Ditchfest

Son!

Hit on of my favorite lakes today. Lots of pre-spawn activity with pairs of fish cruising the shallows. I did see one fish on a bed.

All the fish came on a braided Midnight Fire chenille worm with a marabou tail. It was fun to watch one of the fish watch the worm sink then pound it when it hit the bottom. The gills flared when he inhaled the fly.

With a full moon and next weeks predicted nice weather the spawn should be on soon.

Here are a few pics from today.
SF

Some good frog giggin' right there !
Well done.

You are just jealous because I have a bass pro shops sticker and a 250 HP outboard on my super fat cat......

Wait, . . . you fish for those on purpose? Float tubes adorned with Bass Pro and NASCAR stickers, what's this world coming to? Does your float tube have a metalflake finish as well?

Sg
Metalflake for sure and lots of patches on my shirt.
Even more fun when a big bucketmouth eats a classic Atlantic salmon fly.
SF

Oh, the HORROR!

Salmo,
Bass and carp are two of my favorite species to target on the bug rod.
A LM or SM blowing up on a topwater later is the summer is a blast.
After watching how bass react to flies in certain situations they've earned a new found respect from me.

Carp aren't pushovers either. If only real bonefish averaged the size of the golden boners.

I took my fish blinders off years ago in regards to species I enjoy targeting or plan to fish for. I'm fishing crappie next weekend and Tiger Muskie fishing this summer....
SF

Stonefish,

I hear ya'. I was just giving you some ascot razzin', in keeping with the nature of this sub-forum. If steelheading stays the course of the present downhill slide, I'll be looking for places to Spey cast for carp.

Sg

No worries Sg.
Next time I head past Quillbilly land, I'll stop by at KK's and pick up a Dale Earnhardt Nascar Ascot which are big in those parts.

I hear you about our local steelheading. I've had to diversify species wise.
SF

Minus -10 man card points for fishing for Ditch Pickles.

Minus - 100 ascot card points for using a fly rod to do so.

You can start earning back points by posting a cold water fish and / or something extremely snooty.

Nick,
Just to be clear, I earned 1,000 points for following the BASS tournament rules. Your rods have to be under 8' in length, so my 7' 11" 8 wt qualifies.
SF

Well as long as its legal then I don't see a problem with it.

Boy howdy! Them's some nice bucket mouths! Good-lookin' "bugs." Nice-lookin' pickle pond, too. Cool stuff, sponsors or no sponsors.

Took the metalflake float tube out to the local ditch.
No bucket mouths but quite a few red eyed devils.
SF

Red,
That is a non slip loop knot.
It helps give the fly more movement.
SF

That's a great knot, and very strong. I use it for a lot of situations where a clinch knot falls short of ideal. As Stonefish said it's great for maximizing natural-looking movement. It's also good in situations where you have, say, an up-turned hook eye but no room in front of the fly head on the shank to seat a Turle knot (in other words, poor fly design- the only kind I seem to do). It's my go-to knot for twitching jigs, too.

Nice smallies, Stonefish.