Weekend in Venice, LA November 2-4, 2013

Spent three days in Venice, LA this past weekend. Had some new patterns I wanted to try on the speckled trout but the winds were so bad we could barely throw spinning rods. Plus, we could seem to find trout in any appreciable numbers. The few trout we did find didn't seem to want anything but live bait. We were fishing Yellow Cotton Bay or should I say we were fishing in a dead end canal off of the bay. It would have been really hard to fish the bay in the small boat we were in. My brother called a friend of his that was fishing in another area off of the Mississippi River. We made our way back to the launch, loaded the boat and headed for Cypress Cove Marina. We launched, ran through an area called The Jump, and into the river. We headed south down the river with nothing more on our mind than getting into a mess of speckled trout, on the previous phone call my brother's friend told him they were catching trout every catch. Apparently my brother misunderstood the directions he had been given. This was evident when he turn at full speed into a canal off of the river that had submerged concrete at its entrance. This tore the bottom of the skeg off the lower unit, bent the propeller in several places, and as we found out after we returned home, the shaft the prop is attached to was also bent. We carefully made our way out of the cut and headed upriver. Not wanting to go home defeated we decided to fish the river by Baptiste Collette. This turned out to be a good decision as we caught several redfish, drum, and some type of jack. We threw the jacks back as they aren't edible.
Somewhere along the way during our adventure, my brother managed to break the spinning rod I had custom built for him. We also lost the trolling motor, I guess with all of the pounding from running in the chop the head separated from the shaft. As we sped along in the rough water, much to our amazement the remaining part of the trolling stood on end and did a double flip off the front of the boat. As beat up as we were, all we could do at this point is laugh.
As the sun sunk below the horizon we motored our way back the the marina loaded the boat and headed for the camp. The next morning, Sunday, we decided to just pack up and head for home. Who wants to tempt fate twice.
I didn't get a chance to try the new fly patterns I had developed but there will be other times.

I'm back

Been away for awhile for various reasons but I have returned.
Lately I have delved more into the world of saltwater fly tying and fly fishing. I have been tying some of the classics like; deceivers, clouser minnows, Mylar spoons (of course with my own style of tying them) but I have also been developing some new patterns.
One of the new patterns is a type of spinner bait that I will be testing this weekend in Venice, LA.  I can't wait to get down there and see how they work.
I haven't been able to work due to knee problems and unfortunately, I haven't been able to fish either. I'm able to go this weekend because my brother will be with me to handle loading and unloading the boat off and on the trailer.
I'm really looking forward to this trip as essentially I've been stuck inside and not able to get around much. It will feel good to get back on the water and in the fresh air. I'll post pics from the trip as soon as I return.

Newest Fly - Bream Bitters

I developed a new fly based on a fly I used in Cozumel for bonefish. I down sized the fly for bream and renamed it bream bitters.

I was really surprised at how well the fly worked. I took a ride to City Park in New Orleans to run some tests on the fly and have to say I was pleasantly surprised at how well it worked. The second I threw the fly out a bluegill hit it before it even got the chance to fall through the water column. On the rare occasion that a bluegill didn't hit the fly a Rio Grande cichlid would pick it up. I tried a few different spots in the park with the same results. The total take for the day 23 bluegill and 15 rios.

My New Website

I've launched a new website, http://breambug.com. I have more patterns that have been added to the site. I have also reduced prices on the flies I am offering on the site. All the flies are handtied by me and several of the patterns have been developed by me for catching bluegill and other bream species. I am in process of developing a new pattern that should be killer on bluegill. Check back soon I'll post some pics of the new pattern and how it works.

GCCFFF Conclave

Been really busy lately and haven't had time to visit the blog. I will be leaving for the GCCFFF conclave in Lake Charles, LA on Friday. I'm really looking forward to getting away for a few days and meeting up with some fellow fly fishers. I am really looking forward to taking Fred Hannie's class on tying realistic flies. He makes some of the most realisitic flies I have ever seen. There is also a new product out that is supposed to be easier to work with than epoxy, Tufflye. I will be taking a class on this also.
Hopefully, I will have some great pictures of new flies when I return from the conclave.

