Smallies

My client called me on Monday and had to cancel his trip yesterday. Unfortunately he fell and bruised his ribs. Now that I had the day off I decided that I would load up my pontoon boat and try to catch some small mouths on Scott's flat lake, but before I could go I should try to make the wife happy and do some chores around the house. It always amazes me how fast I can get them done when I want to fish!

I arrived to the lake around 11:00 set up two rods one rod had a 200 grain sinking line and the other was set up for drys. It was an overcast day with a nice breeze, the water was a little green in color, but still had good visibility. I started fishing with a 6 wt. rod a 200 grain line, 7 1/2 foot 3x tapered leader, my version of cutters gobblin and a small size 10 olive seal bugger.

I kicked out about 30' or so looked down into the water and saw my first victim swim bye. I stopped kicking stripped line off my reel and made my first cast in the direction I saw that smallie swim, let the fly sink for about 10 seconds stripped three times and BANG! First cast first fish not big in size but big with attitude. Oh you ask what fly did it take, well it took the seal bugger. I then proceeded to a submerged willow bush made a dozen cast and had few small grabs with no hook ups. (Hmmm) I then scooted over to some more submerged willows made one perfect cast let the fly sink for a few seconds stripped four or five times and felt some heaviness set the hook and yes it was a bull dog of a fight, the fished stayed deep turned the pontoon boat in circles and then decided to show her self, nice fat 3 to 4 pound small mouth. She wanted a bigger meal and took the size 4 version of the gobblin.

It was a stellar day of fishing, I landed 4 small mouths that were in that 3 to 4 pound class and lost a couple that were close in size. Mixed in with those big fish I caught a dozen or so smaller fish that ranged from 10" to 14". I also caught 6 rainbows that ranged in size from 12" to 18" the 18" rainbow looked and fought like it must of been a hold over from two years ago stocking.

My version of the goblin is tied with either crawdad orange pine squirrel or rabbit strip depending on the size of hook, I will also very the body color, I will some time use olive chenille with a black hackle, olive chenille and olive hackle, black chenille and olive hackle or orange grizzly hackle. I will also use a cone head bead for wieght, found that gold works well.

The perfect storm

On tuesday I guided the lower Yuba with rain in the forcast my clients were still rearing to fish. When I left my house in Grass Valley the rain was coming down, as I drove west on Hwy. 20 the rain started to decrease. I met my clients at 8am under the Hwy 20 bridge as planed and the rain had stoped for the time being. I launched my drift boat and started the day of fishing. The flows were up around 2300 cfs a little high but not to bad the water color was on the green side with about 3 to 4 feet of visibility. My one client Al is pretty green to fly fishing so I stopped on a sliver of an island to give him some casting lessons, I sent my other client John over to fish a side channel. With in a few minutes I heard owe *#*$&$ I just missed one and then heard all right I got one, few minutes latter landed a nice 16" hen. We stayed there for about 20 more minutes as I gave Al some more lessons, John hooked up on a couple more fish. We floated down river with a mixture of mist and rain with some small wind gust up to 10 to 15 mph. John had the hot stick for th day as Al was trying to learn how to cast, mend and find his indacator that kept going under water and was wondering why I kept yelling Al set!!! Then all hell broke lose rain, wind gust of 30 + mph that did not stop poor Al had one hell of a time. Thank god we only had about a mile of river left. Although we had wind a rain John ended up getting into eight fish and he even let his buddy Al fight a few fish landing one for himself. Good job Al

I just dumped my go daddy account :)

For the past two years my website was through go daddy and today I received a renewal notice from go daddy informing me that my subscription was coming to its end. ( thank god) I made sure they understood that I was not happy with there format and constant changes they were making. It seemed like as soon as I figured out how to update my website they would change everything it made updating miserable. I would keep a note book so I can make quick updates but the icons that were once their are now gone. What the hell go daddy get it together. So now I will be happy using google.