Saturday, August 22, 2009

What's going on around here...

Bountiful harvest - every day for a while now (although not quite this many each instance):

Some good home/yard/garden improvement projects.


Gearing up for BWCA - starting to tie some poppers and streamers:

Sith Lord Darth Maul Popper

The Clouser Minnow - simple and absolutely deadly. It's a known fact that fish eat the hell out of these flies. I've read a lot of what fly would you choose if you could only have one articles, and a lot of guys answer Clouser Minnow. It's a baitfish, just bobbing along. Eat me, eat me. I'm wounded and spiraling and dipping and bobbing and crying out to you: eat me. Sometimes, if you hit it just right things can really come together. I will bring somewhere between 12-20 of these flies to BWCA in September, in large part because they are often victims to bite-offs while smallie fishing - northern pike marauders.

Here is an experimental fly with a rattle tied in:

Other shots from the bench:






I'd really like to hear what folks have to say on these two topics: (1) best and favorite smallie flies, and (2) BWCA fly fishing tactics. Info like this I find to be highly valuable: relation of personal experience that a guy can take a lot from.

3 Comments:

Blogger Royce Gracie said...

Garden tomatoes and poppers, mmmmm, get me some a dat.

1:06 AM  
Blogger darklake said...

The past couple years I've taken to using a "shock tippet" of about 12 - 18 inches of 14 lb Fireline any time I'm fishing where northerns might bite me off. Works great, really tough, pretty supple. I'd recommend trying it --- I don't feel it affects my smallmouth presentations at all. The only real negative is if you get hung up and can't get it out -- it won't break first, and consequently you'll loose some or all of your leader. The other negative, I suppose, is that you won't have a reason to tie all those clousers...

9:19 PM  
Blogger Wendy Berrell said...

Good tip on the shock tippet. I may try that. Like you say though - a guy doesn't mind losing clousers to bite-offs... kind of a good problem to have. Just bring a good supply of flies.

Royce: how are your tomatoes doing? How about your poppers? LMB.

4:16 PM  

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