As I have said in past entries, “when the ice is on the water it’s time to clean up and reorganize all my fishing gear in preparation for the next spring season.”  I’ve already done my fly fishing gear.  I read somewhere that after cleaning your rods with water, “try Pledge furniture polish to get back that new rod look”, and it works.  My rods look as good as new.  I cleaned all the lines with line cleaner and changed all the leaders.  During the season I found that adding 18” of fluorocarbon as a tippet it saves the leader and the line is so much thinner that the line lays out better and seemingly gives the popper or fly better action.  Of course fluorocarbon  is also mostly invisible to the fish and that helps to get more strikes, “I think, anyway”.  Fluorocarbon also sinks, using too much will cause the wet flies to sink faster so, if you’re using dry flies…?  I’m also looking at my fly shop sources for sale prices on flies, lines, and leaders.  Many shops have lowered their prices on these items, so, if you’re interested, now is the time to buy.

I’ve also finished cleaning my bait casting rods and reels in the same way.  As you must have surmised, I’m not just strictly a fly fisherman.  When I go fishing I go to catch fish and I bring along several rods and reels and the baits required for the specific fish that I am pursuing.  Fly Roding, however, is my first choice.  There is no more fun that catching a big bass on the fly rod or for that matter, a big bluegill, or crappie, or pike.  Of course if you have read several of my fishing experiences in this web site you will have found that channel cats will also hit flies.  My biggest cat on the fly was last years 7 lb channel cat caught on a bass streamer fly.  That fish didn’t want to give up!  And the biggest crappie that I’ve ever caught was caught on the fly.  I might add, that all the fish shown in this web site are still swimming as far as I know.  I am almost strictly a “catch and release” fisherman.  The only time that I kept any fish was last season , spring, when I took out my 6 year old granddaughter, she wanted “to cook some for  supper”, which we did.  And she liked them!  So did I.

I’ll be working on my spinning and spin casting rods and reels in the coming days and weeks.  I’ll keep in touch

Tight Lines

Jim

I was fishing fishing in the pond whenever I could the last week in November and the first day of Dec. for about two hours on  one day and 3 hours on two other days in the afternoon from 1 – 3:30 or 4:30 PM.  The fish were responding mainly to spinners, especially the one shown here, a Storm Wild eye on a pin spinner,  It was the only color(green perch) that the bass would respond to.  One bass was caught on a pin spinner/curly tail jig in dark/light  blue, the 18” bass shown here.  Using the spinner was the key if you dragged it just on the bottom with enough speed for the spinner to have some spin on it.  Looking at the tip of my spinning rod for vibration I could calculate just how fast to move it to get hit.  Faster or slower would get no response.

The crappie were hitting on the storm wild eye as well as the flies.  The bluegill I caught on the olive color and the white color wooley bugger fly #6 fished with very small jerks with the hand doing the work, not the rod.  The fly had to sink to the bottom to get the attention of the crappie and the bluegill and a couple of small bass to boot.

Another observation, the fish were hitting on clear sunny days and were not responding to any bait on the dark days with a few small crappie as the exception .  The wind also created a different pattern, when the wind was up-nothing, but a calm wind-hits, as long as the sun was shining brightly.  And, the best times were the last hour of  bright sunlight.

The majority of the bluegill were in the 8 – 9 inch class, the crappie were mostly 8 –9 inch with the exception of the one shown here at 14 1/2 inches.  The bass are 18” and 15”.  They were the biggest bass but I caught a few more smaller bass with both the fly and the wild eye rig.  I also lost several larger fish because of poor hookups.  I guess I caught 40 fish on the good days and maybe 15 on the bad days, a mixture of all the the fish shown here.  Whatever, its always fun to be out there trying to catch the “Big One”.

Tight lines

JIm