fly fishing

[bobdea]

anyone here ever do any fishing around hilton head in SC?
I might be headed down there around feb and I would like to know if its worth it to pack a fly rod for some salt water action, a 9 weight to be exact

also, if any of you tie flies I am putting together some packages of meterials that I am going to put on ebay and I would offer anyone from this forum the same price $35 but bigger portions
these include mustad hooks in various sizes, deer hair, badger hair, woodchuck hair(this one is very useful for a wole bunch of stuff), squirel tail, ring neck pheasant feathers including tail, golden pheasant, partridge, peacock hurl, ultra chenile in three colors, foam in six colors, some whiting silver grade dry fly hackle and some other stuff that I can't think of right now, a pretty good deal, since with all the hair its gonna be full portions to triple depending on which one it is.

[kipstar]

Hey Bob!

Man I been die to talk to someone who fishes for trout; I used to fish a lot in New Zealand for rainbow (like a lake run steelhead) and also brown trout.... what sort of size you get over there? We would keep anything about 3 pounds, although on a good day, might consider with a 3 bag limit to take any first fish, then catch and release on anything smaller than 5 pounds.

Best river in NZ north island is tongariro, within an hour drive for snowboard and 12 month season :-) but only easy fishing for 6 months there; other places better for rest of year.

Our set up is:
- nymph set up on a 9ft or 10ft or 11ft rod, usually line weight somewhere around 9-11... mostly use weight forward floating line
- yarn indicator (plastic indicators banned)
- 10 ft leader to heavily weighted glow bug, which looks like a muppet sort of a thing on abuot a size 14 hook... lead tied into the body, and also eyes as well
- 18 inch leader to the dropper which is on size 16 or 18, hare and copper; half back; caddis type - with no or minimal weight

I still am lucky, I got maybe 100 flies left from my dad and since I can only tie hare and coppers plus rabbit streamers, and of course muppets, that is all I need... :-)

Do you like to tie them, because you can buy them really cheap in China now?

[bobdea]

sometimes I will go out and buy the super cheap flies for stuff that I don't like to tie though
NZ seems like it would be a blast, I have read allot about high quality trout waters there.
here, for trout I fish with a two or three and go to a 9 for saltwater, in the salt I have only caught stripers and blues.
for trout it really depends on where you are fishing and what species to determin what is a keeper, for rainbows 20' or above is is a keeper here in MA, Browns get big here but get really hard to catch when they are big, brookies in MA don't get big for the most part the biggest I have ever seen is 17 inches but if you drive three hours north to ME they get real big.
also, I am a big fan salmon fishing, only caught one atlantic in my life but it was fun but we do have plenty landlocked atlantic salmon here that go into the streams in the fall to spawn 20 to 25 inches is pretty common for landlocked salmon.

In the great lakes there are steelhead and a few species of salmon and they get BIG, but I always have other priorities so never I take the 10 hour drive to get out there when those fish go into the rivers.

[oldvolvosrule]

A fellow fly fisher here, in fact, I just spent Sunday out on the Santa Ana river here in Southern Cal, yes we do have wild trout in Southern Cal.

This stream is located within 1/2 hour of my house. I love the summer months, you can go there after work and experience a huge mayfly hatch every evening.

The water is flowing higher than normal as we have been having nearly 80 degree days and the snow, what we have, is beginning to melt up above.

I'm the one in the first group of photos, the one with the big wood between my legs. OLDVOLVOSRULE = NAILKNOT

http://outdoorsbest.zeroforum.com/zerothread?id=434932

Enjoy.

I may be interested in picking up some materials from you

[bobdea]

tell you what I have and sometime near the end of the week I will take some pics so you can see what you're gonna get

[kipstar]

Nice pics there, although the fish are a little smaller than what we would go after in NZ; different type of conditions since the fishing in NZ is during spawning season mostly.

The water is a lot smaller than most of ther places I fish and lots of boulders... must lose a fair few flies there is it?

The set up looks a lot different as well. So you use only 1 fly, not two?

The whole dry fly thing; I don't really get it. I don't think the fish in NZ get it either; nymphing and what we call downstream lure fishing (with the big flies on a sinking line trawled through the lies with a slow retrieve) would be many many times more efficient at most places. The rivers mostly require a monster cast to get the fly into the right spots, and then the fish are deep in the water; even the hour of rising is not effective for dry fly.

So my dad's boxes and boxes of dry flies are all sitting unused!

