Something Other Than Trout
It is not at all unusual in the world of fly fishing to target bass but there was a time when targeting anything but trout was seen as a little bit weird. Smallmouth were given the name of Red Eye Green trout, Warm Water Trout, Spiny Trout and a bunch of other names.
If You Aren’t Targeting Bass With Your Fly Rod, You Are Missing Out
Anyways, anybody worth their salt knows fishing for trout is not the beginning and end of fly fishing. I’m not a meteorologist but I do watch radar and I tried to find a place that wasn’t going to be raining and basically it rained everywhere in driving distance of Winnipeg except at the Manigotagan on this June day. It was definitely clouded over and we did hit the rain on the way back.
Multi Fly Rod Fishing for Multi Species
I was doing some different things on this day.
I was trying out a brand new rod that I got at the Fly Fishing Banquet
It’s a rod that had never been fished! From around the 50s era and, without going into people’s names or anything like that, it turns out it was a rod that was given to a bar owner somewhere in Minnesota, in a working class town to pay off a bar tab. Magically it had been in the hands of a few people including a fisherman and it never got fished. So as the person who owned the rod was in a personal care home and they did not donated it to the club to be auctioned of and not fished, I want to make sure that it saw some fish and didn’t become a museum piece.
So I got a bass on the on the first cast.
Then I can proceed to catch a bunch of bass and some really good ones in the 16 range and the rod balance was good. I might want to get a heavier reel to balance it out but for the most part a match catch reel that was a little bit oversized for it worked out great. I also tried my tenkara rod that day I was able to hook more fish than usual with it because there’s something about the drift in a tenkara rod that just is more enticing. Landing fish with the tenkara is very very hard as you can’t reel it up and the rod has a lot of spring to it and with that current coming off the of woods Falls think I only I don’t think I managed to land a single fish but I had a lot of fun hooking them and then getting off.
Here are some pictures and video from that day.
The fishing was so good why not go back the next week?
I have figured out that this spot is very much a springtime into summer fishing location. We have been there late winter, barely spring, and has been poor and we’ve been there in the fall a couple of times and it’s surprisingly poor considering there’s so many small mouth bass. But spring into summer it is wicked good so you got to strike while the iron’s hot and that’s what we did one only a week later.
It was a brighter day but the fishing was still great! I use the seven weight bamboo again and my Tenkara
As I type this post It is January the 22nd The high today is supposed to be like -29° C if you buy into the whole “feels like” thing, the wind chill supposedly makes it feel like -44° So I’m enjoying looking open water sunshine and fish on a day like today.
Robert Burton
info@flyfishingmanitoba.com
204-770-0846 (Texting only)