SlowBay for the Foreday

[Jay Murakoshi]

Well, this could be a short report or a long report. Anyway, I went over to the Forebay this morning meeting up with Bob Laskodi. The weather was perfect for shorts and sleeveless t-shirt at 7:30am.
We launched the boat and headed over to the Mederios side of the pond and motored into my HOT SPOT for the past two weeks.
For those of you who are calling the "wind lady" the lake level is not 222.40, it's around 210.00. It's down at least 10' from last week. Some of the weeds are well exposed.
Started out with a couple top water boils in the weed beds. One fish that Bob hooked into ran pretty good before coming unbuttoned. I had a good fish but when he came close to the boat, GONE. Damn, we sucked.
But I think my fish grabbed the flashtail because some of it was missing.
The water was "flat" allllllll day and we were sitting there wishing we had a slight breeze. It had to be in the mid 80's today.
Well, around 4pm our wish came true. The breeze started up so I decided to call the "wind lady" on my cell phone to see how accurate she was. She said the wind was from 1 to 19mph and the direction was from the north. Bob and I looked at each other and couldn't believe it... 19mph, heck there was just a slight ripple on the surface. Then it got stronger and stronger with small white caps. Now this is within a 10 minute span. We thought about sticking it out but after a long slow day, we bagged it and went home. All in all around 10 stripers and a couple LMB. Pretty dang slow in my book.

OH YEAH, my fish were caught on the red collared clouser in White/Chartreuse. Going back on Friday morning for some top water action.

That's the report.

Jay


By the way, the red collared bead on the clouser is made prior to adding the colored bucktail. The material is UV knot sense. Rotating the fly in a Nor-Vise for true rotation.

[Bob Laskodi]

Even though it was a long time between solid hookups, it was sure a lot of fun and a great pleasure to fish with you Jay. You're certainly welcome in my boat any time! 8) I second the emotion about "we suck", as two veteran fly guys with well over 60 years experience between them sure had a heck of a time putting the hook into the fish! :evil: What Jay didn't say was that between the two of us we probably had solid grabs from over 20 fish and couldn't stick 'em good enough to keep 'em on! Yep, we sucked! :shock: :oops: Us old pharts must be getting slow on the hooksets! :twisted: :roll: And for all of you interested in a boating warning, as Jay mentioned, it went from dead calm to white capping in about 15 minutes so be careful and cautious out there and make sure your boat/rig can handle rough water.

[JerryInLodi]

Jay, you wrote about the striper having the fly by the tail and holding on for so long.

Down in Baja I took an old metal stringer apart and used the metal clips to hook into smaller mackeral to toss out on my spinning rod as teasers for Dorado and sails. I'd hook the mackeral by the nose just as if I was using a hook but close the clip so the fish taking the bait could not get impaled.

On numerous occassions, Dorado would catch up to the teaser and grab the bait and run and fight for as much as five minutes before ever opening their mouths and letting the bait go. Amazing. If there were a way to toss a mackeral like that on a fly rod it would be a hoot. The bait, when let go, would be so far away that another fish would grab it for sure before getting it back to the boat.

You could be "hooked up" for hours and never have to take a fish off the hook!

[JerryInLodi]

Oh Jay, just though about it. The NCFFB is having their bash down at the Forebay starting on Thursday and maybe going on till Sunday. You might post your report on their board with a warning on just how fast the wind can come up.

I expect that a number of bashers will be out in tubes, pontoon boats, kayaks and canoes. A warning from someone as respected as you may just save someone's life. If it looks like it's going to blow get OFF THE WATER, don't wait to see just how bad it will get!