Fallser

That's some nice looking water. My only experience fishing for walleyes is on a lake in Northern Ontario. There are a couple of areas where streams/river run into the lake that are similar. Since we only fished them during the day I don't remember catching any decent size walleyes over the years. We seldom had any luck going out before breakfast or sun up. Prime walleye time was about two hours before sunset and maybe a 1/2 hour to 45 minutes after sunset. Mostly we fished 1/4 oz jigs tipped with night crawlers, leeches or minnows and curly tail grubs 2 to 4 inches, chartreuse, white, yellow and black worked well. We either drifted bouncing the jigs off the bottom, or if we were feeling lazy we'd just anchor up on a good spot at wait for the walleye to come to us. Not sure a sunfish/bluegill would be the best choice for bait. I know they use them around here for flatheads, but I don't think they would be the prime forage fish for walleye. We did catch a few trolling, with deep diving lures running down 15 to 25 feet. Forage in the lake was mainly perch and whitefish. Fire Tiger, Perch and blue over silver always caught fish. Lure length 3-6 inches. Never fished any senkos for walleye. Used them for smallmouth. You'll need to keep them close to the bottom. Drop shot set up, you'd want the senko 6 to 12 inches off the bottom. I wouldn't be surprised if a Ned Rig worked. What to look for on the depth finder besides fish. The ones the lodge had in the boats were basic nothing fancy. We did learn not to use the fish symbol to show us what was down there. Everything from weeds to timber would show up as fish. Walleye seldom showed up on the depth finder for us. The definition wasn't good enough to distinguish between rocks on the bottom and a fish 6 to 12 inches off the bottom. What we did look for were schools of bait fish. The walleye usually followed the schools If you're going to keep a couple the best eating ones are from 14 to 20 inches. You get a decent fillet from them

I've been seeing more articles about using the drop shot rig for fly fishing. It's an interesting idea. I can see the set-up working from a boat or dock. Not sure how well it would work if I were fishing from the shore or wading. It's something to think about over the winter. Not all flies work. I have a couple of boxes filled with "brilliant" ideas that didn't work. Flies do have to be worked differently than a soft plastic. It may be you aren't getting enough action to trigger a strike. I certainly wouldn't tie a drop shot fly with feathers or a weed guard. Feathers have their place in tying streamers for bass but for something that's more or less bounced off the bottom, rabbit/zonker strips or marabou, even spinner bait skirts, would give you more action. Not sure why the weed guard. Maybe the logic is "It's a bass fly, got to have a weed guard." Now all I have to do is figure out how to tie a "Ned" fly.

Nice. Unweighted? I've always thought of them as bass flies rather than trout flies. I tied up a few for an anticipated trip to Northern Ontario this year to try on the smallmouth up there. That went down the tubes with the virus. Mine measure about 3 inches long. I scrapped the beard after the first few. I tied them both weighted and unweighted. Mine are a bit scruffy looking compared to yours. Different style of tying. I do occasionally fish spinning gear and the guys I fish with are into drop shotting. It would be fun to out fish them using a Zonker with a drop shot rig. The Solarez UV resin dries tacky sometimes. I wipe mine down with alcohol pads and that gets ride of the tackiness.

Usually just one. The only time I carried two with me was when I was switching over from ultra-light spin fishing to fly fishing. Figured if I kept carrying the spinning rod, I'd never learn to fly fish, so I started leaving it home. Just carry the fly rod and a couple of boxes of flies these days.

Actually a picture of the rod(s) might help. In either case, as already mentioned, it's time consuming and you can't melt the epoxy to take the guides off. Guides are removed, usually with a single edge razor blade. You have to carefully cut through the epoxy and thread holding the guides in place and basically peel it away. Before removing the guide, you need to mark, usually by wrapping a piece of tape around the blank, where the guide foot or feet were sitting on the blank. So you can put the new ones in the right place on the rod. The fore grip, the one in front of the reel seat, if it's either foam or cork can be carefully cut off. The reel seat can be heated up to loosen the epoxy or cement that's holding it in place and can be worked loose and removed. Then remove the grip behind the reel seat the same way you did the for egrip . Now you have to decide what kind of grips, reel seat and guides you want to replace the old ones with. Order them. Once you get them you can put the rod back together. It would take you two, maybe three hours to carefully remove the old hardware. Making sure you've marked where the old guides sat on the reel and how the reel seat was sitting on the blank. Then you have to wrap on the new guides and coat them with epoxy. Another 6 to 8 hours depending on the equipment you have.

Welcome. I'm from SE PA. Not sure I'd consider Levittown, NE PA. You'll find rod building as addictive as building guitars. Then you'll start making you're own lures. Or in my case tying my own flies.

They're very popular. It's hard for me to find the soft foam popper bodies that I normally use, anymore, in a lot of the fly fishing catalogs. I've got some in various sizes in my tying room. I did use some of the smaller ones to make sliders for pan fish. I know I took some pictures just have to find them. My main problem with them, at least the ones I have, is they don't have a through the body hole to insert the hook and it appears it's going to be tough to get legs through the body. Also they don't take colors well, so much for fire tiger poppers.

