Thread: Fly-Fishing for Bass

Well, my usual flyfishing forum is down anyway, so I'll just put what we call a "TR" (trip report) here. When I don't have time or the spare energy to make the 2-hour drive for my beloved North Carolina mountain trout, I often hit up a local secret spot that literally nobody else fishes (see my post on page 460 of the "What Are You Working On" thread above). It's become kind of a personal tradition for me to hit it over the Labor Day weekend if conditions are right, which they were and then some.

At any rate, I woke up early, and was hiking down to it by sun-up. Though only 10 minutes from my house, the trail-less briar-patch going in and out is what keeps saner (but less determined) folks away!


It's a nice walk through a field before you head down into the jungle in that far tree-line, which puts you here:

Early enough to catch the mist rising off the water (though neither the morning top-water nor the crawdad bite ever materialized). Anyway, it's about half a mile of bends, blow-downs, shoals, scour-holes, ledges, and undercut banks-in other words, bass heaven! And even better, I had the place entirely to myself, my own little private wilderness-didn't even see any kayakers or canoes on a holiday weekend no less!

Funny thing is, though temps, clarity and flow were nearly perfect, I threw everything I had at them for over 3 hours with nothing to show for it but a couple of little sardine bream.

Rabbit-strip zonkers, wounded bait-fish patterns, natural versus flashy, wiggle minnows, sheesh, I was about ready to quit. That's always a good time to sit down, take a break, have a snack, and re-think your game plan; in that respect it's like honing.

So I had a snack that involved a Sasquatch sighting.

In desperation I tied on this neon chartreuse monstrosity "chasing" a baitfish. Like the quote from A River Runs Through It, "I figured that if I can't catch a fish, by God I can scare 'em to death!"

The plan worked. The "reaction strikes" I had hoped to trigger resulted in zilch, nada, not even any good follows! Anyways, after another head-scratching session, I down-sized to a black crystal-flash wooly bugger "chasing" (in other words, tied about a foot ahead on my tippet) a flashy little golden stone-fly.

To be continued due to image limits...