SKollmann

Now I'm really disappointed. Having just returned from a week vacationing in Key West, I was looking forward to receiving the current edition of Bronzeback Bulletin in the massive amount of mail just delivered. Instead, I received the March edition of Illinois Game & Fish, the March edition of PCS Paddler (Prairie State Canoeists monthly newsletter, and the Bass Pro Shop 2011 Spring Fishing Classic news flyer . . . but no Bronzeback Bulletin. With the melting of snow and flooding of the Fox River while we were in Florida, I can only conclude that my ISA Bulletin is being shipped to Northbrook via canoe or kayak (all said in fun, of course)!

Whatever happened to the monthly gathering of Bassbuggers at the Anglers International Resource in Palatine?!?

Living in Northbrook, Ed . . . North Aurora is just too durn far away! Guess I'll need to await the infamous Bronzeback Blowout to renew ISA friendships.

Here's wishing my ISA friends of all faiths a most joyous and blessed holiday season!!!

I'd be available to serve a few hours at each of the shows over the weekend. Cannot serve on weekdays now that I'm fully employed. Let me know you needs.

You're right, Rich . . . twice Bob and I partnered with you in your fishin' boat, and were planning on making it out again next year more frequently after I retired. In honor of Bob and his love of fishing with me by his side, I'm planning on visiting each and every locale that we fished together. Yes . . . that means I'll be out to fish with you once again on Shabbona Lake. If I shed a tear while fishing though, you'll know why and understand.

Today, my fellow ISA colleagues, is among the saddest days of my life . . . for on this day my best friend and fishin' buddy, Dr. "Bob" Reid was laid to rest following a 5-day battle with the flu that ultimately took his life at the "young" age of 72. Why, you may ask, am I sharing this with you? Well . . . while Bob was not a member of our distinguished Alliance, his favored prey (usually in my presence from shore, in my canoe, or on a rental boat) was the smallmouth bass . . . and did he ever know how to catch them!!! Oh yes . . . he enjoyed catching other species that took his bait as well, but it was the bronzeback that he always sought. He kidded me that I converted him from a "Fillet and Release" smallmouth bass fisherman to a "Catch and Release" bronzeback fisherman. Mission accomplished. May my friend and fishin' buddy lie in peace . . . and on his spare time teach the disciples of Christ the skills that he applied and refined in catching his favorite prey . . . the smallmouth bass. Steve

Cory . . . for those of us fly tyers like me who work and/or live too far away to participate, what's the chance of starting a new post on our Bassbuggers website with instructions about patterns tied by you fortunate ISA colleagues who can attend?

Well . . . after 97 years of living, culminating in a couple years of intermediate dementia, my Mother passed away early this morning. The lady and my Dad were instrumental in developing my interest in fishing early on. So now I carry on their legacy by sharing my fishing "expertise" with my four young grandsons. The eldest of the four (age 5) shared some choice thoughts with me today as he consoled Grandpa . . . "God and Jesus came down her to take Great Grandma up to heaven where they will take very good care of her." He continued, "When my heart is done beating after 97 years, then I will be very excited to go up to heaven to see her again." Needless to say, that brought tears to my eyes. He may just end up a Lutheran pastor! With grandsons age 5, two age 3, and one age 3 weeks, I have many years ahead (I hope) to educate them all about the fabulous sport of fishing for and catching the prize fish species on earth . . . the bronzeback . . . after which we quickly release the catch. So far, the 5-year-old has caught and released four bluegills. Will move him up to smallies in a few years.

I'm blushing! While Scott once again published a "Star Quality" edition of Bronzeback Bulletin, space didn't allow inclusion of several responses to questions posed by Jude. This response was written specifically with you in mind, Don . . . . Are the best stools constructed with ash, pine, or oak? Ah yes . . . my famous (or should I say infamous) ash fly tying wooden stool that I inadvertently left at our ISA booth after a day of “preaching the ISA Gospel” to prospective new members at the Rosemont Show, only to find it posted as “The Stoolie” innumerable times in innumerable settings on the ISA website compliments of Don R. and a few other ISA colleagues. However, as the saying goes, “He who laughs last laughs best” . . . and laugh I did along with the congregation of Chicago ISA Meeting attendees when I presented Don with a true miniature “Stoolie” following our meal . . . made out of no less than quality pine.

Forecast = rain showers + thunderstorms Conditions = standing water + slick patches on roads Decision = stay at home and sit on "Stoolie" while admiring my "famous" canoe Hope the weather turned favorable for today's event! Looking forward to the September ISA Fox River Float (weather permitting)!

Just a canoe, Ed . . light weight for my aging muscles and several accessories to hand down to my three grandsons when my paddlin' days are over.

Since this is my first experience with this ISA outing, does the agenda include demo boating only or will time also be afforded to fish awhile? Are we only bringing boats (e.g. canoe in my case) . . . or would you also like related accessories (paddles, sponses, motors, locators, etc.)? Any guidance would be most appreciated. Thanks.

I purchased one last year since I spend a lot of time paddling my canoe and navigating along shorelines in search of smallies. Brush again a shoreline bush or branch and the mosquitoes swarm. But not around me with my repellent fan on. I've tested it . . . and it actually works like a charm!

Sorry I couldn't make this year's event, Mike . . . family reunion downstate.

I tied a half dozen of these Red-Faced Wobbler flies in different colors . . . red + white; red + black; red + turquoise; red and root beer. Whipped them out in no time flat over the winter. Then I turned around and accepted an offer of employment starting in mid-March, so I'm hoping to find free weekends to try them out on smallie rivers this Spring.

With the Kish being my favorite, I wish I could make it, Jude . . . but we're celebrating the eve of Mother's Day with my 97-year-old Mom! Enjoy the day while you catch and release!

Remember . . . my wife and I are members of Prairie State Canoeists. Translation . . . we paddle a lot. Amortize the number of strokes we've made into $400 and the appearance of extravagance diminishes with each mile paddled. Just don't ask me what I paid for our 17' kevlar canoe.

Don . . . mine were manufactured by ZRE (Zaveral Racing Equipment). They ran me $200+ each. You can check their website at www.zre.com. Also purchased a case for our two paddles from Wenonah Canoes. I retained my initial straight-shaft wooden paddle for shoving off from shore so I wouldn't damage our good paddles. Steve

As a member of Prairie State Canoeists as well as ISA, I have a 17' shallow arch, kevlar, 40-pound Wenonah Spirit II canoe which satisfies my paddling and float fishing needs quite nicely. With less hull on the water than a flat bottom canoe, it paddles quite gracefully and fast . . . especially when my wife and I use our carbon bent-shaft paddles weighing in a 8 ounces each. Same as those used in the Summer Olympics. Now when it coming to floating fishing a river, I bring along my Minnkota trolling motor which permits a fishing buddy and me to bring only one car. We simply put-in, motor upriver a mile or two, and float fish back to the car. That said, when fishing on a lake, I also bring along my 4-foot sponses which create a tri-hull fishing craft for added stability.

Had every intention of attending, Ed . . . but received a call from The Lutheran Home that my mother (just turned 97 on April 10th) had fallen out of her bed again. No rest for the "Sandwich Generation"! Would appreciate your letting me know in bullet point fashion the key points Joe shared with the fortunate members who attended.

Too bad I couldn't make the Flies of the ISA event this year! My grandson's 5th birthday party at Monkee Joe's followed by a celebration of my Mother's 97th birthday at her nursing home in Arlington Heights took priority status. Trust my fellow fly tiers understand! If, by any chance, the patterns for the flies tied at this year's event are available, I would be most interested in receiving them. Thanks.

Ben . . . here's the website that will provide you a listing of materials as well as step-by-step instructions for tying this fly. www.flyfishohio.com

"The Foxee Redd Minnow is a version of the Clouser Deep Minnow that has become a staple for many species of fish. I do not leave home without this one, and I carry it in a variety of sizes. It has become my favorite fly for trout and carp," says Bob Clouser in his outstanding 2007 book, Fly Fishing For Smallmouth In Rivers And Streams (Stackpole Books, ISBN 0-8117-0713-5). "The Foxee Redd Minnow is a good imitation of sculpins and crayfish," says Clouser. "Lefty [Kreh] thinks it looks like a baby carp or rock bass. I love to fish this pattern for trout in sizes 2 through 8 in coldwater rivers and carp in sizes 2 through 6 on the Susquehanna from late July to September." Any fly with such a recommendation from two giants of contemporary fly fishing deserves the immediate attention and respect of any serious angler. I'll even go one farther; this fly is so good at fooling summer smallmouth that I'd happily fish it and it alone. And I'm not alone in these sentiments! Bold claim? Try it yourself and find out! I tie the Foxee Red Clouser differently that Bob Clouser ties his own Foxee Redd Minnow. The slight difference in names is very deliberate. This is a different fly, but it remains such a close cousin that to do other than fully honor the original would be a deep violation of ethics. You see, this is Bob Clouser's pattern, but simply refined for the slower, shallower and more intimate waters in which I often find myself. It's proven it's worth, in this incarnation, in flows as diverse as Florida's St. Johns and Econlockhatchee to Minnesota's Pine and Ottertail, from Kentucky's Elkhorn to Michigan's Flat River. Everywhere I fish this fly, it catches smallmouth bass and rock bass with amazing regularity. When compared directly with Clouser's original tie, this fly bumps the success factor up a full notch. The Foxee Red Clouser is different because the main material used in its construction is different. The original Foxee Redd Minnow was designed using red fox tail fur. Says Clouser; "My first attempt was a disaster. I cut a clump of the hair from the tail and tied it onto the hook shank without first removing all of the soft underfur. Fox tail has a lot of underfur, which makes good dubbing for nymphs and dry flies, but it caused the fly to have a bulky head, look horrible and matte when wet. One day it dawned on me to remove the underfur and just use the long guard hairs, which have black tips, reddish centers, and creamy brown bases. With all the underfur removed, the guard hairs of the red fox tail makes a small, neat-looking Clouser Minnow, don't tangle or mat, and have the right consistency for the size so that they look just like deer tail going through the water." I suggest that Mr. Clouser went in the wrong direction. The tail guard hairs do look excellent and make for a streamlined minnow pattern. But the softer red fox body fur, complete with underfur in place a la Eric Leiser's Llama, makes for an even more translucent and lively fly that imitates a crayfish. Crayfish make up nearly 80% of a smallmouth bass' summer diet. In 2001 I was fishing a local creek. I regularly parked in the lot of a bait shop on the banks of the creek, and as a token of my appreciation for parking privileges I always went in to buy a soft drink and snack and whatever tackle looked like it might work on a fly rod or fit into my small collection of spinning gear. On this particular occasion they had soft-craws available for bait - and they were expensive. I asked about the $8/dozen crawdads and I was told that there's nothing else like it. The owner explained that soft craws will take fish when nothing else will. Because of the difficulty in obtaining and keeping these delicate creatures - and as a direct result of their effectiveness - they sold for prices that seemed astonishing. I bought a dozen on my way out and put them into a small aquarium in my office to study their action, color and behavior. I discovered quite a bit about crayfish from that experiment. First, when they are in the soft-shell phase (crayfish molt their exoskeleton in order to grow - this happens several times every season to each individual, so soft-shell-phase crayfish are nearly always in the environment) these mudbugs are highly gelatinous and almost incapable of movement. Nearly gelatinous, they tumble and twist with the current. This, of course, explains their penchant for holing up under a rock or log for the shedding process. They are also very translucent. Immediately after shedding the crayfish are primarily cream, tan and gray. The new s hell hardens over a two or three day period, During this time the colors gradually get darker and gain opacity. The spectrum of colors I observed was amazingly similar to the colors in a red fox tail I had in my tying supplies. The specific crayfish patterns in I researched various books and magazine articles all focused on the chelae (claws) and were far too dark and without the flowing motions I'd seen in the real thing. Several tries at complex designs left me unimpressed. The straight Clouser recipe seemed logical, so my first ties were simple Clousers tied with the red fox tail. They worked a little better than accepted crayfish imitations, but the micro-motion and translucency was still missing. I needed something like marabou, but with mottled coloring and different texture. Happenstance delivered a piece of red fox body fur in a materials swap. The light creamy pink of the fox flanks captured the colors of the soft-shell almost perfectly. The gray underfur, a useful dubbing, added bulk. One experiment lead to another and the technique of leaving in the underfur, learned from the Llama, brought the effort to a successful conclusion. The Foxee Red Clouser, tied in a way I'd truly stumbled upon, exhibited the squared profile, graduated translucency and spectrum of colors that provided the effect I wanted, And the fish approved! I now have a "system" for fishing Foxee Red Clousers. In the early part of the year, from mid May until late June, I use a size 4 or 6 fly tied with painted red dumbbell eyes. The spot of red imitates the eggs carried by the female (at least it does in my imagination). Female crayfish "in berry" are highly sought by game fish because of their additional nutrition value and ease of capture. From late June through late July I use the Foxee Red in sizes 10 and 12 tied with unpainted lead dumbbells to imitate young-of-the-year crayfish. In August and September I like to fish sizes 8 and 6 with unpainted dumbbells, in keeping with the theory of the inverted bell-curve for size. Finally in late September and through October I switch over to the flashier and larger Mixed Media to imitate the adults during the autumn mating season. I like to fish the Foxee Red Clouser with a floating fly line and long, fluorocarbon leader. Leader lengths vary from 10-feet to 14-feet depending on water depth, water clarity and fly size. I almost always use a non-slip mono loop knot to attach the fly to the tippet. For a size 4 or 6 I like 3X, for 8 and 10 I'll go to 4X. Under low, clear water conditions I'll even go to a size 12 on 5X tippet. This last version is also a killer size for brown trout that act like they've seen everything. I prefer to cast up and across with a quartering presentation and fish the fly on a tight line, high-sticking the fly back to my position just barely faster than the current. It's important to keep the fly low in the water column, crayfish will rarely swim more than a foot off the bed of the stream, and in the soft-shell phase they really can't swim at all. Takes are never subtle, smallmouth bass and rock bass eat this fly. The take is firm and positive. Using a light wire hook and keeping the point sharp ensures positive hook placement in the mouth or lip. Tie a few of these and take them to the river on your next smallmouth bass outing. Try them in the lakes along rocky bottoms where large numbers of crayfish find themselves a frequent target of marauding largemouth. Try them the next time those wily brown trout turn up their noses at your best-presented nymph. Finally, cast this one in front of a tailing carp and hold on!

