flyfisher

Being a teacher i get out usually once a week during the school year and in the summer i get out 2 times a week generally. My 8 year old son goes to daycare 2 days a week and hasn't really gotten into fishing too much yet so we usually spend the days doing other things. On his daycare days i drop him off and then hook up the kayak trailer and head out as soon as i get home. I am then off the water in time to get him around 4:30-5:00 and still cook dinner before the wife and my daughter, 2 years old and goes to daycare still, get home around 5:45. I do try and get out at night but i haven't been able to this year with all the rain and thunderstorms we've been having.

Yeah i looked at them and am gonna pick up some myself but haven't yet. Just debating on using my bass pro gift cards and going to the actual store or just getting them delivered lol I may head up there tonight though because i am hoping to get out tomorrow and throw some frogs

i am somewhat of a headlamp addict so right now i have a black diamond one i am using that has a red light. I will say though that if you let your eyes adjust you will be shocked at just how well you can see. It all goes to **** though as soon as you turn on any type of light. And your schedule is about what i would do...get the kids ready for bed and head out. I usually end up staying till around 3-4am, then the obligatory stop for food on the way home and able to get a few hours of sleep before everyone wakes up lol. I have left early though on nights where the bats are driving me nuts and make sure you have some sort of bug repellent. I have heard good things about thermacells but haven't gotten one yet.

I wear mine 95% of the time. The only times i don't is when i am in a a few of the slow moving swampy areas around here where the water is super shallow for the most part and nothing bigger than a kayak can be out there. On lakes, I always wear it and i go with a self inflating as well.

I haven't made a switch per se but i do enjoy night fishing. I don't go out at midnight though. I like to launch right as it is getting dark and fish till I feel like leaving. Hard part around here is there are limited places that allow fishing past an hour after sunset other than bigger lakes and the rivers, neither of which i like going out at at night. I am also a kayak guy too.

Yeah i would think that is all you need too. Or if he bought it in 2017 where did he get it? maybe they can make you up a receipt. I had a bike shop i bought a bike from make me a receipt when it was stolen so i had it for my insurance claim. I did have a good relationship with them though so your mileage may vary

What ^^^ said. I picked up a spool of cheap mono on sale one time just for this purpose. All it does is give you filler, that's it so nothing fancy is needed.

Cycling, tying flies, recently gotten back into disc golf and losing to start climbing again with my son. My hobbies change around and the focus shifts from time to time and even in fishing, i will get on kicks where all i want to do is fly fish, wade for smallies, tie flies or go after trout.

All the ideas above are good ones. I will also add that any type of soft plastic you use, slather it up with something like mega strike as it seems to help the grass stay off the bait and for it to slide through the grass more easily.

no moral high ground here i just don't see the need to kill something when given the option tp release alive and you aren't going to eat it. Killing just to kill it is waste to me.

oh so being invasive has nothing to do with it...you should at least keep your reasons straight.

so do you kill the invasive bass too?

The wife and I went to see the Alton Brown show he is traveling around the country doing since he is one of my favorite chefs, a lot of science with his cooking. anyways in one of his monologues he brought up the topic of kids and he said one of the worst things you can ever do is take a kid out to a restaurant when they are young because then they have choices and think it is the norm. We all laughed but at the same time it is kind of true. I have to cater my cooking to the kids more than myself or if me or the wife wants something, we have to make something different for my 8 year old, the 2 year old eats everything pretty much.

Killing a snakehead just to kill it isn't going to do anything to the population and to me is just wanton waste. If you don't want to keep and eat them, then release them.

lol That is learned behavior for sure. It always amazes me on what kids will or won't eat. My son looks at something and makes his mind up if he likes it or not and I honestly just say ok, well that is what there is to eat so deal with it lol

My 2 year old daughter eats pretty much everything. Now she does have things that she wants at certain times but for the most part she is pretty good. My 8 year old son used to eat everything but has gotten pickier over the years but part of that is because my wife likes to cater to him and i said from the beginning we shouldn't do that because if he gets hungry enough, he will eat. He is learning though and funny thing is he likes to watch the cooking shows and says he wants to cook stuff but never wants to try any of the food so that goes out the window. Luckily he will eat pretty much any vegetable out there so i can't complain too much.

Smallies definitely fight harder than Largemouth. River largemouth fight pretty hard too but i still think Spotted bass fight harder than both of them.

And here is another fun filled fact....there really is no Mayfly per se....Mayfly is a generic term to describe thousands of different species that bear similar characteristics and belong to the same insect family group.

the hatches around here aren't as predictable so it has usually been a by product of me already being out there and happening to have a trout fly box in my pack. Have you tried fishing the emergers or nymphs of the flies that are hatching? While the excitement on top is awesome and hard to get away from, the action under the surface can be even more crazy since a lot of the fish are feeding there more than on top.

A heavy hatch is sometimes the hardest time to catch a fish on a fly rod in my experience. You think it would be easy but there are so many naturals out there that any fly is going to look fake to them so they bypass to get the others. I have had some great days when there were heavy caddis hatches on the shenandoah where you could get away with skating them across the surface.

I hav caught a ton of smallies during a hatch, on the fly rod though. I do agree that the majority of the larger fish will be feeding on the smaller fish feeding on the mayflies.

Sounds like a dog food brand lol

Megabass PopX and PopMax for me as they both allow for popping or walking the dog if needed.

Depth of crank bait running is more attributed to line diameter than anything as the buoyancy or lack thereof has negligible impact.

There are quite a few reel companies that are made in the US with Lamson being one (they do have some models that use overseas machining), Galvan, Ross and in the high end category Abel and Tibor. i am sure there are others too.... I have always been a sucker for fly reels even though i rarely even need to use them for anything more than a counterweight and line holder but i don't think i could ever spend that much on a reel....