asherman

The rivers have been too high to jump in and wade to fly fish. I've been doing some smallie fishing, but it has been lunch break fishing where I walk along the shore dabbling with a spinning rod right along the shoreline. That fishing has been pretty slow, with just a few fish and a few more hits in several outings. It has been nothing to get excited and write about.

Definitely get breathable stocking foot waders. If you are fishing mostly in Illinois, lug soled wading boots will work fine. Before you buy waders, you need to figure out what type of wading/fishing that you are going to be doing. If you plan on busting brush or climbing down embankments to get to out of the way fishing spots, you will be better suited with heavy duty waders designed for hard use. "Heavy Duty" waders will probably be made out of four or five ply material and will have reinforced knees, legs, and seat. If you don't plan on being hard on your waders, you can get buy with lighter, less expensive waters made with three ply material and less reinforcement. The lighter waders will breath better and be more comfortable in warmer weather than the heavier waders no matter which brand you buy. If you plan on fishing in colder weather, make sure that waders have enough room to wear some extra layers under the waders. In my opinion, Simms makes the best waders in terms of fit and durability. They are are not cheap, but they last a long time and Simms backs up their waders with good service. I have a pair of Simms Guide waders that are nine years old and still going strong. I have had to seal up some pin holes, but the seams are still in good shape. I know people that have purchased store brand waders at the big box stores and have had good luck with the waders while other people have gone through several pairs of the same store brand waders before getting fed up and buying Simms or other higher end waders. As other guys have said, fit is very important. If your waders are too short or too long, they will not last long. Try the waders on to make sure that they fit. If you go to a big box store, be pushy and pull the waders out of the box and try them on. It is important to buy waders that are backed by the manufacturer and retailer as all waders will eventually leak. If you get unlucky and your waders leak sooner rather than later, you want to make sure that your waders will be quickly repaired or replaced under warranty.

The only Gulp product that I have used that has worked well has been Gulp leeches, which have worked great in for Walleye fishing. Regular plastics work well enough for smallies, so I don't bother with smelly Gulp products for that type of fishing. I would think that the Gulp Alive leeches would also work well for walleye. Leeches are pretty expensive to buy in Canada, so using Gulp leeches there makes the cost a bit more palatable.

I use plastic boxes for larger stuff like buck tail, craft fur and long packages feathers. For hooks, chenille, and other small stuff, I use expandable multi-pocket folders that I buy at office supply stores. These folders provide plenty of room when expanded but get pretty small when closed with the elastic closures.

I've floated a river with Paul in his canoe and the stabilizers kept us from getting dumped. The stabilizers definitely compensated for my lack of canoe skills and lack of balance. They do seem to slow the canoe down a bit, but if you are floating and fishing down a river, slowing down isn't necessarily a bad thing. You do have to be careful around wood and other obstructions.

When multi piece rods first became available, there was a difference in weight and performance, but that is not the case now. Many rod lines from major manufacturers such as St. Croix and Sage are not even available as two piece rods. The new St. Croix Legend Elite rods, for example, are only made as four piece rods. Very few new rods are available at all in three piece configurations. You really limit your selection if you consider only two piece rods. If are never going to travel with a rod and you drive a big vehicle, a two piece rod is fine. Two piece rods, however, are a pain if you travel by air and just won't fit into the trunks of some intermediate and most smaller sized cars. If you travel by air, you can carry on a four piece rod or put it in a duffle bag and check it. With a two piece rod, you have no choice but to check the rod by itself and fly rods in rods cases can get broken and they make attractive targets for thieves.

Does this mean that we have to start paying licensing fees for tying our own Hairy Fodders?

Jude, The contest rules state that you can't use any type of fur. Using belly button lint might could cause your fly to get disqualified so you better check with the judges before you submit the fly.

I have never fished for smallies in the dead of winter. My cold water smallie fishing experience has been in late November or early December and in March, when the water is still darn cold and the fish are in winter holes and the fish respond to winter patterns. Any dead of winter river fishing that I have done over the years has been for walleye using conventional tackle such as a jig and minnow. I have caught a few smallies while fishing for walleye in the winter in the Fox river. Call me a wimp, but the older that I get, the less I want to go out and fish in the dead of winter. I am of the opinion that a fly rod is far from the best tool for fishing for smallies in cold water conditions. A floatn' fly with a fly rod does work, but the same fly works far better with a spinning rod and a float. With a spinning rod, you can use a heavier fly and bigger float which gets the fly into the strike zone fast and it is far easier to the keep the jig/float stationary because you don't have to deal with drag on the thick fly line from either the wind or the current. With a spinning rod, you can keep a heavy jig (3/8 or 1/2 oz) stationary or just crawl it slowly on the river bottom from just about any casting position. The same presentation with a weighted fly and sinking line can be done, but you have to be casting from just the right position to have a chance at getting the fly to crawl or be stationary. On a small river like the Kish, you can't always get in the right position. If you want to catch fish with a fly rod and catch fish in late winter and early spring around here, you will have better luck targeting northern pike.

