Fish Pics 1/5, 1/6, and 1/7

The weather decided to warm up a little bit this week so I ran out the first chance I could. TPWD stocked trout in Northwest Park Pond in Irving, and of course I had to go check it out. I got there late so I only casted a few times. I caught 4 little bluegill on a blue Theo's bomber.

On thursday I went to the library pond just to check out how the fishing is before the coming "arctic blast" the news is forecasting next week. I got 1 on a DBHWF and 1 on the red Circle Hook Clouser.

I went float fishing for carp today and blanked. I still got to see the awesome sunset!

Wormy and Leechy things

Got these tied tonight. 2 DBHWF's (my pattern, a bass worm pattern) and 2 modified Tim's Muppets. I really like both of these patterns for a big buggy dark thing that fishes deep year round and is equally at home in shallow water.

Circle hook swag!

DBHWF stands for Derik's big honkin' worm fly, invented by my friend Derik. I embellished the pattern and added flash, legs more weight, and the newest, a 60 degree jig hook.

Muppets

Oh, I also tied a little streamer I use a lot. It's ice dub, a rabbit strip, and a fish skull. It's a great pattern that works!

Fly Box Porn

I thought I'd make a post showing what I usually carry around fly fishing around here. Boat, Yak, Bike, or Foot this is what I carry.

One of my bass boxes. I have a few more but this is the one I usually carry around.

Well stocked bluegill nymph and streamer box. More of a multispecies box. A few smallmouth flies, some trout and carp, but mostly bass and bluegill

 Popper and hopper box. Not much use right now, but it'll pick up in a month or so.

A double sided sandbass box. This side is all clousers.

This side has all the other shad imitators.

This is carp. As you can see my carp box has been depleted greatly, but I will get to tying soon.

And the can. This altoids can holds my hot patterns and new stuff. Stuff fresh off the vise goes in here and also patterns i'm catching on.

Everything here, including my chest pack. I know I need a bigger chest pack!

That all goes in the backpack.

Ready to go!

I have more sometimes, like I have several boxes in the boat that stay in the boat, but this is what i always come back to. All the flies in these boxes work!

Circle Hook Clousers

Shannon gave me a small pack of hooks when we fished on Friday, and in there were 2 size 4 Mustad 60 degree circle jig hooks.. They are hard to find, and of course i've never seen them before. They are cool and I have wanted to get into the circle hook craze more in fly fishing as I have done with conventional stuff. Here's a few clousers tied on the circle jig hooks

That circle hook is sharp! I ordered 3 sizes of them plus a bunch of new jig hooks this weekend. After this weekend I should be set for a while!

A few new blends

I went crazy at JoAnn's fabric store today. I saw the wool/arcrylic blend that JP of Roughfisher.com found last week and I needed to stock up anyway. 23 bucks gets you this

Then I spent a long time just messing around with dubbing. Rabbit fur and these mixed gets you these tasty blends. Carp, here I come!

Just messing around with a coffee grinder. I hope to actually get some flies tied tomorrow.

First Fishing Folly

I can sum the whole new years day trip with Shannon Drawe on the Red River at the Denison Dam with 3 words= COLD AS HELL! It was absolutely freezing! I got up at 7 and looked out the window to a snowy looking heavy frost. I looked at the weather and an "Oh Shit" echoed from my room as I saw the number displayed on the screen- 22 degrees. That's insane for Texas. A text from Shannon assures me the trip is still on, so I went downstairs, loaded up my stuff and jumped in the truck. We were on the road.

Fast forward 1 hour. We have the kayaks in the water. Shannon looks at me and says "Amigo, we are complete idiots for attempting this, but lets get going!" I stick the kayak in and walk into the water, boosting myself into the Diablo and watching my wet waders turn white freezing before my eyes.

Arriving at the dam

Rigged and ready!

We paddled down about a mile and started casting around the deep holes I marked. You can feel the line becoming stiff and the guides freeze before my eyes. The line i'm stripping in is freezing my index finger to the line. I had a striper follow the fly right to the kayak without striking. It's freezing, and being this far downstream we aren't protected from the wind by the dam.

Me flailing the rod into the stiff wind.

We decide to paddle back to the dam and suddenly shannon sees a bunch of bait rolling around on the surface. we cast around but the fish seem really lethargic. We decide to go target buffalo near the dam. We see at least 50 buffs but they are super lethargic, very hard to catch becomes nearly impossible. The fish just weren't there. I hope they start generating, there needs to be some water down there, but we had a good time skipping between the Texas and Oklahoma sides. I have decided that I need a new carp fly soon since I spooked so many today from my fly splashing in. We had a good time, but it was really cold. I think the high was like 33 that day then it dropped back to 16 again. Still, this kicks off the 2011 Year on the Fly. Happy New Year!

Kayak mods

Just got the new fishfinder/GPS on! It works great! we had a Navionics 2010 hotmaps chip left over from the bass boat (it takes the 2009 chip, somehow we never returned the 2010) so that went in it, and I have maps for all water bodies in texas (not sure i'll need it except for marking waypoints). The Diablo works great with the fishfinder in it. Here's the mount and transducer.

We went with a ram mount under the handle on the front. It's out of the way and I can fold it flat for when i'm standing in it.

Oh, we also mounted the light. Scotty sells an extender for their mounts so I think I'll make this about a foot taller than it is so it's more visible.

More of the mount, the next few are with the fishfinder on the mount.

Here's the transducer, mounted in the hull shooting forward. the dry bag behind it holds the battery.

 You can see the hole in this pic. That is where the wires go below the deck. An O ring is going in it to waterproof it.

And it's gotta have a TFF sticker!

Other side got one too

I'm planning on mounting 2 scotty rod holders up front and 2 in the back plus a few flush mounts. It's going to be an awesome fishing machine!