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):

Flyfishing for White Bass, 8-17-2014

Following my previous blog post, I tied up a couple more shad-imitating flies.  I had seen a picture of a fly pattern called "Bill's Articulated Baitfish".  I only had a picture to go by....no recipe or instructions.  I thought they turned out reasonably well:

The first one I tied (the bottom one with the chartreuse eyes) I used a superline or backing line as the articulation connection.  I may have tied it down too tightly or something...when I sink-tested the fly, it was dead....no action in the water.  So, the 2nd one (the top one with the red eyes), I used a bent-wire connection, and I really liked the action during the sink-test!  In case fish were small and/or striking short, I left the rear hook in place, where I had clipped it off in the first (bottom) one.  I'm glad I did!

Another fly that caught fish well was this one:

Another fly that did well was the bottom one in the picture below.  You may not be able to see it in the picture, there is a metal bead on the hookshank about 1/3 hook shank length back from the hook eye.  The tail materials tangled some, but I could still fix it and fish it.

I missed at least 2 strikes for every fish caught on the above patterns, probably because of the size and hook placement.

I had a tip from a fellow flyfishing white bass angler...   Small #8 Clousers tied with marabou instead of bucktail.  I had tied up a couple of these:

I fished the bottom two, while my buddy Jay fished the top one.  They all caught fish VERY well, with much fewer missed strikes than the bigger patterns.

In fact, I had the biggest White Bass/Wiper of the day  on the middle fly above.  The strike and fight were amazing....after 10-15 seconds, I decided I must have hooked a channel catfish, THAT's how hard this fish was bulldogging and fighting!  I finally dragged it up onto the sand in the shallows, but it flipped a few times, threw the fly, and swam away.  It was probably about a 15" fish.  Not huge, but REALLY NICE, especially after battling with the fun medium-sized fish (11-12") all day.

Jay took my picture against the fog on the lake in the morning.

New Fly Rod Personal Best White Bass

My buddy Jay called me before noon today to tell me the fish were biting.  I met up with him during my lunch hour.
Fish were picking the 17-Year Cicadas off the surface of the water, but they hit so fast, we never actually figured out WHAT was eating them!  There was also an abundance of sub-fingerling size young-of-the-year fish schooling around near the surface, and fish would crash them as well.  Pretty exciting to watch all the action!

I used my 12' 5wt Allen Olympic Switch Rod again.  I started out with the beat-up shad-imitating streamer I'd caught those catfish on last week, with no hits.  I switched to a Chartreuse-Over-White Clouser Deep Minnow, with no hits.  I switched to a variant (90-degree jig hook and lead eyes) of the F-C Pearl Shiner, and started catching fish by letting it free-fall into the water, then giving some short quick strips and letting it fall again.

I caught 3 small 10" Wipers, and one 16" White Bass, which was a new flyrod personal best for me.
I wish I could have fished longer!  :)

Red Rock Spillway, 7-26-2013

After not doing particularly well with kayaking/catching fish on Blue Heron on Wednesday, my buddy Jay and I went below Red Rock on Thursday (7/25/2013).

We started on the west side of the dam, and caught a few white bass, wipers, and drum.

Then I saw busts on the east side, so we drove all the way around to the other side of the river.  The fish were still busting shad on the surface when we got there.  After a successful cast or two with spinning gear, I decided it was time to try out the 7wt combo I just bought from my friend Chad (http://iowaflyfisher.webs.com/).

I used a Clouser Deep Minnow, and hammered fish for about 1.5 hours.  Nice white bass (up to 16"), Wipers (the action was so fast, I only bothered to measure one, and it might not have been the biggest one..but it was 18.5"), and even a Drum or two.

Here's a few pics ( I wish I'd taken more...but I was having too much fun!):

This was one of the smallest Wipers of the day.  Why didn't I take more pictures of the BIGGER ones?

I finally switched back to spinning gear because I was getting worn out casting/catching so many fish, and some folks with a much different idea of personal space and fishing etiquette decided to stand just a rod length away from me and cast wherever I would cast.  I kept catching fish for another hour or so, then the action finally died.

I saw quite a few gar, but thYe would disappear quickly, so I never really got serious about trying to catch one...even though I really WANTED to catch one.  But I was having too much fun with the Wipers!  

Saylorville Before the Storm, 6-20-2012

A big storm had been forecast and was well on its way.   Jay and I decided to squeeze whatever fishing time we could out of the evening.  We went to Saylorville Lake, fished from shore.

As I've mentioned before, I bring flyfishing gear AND spinning gear when I fish this lake.  Sometimes the spinning gear is just the better tool for the white bass.

I spent much of the time flyfishing for some carp.  I knew where they were.  But the water was extremely muddy...visibility maybe 6".  I tried a number of flies and a couple techniques I thought might do the trick...but no takers.  Frustrating!  So then I put on some streamers to try for some other species, like catfish or white bass or wipers.  I had one nice fish on, got it near shore, and BROKE my tippet.  DANG IT!  It was not going well for me.

Meanwhile, Jay had caught a couple white bass, a nice catfish, a good-size freshwater drum, and some nice largemouth bass...all on spinning gear/lures.

I tried a couple other streamers, and managed to spend a good deal of my time trying to rip my flies out of the tall weeds that were behind me.  More frustration.

I tied on a Murdich Minnow, and finally got a nice 14" White Bass to hammer it.

I made some more casts, but didn't get any more fish on the fly gear.  I switched to the spinning gear and caught about a dozen more really nice white bass, mostly in the 13"-15" range, using a Mepps spinner.
This is one of the 15-inchers:

Excellent fighters!

I had my back to the approaching storm, while Jay was fishing looking towards the storm.  The second time he said, "There's lightning!", we took off for the car...FAST!  We had just finished putting our gear in the car and were closing the tailgate when the first drops started to fall.  By the time we left the parking lot, it was coming down pretty good!  Talk about perfect timing!!