Watchhiller wrote:
> hey aka, just as a follow up i figured i'd drop some major mojo on ya.
> found a dead, headless chicken on the side of the road once, and like all
> good fly fisherman, threw it in the back of my truck. got home, skinned it,
> and proceeded to dismantle it for materials. came up with what i call
> either the rhode island red, or the strawberry blond. its a wooly bugger
> tied on a 10 or 12 longshank. i use bunny for the body, the stawberry blond
> maribu from the chickens haunches, and copper colored jungle cock for the
> hackle. my secret weapon....devistating on browns. found a fox like that
> too once during work. threw it on the back of the bosses truck and when he
> asked what i was going to do with that, i responded with ' why, i'm gonna
> cut its face off.' never quite looked at me the same way again....catch em
> up!
You crack me up.
I bet the boss never did understand. I know my wife never really got use to all of the dead animals I have in my fly desk.
Because of the nature of the lake these big fish are in, you have to cover a lot of water. Fly fishing is not a great way of covering water, but it is a great way of concentrating on a spot. Also, because of the nature of the structure, the fish tend to be quite spooky, requiring long cast. This is not normally great fly water.
Nevertheless, I do occasionally toss flies, but I go big. I often use the Kelly Gallop style articulated flies using a #2 wide gap for the front and a #4 for the back. I also use several Saltwater style and size flies. If I could ever get the Dahlberg Diver to work right, I would use it to.
The idea of using a 10 or 12 hook just seems small trout to me. The fish in this lake feed mostly on other fish, sculpens, crayfish, sucker minnows, carp minnows, young bass minnows, and of course the 5 to 8 inch young trout they plant in the lake. As you can see, my fish want meet, not snacks.
When I do fly fish this lake, it normally is done with either an 8 weight shooting taper or an 8 weight Switch Rod with a Lee Wulff Ambush line. With these outfits, an 80 or 90 foot cast is pretty normal and the large flies are not so bad. Still, I have a 5" deer hair crayfish, weighted to sink tail first, craws up, articulated, that weighs a ton but catches like crazy. Having said that, it is a real head knocker and I do have scars in my scalp from yanking the barbs out of my head.