Arofishing

I'd like to hear more about some of those lakes. I'm in Riverside for the next 5-6 years. Not that I have any time to get away, but I'd try my best to make it. I went up to Yosemite to fly fish before school started. There wasn't much water, but I managed to find some smaller trout. But that was like a 7 hour drive, not feasible to do over a weekend.

Still 90 degrees in the desert. Man, WHY DID I MOVE TO THE FREAKING DESERT!?! And why do I keep reading this forum despite being 2,000+ miles away!?!

That sucks about the bird and the fire.

I think the taboo in this case relates to the fact that Crane is NOW designated a blue ribbon fishery. Bait fishing isn't allowed. More generally, I'd say any taboo surrounding bait fishing for trout has to do with them being very selective, and bait being a lazy/cheap way to catch a fish that can otherwise be quite difficult. That and all fly fishermen are snobs .

Dennis, Where did you go on the McCloud? I'll be moving to California in a few weeks and would certainly appreciate any info you could give about fishing there.

We'll wade all day Sunday if we get our fill we'll head out for a short canoe trip Monday. Thing is my friend will be floating on Saturday, and I know there is plenty of good water between the spring and the state campground. Thanks for the info re: fishing near the spring. We'll keep that in mind.

OK. Access was my concern. I didn't want to walk to the branch (via 19) only to discover I couldn't get in the water, or discover that I could only get in the river by getting up to my neck in water. We'll likely just walk the river up from 19 and go back down. It will take a long time but that's fine.

In a couple weeks I plan on camping at the state site and wading the water near there. My question is: can one wade from Greer Spring to the 19 hwy bridge? I was told in passing by someone at Richard's that this was possible, but wanted to confirm before I walk all the way there from the campsite.

Used a box from a Fish Itch deal a while back:

Thanks for the ideas. I may just take a regular tackle box sleeve, remove all the compartments, and glue some foam in there. That would be good for bigger flies. I also already use tackle box sleeves for flies anyway. Something a bit smaller would be ideal though.

Wow.

I hear ya. I was using a hopper/dropper combo at the Eleven Point a couple weeks ago and realized I didn't tie enough tippet below the hopper. Was I really going to retie all of that again? I decided not to, and that's why I was asking, so next time I'd have a better idea of length. Of course it depends on the water you're fishing too. Thanks

Jealous! Nice fish, hopefully that's me when I get there in a couple weeks. How much line did you have between your hopper and nymph? Did you use weight for the nymph? Looks like the water in your pic is pretty slow, were you fishing slower water?

I wish. I'll be outside of LA. I'll get up there as often as I can, trust me.

Well, it seems I saved my best for last. One of my last floats in MO for sometime (moving to California in August) was great. My wife and some friends of ours floated from Greer to Riverton this weekend. I got there a bit early to do some fishing before everyone else arrived. Aside from some hiccups (thunderstorm blowing in from the wrong direction, necessitating a hasty retreat from the river and back to the tent to put on the rain fly, tipping a canoe and losing some stuff), this was my favorite float of my young trout fishing career. I caught about a dozen trout, and had at least that many that got off. I also caught my biggest trout. I caught 3-4 near or over 14", all very healthy, and then on Saturday, I caught a fat rainbow over 16". I have video/pictures if my wife's phone ever functions again after getting submerged. The biggest fish was such a treat. No one else in the party fished, and that was the first one they saw me catch. As soon as I announced I had a fish on it jumped about 3 feet in the air, and did that two more times during the 5-10 minutes it took to bring it in. I'll caution, again, anyone heading around the turn below Turners. It took out one of our canoes and then knocked another person off (fortunately that canoe didn't tip). It would be nice if there was some signage there. I would definitely recommend just walking by, as it seems to be about a 50/50 proposition.

My kayak has been at a friend's house for years because I don't have a truck to transport it, so no to paddling up from Crighton. I park just off Sunshine St., ample parking there near the bridge. I ride my bike sometimes, but never have to that location. Definitely having a good time .

