More caddis

Took Jr. out last night to hit the caddis hatch in SE MN. About 30 pounds on my back for a few hours and miles and I'm sore today. I'm sans camera these days as the charger is lost and battery dead. Caddis were popping pretty good and the fish were responding to them and my offerings. No big fish on dries. The largest was probably 11 inches. I switched over to streamers and probed a couple of places I've taken big fish before. I got two fish that went about 14 inches or so and took them home to feed the family. My three-year old daughter goes nuts when I bring fish home, something primitive about it. All apologies to my fishing brethren who would have liked to have caught those two fish in the future. They are dead, but their nutrients and energy now reside in the bodies of two little kids and who knows what additional cosmic elements, which we cannot measure, now also live in the bodies of those kids.

On my camera is a photo (I think) of a short-nosed gar I caught last weekend (~30 inches) on a 5 inch long rope fly. I've been hitting the Black River exclusively for gar the last few weeks for 1-2 hours at a time. The carp are in the backwaters spawning. You can hear and see them from the house-some big-uns down there. One of these days I'll land a truly large gar (~4-5 feet) and capture it on camera. Until then, I'm not going to post much about gar fishing. -Just know that I'm out there, putting my time in, figuring them out little by little. There are some true beasts rolling around in the soft back eddy, presentation seems to be everything, it just takes one, it just takes one.....

Fishing the caddis hatch a while back...

Carp! It's that time of year.

Having fished the stream last Sunday I knew the quilback and redhorse were pooled up. It's gonna rain this weekend so I wanted to fish before the streams go dirty. My closest streams meander through Iowa's corn fields, a little rain quickly muddies the water. I don't catch much in muddy creeks. Check out this nice bender. From below I target the rock bank and the snag.

The rootball motel. Usually housing a couple smallies. Today, the carp had it booked.

Carp are picky eaters. I heard from the man Barry Reynolds that carp don't like flashy flies. I took em on wet flies and midges -- using flies with no flash was key. Top two wet flies were best producers.
Redhorse pictured above.

80-20

Been busy fishing and fathering-will report soon. Caddis are out.

For now, enjoy this topic (The 80-20 rule) and consider the implications for your life, work, and hobbies, etc...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/80-20_rule

4_18_Outing

We've finally had enough of a dry spell to clear up the creeks.

It's fun seeing what changes result from the Spring high waters. New smally hideouts on this stream.

The carp are marching up the creeks. I walked through some thick pools of quilback and redhorse. I should have spent more time fishing for these guys but I didn't have much time to fish and I wanted to scope out the rest of my stream. I stood on a big slab of limestone with water 1 ft deep and pretty good current while a school of carp marched single file right under my nose. I should have taken out my phone and shot some video, it was pretty cool.
Took a couple smallies from this sharp bend, on the rocks. The bite is very subtle this time of year. Lots of short strikes.