on the left and a steeper rip-rap stone bank to the right. I was starting to see some more fish swimming around, so I thought, surely, I'd have some luck here. The water was nice and clear and smooth and I could really see the action of my mini bugger as I stripped it in. I was working it in every way I could think of, long fast strips, short slow strips, short fast strips, long slow strips, you name it, I tried it. I would occasionally see small bass following the fly, but no bites.
In the three hours I was on the lake fishing, I got two soft, but splashy, strikes. I had things to do at home, so wasn't able to put in any more time. By the time I made it back to the car, I had paddled almost 5 miles. You tend to feel paddling that kind of distance more when the fish aren't biting. I loaded up and went home.
I got skunked, two weekends in a row. See now why I haven't posted? So, what have I learned? If you're not going to catch fish, you should at lease learn something about fishing, right? I need to do some more research, but I'm guessing that due to the cloud cover over the lake the fish must have been holding deeper than I could reach with my mini bugger and floating line. At one point I had crimped on a small split shot to my line. That seemed to garner the most attention. I think I'm going to spend some time tying some more mini buggers, but this time I might try some tungsten bead heads. I also might have to look into investing in a spare spool and some sink tip line. One of the purposes of the original wooly bugger was to imitate leeches. From what I've read, freshwater leeches tend to prefer living in and around rocks. I need to tie my mini buggers so they will get down into the crevices of the rocks and can be worked in and around. The buggers I tied had 5-7 wraps of .015 lead wire, but with the chenille and marabou it just wasn't enough to take the fly down more than a foot and a half or so. Even to reach that shallow depth required me to wait probably a full minute. Being that I'm still new to fly fishing, coming off of years of fishing Texas rigged worms on spinning gear, I'm not used to waiting so long for my lure to reach the bottom. A bit more weight on the fly and a sink tip line might just do the trick.
Hopefully soon I'll have some caught fish to share with you. I'll post a photo tutorial on the mini buggers that I tied. I'm still working to get them right and practice my tying skills, but you folks can critique me on how I'm doing so far.
Thanks for reading. Tight lines and Happy fishing,
-Nick
Jim Misiura - Wooly Bugger Tutorial
Tim Cammisa - Wooly Bugger Tutorial
The Orvis Fly Fishing Guide Podcast
Today's Equipment
Flyrod: Temple Forks Outfitters 6'6" 2wt
Fly Reel: White River Fly Shop 3/4
Line: Rio 3wt WF
Flies:
#14 Mini Wooly Buggers asst. colors
Knife:
Kershaw Ken Onion Scallion
Evenin' Folks! New for 2017, the folks at The Fly Fishing Shows made a venue change. This year, for the first time, they moved the show from it's Winston-Salem, North Carolina location to Atlanta, Georgia. More specifically, the Infinite Energy Center in Duluth, which is located about 10 minutes from the former The Suburban Angler world headquarters in Suwanee. I say former because, as you know if you follow our social media pages, The Suburban Angler moved to Florida last fall!!! Right before they announced that The Fly Fishing Show would be held in our backyard!! I really hated to miss the show, I attended the last three years at the Winston-Salem venue, but we just weren't able to make the trip back up to Atlanta. Luckily, a fly fishing buddy of mine very graciously offered to take a few photos of the show and even do a couple of live videos on Instagram from the show floor. The videos, unfortunately, are gone forever, as is the nature of Instagram's live video feature, but here are a few of the photos he took for me. Enjoy them, and hopefully I'll make it to Atlanta for the show in 2018!!
With a compressed body, small head and arched back, the black crappie is silvery-green to yellowish, with large dorsal and anal fins of almost identical shape and size. It has a large mouth with an upper jaw extending under the eye. It has many dark spots on its sides and fins, which become more mottled toward the back. To differentiate between a black crappie and a white crappie, count the dorsal spines. The black crappie has seven to eight dorsal spines, while the white crappie has only five to six.
The redear sunfish is a deep, slab-sided fish with pointed pectoral fins. Its most distinguishing feature is a red or orange edge along the ear flap. With light green-to-gold sides speckled with red or orange flecks, the redear has a yellowish-orange belly. The redear sunfish also grows faster and larger than other sunfish, often reaching 2 pounds with 1-plus pound fish common.
Fliers are small, deep-bodied, compressed sunfishes with large dorsal and anal fins that are nearly equal in size. The upper jaw extends backward to the front of the eye, and the tongue has two tooth patches. Olive green to pale yellow sides are marked with several rows of brown spots. Small fliers have a prominent black spot surrounded by an orange circle in the soft dorsal fin.
