Tom L

Add a little of flash and tie them in white, yellow, tan, and chartreuse. Smallie will love them.

Another legend passed. Learned a lot of stuff from his books and articles. 

We had 10 members attended.  Thank you everyone for coming out. It was fun.

It is tomorrow. See you all soon.

Looking forward to seeing everyone here. The more the merrier.

nice video Ben and great fish Paul.  

A window into the paste, Key West was a much different place back in the 70's. Those guys featured in the film were writers - Tom McGuane, Jim Harrison, and their friends.  The music was by Jimmy Buffet. They had the flats to themselves before fly fishing for tarpon became a thing and Key West itself became touristy. 

This is one of my all times fly fishing films. Hope you guys enjoy it.

You are a good man, Ed.

Thanks John. I see they have a few new models with fully sealed drag now. Might pick one up for a backup rod.

Simple and deadly fly. Nice tyes.  Thanks for sharing.

Frustration sometimes makes people do stupid things, not that I condoled.  

Congrats! Try adding white bugger, yellow bugger and Autumn Splendor to your fly repertoire.. 

Scott, please put me down for 8/6-8/8. Thanks. 

Cool looking fly. Looks like it has a combo of rabbit strip, bucktail, hackle, and marabou -all fish catching materials.

I caught most of my fish under 50 feet distance. I'm sure you will do fine with that fly.

Nice fly Rob.  Try dapping a small amount of UV glue at the base of the tail, close to the hook, to stiff up about a 1/4" of the material.  I have been using this technique on all of my rabbit strip tailed flies. 

I would use this time to explore the river, just as you did Kevin.  You can learn a lot.  Places that were too deep and too fast during the normal level will hold fish.  Stealth, stealth, stealth!!

Steelie buggers.  These are my go-to steelhead flies.  Nice ties!

Tail = Craft Fur (CF)

Body = Craft Fur (CF)

Flash = Krytal Flash or Flashabou

Head = Deer Hair or Deer Body Hair (spun Muddler style)

Hook = Gamakatsu SS15 size 2 or 1.

CF Muddler is short for Craft Fur Muddler. Hope that helps.  Very easy fly to tie.

This was my secret weapon on the Menominee trip this year.  90% of the fish I caught on the trip were on this fly, fished by itself.  It is basically a CF Muddler in olive, yellow, and orange combo.    I'd never have much luck fishing this fly on the Fox but the Menominee's smallies couldn't resist it.  I noticed that Alan Sherman had good success fishing a bad-hair-day in the same colors scheme prior year while we were fishing together.   It was amazing to see big smallies hit the fly as soon as it hit the water or chased after it on the flats in few inches of water.  May be the fly looks like a baby perch, a walleye or a sculpin  to the Menominee's smallies.

Cleaned and well organized.  My tying table would be cleaned and organized for a few days and would go back to being messy again.   

Hi Scott.  Please put me down for Group 1 8/7-8/10.  Thank you.

On 8/13/2020 at 7:15 PM, Mark K said:

with a regular floating line?

 

Yes Mark, with a  floating line and a 9' leader. 

With the high water, I found a lot of fish around the shallow flats and mid stream humps (1'-3') - in front of the flats/humps where the river bed going from deep to shallow,  behind the flats/humps where the bottom going from shallow to deep, outside drop-offs of the flats, and pockets inside the flats.  You need a fly that rides close to the surface so your fly doesn't hang-ups on the bottom all the time.  The CF Muddler, if fished by itself would swim only 1"-6" under the surface, worked great in this situation and had caught a lot of fish on this trip. 

In the slow sections of the river, I found fish closed to the banks.  Due to high water, a lot of shrubs and bushes along the banks were flooded and the fish were hiding in there.  Place a top-water fly close to the bank would take fish.  Also, I continued to fish the CF Muddler in these sections and watched for a ring where the fly landed.   And do not ignore those log piles along the banks.

The Foxy which were very productive on the previous three trips didn't worked as well on this trip.  90% of my fish came on the CF Muddler, fished the way I described above.  Hope these info would help some of the folks out.

Bravo to the second group.  Hope to see more good reports from the third and the fourth group.  I missed the place already.

3 hours ago, Mark K said:

any more reports?  Tom you caught those with a  flyrod?

Mark, all fish were caught with the fly rod.  The Foxy and CF Muddler were my go-to.

The water was at the highest I'd seen.  Fished for 2 days on Sunday and Monday - Sun full day and Mon AM with John L and solo on Mon PM.  The first day had 20+ smallies + a bonus 21.5" walleye and the second day had 30+ fish.  As for size while, it was typical of the Memominee, mostly in the 14-17" range, a few in the 18 , 19 range and a few in the 10 - 13.  This is my best trip (out of 4) in terms of number.  Every time I thought I had her figured out, she showed me something new.