Fallser

I used Solarez Tack Free Flex resin for the large ones and possibly the small ones. If I didn't use the Solarez on the small ones I used Deer Creek Fine Flex resin. I know I used it on the slider. I was using an old bottle and it was thicker than I liked. Just got a new bottle I'm going to finish the remaining ones with that, should be easier to coat them. The reason I coat them with the resin is that craft foam will absorb water and the flies eventually ride lower in the water. The Solarez comes in a larger bottle than the Deer Creek. It's not cheap, but you can coat quite a few flies with it. The hooks are double hooks. I used 3/0 for the large frogs and 1/0 for the smaller ones. I had to use articulated shanks with the double hooks so I had an eye that I could tie the line off on. My fishing is going to be limited this year. I've been hobbling around on a cane for a few months. I had a lot of pain in my lower left leg and at my age the immediate thought was I had blood clots or blockage in the arteries and/or veins. The virus screwed up the time line of the final diagnosis and I got the results a couple of weeks ago. No blood clots or blockage. Next stop was the orthopedic specialist. So I'm having the knee replacement that I had 11 years ago replaced. Surgery is Sept 4th. I'll be doing a lot of tying in the fall. When I see a fly I want to tie, I try and get hold of the original pattern. If you send me your address, I'll send you a couple to use as templates and to see if they work.

That's a nice, healthy looking bass. Here's a few patterns I've been working on. I'm almost finished my frog project. The first picture is of all the ones I've finished. I still have 5 of the large ones that I need to add legs to and coat with UV Flex resin. A large and small frog floating in some water. A bass slider, just my favorite pan fish fly on steroids. The last is the basic bait fish pattern. Not happy with how it came out or might be just how I took the picture. I use them in fresh and salt water.

As you've already been told, smallmouth. I've seen those little black spots on various pan fish and bass I've caught in lakes in central Vermont. I've been told they're parasitical cysts that are harmless to humans and have minimal effect on the fish.

Ultra light was my last step before taking up fly fishing. I built an ultra light rod on a blank that was made at place where I brought my rod building components. 5' 10" graphite, the tip is 1/16"in diameter and solid graphite. Paired it with a Mitchell 370 UL reel. It sits in my rod rack these days. I couldn't replace it if I broke it. Back to fish. I may have started out using 4 lb test with it but I quickly switched over to 6 lb test after my first trip to Northern Ontario . I caught my first 20 inch smallmouth on it the next year and several 5 to 8 lb walleyes over the first 4 or 5 years that I went there. I took up fly fishing and retired it. The tippets/leaders I use for warm and cool water fishing don't fit into ultralight. Though I do have membership in the 20-20 club, catching a 20 inch trout on a tippet the equivalent of 2 lb test or less.

I've fished a similar lake in South Jersey. There's a beach area, but the rest of the lake either has high reeds or brush and trees to the water line. The only way to fish it is wade around the edges. Now I'm fly fishing, so I making 30 to 40 foot casts. In the reed area, I start 10 to 15 feet from the edge of reeds, it can be anywhere from calf to waist deep water. I pretty much do what jimmyjoe does at least in terms of how I wade. I make 10 to 15 casts from my starting spot, starting at the edge of the reeds and in an arc out from the reeds. I know it's time to move on when my back cast starts catching the reeds. I'll move 15-20 feet ahead stop, and repeat the process. I'm fishing mostly top water bugs, but will use streamers, bait fish patterns or the fly fisherman's version of a swim jig. I'd fish it the same way if I was using spinning tackle. Now I haven't had bass follow me in the lake, but the sunfish do because I'm kicking up food for them when I'm moving. I've certainly have had bass or chain pickerel blow up the sunfish behind me.

Looks like a good sunfish pattern to me. I know in the fall, at least in some of the lakes around here, it looks like the bass herd the small sunfish, 2 to 3 inches long, into the shallows. A couple of years ago, it's a clear lake, I could see a line of decent largemouth in front of me and every so often one of the bass would dash in and blow up one of the schools. We were acting as lake guides for a Casting for Recovery retreat, and I wasn't fishing. The woman I was guiding caught a small sunfish. I asked her for her rod and rather than unhooking it I flipped the sunfish back out about 15 ft and handed her the rod back. No sooner had it hit the water than there was a huge swirl as a bass tried to grab it. Last year in the same area on the lake. Another woman hooked a sunfish and a 3 or 4 lb bass grabbed it and hung on to it for a few minutes before finally letting go. What was driving us nuts, we were fishing off a small pier was the biggest largemouth I'd ever seen. It had to be a 10 lb fish, kept cruising the area, occasionally following hooked sunfish or even the flies. Both times it was late September, so that should be a good pattern for in the fall.

