Monday, January 25, 2010

Still more Flies

As you can see, I've been busy NOT FISHING!

Here's some more flies I tied over the weekend. I don't even know what to call most of these, but I'm sure others have tied similar stuff before. If anyone knows of the true name for any of these, I'd like to know...at least maybe I can title my fly pictures correctly:

Miscellaneous nymph...

Size 10 Clouser Deep Minnow tied with craft fur:
A "modified" Cap Spider (small glass beadhead instead of a jighead):

A small size 10 crayfish pattern of my own design:

A dubbed-bodied pheasant-tail nymph.

A fairly simple rubber-legged nymph:

...and a Mohair Leech:

Friday, January 22, 2010

More fly ties, January 2010

Here's some flies I tied recently:

This is a Griffith's Gnat. I used brown hackle instead of grizzly. I don't know why I did that.

Below is a beadhead Clouser Swimming Nymph. I used possum dubbing for the abdomen. Looks like there's a big gnarly guard hair sticking out of that!




Below is another idea for a crayfish pattern. It seems ok, but still not exactly what I'm looking for. Getting closer, I think.



This is a beadhead PTN. A lot of folks on here seem to like them, so thought I'd give it a try. This is one of my first attempts at this fly. I think I could've done better with the peacock herl thorax, but overall not too bad, and it should catch fish!






Thursday, January 21, 2010

"Icicles at Night"

Testing out my new camera.... The first is the actual color picture, the second is one I converted to "grayscale".

Icicles at night:


Monday, January 18, 2010

Pond in Ankeny
1-15-2010
6:15pm-10:15pm
10" ice thickness
Fish sought: crappies
Fish caught: 17 crappies, 2 bluegills

Got out Friday night. First 2 hours were pretty steady, last 2 hours weren't very productive...plenty of fish showing up, but they just wanted to annoy me, rather than feed. I was too comfy and lazy to move at that point. Figured the attitude of the fish would be the same everywhere on the pond anyway. It was still fun!
I used a BFGS special vertical-style jig tipped with a couple red maggots.
This pond is about 15' deep, but I fished holes in 5', 7', and 9' depths, and caught fish in each. I moved deeper as the evening progressed, which actually seems counter-intuitive. But I started shallow, so I only had one direction to go, really.
The fish weren't big, but I'm not complaining:





Banner PitsDate: 1-14-2010Time
Fished: 12:45-4:00pm
Fish sought: trout
Fish caught: 45 rainbow trout

Left work at 11am, went home to dust off my ice-fishing gear (I hadn't been out yet this ice season...in fact not since Nov. 24!), and then headed down to Banner Pits. The DNR stocking truck was still there, but the stocking was already completed.

I spotted a small opening near shore amongst the many that got there before I did. I asked the anglers on either side if they minded if I drilled a hole there, and they gave me the green light.

I still had a Cicada blade bait tied on from last year, and I was too lazy to try anything else. I took some maggots with me, but never bothered to use them.

The fish were hitting fairly well for the first hour, then it slowed down considerably as the trout started to disperse. I started off about 10' from shore. When that bit slowed down, I drilled a hole 2' closer to shore and caught more fish. When that slowed, I went another 2 feet closer to shore. Caught more fish. Drilled one more hole about 3'-4' from shore, and caught more fish before I needed to leave.

A good number of folks stopped by to see what I was using, since I seemed to be doing much better than everyone else. Probably all the fish were caught less than 3' beneath the ice.

There were some folks next to me that brought their 4-yr old son. He was energetic, sharp, and competitive! I had fun bantering with him. We were giving fish names...I told him I was just catching the same fish over and over...because it was my pet fish "Rob" I had brought to the lake so it could get some exercise. He named his "boy" fish Dorothy and Sally...

What's a report without pics?This was probably the biggest one I caught. I didn't measure, but I'd guess it was close to 15":