Float and Flies are your best shot. Another option is to use a sinking or sink tip line and fish a fly very slowly or even stationary. Think in terms of duplicating fishing a jig and pig and slowly dragging it on the bottom.

I'm calling the the fuzzy olive colored flies Fuzzy Craws. They are Hairy Fodders tied with Enrico Puglisi "streamer brush with legs" material instead of cross cut rabbit fur. I have not fished this fly yet, so I have no idea how it will work. I'm thinking that this material will hold less water than rabbit fur so it will be easier to cast than the the rabbit fur version. I have also used the streamer brush on the body of Lithuanian Bats.

Steve, An eight weight will be fine for smallmouth or pike in Canada. I will be armed with an eight weight when I go to Canada this summer. An eight weight rod will not be overkill because the smallies up there will run bigger than most of the river smallmouth that we catch in Illinois. Hooking a really big pike or muskie could be interesting on an eight weight, but that is no different than hooking one of those monsters on a medium action spinning rod when you are fishing for walleye. It is lots of fun. You might consider taking some type of sinking or sink tip line or using a sinking leader for fishing sub surface. Fishing sub surface with flies ought to work OK during the day for bass or pike or in the evening if the fish won't rise to surface flies. With that type of setup, you can get your fly down using less weight on the fly.

Losing Joseph as an ISA member is a loss. He knows more about fly fishing, fly tying, and casting than most people around and he has always been willing to offer his time and knowledge to us. He has certainly helped me to improve my casting and my tying. Joseph is also a great guy and I will still be spending time and money at OMC.

I think that color can make a difference for smallmouth fishing, especially if you are fishing in clear, slower moving water. I have seen it numerous times when an olive colored crawfish pattern (fly or plastic) worked much better than brown or some other color. I had that happen to me this year on both the Kishwaukee river and Sylvania. At Sylvania this summer, I couldn't buy a hit on brown crayfish jigs or flies, and I literally ran out of olive colored flies and jigs. If you are fishing in a manner that will induce reaction strikes, color doesn't make as much of a difference. If you a fishing in a more slow and deliberate manner, then details such as color and size of a fly can much a big difference.

I've been lucky at ISA outings in terms of catching the biggest fish of the outing. It happened again at the April Northwest group outing on the Kishwaukee river. I was fishing a section of the Kish that I had not fished before and I came upon a small but deep hole covered by a big tree limb. I tossed a jig into the the pool and a big smallie immediately nailed the jig on first cast. After I landed the fish and held it up, some of my fellow ISA anglers exclaimed "that's a twenty inch fish!". I didn't have a tape measure with me, so I kept my mouth shut and measured the fish against the handle of my new rod. When I got home, I used a tape measure to measure the spot that I had used to measure the fish on my rod. It was something like 18 inches. A nice fish to be sure, but not a 20 incher. I fessed up on the board that the fish was not twenty inches. If someone else would have tossed some other lure into that spot, they would have caught that fish.

If I'm fishing around here with the sink tip, I fishing from 1 to 6 feet in depth. I've found very few places in the rivers around here where the water gets much deeper than than that. The 5 foot sink tip on the Teeny line that I have is made for fishing relatively shallow water and I can use it effectively in a foot of water depending upon the weight of the fly that I am using. If I wanted to fish deeper than five or six feet, I would need a longer sink tip or something like a shooting head.

Are any of you guys using sink tip lines for smallie fishing? I've had a Teeny Mini Sink tip line for several years, but until my last few times out, I really haven't used it all that much. Now that I've used it, I really like the way that it performs. It turns over bulky flies well, casts great in windy conditions, and most important, it really helps to keep the fly close to the bottom with most presenations. I get snagged on the bottom more often, but if I'm ticking the bottom, I have the fly where I want it. It is much more enjoyable to cast than a a floating line with a sinking leader. The only downside to using this line is that I have to switch spools if I decide to fish topwater flies. What are your experiences with sink tip lines?

