Whirlwind Ride!

Bass have no problem taking carp flies...

Wow, where to begin. It was a pretty busy weekend between carp on Thursday, bowfin client on Friday then some awesome bass/multi species action on Friday evening, and the Ditch Pickle Classic on Saturday... man, crazy times. The Ditch Pickle really needs a post on it's own, so I will give a quick update and then hit details on that later on.

The carp on Champlain are all over the place and really doing great. They frustrated me a lot on Thursday. I had one on and it broke me off during a blistering run through some lily pads (their classic trick). Had a couple of other takes but I blew it and didn't seal the deal. I did land a pretty nice bass though. Can't complain about that.

Bernie with a nice bowfin... great picture without the football..

Friday morning put a great guy in the boat with me. Bernie had caught bowfin down south on bass tackle and wanted to give them a shot with a fly. The hunting was tough (it really is hunting as much as fishing- give it a whirl with me sometime and you will see). but we managed to find a few. One of them was probably the biggest bowfin I have ever seen. My estimate is around 13 lbs. Yep, I am not kidding. There are some big dawgs out there for sure. Bernie finally got one to take- and it took hard- it swam a couple of feet to hammer the fly. After a good fight we took some pics with my camera.... and then it happened....

Your intrepid guide willing to do anything for a fish (and his Boga)

Bernie wanted a pic with his IPhone and I had him hold the fish in the water while I got it ready. One good thrash and it pulled the Boga-grip lanyard out of his hands. The fish with my Boga was in the muck on the bottom of this wetland. And it was churned up. Oh was it ever. I tried randomly netting which only made things worse. I could see the fish death rolling but I could not see well enough to net it. So, over the side I went. I felt around with my foot until I found the fish. Then I netted and VOILA!  Bowfin and Boga came up together. Really, it was my fault for taking the football float off the Boga for pics. If it was on it would have been a simple matter. I felt like Chef from Apocalypse Now, but instead of saying "Never get out of the boat" I was saying "Never take off the float".

Nice little pike... Clousers- gotta have 'em!

I drove up to a location that Ken Capsey had told me about to hopefully get into some big white perch. The perch never materialized for me, but some huge bass did!  I was nailing rock bass, smallies, buckets, perch and even a pike (love that 3X Mirage- landed the pike no problem without wire- but please remember I was not planning on targeting pike. If you target pike use wire or you are a moron!). I got a nice bass pretty quickly. The action was off the charts. All on a simple chartreuse and white clouser. If you don't have that fly on Champlain, stay at home. It catches anything. 

Master Class bucketmouth boys!

Here is the story of the day though: I hooked a 6 or 7 inch perch and was stripping it in pretty quickly. It was thrashing on the surface as I was bringing it to the boat and WHAM! this bass comes out of nowhere to nail it. I kept a tight line and hoped for the best. Well, the perch evidently had the fly out the side of its mouth and it got hooked too. The bass jumped a few times with the perch still on and on a final jump the perch ripped loose. I landed the bass too. It was 20 1/4", my first Master Class largemouth for 2011! Pretty cool! Damned big fish too. I could fit my fist in it's mouth....


So I had a great dinner with Brian Price, Ken Capsey and some of the DPC crew. I figured with the action as hot as it was the night before, we were gonna do great for the Ditch Pickle. We caught some fish, some darned big fish too, but that is a story for another day.....

Today's strange picture- self timer in a rocking canoe...