Mardi Gras Fishing

Brian and I decided to avoid the crowds Mardi Gras day and go on the first fishing trip of the year. It was cold that morning, cold enough that the cars had frost on them. Still I knew the day would warm up and we should be able to land a few fish. One thing I hadn't planned on was the wind. By the time we got to the launch the wind was blowing around 10 or 15 mph, still we prepared the boat for launch. As I unpacked my 3wt fly rod the tip caught on the case and broke off. I should have taken this as a sign that the day would not go well. I managed to unpack the other fly rods without destroying any more of the fishing equipment. We launched to boat without incident... until I tried to start the engine. The motor would start and then die. After several attempts we finally got the boat to stay running in gear. We motored to one of our favorite fishing spots. By now the wind felt as if it were blowing at gale force. Brian had brought along an ultralight spinning rig and crickets. He started fishing with this. I tied on one of my handmade flies. Brian almost immediately caught a large bluegill. I fought the wind with my 6wt Albright rod in an attempt to present my fly to the fish. This would be a battle that would repeat itself all day.

Brian rigged his 3wt rod and tried his luck with the fly rod. He had previously broken his rod which I repaired. The rod broke again on his first cast. I guess I'm not going to seek a career repairing broken fishing rods for a living. Brian went back to bait fishing with spinning tackle.

The fish did not seem to respond to the first fly I had tied on, an orange Simple Fly. I switched over to black Wooley Booger and found a bit more success with this fly. I then switched to a black Simple Fly and landed a small bass.



After landing a couple of other small fish and losing a fish that put a serious bend in my 6wt rod, and also noticing that Brian was outfishing me 5 or 6 to 1 with live crickets, I switched over to a live cricket on a #4 hook. This landed me a couple of fish but still I had to fight the ever present wind. In order to cast my line any distance I had to make full backcasts and then power through the forward cast, roll casting was not an option. This unfortunately would cause the cricket to fly off the hook. I went back to using flies. Because of his success with the crickets I tied on a brown soft hackle fly. I had more success with this fly but because of the wind and wave action it was had to place the fly where I wanted it or to fish it correctly.

In a small cove we found some fish hitting on top of the water which caused me great excitement. We were somewhat protected from the wind so I tied one of the poppers I make and started casting to the rising fish. Brian continued to cast live crickets to the rising fish and caught a large bluegill. I was not having success with any of my poppers then Brian caught one of the rising fish. We were very surpised to see it was a mullet. Not that seeing mullets are rare in this environment, in fact they are quite ubiquitous, but the mullet actually took the cricket as bait. We had never seen nor heard of this happening. This explained why the rising fish did not take any of my poppers. I switched back to using a live cricket to no avail. I must admit Brian did everything he could to put me on the fish. He would show me the spot and postion the boat so I could easily cast into the area. I think I may have caught 1 fish from this spot while Brian caught several. While in this spot I switched over to a brown soft hackle fly which I had more success with but still not anything to brag about.

At some point after this I lost the soft hackle fly and switched over to a Warm Fly. I thought for sure this fly would produce for me. Shows what I know. I did not get a single hit on the fly. Back to using a live cricket on the fly rod. Because I could not cast the rod Brian manuvered the boat close enough to the shore for me to use my fly rod as a cane pole. By this point I was totally disheartened and fished a bit more with the cricket. I got no more strikes that day and eventually admitted defeat.

We, meaning Brian, managed to catch a total of 23 fish large enough to keep for a fish fry. I added 2 fish to the pot while Brian caught the rest.

Looking back on the day even with all the problems, the broken rods, the winds and waves, the reluctance of the fish to take our bait, it was a pretty good day. Definitely better than standing on a crowded parade route or working.

Poppers

I have found a new passion, making fly rod poppers. It started simple enough, Vince D. whom I met through the WarmFly website invited me to a fly tying class in Gonzales one Saturday. The gentleman that runs the class showed us how to paint the poppers with an airbrush. Vince had brought a couple of poppers that were ready to paint for me to use in the class. I was hooked. I bought an airbrush and some corks that afternoon and never looked back. I love painting these guys. It helps to relax me and gives me an outlet to be creative like never before. I didn't know if it was something I would be able to do as I tend to lean towards being more autistic than artistic. I have to admit I am pleasantly surprised with my results. I even got a compliment from my younger brother, Brian. He is usually critical of everything but told me he was very impressed. This meant a lot because he is a very good artist, much better than I will ever be. I have started selling my poppers on a new blog, www.cajunpoppers.blogspot.com. I haven't made any sales yet but then I just started the blog around 9:00 last night. I'm hoping to get a few sales off the blog so I can buy more fly fishing stuff, mainly I would like to get a kayak. A few guys I know fish from kayaks and seem to really love it. My first purchase will be a small compressor for my airbrush, the cans of propellant are getting expensive.
My wife is backing me on this venture, which is great. She has been very complimentary on my poppers and other flies. And not just the praise you give a child after they drew a picture that looks like nothing.

Well guess it's time for me to get back to making more poppers. Hopefully, I will have a few sales come through.