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Colin's fly saves the day


Rob G

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Hit a favorite stream a couple days ago and of course the water is very low and very clear. I had found a couple decent fish when I finally came upon a pool which you could see held a lot of smaller fish. Since I hadn't yet connected with anything larger, thought maybe I could entertain myself with catching a bunch of smaller smallies. It was obvious that I was going to be forced to make long casts with my long leader. So as I'm looking in my flybox for a fly that I could cast a mile and thought wouldn't be too large for what I expected to be 8-10" smallies, I spotted Colin's fly that we had tied this year at one of our winter fly tying gatherings. The classic deer hair or bucktail streamer. I'm guessing this has to be one of the very first streamers that was ever tied hundreds of years ago because of its simplicity and widely available materials (minus the tinsel wrap of course). Well anyway, on it went and cast after cast yielded an aggresive smaller fish. After about a dozen caught I noticed a couple bigger boys were swimming thru the pool and with no time to cut and retie a larger fly, I made a cast and started stripping hard. One of the two turned and gave chase and as I'm stripping fast in order to make it appear as though that small baitfish is trying to flee, he nailed it. He came in at just over 18". I continued to fish that fly much of the day where I didn't need to get down too deep and it provided a few more decent fish. It's neat to see a fly that is hundreds of years old still catching fish today, so thank you Colin for reminding us of that classic bucktail streamer.

 

37353812561_3e7d9f5c1c_o.jpg.

 

 

Tied on a Mustad 3xl size 4 streamer hook, lower wing of white bucktail fibers and top wing from the natural brown bucktail fibers on the top of the tail.

 

37353730461_56224fd697_o.jpg. by robow 77

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Very observant Johnny G, I had to go back and look at the other photo to be sure but it appears to have been just a leaf beneath the fish.

 

Btw, ran into a school of Drum and so tied on your small crayfish and hopped it right in front of their noses. The line went taut and I thought, "All right", fish on and it's a good one, but when it grabbed some air, I realized it wasn't a drum but rather a real nice smallie. Unfortunately he came off but would have made for a nice story.

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Very observant Johnny G, I had to go back and look at the other photo to be sure but it appears to have been just a leaf beneath the fish.

 

Btw, ran into a school of Drum and so tied on your small crayfish and hopped it right in front of their noses. The line went taut and I thought, "All right", fish on and it's a good one, but when it grabbed some air, I realized it wasn't a drum but rather a real nice smallie. Unfortunately he came off but would have made for a nice story.

 

The drum of the lower Vermilion seem like hard nuts to crack. At least that little crawdaddy attracts the bass down there.

 

Glad to hear that the bass had no abnormal bone growths.

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The drum of the lower Vermilion seem like hard nuts to crack. At least that little crawdaddy attracts the bass down there.

 

 

 

Yea, the Drum are winning.

Drum....... 2

Rob G.......0

 

They have to eat something. Ever tried pulling a fairly large nymph in front of those ugly mugs? We used to always catch them on crawlers when I was a kid, maybe time to break out Rich's Worm fly?

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I know drum feed on mussels a lot. Maybe try a carp fly like the Hybrid carp fly. A second choice would be the clouser swimming nymph (following the nymph suggestion above). It's a general nymph size pattern with some size too it (good smallmouth fly as well). I would start with those two and would be very interested in seeing how you do. If they hit the pearl crappie tube I can't see a small pearl clouser not working as well.

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These fish must swim to the beat of a different drum. Have you ever fished spin gear for them. I often catch them in the upper Vermilion bouncing a small crayfish crank bait along the bottom. The Rebel Deep WEE R catches quite a few. Kevin and I both had a few on cranks a few weeks back. I know the idea is to get them to hit a fly, but we need to find out if these fish are alive.

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I was reading on another board that many use a small 1-1.5" bright minnow pattern made mostly out of flashabou, similar to your grass carp fly. Going to try that and Josh's idea of a Clouser swimming nymph since I'm pretty sure I have a few of those somewhere, used in the past for carp.

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OK, the Drum win, I'm waving the white flag. Spent a couple hours at these two pools which contained numerous drum, showed them small bright minnows, instead caught dink smallies, showed them Clouser swimmng nymph, instead caught dink smallies, and this one kills me to admit because I hate these things but I showed them a San Juan worm, you guessed it, caught a dink smallie. Small crayfish, again nope. I have better luck with carp.

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Sorry about the Drum thing Rob. Don't give up on it though. Give it a rest then get after them next season. Do like the St. Louis Cardinals and try to work on a plan in the off season. Then you can give it your best when you meet them again. Maybe your drum eat mussels if they are more common. Maybe they feed on different things at different times of the year. Maybe they are as particular as the grass carp I have been chasing and can only focus on one thing at a time. Maybe they only eat at 5:00 am sharp. Maybe they like pink and you haven't dressed your fly in the proper color. Maybe a local fish biologist could shed some light on it. Maybe they all need glasses and don't know how to tell you they need help. ?????...

 

By the looks of these posts, I think I stopped getting notifications after Oct 2. I received your Oct 2 reply but not the one from the 4th.

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  • 3 weeks later...

OK Johnnie G. we'll see how this loads. This 19"+ came on a variant of Colin's deer hair streamer the other day but as we've now gotten more rain and the water has become more stained, not sure if this will be as appropriate as it was when the water was low, slow, and clear. What do you think?

 

38223737811_5f0de4b68f_o.jpg. by robow 77

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