I misplaced my fly rod on the roof of my SUV one day after finishing fishing. Didn't notice it was missing till I got home. Never did find it. I don't use spinning gear that often. I have my tackle stored in boxes. The problem is I can't remember which one, so when I'm packing up a tackle box to take with me on a fishing trip, I have to go through several boxes to find what I'm looking for, floating lures, divers, senkos, grubs, other soft plastic. Add to the list Ned rigs which I won't use till I head to Canada next year. Flies are just as bad. I try to keep them in separate boxes but they get mixed up and I've have to look through various boxes to find the ones I want take with me. These days add senior moments to the list.

Just finished this one up the other day. More for pike but should work on bass.

Nice, Adam. My buddies and I usually fish Shohola or they hike into Little Egypt. They're going up in mid-September and staying on Fairview Lake I'm going to be grounded because of knee replacement surgery. I'll keep Promised Land in mind for next May and maybe give it a shot.

I've caught smallmouth in Amherst Lake(81 acres), Echo Lake(530 acres) and Lake Rescue(184 acres) along Rt 100 between Ludlow and Plymouth. They're not big lakes but they're not ponds. All three have boat launches. There's an extension of Lake Rescue called Reservoir Pond that also has smallmouth but no boat launch that I know of. I've seen folks launch kayaks and canoes from the parking lot area at the end of the pond, by the dam. My buddies and I have launched a Crawdad from worst places than that area. Further north on RT 100, below West Bridgewater is Woodward Reservoir(110 acres), another place I've caught smallmouth. It has a boat launch Further north along Rt. 100 near Killington is Kent Pond(71 acres), I've caught smallmouth there but they're not listed as the main bass species. Like BurrStone if I'm looking for smallmouth I had for a river, in this case, the White River between Bethel and Sharon.

Pictures would be nice. A couple of pike flies I tied up on jig hooks. Not articulated.

Yep. Generally, they don't feel like a fish hitting. I caught a rod and reel one time. Thought I had huge flounder on. Another time I caught a rock and landed it. Coming up from 30 feet of water it felt like a huge walleye. Weighed two pounds. Still have it sitting on my TV table. Did you get your lure back? Couldn't figure out if you did or not. If you got the lure back, it most likely was a fish and and by doing a hard set you might have pulled the lure out of it's mouth. Been there and done that. Did you figure out what went crack when you set the hook? I'd be more concerned about what went crack. Like newriverfisherman said, weird things happen when you're fishing. Enjoy them.

I fly fish for them and they're a blast on a fly rod. I don't use small poppers or bugs though Most of my top water bugs are tied on size 6 or 8 hooks. Discourages, most of the time, the dinks. I didn't always fly fish for them and I did well with white, yellow or chartruese twister tail grubs on 1/8 or 1/16 oz jig, small Road Runners, Mepps or small in-line spinners, small floating Rapala minnows. Bait, red wigglers over night crawlers, crickets and leeches.

Yep, 1971 to 1975. A lot of the professors I knew owned small farms that had ponds on them that kept us in food. Fished the Obion River for shell crackers, Reelfoot a couple of times a month, and always made it over to the Paris Fish Fry.

The problem in my creek is the flathead catfish fisherman. They've decimated the bluegils and other sunfish in sections of the creek I fish and use them for bait. In PA the limit for individual species of pan fish, including bluegill is 20 fish per day. You can keep 50 fish a day of combined species. No minimum size, no seasonal restrictions. Myself and the three guys I fish with could probably eat 25 crappies in one sitting. Do we keep that many pan fish. No. We spend a week on a lake in the Poconos, twice a year. At the end of the week, we have a "Canadian Shore Lunch" for dinner on the last night. Last time I cleaned 15 or 16 fish. Mostly rock bass, but a couple of big bluegill, crappie and perch. When I was in college in NW Tennessee back in the 70's, my buddy and I, who I still fish with today, would make a trip to Reelfoot Lake once or twice a month. The lake's noted for it big crappie and bream. If we had a good day, we could bring home a couple of dozen crappie, what we didn't eat that day went in the freezer for dinner another night. Often when we would get back to the dock, we'd see locals with coolers full of slab crappie. That was food on their table.

