New Member To The Strippers Club

[duckydoty]

Phil and I Inducted a new member into the club last night. It was Ryan's 5th time fly fishing and his first time stripping streamers at night. At first, things seemed to be against Ryan's conversion to the Dark Side. Ryan and I arrived at the parking lot only to realize he had forgotten his waders. After a quick run back to the house for the waders we met with Phil. Phil had been tied up at a lengthy staff meeting. In a last minute decision, he chose to forego waders and went for some wet wading. We were all back in the game. Turns out the water took a little longer to drop, so we really did not miss any action. We started on the flats between outlet one and two, where I had picked up some good fish the night before. We were throwing black pine squirrel sculpins. I spent some time with Ryan, working on his cast and retrieve. It was not long until we started getting into a few fish. Nothing too hot and heavy, so we started changing colors. We found the white mink sculpins were catching the most fish. At first, Phil said the water was not too bad......I knew better. There was no way that I could have wet waded last night. He lasted about an hour or so before admitting he was getting cold. I got to give him credit....he lasted alot longer than I would have. Ryan and I hung around the flats just a little longer, picking up a few more fish, then moved on down below the rebar hole. Ryan was really starting to get the hang of this night fishing. We both picked up 8 or 10 fish down there. Around 1 am, we decided we would call it quits after one more fish. Well, that last fish took 45 minutes to catch. The moon was fantastic last night and the fog coming off the water was spectacular! I think Ryan will be back as a full pledged member to the Lake Taneycomo Strippers Club!

[Patrick M]

Ducky I have been considering going at night and also wanting to learn stripping. how would you suggest i go about learning and what type of lights do you use or bring along. i have fished during the day many times just not at night and i think it would be something i would like to learn and do this summer. any help would be great. i look forward to meeting new members this year.

[duckydoty]

Patrick

Any kind of head light or small flash light will work. The only time we use them is when tying on new flies, untangling a mess, or taking pictures. The lights spook the fish, so the more you keep it off, the better your fishing will be.

Any kind of streamers will work at night. Size 8-10 seem to work the best. Just make sure you have a variety of colors such as white, grey, olive, brown, red and black. One of these colors will usually work on any given night. I bring both weighted and none weighted ones. The streamers can be anything from wooley buggers, pine squirrel sculping, mohair leeches, Leonard's pms's and hibernators, or slump busters. Just as long as they are between an inch to 1 1/2 inches long.

I throw them on a 6 wt rod with floating line using 2 or 3x leaders and tippet and vary my retrieves untill I find out what the fish want. Sometimes it is a fast strip. Sometimes no strip at all, just a dead drift or it can be anything in between. After I've tried all the various stripping speeds and dont get a bite, I then change colors and repeat all the speeds. Eventually I find what they want and then stick to that.

Hope this helps you out some and by all means....get down there and give it a try

[moguy1973]

The title of this thread had me thinking something totally different...