The most effective fly color is whatever the fish seem to prefer at the time. White on white or white with another color like olive or grey have always worked well for me and are usually what I first try to fish, but the last few times that I have been out, more subtle colors, especially olive have been the ticket. An olive bunny fly tied with a chartreuse body has produced some nice fish for me recently on the Apple and Kish, which are running slow and clear. Gaudy, flashy flies like white or copper sparkle minnows, which usually work very well, have resulted in follows but very few hits. It seems to me that the action of the bunny fly is what made the difference as much as anything for the larger fish. The next time out, things could change completely.

Tying for me is pretty much of a a winter activity. About the only time that I tie flies during the fishing season is when I run out of something or if I need a specific flies for a planned outing. When I tie in the winter, I usually sit down and tie at least a half dozen of a particular fly. The flies that I tie are based upon patterns from ISA meetings or other sources.

The rain stopped on Sunday afternoon and due to family commitments, I had about 90 minutes to get in a fishing fix. I put the four weight in the car and drove a few minutes to Lake Arlington. The lake was high, with much of the shoreline weeds covered by the high water. I had 90 minutes of non stop surface action using mostly a popper with a nymph trailer. The fish were very aggressive, with many of the fish stacked right up to the weeds and grass that used to be out of the water. I stopped counting the bluegill after twenty fish, and I caught four largemouth bass, the largest of which was fourteen inches. I was fishing with a fast action Scott S3 that I bought this winter on Ebay, and after fishing with this rod several times, I finally got the hang of casting this rod. Now I want to get a similar action rod for smallie fishing.

I took my daughter to the Sylvania Wilderness last week for a fews days of camping, canoing and fishing before she goes to college. The weather was great , the scenery was spectacular and the bugs were not a problem. The old growth forests in the Sylvania wilderness are unlike anything that I have seen in the north woods of Ontario, Wisconsin, or Minnesota. My 18 year old daughter is not into serious fishing. We did fish together and we both caught some nice smallmouth and largemouth bass in Clark Lake on spinning tackle. It was tough using the fly rod from the back of the canoe without endangering my daughter with casts. I went out by myself early two mornings and one evening where I could use the fly rod without endangering anyone. I caught a few nice smallies on topwater flies. These fish were hitting something on the surface in deep water away from structure in up to forty feet of water. I would see or hear fish hitting at the surface and I would canoe toward the ring in the water and make a few casts. I missed one fish that must have been huge based upon the sound that it made when it crashed the surface The subsurface fishing was better in the crystal clear waters of Clark Lake, but most of that fishing was done with a spinning rod as I didn't have a full sinking line that would have allowed me to get a crayfish fly down to fifteen or twenty feet. We could could see crayfish scurrying on the bottom in water that was fifteen feet deep. I caught a nineteen inch and a twenty inch largemouth bass along with some fifteen and sixteen inch smallies using plastic crayfish imitations. After spending a few days there, I really want to go back there when I have the time to get back into the more remote lakes.

I've never fished a wool headed fly before. Does it fish "heavy" or does casting shake the water out of the wool head?

I took a "newby" fishing on the Kish on Saturday morning. My guest was fishing with a spinning rod and I had both a fly rod and spinning rod with me. I caught a few rock bass and dink smallies with the fly rod using poppers and a few others on a sparkle minnow. We both did better with spinning rods using plastics dragged on bottom. The biggest smallmouth that we caught was only 12 inches. We ran across two other spin fishermen who looked like they knew what they were doing, and they were having similar results. We didn't start fishing until around 7:30 AM and the fishing pretty much died after 10:00 AM.

Although we like to catch and release, fishing is a blood sport. Lures with treble hooks can be nasty, but a bass can swallow just about any lure deep enough to damage the gills. I've also seen northern pike and muskies tear up bass and other fish that I had on the line. I wouldn't worry a fish dying unless it starts happening a lot.

A good alternative to polarized progressive bifocals, which can get pricey, are Cocoons fit over type sunglasses. Although they are not the best looking sunglasses, they work very well. They fit over your standard bifocal glasses and provide better sun blocking on the sides and top than standard wire type prescription frames. At forty dollars, you can buy a pair with dark lenses and a pair with amber lenses for low light conditions. One More Cast in Countryside sells Cocoons.