This week the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the long term closing of the lakefront locks. That sound decision is buoyed by the fact that searching scientists, who have been looking for weeks, have not found any Asian carp above the barrier at Romeoville. Those scientists represent the Asian Carp Working Group, the collection of government agencies that developed a carp-prevention plan, which is up for public comment with a deadline of this Friday, March 26.* After reviewing the details, Friends of the Chicago River submitted a letter stating that we, too, are against closing the locks at all and we exhorted the Working Group to: • Consider the fact that the Chicago and Calumet rivers have become dramatically healthier in the last 30 years and that progress must be cherished and protected • Remember that closing the locks intermittently and poisoning the river (which is still on the table) will not keep the carp out but will destroy decades of improvement to the river and the new life in and along the river that is there as a result • Follow the law using environmental impact statements and plans for remediation, with funding, for our rivers if they cause environmental harm • Advance the Inter-basin study and consider creative solutions to ecological separation such as ship lifts and improve and enforce ballast water laws • Use this disastrous development as an opportunity to advance our knowledge of our aquatic environment by including ongoing monitoring of all fish and other wildlife impacted by the framework plan. That information could be used to improve and protect it in the future. Meeting Clean Water Act goals for all our waters would protect our rivers and the lake. The river would then be able to support much larger numbers of recreators in addition to the ever-increasing wildlife populations. Their value to the region would be enhanced. We must protect the river and stop the carp. *carpcomments@gmail.com