The Catch-All Fishing Thread 2014

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perabyte: Apr 2, 2005; Angry

If anybody needs any help with fly fishing, I'd be more than happy to give you some tips and tricks. I'm a guide living in Mammoth, so if anybody's coming up from LA and would like to hire me, just let me know.

Now that that's out of the way, I've spent most of my winter fishing (instead of skiing) and tying flies to use all summer. Been a really mild winter up here, especially compared to last year. I also just bought a boat to fish with on Crowley. Really stoked on the boat because water in the rivers and creeks is going to be low, warm, and weedy this summer from the lack of snowfall.

Fire away with the fly fishing questions. Also, if you need a deal on gear I can get you set up with a pretty good deal on rods/reels/etc.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2012 03:23

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# ¿ May 3, 2024 21:37

perabyte: Apr 2, 2005; Angry

jvick posted:

How much? What is lodging like around there?

Half day trip is $310 for 2 people, Full day is $400. If you've never been fly fishing before, we do a beginner special for $250 for 2 people. Lodging is much cheaper in the summer up here. The Shilo inn here is cheap, so is the motel 6. Beyond that it can get expensive. If you come up with a car, you can stay down in Crowley at the Mono Sierra Lodge. It's clean, not much to look at, but it gets the job done.

# ¿ Apr 29, 2012 04:35

perabyte: Apr 2, 2005; Angry

Operating Rod posted:

Does anyone have a source for good bang-for-the-buck fly rod blanks?

I have a 6-weight and a 9-weight that cover most of my fishing, but I have some rodbuilding stuff and want to finally use it. I fish mostly for panfish and bass, and I use the big rod for poppers and heavy flies, so I'm thinking maybe a 7-weight?

I can probably get you Sage Bass II rod blanks, or just about anything from Winston. Let me know, and I'll give you the number for the shop I work at.

# ¿ May 22, 2012 03:21

perabyte: Apr 2, 2005; Angry

Mustang posted:

Anyone know a good, cheap fishing rod rack for cars? I found a few but they are $100+, I'd like to spend less if possible.

How many rods do you want to carry? Because this works fairly well as long as your car has a good paint job.

http://rodmounts.com/talon/

Same goes for this one:

http://www.sportube.com/pages/vac_rac.php?d=rod+rack,fly+rod+roof+rack,vac+rac+magnetic+roof+rod+rack

# ¿ Jun 13, 2012 03:42

perabyte: Apr 2, 2005; Angry

Unperson_47 posted:

To the fly fisherman out there:

Are the really lightweight swivels/snaps marketed for fly use actually viable? I hate having to retie flies, widdling down my leader to the point of hindering my casting. This leads to me having a longer leader than I can manage really so that's self-defeating. A tippet seems to be more trouble (and one more knot) than it's worth. Then again, I suck at fly fishing right now.

For some extreme fly tying, check out Graham Owen.

As a fly fishing guide, I can personally tell you to suck it up. I have to re-tie rigs all day long. I must tie over a hundred knots a day. Its all part of the game. I can tie knots and flies on without even looking now.

# ¿ Jun 29, 2012 05:25

perabyte: Apr 2, 2005; Angry

DoctaFun posted:

Looking back I now realize it was not the most humane way to clean a fish .

I just got back from a week in Alaska, how incredible! It's just absolutely beautiful up there, it really is an outdoorsman's paradise.

We planned for two days of fishing and ended up doing three. Our first day of guided fishing for rainbows/silver salmon on the upper Kenai was a complete clusterfuck and I called and complained because I felt very disappointed after spending $700 for my wife and I to fish. The owner of the charter offered to take us out personally the next to make up for it, free of charge! That was awesome of him, he was a great guy and a great guide. We got paired up with the sports reporter from Anchorage's NBC affiliate, Kari Bustamante(look her up, seriously). Her and her cameraman were awesome, we all had a great time and left after about 4 hours with a limit of silvers each.

Halibut fishing in Seward through Puffin charters later in the week was a joke, my wife and I each caught halibut right away, but you can only keep one over 29" and one under 29", which wasn't communicated to us before I caught mine(which meant I was basically done fishing after catching a fish like 40 minutes into the trip), then my wife caught a small halibut that they gaffed immediately without asking if we wanted to keep it because, "It looked under 29", but measured 29.5", they made her keep it and thus we filled our limit of over 29" halibut. Yes, I wanted to pay $700 to catch a 29.5" halibut. Then we had to let other clients take over for us if we got any bites because "they don't have their overs yet, and we'd hate to throw back any big fish."

Yeah, you know what else I would hate as a paying customer? To catch an 8 pound halibut and then let someone else reel up an 80 pound halibut on my rod. It would be awesome for them to do no work but get to bring home 60 pounds of fish while I sit here with my thumb up my rear end. Then we moved to try and catch silvers and the entire boat caught 0. That's fishing I guess, but it wasn't the 'fishing' that anyone else experienced in town.

Anyways, that day was disappointing, we dropped all our fish off at the processing place later that day and had 21 pounds of halibut to go along with our 25 pounds of silver salmon. You want to feel sick to your stomach? Pay $700 for a charter and bring in 20 pounds of fish, and then wait in line behind a group of two people dropping off 55 pounds of salmon and 30 pounds of rockfish, to go along with the "60 pounds of halibut from yesterday!".

To make matters worse, when we picked up the fish, they misplaced all of our salmon. Awesome. They ended up giving us the same weight in salmon from their fresh caught stock, and then adding on 6 pounds of halibut and 6 pounds of salmon(which is about $250-$300 worth of fish), but still, disappointing.

Overall it was a fun trip, in a truly breathtaking place. But to be quite honest, I could spend $4k+ to go to Alaska for a week, fish every day, and catch a total of about 30 fish(they have strict laws up there, once you catch your limit, you can't fish anymore, makes me really appreciate the catch and release laws we have in MN) OR I could pay $3k, go to an all-inclusive fly-in trip in Manitoba, probably catch 1000 walleye/norhtern/lake trout, with a chance at a trophy in any of those species.

Either way, if you ever make it up to the Kenai Peninsula, I'd recommend giving Jimmie Jack fishing charters a call, he's a total pro and takes care of his customers.

Oh man, that's rough. I just got back from Kodiak chasing Coho on the fly. Being a fly fishing guide myself and that 2 of the guys I went with had been there before, we didn't hire a guide. I pretty much limited out almost every day of the six days we were there. I had my first fish on within the first 10 min and hooked him on a fly I tied myself surprisingly enough. Caught a ton of Dolly's too (glad I brought my 6 weight). Here are some pictures, maybe that will cheer you up.

The owner of our shop doing his best "vana white" impression in front of our transportation for the week.

Me with an awesome Sockeye

Me with a nice silver on the Olds River

Me in the float tube with a beast of a silver

Kent with a nice silver in the float tube

Kent on the first day (it rained harder than I've ever seen) at the Olds river.

All in all we both left with 40lbs (each) of salmon, we had to give a lot of what we caught to two rookies who only caught two fish between them in 6 days... 2 fish per day doesn't add up to much

I released a ton of fish though, including some I foul hooked...

# ¿ Sep 27, 2014 19:05

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# ¿ May 3, 2024 21:37

perabyte: Apr 2, 2005; Angry

Kazak_Hstan posted:

What did you go after them on? I did a bit of silver fishing on the fly this year (I'm mostly a spin fisherman) and they seemed to only be interested in garish pink things for me. It was kind of fun for a guy who does not do the whole delicate precise fly fishing thing.

I got a good majority of mine on Clouser minnows in chartreuse, and egg sucking leeches in purple and pink on the sunny days and black on the overcast days. you need to pretty much hit them on the head with the fly to get them to take it, so casting accuracy is pretty important.

# ¿ Sep 29, 2014 16:32

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