I don't tie anything fuzzy on during a mayfly hatch. At best I try to imitate the mayfly hatching. Don't always work. It's the one time a fly fisherman might have an advantage over ya'll. The Susquehanna River a huge white mayfly hatch. If you look at the street lights you'd think you were in snow storm. Everything in the river is eating them, minnows, sunfish, bass, catfish, walleye. Even a well tied fly won't get their attention a lot of times. It does pay to try something different. You didn't say whether you were fishing a lake or a river. Coming up in the next couple of weeks in the Northeast, Midwest and Ontario will be the Hex hatch. This is the biggest mayfly in the U.S. It's mostly found in lakes. The adult mayfly can be over an inch long and the nymph is about an inch long. What the fish are eating are either nymphs swimming to the surface or the emerging mayfly in the surface film. I won't bore you with anymore details. Except they usually emerge just before dark and the hatch continues for a while after dark. For the nymph, all the suggestions are good. A small jig with a black or olive twister tail grub, hair or marabou jigs. The only thing I'll say is the nymphs aren't slow. They're literally swimming for their lives. The emerger is where things slow down. The nymph sits in the surface film and the adult emerges from it. Basically it has to sit there until it's wings dry and it's body hardens, then it can fly away. Easy pickings for any fish. A small popper fished slowly should work for top water. I'm not sure about the sunfish lure, unless it's a top water. I would fish it with either floating Rapala style lure or a shallow diver. I prefer Yozuri lures myself. Fish them slowly. I'm heading to upstate NY in about 10 days to Upper Saranac Lake. I'm hoping to hit a Hex hatch there. Figure I can get my niece's husband or my nephew to row their old uncle around the lake in the dark. This is one of the flies I'm planning to fish. It doesn't look a bit like a mayfly. This one is about 3 1/2 inches long. My feeding fish imitation. I'll have to downsize it a bit to imitate the mayfly.

I've got them. Haven't tied one wacky style yet but I'm thinking about it. Even got an idea for the Ned rig. Sometimes you have to tie up an imitation of what the others guys are catching fish on. A different take on matching the hatch.

Another place or fish where I don't use wire. The lake I go to is noted more for its walleye than pike. Plus the time of the year I go, late summer, is not when you're going to find big pike. There are big pike in the lake. I had one grab a 12 inch walleye when I was trolling. Another time I had a 20 inch pike on the fly rod. It was fighting me and then started swimming toward the boat. When I was taking it off the hook, I noticed blood dripping onto the bottom of the boat. I checked the pike out and there large teeth marks on the back third of the fish where something had try to grab it. Most likely another pike. If you catch a 30 inch fish that time of the year, you've had a good week. They seem to prefer longer minnow type lures which cuts back on the bite offs. Even on the fly rod with the heavy fluorocarbon leader I can count the number of bite-offs I've had over the years on one hand.

I've seen them that dark. It depends on the type of water they live in. South Jersey has a lot of tannic lakes with dark water and that affects the coloration of the fish. This one was caught out of Shohola Lake in the Poconos that has a high tannic level.

Nice rainbow. I fly fish for them, so I've got a lot of them on my score card including a few 20 inch fish. You know what though fly fishing gets too technical. Match the hatch. Tie a size 20 fly, because that's the only thing the trout are taking. Which is B.S... When I kept them I sometimes I found cigarette butts in their stomachs. I've caught them on miniature marshmallows. I live in an urban area, so I enjoy getting to places where I have to hike in to find small streams that hold wild fish. Whether it be trout or bass. For browns, try a small minnow lure or crayfish lure or a larger spinner. Let's see what do I have up in my tying room. I'm sure I can tie up a white paddle tail fly.

I generally use a heavy fluorocarbon leader when I'm fly fishing for them, usually 25#. If I'm getting bite offs I'll go with a 40# bite tippet. I don't think I ever used wire when I was surf fishing or tossing lures to them. I might have because I found a spool of 30# Tyger wire when I was cleaning up my tying room. Which is one of the knotable wire leaders.

I live in Philly and I wouldn't eat any fish that I catch from the creeks and rivers in the immediate 5 county area. Even some of the lakes would be suspect. PA has in its regulations advisories about each species of fish in different areas of the state. Are they edible, if so how much and how often you can eat them. Maryland might have a similar chart. It's a striper. They migrate in from salt water. How long has it been in fresh water, might be a question you can ask yourself. If the fish has been in fresh water for awhile, it may not taste as good as if you caught it in salt water. If you're hungry or enjoy eating stripers you could probably eat that one. I wouldn't make a habit of it, until you check to see if there are any advisories about eating them from the river. One most likely won't get you sick or kill you.

I wear glasses, so I need a pair that will fit over them. I settled on Cocoons. They run between $50-$60. They're cheap enough that I have three pairs. Gray/Smoke, Amber and Yellow. Just pick the pair that's appropriate for the weather conditions, though I've found that the Amber lens is the best all around color.

I wear long light colored pants, light color t-shirt with a light long sleeve shirt and a well used wide brim Panama hat. Since I'm a fly fisherman, I also wear a fishing vest that holds a my smaller gear. Foot wear usually a pair of old sneakers if I'm fishing from a boat. It the bugs are bad on the water I wear the boots I cut off of an old pair of waders. If I'm walking in to a lake or fishing from the shore. Pretty much the same outfit. Waterproof hiking boots and socks that I can tuck my pant legs in. Clothes well sprayed with insect repellent.