Flyfishing for White Bass, 8-23-2014

Odd place, Saylorville Lake.  A lightning-heavy rainstorm passed over in the morning.  I got out to the lake around 9:30am as the last few drops were still falling, and the lightning had long since moved on.

I fished for an hour-and-a-half with no fish activity sighted, and not fish caught.  I did see one or two carp, and made some poor casts in their general direction.

My buddy Jay showed up around 10:30am, and he found fish almost right away, although the action wasn't fast.  I was up and around the shoreline a ways from him...out of sight...and he kept calling me on my phone to come over.  I finally did.  I caught one white bass while he caught 4, plus a drum and a walleye.  Sheesh!

An experienced angler knows that sometimes you just gotta move on.  So, I headed back down the shoreline to an area I'd already covered that morning.  But, fishing activity did pick up, and by 12 noon, it was rocking really good, and stayed that way right up until we left around 3:30pm.

I used spinning gear much of the time, but once the fish got really active and were within casting distance of a fly rod ( I brought a 9' 6wt this day), I grabbed my fly rod.  Personally, its just more fun!

I put on a craft fur baitfish fly,

and the fish were really having fun attacking it, but I wasn't hooking up as often as I wanted...as in, lots of MISSED strikes.  I also had fish (catfish?) break my 8.2 lb tippet 3 times!!!  I switched to 10 lb tippet and didn't break off any more fish.  I also eventually switched to a #8 Marabou Clouser, chartreuse over white, and started catching a much higher percentage of the fish that were striking.

FUN!
Here's a 12" Wiper:

And here's a 14" White Bass (FAT):