Bass jigs

I have been doing some tying lately but it hasn't been flies. I have been working on some jigs for a friend. 

Here are some crayfish jigs using 3/8 ounce jigs painted black. Most of what I tied was using synthetic claws with multi colored chenille and rubber legs on top. 

I also created some samples for him to test. These I used two rattles in the body over wrapped with rabbit hide and claws are using rabbit strips. One jig I mixed in a little flash into the rabbit that has some UV qualities. This pattern I added some silicone legs hanging over the top for added movement. What's your comments, with or without the legs?

And one last sample I created is a baitfish style pattern. Using lots of natural materials that have an extreme amount of unique movement added with a little UV flash as well. 

Warm water prep

Here are some flies that I make sure that are always available in my fly box for warm water fishing.  As you can see I started with some popper production. 

Then I started the job of painting them and then finished them off with a little fox for the tail and then wrapped some hackle.  You should always have some yellow, olive, chartruese and black when you are going for smallies.  I am trying red this year too.  Will have to see how they all work.  

 

Then I moved on to replentishing my clouser patterns.  They are always fun to tie.  I am trying a couple of the clousers with rabbit strips.  I am really anxious to see how they work.  I like to have at least the gray/white, chartruese/white, and fire tiger (green/yellow/orange) in my box.  I added a few extra colors with the white/red/white, and brown/orange.

 

Never leave home without a few crayfish patterns.

 

 

This year, I added a few Hammer Head Croakers.  These subsurface frog flies have produced well for me when chasing large mouths and catfish.  I want to see how the smallies react to them this year.

Fly on the run

I was invited to participate in the Fly On The Run annual fund raiser event again this year. This event is a fund raiser for Lancaster County Career & Technology Center (LCCTC). This is a great school for kids to learn a specific trade. This is a two day event. The evening before the fishing day, there is an awesome meal that is made by the student and hosted by the student. This event allows the students real life experience in the specialties of hosting, pastries, restaurant planning, and lots of other positions. Tonight they served Lobster tail, prime rib,and lots of other great food. The desserts were out of this world! Here was one of the cake pieces. The fish image on top was all hand done with white and regular chocolate. It was on each piece. And it was very delicious.

There is an auction that is of all kinds of donated items.  one of the items was a cake made by the students. Everything on the cake is edible. Here is the item I donated.  It is a wooden 4"x6" wooden fly box.  I put in some of the chain gang nymphs (Hares Ear, Copper John, Stonefly, and two new patterns: Prince and Royal Prince) and my favorite caddis dry fly which works great on the Lititz Run, the Opal Caddis.  I also put in a Stoned Claw Crazy, a new sculpin pattern, and the Wooly Skull. This box raised $150 for future scholarships given to some of the students.

There are browns, brookies, and rainbows in this Lititz Run. This creek is a stream restoration success. It is a spring creek that was a really warm water because of thermal pollution and also suffered a lot of chemical pollution. Donegal Trout Unlimited and others put a lot of time and effort into cleaning it up and is now a first rate stream. The bug life had disappeared but in the last couple years have seen lots of bug life return. There are now several caddis varieties, a cahill hatch, and tricos.

This event is a one fly tournament. It is setup as a competition of teams of four. There are four session times to fish. Two rods are allowed during each session. We had a lot of rain on Monday and Tuesday. This allowed the stream to have a nice amount of water, which was nice because before this there was very little water in the Lititz Run.

I tried a new streamer design (Ice Magic) and did well with it. The wooly skull also did well and brought fish to hand. The new design of chain gang prince nymph also caught fish. I was really happy with how some of these new designs worked today. We had really good fishing for about forty five minutes and then the sun hit the water and it definitely slowed things down. It was bright blue bird skies. The weather was wonderful to be outside and enjoy the friendships of the guys on my team. The lunker award went to a 23.5" brown. There were a couple teams that just knocked em dead. They must have had some beats that had a ton of fish.

The event was well worth attending and was enjoyed by all. Last year they raised over $50,000 for the school and to provide kids with scholarships to further their education.

New Creations

I have been doing some creating lately. I have had a lot of new concepts running through my head. I finally got some time and put some of these patterns to life. I am anxious to test them out and get the fish approval.

First is the sculpin.  I got some of the sculpin helmets and just had to tie some up.  They are really awesome heads to work with and they fish really well. 

The next thing I was wanting to come up with was cicada imitations.  I had gotten some of the "ThingAMaBody" and I came up with these imitations.  I had gotten one of the cicadas that we see every year around our place.  Should be fun this summer when they show up again.  I  also heard that in the next year or two there are going to be some of the 13 or 17 year cicadas showing up in certain locations.  So I was playing around with ideas for them as well. 

Here is a modification to the clouser or even a deceiver.  I have beed chain and on the end of the chain I put artic fox or marabou.  It has some nice action.  I am hoping the fish like it as much as I do. 

I was playing around with some minnow imitations for my next bass trip.  There are some greenside darters and some other small minnows that I am trying to imitate.  These patterns are just a little over 2".  I am hoping the bass find them tasty. 

There are a lot of frogs around in the summer.  One of my son's friends was fishing with a little rubber frog last summer and did really well on the bass on our pond.  I thought I need to have my own imitation that we can fish.  I am excited to try this one out. 

I got some professional photos taken of my new crayfish pattern "Stoned Claw Crazy".  I have been having a lot of fun with this pattern.  The fish have given me some good feedback on it.  :)

4/15/2012 fishing report.

I decided to head out to the Conestoga River for the last couple hours of daylight last night. The section I was fishing is more like an average size stream. The water level for this time of year is extremely low. We haven't had a sizable rainfall in a while. I believe we are about two inches of rainfall behind our normal amount. The Conestoga is currently at 200 CFS and is usually about 500 CFS this time of year. We need rain badly here in PA. 

I went to do some exploring. I looked on the map and found some spots I wanted to fish. Well unfortunately, when I got to these spots I found out that they were posted. What a bummer, cause the water looked promising.

I finally got to a spot that wasn't posted. I was fishing with my new crayfish pattern. I have to say, this new pattern didn't disappoint me. It did well and the fish I did catch, hammered the pattern. There were no subtle takes! Look for this pattern on MyFlies.com as soon as i can get photos of it. It is called the "Stoned Claw Crazy".

The only thing that did disappoint me was the fishing location. There was a LOT of dead water, water with no holding spots or it was covered from bank to bank with green moss. I covered a ton of ground between fishable spots. I guess that is one of the things with exploring, you can get find places you will go back again and others that you won't waste your time on again. Each time you go out exploring you hope you hit the jackpot on an excellent fishing spot. Sometimes you win and sometimes you don't.