This has become my favorite place to go bass fishing. While it's a bit of a jaunt, lately I never fail to find the fish and get some bigguns too. This time I caught the same fish I caught on May 11, which I claimed in that report was my biggest bass yet. Well, it's still my biggest bass and grew about 1/2 an inch to 15 1/8. I also caught another nice smallie and lost another at the same spot. The pool I dubbed the "holy grail," after two weeks prior losing a fish (assumed smallmouth) of my life, was actually quite a bust. I caught one decent smallmouth there and my friend caught a mess of rock bass. Crazy enough, poppers were working at 4pm, even in this heat, at least in the shaded areas. Didn't have nearly as much success fishing on the sunny side.

Great video. What a fat rainbow! How big was it? I had (almost) the same thing happen to me in Canada with my 40" pike. After declaring the fish "wasn't that big" and claiming I could strip it in by hand, I got her half way to the boat and she took off for the first time (for whatever reason she wasn't fighting before then, hence the she's "not that big"). My slack line, replete with knots, darted for my reel and got it call clogged to hell. So here I was trying to fix that and hold a 40"/20lb fish at the same time. It all worked out though! Did your reel actually break? That's what it looked like. And what are you pointing at at 6:00? Strippers? Browns?

Congrats! You sound like me a year ago (if you went back on the forum and looked at posts from last summer you'd see). Not sure about the dots. Best

My biggest problem is hooking trout in the eye. Barbless is not going to help with that. My second biggest problem as it relates to fish health is dislocating/mangling the fish's jaw when trying to get my hook out. I know barbless can help with the second. I fish barbless and nothing I saw here would discourage me from doing so, especially since mortality was judged over a 72 hour period in which the fish couldn't feed anyway (well, maybe they could, they were in cages. But lets say you mangled a fish's jaw pretty bad and the chances were that the fish would have a *more difficult time surviving* because you mangled it more by using a barbed hook. The fish wouldn't die in 72 hours but would be less able to compete with others in its surroundings (and predators, due to the resulting lack of energy from lack of food). While the study may be illuminating considering the relatively short-term effects of catching fish, I don't think it tells us much of anything about the long-term consequences. Some things I found interesting: 1) "However, those brook trout that were deeply hooked were more likely to die when barbed hooks were used." - Sounds plausible, and yet the results were not statistically significant enough to merit acknowledgement in their conclusion. So what was the statistic? 2) "Neither hooking efficiency, frequency of escape after hooking, nor the mean amounts of time that fish were held out of water for unhooking differed significantly between hook types." - That doesn't sound as commonsensical, but maybe people like me are just too inefficient or soft when trying to get barbed hooks out? In any case, an interesting nugget, would like to see the actual numbers. Maybe there is a specific time out of the water that once surpassed trout are unlikely to live? I know that after fishing for pike, it cant take quite a while to get even a barbless hook out of their mouth and all of the fish I caught except one (swallowed a spoon real deep, harvested it), swam away fine. 3) "Active bait fishing resulted in levels of post-release mortality that were substantially lower than those often reported in bait fishing mortality studies." As someone else noted, that's great news.

I gave up on indicators, despite many on here telling me, especially as a noob, that I was better off using one. They are just too cumbersome and inevitably come off and/or lead to tangles. I spend almost as much time maintaining my line as I do fishing when I use one. Since I've stopped using them I haven't noticed either an increase or decrease in fishing success. In other words, I catch just about the same amount of fish as before but my line is in the water more. My procedure is 1. cast 2. aggressive mend 3. keep as much line off water as possible to reduce drag 4. smaller mends as needed 5. watch line intently for changes in behavior 6. set hook early and often, which 3/4 of the time amounts to me "catching" changes in drift or rocks Favorite nymphs include rubber leg stone (goldish/blackish) and prince nymph. If on the NFoW I use 9ft 4x. If on Crane I'll use 5x or 6x 9ft.

Have you guys gone on your musky trip yet? I was definitely thinking about that as I was posting this. And thanks again for the tying videos.

*Original post updated with video of 36 inch Northern caught. Still waiting on pics of the 40 inch.

Are you fishing solely for pike up there? I would have gotten a commercial leader if I had any options at all around Springfield. I wasn't impresseed with either fin and feather or bass pro's selection.

