Fishing Season!!! (Page 2 of 2)

Unclejoesband - Bass fishing story coming up just for you!  When my sister and I were kids (around 10 and 12) we caught a frog in the stream and my sister decided she wanted to use it for bait back at the lake (dad laughing at us, because it was near to impossible to catch a bass unless you were out in the cooler water).  Stuck the hook through his poor little lip (not the smarted spot to hook a frog), cast out into the lake from the waters edge, and just as it looked like the frog was going to go flying off the hook... BAM!  A BIG OLE Bass jumped up out of the water and GULP... Frog, hook and all.  She was pretty proud that day.

Soooo.... We took that fly fishing class last week, and, well, (wait for it....  WAIT FOR IT.....)

We're both hooked. 

We bought rods and a bit of tackle, and then spent the rest of the day throwing line out into the lake (conveniently located in the back yard).   Lost all the woolly buggers (mine in a tree, her's into the aether) and so I ordered up two dozen more on Amazon.  Fortunately the fish were jumping so we switched to a dry fly and managed to have a really good time catching nothing at all.

I'm buying a set of waders tonight and am going to get a bit deeper into the lake.   The Cedar and Green rivers open up at the end of the month, and I can fish them daily if I want.

I'm getting that urge to go fishing again. Very little chance of actually catching anything around here (except perhaps Weill's disease), but that's not really the point...
I like your style, dino!

Thanks Zurf!

There are bass in the lake, particularly on my side of it.  The woolly buggers usually suffice as a leach pattern, but I'll add something more specific as I grow my collection and figure out what the heck I'm doing.   I don't have a frog pattern, but as there are thousands of frogs around, I'd imagine they're a pretty tasty treat so I should probably get one or three (dozen).   How would I tie that, though?  Tie a new tippet and put the frog on the tag end?  Two tippets on the leader?   Should I weight the leach pattern or just let it sink naturally?

I'm not quite ready for a canoe, but there's been one in my future for a while.  Or a float tube, perhaps. 

I'll probably go out again on Thursday after work.  I'll report in on my failures then.   

So, like this, except with a frog a and a bugger?

I do end up in your neck of the woods on occasion, so that's a date.   One of the things I really like about the fly rod setup is you can put everything you need to fish in your pocket.    It's so portable!

I haven't caught a fish, literally, in decades.   I think the last time I ever had a live fish was on a spin rod back in '87, just before I went in the Navy.   White River steelhead, just under the Buckley bridge.   

Good times. 

Most of the rivers I have easy access to don't open for trout or steelhead until next month, which is good as they run high this time of year and I'll drown.    But that's what I've got my eye on, ultimately.

I've heard that you can catch sea bass from a local naturist beach. But you have to be REALLY careful with your backcast...

All this talk about fishing has gotten to me, renewed the boat registration and cleaned up the boat (it had become a storage area for junk), put new line on the fishing reels and organized the tackle box. I'm all set to go except I need to buy another guitar to keep on the boat. I'll need to come up with new stories about the "one that got away" to tell the wife and grandchildren (they've heard all the old stories and associated embellishments).