tangledup

I have a few old bass plugs like that. Beat up, paint chipped off, but they catch fish better now than they did brand new. I fish a lot of tubes for smallmouth and I swear a tube fishes better after it’s been chewed up by two or three of those little bronze bastards.

We must fish the same waters because my flies definitely aren’t pretty or professional quality but I manage to snag a few fish every now and then. I strive for perfection, fall short every time, and am happy with whatever fish are dumb enough to eat my ugly flies.

I agree there are several patterns out there that are more time efficient and probably more effective. Like I said, it was mainly just a fun tribute project. But I did learn a lot about selecting bucktail from different parts of the tail, different ways to tie it in to build different looking baitfish profiles and things like that. I'm going to start tying up a few different types of flies using bucktail and try to do more bass fishing with my fly rod. It was a lot of fun and challenged me to learn to cast farther. So far the majority of my fly fishing has been small stream wild trout so I really don't have to cast very far.

Yeah it is basically a dahlberg. You can use deer hair or foam I believe. At least that’s what I saw during my YouTube research.

It dives when you strip it, although you have to strip it pretty quickly to get any kind of depth at all. Luckily the fish were in a mood to chase things last night. But I did catch a couple by doing exactly what you said: toss it out there and let it sit for a while then twitch it a little. It didn't cast very well on my 5wt though lol. I don't think this is a fly I'm going to tie up a bunch of but I did enjoy making it. More of a tribute project than anything. The craftsmanship on the originals caught my eye and the wistful way my father in law spoke of his departed friend (the original tier) pulled at my heart strings a little. He was pretty excited when I told him I was going to try to recreate them and even more excited when I showed him the pictures of the fish they caught. All in all it was a fun project.

The markers didn’t stay on too well in the water. You can see that in the last picture. Those silly ducks followed me all around the pond chasing that fly. They actually made it hard to fish. Even the wild mallards who adopted our pond chased this thing around. It almost seemed like a game to them, grabbing the fly out of the water and swimming off with it as fast as they could.

Well they caught fish. I only had about an hour of free time right before sunset but I caught 8 of these little bass and one crappie. I had one decent (by decent I mean maybe a two pound) bass get off but didn’t land any big fish. I had trouble with the fly landing upside down on some casts. Not exactly sure what to do to fix that. The leader probably wasn’t perfectly suited for the job so I probably need to fix that before I start making adjustments to the flies. It was still fun though! Oh, and did I mention that it also catches ducks??

Yes I think it is. The top sections that are blue/green definitely are. I didn’t have any craft fur so I used bucktail. In the underwater videos I watched, I kind of like the movement of bucktail better anyway.

I'm still working out the shape of the head but it's getting closer. I like the shading on his much better than mine also, but I'm no artist so mine probably won't get much better. This was my first experience working with bucktail too and I definitely learned a couple things. I'm going to take this one down to the pond tonight and give a try. Hopefully my next couple tries will work out a little better.

A couple weeks ago we were at my father-in-law’s house and, as usual, the conversation drifted to fishing, flies, and fly tying. He brought out a box of flies tied by an amazing fly tier and old friend of his who is no longer with us. As we went through the box of flies, my father-in-law was regaling us with fishing tales of old and I found a pair of bass flies that intrigued me. Although my tying skills leave much to be desired I decided to try my hand at tying them. Here is how they turned out. The first photo are the original flies I tried to copy. The second and third photos are my attempt. I’m open to any and all suggestions and critiques.

Dove season will be here before you know it! That and tinkering with my blinds, decoys, etc. is what gets me through to duck season without going crazy. I love fishing but waterfowl is my true passion. Looking forward to setting aside some mallard feathers and goose biots for fly tying this year.

Not a whippoorwill. It’s some kind of small hawk. Pretty sure he was chasing this guy. Which explains why he was silly enough to fly in front of my truck.

Is that a state law?

Looks like the trash can provided by my local waste disposal service meets the criteria for proper disposal. I probably could have easily kept some feathers and no-one would have been the wiser, but I have yet to run afowl (get it?) of a conservation agent, so why start now?I have plenty of options for fly tying material. Lesson learned here: Think before you post.

So I feel a little sheepish....after hunting my entire life you would think I would know this, but it didn't even cross my mind. I was just going to call our conservation agent and give him a heads up about what happened. After speaking with him the bird and all connected feathers have been properly disposed of. It's a shame, he was a pretty bird.

Where Tory Creek (the creek that runs out of the trout farm on O Highway) ends and Camp Creek (that runs through Busiek) begins are on opposite sides on Hwy 13, south of Spokane. While they don't connect, they do run in the same general direction and it wouldn't surprise me at all if there was an underground stream connecting the two. Is it possible that the trout took a brief underground swim and ended up in Busiek? If you click here: https://goo.gl/maps/WJm3ddoAxMDQnk7p8 you can see where Tory Creek ends and Camp Creek begins.

So this guy committed suicide via my truck on my way home last night. He is really pretty and has some nice colors to him. Are there any feathers worth trying to salvage as tying material?

Nice looking fish!

I said it was low and clear, but I hadn't been to the river outside the park until this year, so really my only frame of reference was what it looked like during the first part of the year. Obviously it was pretty high and swift with all the rain we had. As most people do I'm sure, my son and I started fishing at Roaring River when we began trout fishing. We still enjoy fishing the park when it isn't crowded but we discovered a small hidden gem of a creek about 20 minutes from the house so that is primarily where we fish now. I fished below the park at RR a couple times this year because I figured it would be less crowded and I love wade fishing during the summer months. I haven't taken a temperature reading of the stream (don't carry a thermometer) so I can't say about survivability. When I was down there last week the chubs were ferocious as you mentioned. I finally quit nymphing because I got tired of catching the silly things. Although, I was working on nymphing without an indicator so it was still kind of fun to practice detecting those strikes. I saw a few trout but not many. There were a couple small swift runs that held three or four and I found a couple deep pools that had trout in them as well. I just didn't have any luck catching them. But that's all the more reason to go back and try again.

Guys who have been around the game for a long time like you are exactly who I enjoy hearing from. I heard something the other day ( I think it was on the Orvis fly fishing podcast maybe) that trout, or fish in general, will hit a crawdad pattern harder because of the claws and its potential to fight back. I have no idea if that's true or not but there were tons of 1-3" crawdads in this stream the other night. Almost more crawdads than baitfish it seemed. I've seen some pretty cool looking crawdad imitations. I might have to try tying some up. On a sidenote, I fished Roaring River below the park last week and did not do well at all. I started with nymphs and was only catching creek chubs so I did switch to an olive woolly bugger that day with no success. But the water was super low and clear and I didn't make it down there to fish until about 10:00.

Hmmmm.....guess I’ll have to try that next time.

Definitely recommend Ty at Plateau Fy Shop next to Fin and Feathers.

I know this is an old tired thread but I'm curious about this too. I drive right through Hurley on my way to Crane Creek.

Sold! I'm not stingy. I don't mind doing the walking and scouting and am quick to admit that I don't know jacks*** when it comes to fly fishing. If you make it to SWMO lmk and we will go chase them.

Haha, to be fair, "big" is a relative term. Big for this spot is anything above 15". Which look like absolute monster compared to the 8-12" fish I'm used to catching out of there.