Since I only found crickets in the Canada fishing forum, and since I am highlighting my fly fishing exploits in Canada, I thought I'd give a wordy synopsis of my trip here. My wife's family makes an annual trip to Cat Island Lodge on Trout Lake in Ontario. This was my first attempt to fly fish there. The lake has Lake Trout, Northern Pike, and Walleye in abundance with some other species occasionally caught. I bought a 10 wt Orvis Clearwater specifically for this trip, and I've been tying flies for the trip for months. I also bought a number of commercial flies, including a bunch of Rainy's tsunamis and some Rainy's baitfish imitations. If I could do it all over again I wouldn't waste my money on the commercial stuff and would have stuck with the stuff I tied. The tsunamis were an incredible pain in the butt to throw, and I never caught anything on them anyway. The baitfish worked well enough, but I didn't have the same success I had with the things I tied. Flies and Setup The flies I had most success using were a clouser minnow and a circus peanut imitation using all synthetics. The clouser was a size 1 in yellow. I only had one because I had originally tied it for bass and only put it on since I was seeking something easier to cast. The circus peanut I tied using Brian's videos, size 3/0 and 1 (articulated). I had most success with the chartreuse one pictured below (after catching numerous fish, not in the best of shape). The flies stood up pretty darn well. I only retired the circus peanut after catching nearly 10 fish, and the clouser I was still using at the end. My initial plan for the leader didn't work out. After doing a fair bit of research I decided I would try 6 feet of straight 20lb monofilament attached to a normal wire leader. However, I lost 3 flies, all due to the hook attachment mechanism failing from repeated casting stress. On my last day of fishing I ditched the wire leader entirely and used 9 feet of the 20lb mono. While I did have to replace it once on account of teeth damage after a few pike, I found it to be more than adequate. As you'll see below, the 20 lb mono was sufficient to bring in a 40 inch Northern (approaching 20 lbs), each fight with the fish taking between 10 and 15 minutes. In the future I think I would do the same thing but use 25 or 30 lb mono as a shock tippet, just for peace of mind if nothing else. Method At times I was dropped off on islands or rocks and was free to wade around those areas. Typically I fished from the boat, which required that I stand at the front of it. I am very glad I practiced double hauling prior to the trip, as it turned out to be incredibly helpful. Not all of the lodge's guides were amenable to my fly fishing. Often we didn't get close enough or the boat was positioned in awkward angles. That's fine since the rest of the family doesn't fly fish, and I didn't want to sacrifice their fishing enjoyment for mine. I mostly targeted Pike and occasionally Walleye, when feasible, as determined by depth. So if the Walleye were less than 10 feet deep I'd fish for them, with split shot when necessary. Pike were sought in rocky areas, bays, and around weeds. Since Trout Lake had such an early spring (the ice receded almost a month prior to last and most years, in mid-April), I think the pike were probably in their post-spawning feeding. I say this because they universally seemed fat and healthy and were less prevalent in the weeded areas than the reefs, the weeds being an ideal spawning habitat for their eggs. Results Now for the fun stuff! I caught probably 6 or so walleye on or 4 day trip and over 10 pike on the fly rod. I didn't fly fish exclusively. My first fish of the trip was a 36 inch Northern, which you can see in the picture below (I'll update with a video once my cousin-in-law gets it online). The fish was caught on a chartreuse circus peanut imitation while wading off a rocky point. That fish was great because I caught it our first night fishing, after convincing myself that it was going to be real difficult to catch anything on the fly and setting my goal as catching a Northern bigger than 35 inches. I also kept our boat from getting skunked that evening (though, technically, I wasn't on the boat ). My next best day of fishing was our last, the afternoon of which we really managed to find the fish. The first video below is of a 35 inch Northern caught on the clouser mentioned above. The second video is of a 36 inch Northern caught on the Chartreuse Circus Peanut. As soon as they get posted I'll include pictures of my 40 in. trophy Northern (any Northern about 40 on that lake is considered a trophy). In my opinion that was the highlight of the trip behind my cousin-in-law's 46 inch Northern caught on a spoon, the biggest caught in the family's 30+ year history of visiting the lake. 35 in. Pike on fly rod Trout Lake, Canada from Arotator on Vimeo.