That is a cool looking fly. I'm trying to figure out the materials. I can see marabou, feathers, silicone or rubber legs. Can't figure the head out. Maybe some deer hair in there. It looked like a big fly, but seeing it with the sunfish it's not that big. I always have "discussions" with other fly tyers about the size of pan fish flies. Most seem to think size 10 and 12 is what you have to fish to catch bluegills, pumpkinseeds, etc. I tie mine on size 6 and 8 hooks. They seem to like them.

My friends and I rent a house on Fairview Lake, a couple of times a year. As an encouragement, this one was caught in Fairview Lake. Another spot would Shohola Lake, it's shallow and weedy but has some big bass and chain pickerel in it.

My wading days are done. Two knee replacements and a hip replacement, with another knee replacement coming up. Time to replace one of the replacements. I've always worn hip boots or waders when I was wading. I live in an urban area and have always had my doubts about the water quality, not to mention the poison ivy and ticks Plus I'm a fly fisherman and it's lot easier casting from the middle of the creek that it is the shore.The creek has gravel and sand bars along the bank that I can fish from. The creek has smallmouth and largemouth in it most aren't very big. My best is a 16 3/4" smallmouth. There are bigger fish in it but I can't get to them anymore. Here's a picture of the creek and what's an average size smallmouth. The largemouth seem to be about the same size.

Nice, that's one fly I haven't tried to tie yet. Even though I've got plenty of time, it just looks like too much work. I was planning to tie this evening. A friend brought a couple of hard body poppers over and asked me to put a new trebles on them and dress the back one. I was sorting through my treble hooks and knocked the open storage box over, scattering them all over. I was sitting at my tying desk barefoot. I used a big magnet to pick them up and spent my tying time sorting them and putting them in their proper compartments... there's always tomorrow. I've been working on some weedless top water frogs, sort of based them on the Booyah Pad Crasher. I'll take some pictures and post them

Nice. A good mix of fish. I've never caught a catfish with a fly. I have snagged a couple of trout with a fly and maybe a sunfish or two. Thought I had a monster fish on. I snagged a few bass on lures with the same reaction. The bass of a life time. Not so much.

I'll give that a shot. I did drop it in some water and let it sit and it looked like I stuck it in an electric socket, the legs were all over the place I'd like to catch bass not scare them. It did have some nice movement when I had it in running water. I do replace skirts on my fishing buddies spinner baits. Since it's tough to fish fly fish with a spinner bait, I tie these up for subsurface fishing. It's also what I'll do when I replace the skirts. I tie these on a long shank hook would it be worth shortening the skirt.

Interesting. That's an old Thompson vise. I think I have one up in my tying room. I make some Mepps style spinners for the guys I fish with. I've been using various flash materials to dress the trebles, rather than squirrel tail, which is much harder to spin around the shank. I just lay a small bunch of the flash material on the shank so it sits between the hooks then wrap each piece in. I'm not doing production tying, so I don't have to do it quickly. I may try doing a couple with squirrel tail. I think I have a couple of fox squirrel tails somewhere in my containers that I store my fly tying materials in. To me the hook is overdressed, but I'm not going to knock the success of the Mepps spinner, I used them for many years and caught a lot of fish on them before switching over to fly fishing.

Try not to laugh. I'm working on some crayfish flies and don't want to tie up some "traditional" patterns. This is what I came up with. The hook is weighted to ride point up. Other than using a jig hook, I have to find my 2/0 and 3/0 ones, what other improvements could I make to improve it.

I think the scariest was when I was fishing a small river in central Vermont. I'd just started learning how to wade and didn't no diddly about waders. I was just out of college, no job, very little money. I brought cheap pair of stocking foot waders. I didn't know and nobody told me you were suppose to wear stocking foot waders inside a shoe. I got to the stream bank, rigged up my spinning rod, pulled the waders on over my sneakers, and waded out into a fairly fast current. I got about halfway across, and I slipped and found myself floating down stream feet first with my butt bouncing off the bottom and my sneakers sticking out of my waders. Fortunately, I was pushed into a gravel bar and was able to crawl out. The dumbest thing I did, a couple of years ago, was spend most of the day fly fishing an inlet down the Jersey shore. I'd worked my way back along the beach to the parking/boat launch area and instead of calling it a day I went out on the floating dock to make a few cast and catch one last fish. There was a pretty good breeze blowing at my back and I had already bounced the fly off my back and head a couple times. I made that last cast, and I figured the fly was caught in my hat or vest but following the line I found I'd acquired a bit of bling in my ear. The guy I was fishing with wouldn't pull the hook out. We rode over to a friend's house who removed the hook. It was barbless.

I go up to Northern Ontario. The colors are pretty much the same. Perch, Crayfish, Fire Tiger all work. Other colors, black and silver, blue and silver, purple and silver. Main forage in the lake are perch, whitefish, crayfish, rock bass and various minnows. The odd color is a mackerel pattern I brought for salt water. Not sure why it works but it does.

