Tom L

A bunch of good tyes. You've got the entire water column covered from top to bottom.

The ladder gets you higher on the water, so you can cast farther to cover more water. Lots of blind casting and waiting for cruising fish in this type of fishing.

Had a chance to try Mike A's Minn Kota Terrova at the float your boat outing yesterday. The Auto Pilot feather was really nice. Freed up a lot of boat controlling time for fly casting and fishing. Worked really well on a lake. I understand there maybe some issues for river. I think it'll do for my purpose. Thanks Mike.

Really enjoy the outing. Thanks Ed.

Power pole? Rich, you're killing me. A boat is a hole with no bottom, indeed. I also changed the title of this thread to "Outboard Help (now Trolling Motor and More) to reflect the discussions here. Eugene is bring a hand control and Mike A is bring a foot control trolling motor to the float your boat this Sat. I'll be there to try them both. Thanks everyone.

Holy cow! I got the boat and the trailer for free; and thought maybe spending a few hundred more bucks will get me into this boating biz. It's not just an outboard issue now, we are talking trolling motor and depth finder too. Rob, you're right about a boat being an endless hole. I'm tempting on your offer on a 55 thrust Minn Kota, but not sure if it'd work well with fly casting being a hand control motor. The hands may be too busy casting, stripping, and controlling the boat at the same time. Have you or anyone else tried fly fishing using the hand control trolling motor? If yes, what was the experience like? The up side of this option is that being a used motor it'd be cheaper than new. Up front investment will be less, but the risk may be that it won't work well for my purpose and have to buy a new one. My thought is that a foot control may work better. Of cause this is a pure theory in my part, since I have no experience at all. I was looking into a Minn Kota with the iPilot feature. It sounds neat in theory, but the price tag went up ($1000+). Has anyone have any experience with this feature (iPilot) at all? decisions, decisions......................

Thanks guys for the useful info. It looks like a 9.9hp, 4 stroks, with 15" shaft will fit the boat nicely. Most outboards this size are under 100lbs, so I won't break my back trying to mount and demount it. and it will be a legal size for most local lakes. Eugen brought up a good option on the jet type outbroad. But after looking into it, I feel it will not be a good fit. Jet outboards are rated at 20hp and up , very heavy (close to 200lbs) and very expensive (~10k which is way out of my budget). I don't know how much I will be using the boat and if I'll like it or not. I'll use the boat primary for fly-fishing on the Fox, Busse, and Shabbona. I may take it to Lake Geneva in the future, if I brave enough. The idea of a 24v trolling motor is great. Most 24v trolling motors are rated at 70-80 thrust. Maybe instead of get an outboard, I should looking into get a trolling motor first. Try it out on Busse, which is an electric only lake. See if I'll like fly-fishing from a boat or not. It will be a steep learning curve, trying to control the boat and fly casting at the same time. Again, thanks guys.

Santa just dropped an old 17' aluminum Johnboat on my lap, but he didn't give me an outboard. In searching for an outboard, several questions and decisions needed to be answered before I can move further: Horse Power: How much would I need? 4, 6, 8. 9.9, 20? Weight & Portability: The boat will be stored outdoor. So, the outboard needed to be light and easily mount and demount for garage storage. Shaft Length: How long is appropriate? 15", 20", 24", 30"? Engine Type: 2 or 4 strokes? Brand: It's an can of worms and I don't want to touch this subject yet. bwt, I'm planning to use the boat on the Fox and lakes of Sabbona size and smaller. Thanks for any input.

Rob, I've been using piano wire, size 8, to connect my articulate flies. Original, I got this wire to be used as weed guards; but I found out later that it was too stiff for that purpose. So, I tried to find other use for it and found that it made great connections for artic flies.

John, those are Wapsi dumbbell eyes on a 60 deg jig hook and coated over with CCG. Don't know if they would stand up, but they do dive head first like a jig.

These two color schemes have been very productive on Lake Geneva. Baby Perch & Sunset

Ryan was right. When I designed that fly, I had a tandem rig in mind, a Clouser or a weighted Crawfish as the lead fly and a CF Muddler as a trailer. The weighted lead fly would help bring the CF Muddler down, but since the CF Muddler is slight buoyant it would swim slight higher in the column. This fly also deadly on a lake when fish with a sink tip or full sink line. There are a few things that you can adjust to make the fly less buoyant: 1) As you had in mind, pack less deer hair on the head. 2) Use a heavier hook. 3) Wrap a lead wire on the hook. If you don't like fishing a tandem rig, you can also use a split shot - attached it above the leader & tippet knot. Another variation, I did on the fly sometimes, is adding a contrasting color (red, chart, orange, pink) hackle or schleppen collar.

Good looking mouse. Like the pink nose. What did use for the tail? I hasn't had good success fishing top water on the Fox.

Signed.

ice-dub added on the collar? nice work...

Are those CCG dumbbell eyes? looks good...

Nice looking fly & interesting choice of hook.

Got my last week. All great looking flies. Thanks for the swap.

Thanks everyone for the input. There are quite a few ideas here. A "FLIG" is a good term for this Fly/Jig. Like it a lot. I will have to start doing the same, after seeing how effective they were. Thanks for the insight, Mike. Only disagree on one thing, "the beer won't remain for long also".

A few years back, I recued a baby painted turtle on a 2-lanes road close to my house. He was on the paint in the middle of the road. One side of the road was a pond and the other side was just grass and trees. I put him on the pond side, but I have been since wondering if I made the right choice. The little guy might have thanked me for shortening his journey or might have cursed me because it took him several hours to get to where he was and now he had to start all over again.

The feather vs. fur arguments dated back since G.E.M. Skues time when he published "Minor Tactics of the Chalk Stream" in 1910. Skues pioneered fishing wet flies and nymphs subsurface which were deemed unacceptable at the time. The only acceptable way to fish was "dry fly - upstream" only at the time. A typical dry fly was tied with feathers and a nymph was tied with furs. Obviously, there are still quite a lot of people following that "dry fly or died". I respect people's choice of fishing "dry fly only" or any other fishing techniques. But to look down and call other people's fishing technique crude!!!!

As I had reported in my White Bass Bonanza report, the most productive fly to catch white bass on the Wolf R on my first trip was a craft fur jig similar to this one in the picture. With that in mind, I had tied up some craft fur flies using jig hooks, dumbbell eyes, and CCG coated head to test on my second trip. The flies looked very similar to the craft fur jig (see the pictures), acted like the craft fur jig, and as effective as the craft fur jig. Would you consider them Jigs or Flies?

Monday night, my wife brought home 2 very interesting looking flies and said 2 ISA members stopped-by at the restaurant for lunch and gave me the flies. When she asked them for their names, they told her that they rather keep it mystery. Thanks, mystery ISA members for the flies.

Tube Fly Update: After my recent white bass outing, I learned that the tube flies didn't give good jigging actions. A Clouser tied on a tube doesn't get as much the up & down (jigging) motions as the same fly tied on a straight shank hook. A Clouser tied on a jig hook (60 or 90 deg) get the best up & down actions. Tube flies are good for swinging and horizontal presentations, not jigging presentation.

Try CCG Thick. Coat over the eyes or the entire head, then finish with one more coat of CCG Hydro.