[bobdea]

you need to be somewhere in the north east during a drake or hex hatch and you would get it, its intense at times, you can be there one late afternoon at a place that you usually catch a fish or two a day but when a big hatch is going on you are getting a fish every other cast
also early season just after ice out with streamers you can bag other species such as lakers, salmon, pike(they get massive!), and massive browns
dries are not effective during a spawn in most cases, I usually use a glow bug or a streamer such as a woolly bugger or a zonker
Dries are probably my staple most of the time even when I know they are probably less effective than other types of flies, I am for sure not one of the dry fly purists though
one of my favorite things to do is use a very large dry at night like a mouse rat or a size 2 or 4 stimulator, thats how I have gotten most of my large fish

[oldvolvosrule]

The dry fly action on this particular water is incredible, during the warmer months combined with the reduced flow I had 40 fish outings back there. The fish in this river don't get very big, the largest I have landed is around 13", what makes this unique is this water shed is located within 1 hour of the Los Angeles metro area, 11 million people live within 60 miles of this place yet the wild trout exists. The fish here are not selective at all, you can toss a elk hair caddis, parachute black ant, adams, mosquito, humpy, hendrickson and the fish will leap out of the water to attack your fly. GOOD TIMES!!!

When the water turns cool we then switch to a double nymph rig, again, the fish are not too selective here either, hares ears, pheasant tail, brassies and so on will all catch fish.

One thing I do is tie on a #12 Stimulator and then suspend a nymph pattern below that. I figure the fish can have their choice of dry fly or nymph.

Last weekend with the water being so high, we have had nearly 80 degree temps here so the snow is starting to melt off of San Gorgonio Mtn, (11,000 ft+) and that snowmelt is running through the canyon. We did utilize the technique in which you describe, stand upstream of the pool, toss the fly to the end of the pool, stick your rod tip under water and start strippin. We call this the "dip and strip". That is how we hooked most of our fish this last weekend.

Bob Dea, send the photos to: gerthaa at msn dot com

Thanks

[kipstar]

strip and dip...classic :-) I must remember that.

They don't allow 2 fly set ups with fly size bigger than 14 anymore, and the indicator has to be non floating/buoyant (so it can be yarn, but not polystyrene). This was because people for a while were using 15 foot roads double handed, with 3 or 4 flies including a weighted fly that was basically a size 4 with lead body and eyes, then a series of small flies.

The glowbug for whatever reason doesn't work as well as before; I love the hare and copper in NZ with glowbug, because in clear water I can use the glowbug as my indicator.

The last really successful session I had in NZ (and I've only fished 4 days in the last 8 years), I would have been hooking fish at least 3 pounds up to about 8 pounds probably one every 4 casts using the double nymph set up; glow bug heavily weighted with eyes on 14 hook plus H&C weighted no eyes on 16 hook. That was a good day for catch and release.

I would imagine a purist being pretty shocked though. We throw out almost all the line - 25 or 30 yards I think my line is so we are casting to almost the backing; there would be probably only 1-2 meters of line left on the reel because we send the cast as far upstream as possible, then imeediately send a big load of slack behind it so that the fly can fall downward without tension. THen as it gets to about 11 oclock position relative to us looking out over the run, we then do little loop casts and get the line straight, coiling in the hand. Then we resend the line out again, so we get back to the almost to the backing position again.

Tongariro is fishing in about probably 5-8 feet of water, and the fish sit deep, so the fly has to sink down and be rolling somewhere near the bottom.

It is messy, but is works. In smaller streams like where you are fishing, using this technique would probably trash the water so much the fish would be long gone. No need to care about presentation when the water is deep and wide. Can wade all over the fishies as well, they don't seem to mind :-)

One friend who had learned to fish from some English, was shocked when he saw my dodgy techniques.; but they are typical of fishing around taupo in Winter.

I am keen for this dry fly stuff, but just haven't got the chance to find the right water is sounds like. My dad also has about 10 mouse varieties including with and without tail etc etc - he was the master fly tier; I however still stick with the about 2 nymph patterns I can remember and can use :-) Then I cannot blame choosing the wrong fly innit :-)

[neil sunday]

Bob-
If I were fly fishing in / around Hilton head, I'd throw a 9' 9# and nothing but chartruese and white clouser minnows in sizxe 2 and larger. the salt can be great. Good Luck!
-Neil

[bobdea]

thanks, that works out well, I plenty of the big lead barbell eyes so I will tie up some big clousers

[owaysys]

hey guys, cool to find some fellow hardbooters that fish! i'm out in southwest MT, so i'm completely spoiled on trout. any time any of you are in the Bozeman area and want to fish, look me up. my email is owaysys@hotmail.com


jeff

[bobdea]

been talking it over with my woman and MT is actually one of the spots we are considering.
VT is probably where it will be because I am tied to the east for a couple of reasons but once those are resolved MT is a verry possible destination for us or maybe just me.