Beaver Lessons _

[Guest flyfishBDS]

It's under a week to the Faith Howie Benefit Tournament, and on a guide trip yesterday had a few lessons reinforced, which get overlooked a lot by regulars and can be helpful to new comers

Guided regular and good mate Keith Elliott and his friend Jamie, both from Ok City. He's fished here a lot, she had never fly fished. She caught way more than Keith. Yep some days luck has something to do with it, but on reflection there were a couple of other tactics. Grabbed a late start given the cold weather and it seemed the fishing heated up as the day did.

Only used 4 flies all day Cadion Midge Blue dun and Steve's Scudbug, and the hot patterns Green Cadion Midge and Charlie' Craven's Blue Poison Tung. 9'leaders 3' of 6x Rio Flouroflex Plus. Small Dam Balls indicator

Jamie picked up casting pretty easily, but on her first time out wasn't casting as far as Keith who was drifting the far bank a lot of the time. Her shorter casts to the near edge of the drop-off were amazing effective. The same lesson got handed out by Morgan and Ian Jones to a bunch of other older fly fishers last month.

Morgan in particular caught more and better fish than everyone else in the Trophy zone, working the close edges

You don't always need to wade out to your chest and blast your longest cast. Look and learn before wading into the water.

Jamie was also a natural at downstream "stack mend" drifts. While she was casting 30' 40' in the wind most of her fish were picked up 50' to 60'' downstream, where there was a congregation of fish. Even though the fish were dropping the fly quickly, Jamie still hooked some nice fish at what most people will tell you is the limits of how far you can fish and again, on her first time out and still coming to grips with fly gear.

Keith was running a tighter fly line on his drifts, hoping a relative lack of slack was going to help him with some picky eaters. But his margin for error, between a true dead drift and dragging the fly out of the strike zone was very fine.

You firts job is to fool the fish into eating, then worry about hooking the fish. My personal approach is to have more slack than not enough, relying on a quick rodlift and linehand strip at the same time to hit the fish. Its why I have two cups of coffee before I start LOL

Anyway some fish will beat you with speed no matter how quick you are.

Fish will always hit your fly when your fiddling with flyline, staring into space, etc

You can't catch them all so just enjoy the ones you do

Hope this helps

Cheers

Steve

[Danoinark]

Now that has got me pumped up for next Sat. Thanks Steve.

Dano

[WebFreeman]

Good tips. Thanks Steve

[Guest flyfishBDS]

Two very good fly fishers today, best casters Ive ever had, swo Andreas and his mother Erica caught a squillion, lots of little fish, under the slot but wild, some real chunks earlier, then a surprise very nice brown in beautifulk condition probablyu around the 16" march for Andreas at the end.

Saw some HUGE stripers and a whole bunch of walleye, neither would take a midge _ not a hooked trout.

You guys will have a great day saturday

cheers

stsve

[Okieflyfisher53]

Stripers? I guess I had better pack my 8wt!

Steve

[Rusty]

Okie FF, If they are the size of fish I saw last year, you will need to go heavier.

[catman]

flyfishBDS

Where you the in the yellow boat yesterday with the couple you mentioned, I believe she had an accent.

New here on the board, just got back into fly fishing this year after a long hiatus. Lived in the area all my life, making time to get back into it.

I fished below the dam a lot 25 years ago.

[Guest flyfishBDS]

Yeh Erica commented on the fish the whole day, lovely woman and a geat caster.

That was me i the boat

The guy in the stern was her son, a real treat to share a great day on the water with them

The Stripers were BIG, so were some of the walleye

Call by the store sometime and introduce yourself.

I have an accent too LOl