Bill's friend Clyde was kind enough to tie up some big hairy nymph prototypes for us to experiment with prior to our upcoming trip, so I took Dani with me over to the bass pond to try them out. Since we would be fishing in still water for bass rather than stream fishing for trout, I kept telling myself that the mission was primarily to get a feel for how easy it would be to cast these weighted fluffy nymphs with a 4wt rod and a 5x leader, but since we saw quite a few bass schooling up in search parties hunting the very edges of the pond we decided to go ahead and try to catch them.
What I found was that the fish spooked very easily, but if we stayed low to the ground and placed the fly right on the nose of the fish (literally no more than 3-5 inches from the rocks at the edge of the water) and then stripped just fast enough to pulsate the soft hackles on the nymphs the fish went crazy. Sight fishing, even if it's not for trout, is an absolute blast.
I was happy that I was able to make long, accurate casts with my 9'5wt rod but I was even more happy that Dani was able to catch and land 4 or 5 fish all by herself. She doesn't cast with incredible distance yet but she's figured out how to move the nymph, set the hook, and land fish. In fact, she managed to catch and land one of the larger bass in the pond (2+ pounds).
Anyway, I ended up losing a couple of Clyde's prototypes so I'm going to have to see if he'll tie up some more for us. The gnarlier the better.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment