“I had to go to Baldwin Michigan in October for a few days and my friend from Nashville happened to be there fishing for Salmon on the Pere Marquette River. Roger invited me to fish with his group one day and we caught some nice fish. I think I landed seven and lost as many. I had a beautiful 27” Brown Trout on until he had different ideas. The fish in attached photo weighed 20 pounds and I caught it using the nine weight fishing an egg pattern. It was a good day, but probably would not had the opportunity had I not been there working. Sometimes working is good!”- Larry

This is my friend Larry, an expert in the art of fly fishing.  His rod and reels are really the best.  As you can see here he really put them to good use.  Personally, I have never caught a freshwater fish like this.  As Larry describes above, he must have had a really great fly fishing day.

Congratulations Larry.

Tight Lines

Jim

Fishing with the fly rod week 2 Nov 09 was almost a repeat of week one.  I managed to get to fish three days for 2 1/2 hours to 3 hours in the late afternoon.  The fishing was really good on all three days with the best day being Saturday.  Using the white wooley bugger was effective on Wednesday, the olive wooley bugger was best on Friday and Saturday.  The rainbow trout fly (From Discount Flies.com) that caught most of my fish one day the week before didn’t get much attention at all.  Well , that just shows that fish have their preference from one day to the next.  To back that up, why is it that one day the fish like the white wooley bugger one day and the next day I have to change to an olive color.  Last week the white one caught nearly 50 fish where the olive was best on Saturday with 42 fish including bass, bluegill and crappie. 

So far this week it’s been cold and raining, no fishing.

For you fishing readers, if you would like to share some of your fishing experiences, I’d like to hear from you.  Especially Illinois fishing since that’s where I live.  Just make comments and add your own experiences with Bass, Crappie, Bluegill, Pike, Walleye or whatever fish you pursue.  I really like to fly fish for big bluegill and bass.  Do you have any suggestions?  As you can see in my web site I have featured some nice 9 or 10 inch bluegill but I sure would like to find some bigger ones.  The largest one that I ever caught was on a fly the day before I entered the Air Force; it was 13 1/2 inches long on Onota Lake in PIttsfield Mass.

Tight Lines

Jim

This was one of the best days of fishing I’ve had all season.  The majority of my fish were all caught on the fly rod.  The cat on a white wooley bugger, the bluegill, about 25 of them, were caught on the wooley bugger and the tiny Yum craw, the drum was caught on a black rabbit skin streamer and this bass was caught on a Blue Fox spinner.  I also caught a 5 lb bass the other day on a Storm Wild eye jig attached to a pin spinner ( didn’t have my camera with me)  The bluegill were all in the 8 to 10 inch range, really nice and lots of fun.  These fish and about 30 or so crappie all caught on the tiny craw.  The crappie were all in the 8 to 9 inch range. 

I stuck with the fly rod for the most part only going to the spinner when trying to locate fish and that it did.  It’s funny but I was catching the majority of these fish in locations where I haven’t caught almost any fish all summer.  This was the best fly fishing day I’ve had in a very long time.  I was kept busy for about 3 1/2 hours almost without stop.  Wish you guys were with me, I’m sure that you both would have done just as well.

Hope all is well with you.

Tight Lines

Jim