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

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 at 12:49 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.