Thanks, flyfisher. Nope, just fancy Pig Boats. What I did with the bodies instead of wrapping the chenille and then wrapping the hackle was tie a saddle hackle on each side of the shank and then tie in, in this case one of Puglisi's brushes, on top of the shank. I then twist them together, and wrap the material up the shank for the body. I stroke the material back with each wrap. I normally use long fiber Estaz for the body, but I brought the brushes at the Fly Tying Symposium in NJ last year and didn't like the way the bait fish patterns turned out with them. A friend asked me to add a skirt to his spinner bait, so I used one of the brushes for flash. Liked the way it looked, so I decided to use them up making various Pig Boats. I use a full spinner bait skirt for the rest of the bodies. The heads are wrapped thread coated with UV resin. They're tied on 3/0 and 4/0 hooks. The crayfish is tied using estaz and saddle hackle. I added two small rattles tied side by side on the top of the shank to add weight so the hook will ride point up. I fish them like streamers, except for the crayfish and I'll try to crawl or jig it on the bottom.

Time to give this a bump up. I've been tying up some subsurface flies. These are updated version of a fly called the Calcasieu Pig Boat developed in the early 1950's. Rather than trying to imitate a bait fish, it was tied to imitate the Hawaiian Wiggler, the hot bass lure of the time. It's probably first spinner bait. FWIW

Jig man beat me to it. It may not matter but I would tie the green/chartreuse strands on top of the jig. Depends on how often you plan to do this, but it's easier to tie in a skirt layer than to tie in the individual strands.

A couple things. One, I fly fish for them. Two, depends where I'm fishing. On my local creek, 12 inches for both largemouth and smallmouth is a nice fish. My PB smallmouth from there was 16 3/4". My best largemouth is 13 inches. There are bigger fish of both species in there. I've seen them. They're just few and far between. On the other lakes and rivers that I fish, here in SE PA, NJ, Vermont and Northern Ontario. I'd consider a 2 lb fish of either species a nice fish. I've done better with large smallmouth, four 20 inch fish on the fly rod over the last 15 years, all caught in Canada. I've just really been fishing for largemouth the last 5 years. Best I've done there is 21 inch fish. Lot of down time the last couple of months, maybe the frogs I'm tying up will get me a bigger one this year.

Saving money was what got me into building my own rods. A couple of my friends had just brought boats and were getting into shark fishing and trolling inshore and offshore. I brought a cheap rod and a cheap Penn reel. They lasted a few trips, but a small mako shark took out the rod. I priced rods at the big tackle shop in Atlantic City, and the rods were $300 to $400. I found a place up in Allentown that sold rod building components. Made the trip up and was able to pick up a quality blank, guides, reel seat/butt for around $175. You don't have to go top of the line but there are quality components available out there that won't empty your wallet. I've got two projects waiting for me upstairs. Rebuilding a spinning rod and stripping the snake guides off a fly rod and replacing them with single foot spinning guides. I was looking through a couple of catalogs and decided I was going to pay $2 or $3 for a single guide. They weren't expensive rods to begin with. So I settle for Fuji SIC guides. Pretty much agree with what else has been said. There's nothing like catching a fish on a rod you built with a lure, fly or jig you made.

I usually get into "discussions" about the size of flies needed to catch pan fish and bass. My pan fish flies are tied on size 6 and 8 hooks. For bass I start with size 6 and this year I've been tying poppers on 4/0. The fish in my avatar is my PB measured out at 21 inches. If you look hard you can see the fly, a floating mop fly, in the corner of it's mouth. I caught it on when I was fishing for pan fish. Speaking of flies I still can't do any fishing, took a break from tying frogs and making in-line spinners. The first couple are Surf Candies designed to imitate silversides and bay anchovies in salt water. I've never really tried them in fresh water, though I don't see why they wouldn't work. The last one is a peanut bunker imitation. Should pass for shad in the local lakes.

Nice, caught on a deer hair bug. Weedless? I'm still in the fly tying mode, or today making some in line spinners for my fishing buddies. Probably won't get out until the middle of June.

I've seen the same behavior in my local creek, a river in Vermont and a lake in Northern Ontario. Bassman said it, competition and a meal they don't have to work hard for. I've also seen similar behavior with bluefish in salt water. Definitely have used Way north bass guy's tactic of tossing my fly into or near the group of smallies following the guy I'm fishing with lure or bait back to the boat up north.

I've caught both largemouth and smallmouth on them over the years. Largest around 4 lbs down in NW Tennessee many years ago. I like to browse the fishing flea markets around here where I can find beat up ones for a buck or two Take them home, clean them up, new hooks and new skirts. I give them to my fishing buddies, unless I like the color or size then I'll keep it. I have a half dozen in my tackle box though they mainly gather dust these days as most of my fishing these days with a fly rod. When I fished them I used either or pop and pause retrieve or a slow steady retrieve. Jedi, my PB came on a top water.