"When Does Fly Fishing Become Bait Fishing?"

[Tony Buzolich]

ANSWER: When the fish you're fishing for becomes the bait for bigger fish.

The other night my wife and I again decided to have dinner on the river and do a little shad fishing at the same time. We got on the water about 6:30PM and anchored in our favorite spot just below the rapids at Shanghai Bend. We proceeded to fish taking a few between eating our meal as things started out a bit slow.

As the evening wore on fishing picked up with chartruse/white being the color of choice.

About 8:45PM my wife says "How about one more and we call it a night?" Just about then I get another grab and start playing the last shad of the evening.

A moment in to the fight and this shad REALLY goes crazy, going airbourne and diving and darting in every dirction. Yaaaa, a real fighter I thought. About then my old Crown II clicker with absolutely NO drag screems and my knuckles start getting slapped big time.

"Geez, what have I got here?" and I have to palm the spool to try and slow things down. I gain a little line, but then another sudden run and there goes the knuckle busting again.

This new kind of fight lasts only a few moments and the line goes slack but still feels kind of heavy.

I can now reel in easily and find only a completely dead shad on the end of my line. A hen, about 3 pounds. Scales torn and missing in several places with a completely broken gill plate.

She had become dinner for one hungry striper. She became the bait.


You hear about this happening often when fishing for shad but until it actually happens to you it's hard to describe just how strong and violent some of these big stripers can be.
TONY
www.feather-river-fly.com

[David Lee]

Heh , heh , heh .......

A few years back ......

The half-pounders on the A were in thick - I was getting a mess of 'em whilst fishing for Stripes . So many that I got the 'bright' idea of taking my little Scott G-905 down and having some fun with them ......

Around 1:00 PM on a Sunday , I tye on a #14 Caddis nymph , get into position , and make a drift . Hook a sweet one about 17 inches , perhaps a bit larger - I'm having a ball !! Get 4 or 5 jumps out of the little chromer , he starts getting tired .....

The Steelie is maybe 10 feet from my boots - I see a 'log' sort of drift down from above ...... strange , I think , there's nobody upstream that could have knocked it loose . The Steelie is a foot under the surface , going absolutlly nuts ........

The 'log' isn't moving down w/ the current anymore . Really strange . It kind of just floats up to within three feet of the Steelie , which at this point is pinging up and down on the surface like a ping-pong ball .... Just as I get my tiny brain firing as to what is going on (yeah ..... I think the first profound thought was "oh , shit "!) there's a big white flash as a mouth that could swallow a bowling ball opens and sucks the Steelhead in from TWO FEET AWAY

My fish is gone . My fish is gone and my 4 lb. fluro tippet is going into the mouth of a Striper that looks to be between 53-56 inches long . I clear the line to the reel , scream at the wife , and start getting a plan together all at the same time . I actually held the Stripe for slightly under a minute - one good headshake and POP !

It's a jungle out there .

David