Testing the RLS + and other fishing adventures.

Some of you asked for a report about how the RLS+ does on the water so here it is. As I said before this thing casts very smooth.  I took it on two of the three fishing spots I will tell you about on this post. 

1. Last Thursday I took it for a spin at Willow Hill reservoir in Roseville, CA.  It’s a fishing hole that I had never been to but I decided all I was going to take was my fly rod.  Either I caught a fish on my new fly rod or I didn’t catch anything.

I was looking for some bass but also wasn’t opposed to catching some trout (stocked pond) or blue gills. When I arrived, I was surprised to find out the pond was RIGHT BEHIND the high school.  Perhaps if I had a pond behind my high school I would have chosen fishing instead of getting into trouble! Lol anyway I tossed out a bass popper and some tiny panfish and baby bass quickly went to check it out. I got a few strikes but they were too small to swallow my popper.  In the distance I could see a dock and quite a few fishermen on it fishing. A couple of high school kids were screaming about having caught fish so I figured I would inch closer to it. I saw a tree hanging over the pond and since it was a hot day I figured there might be some bass and panfish underneath. Sure enough, there were bass, but they were spawning so I left them alone.  

Finally I made my way to the dock and after a few casts, I hooked into my first bluegill on a Royal humpy. Royal humpy is getting closer to becoming my go to fly for blue gills, they seem to love it! Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of this fish because as soon as I caught it an old man asked me if he could use it for bait. I handed it right over. Soon after that my wife called and I made my way to pick her up. One quick observation, 8 wts are not for catching bluegills! (some of you are saying,” well, duh!”) I knew this but I was able to feel that this rod was designed for bigger fish and I just man handled this little bluegill with no problem at all.

Total = 1 blue gill

2. Went fishing by myself out at the bee hive.  I did not bring my fly rod on this trip even though I probably should have.  I was looking for crappie and bluegills but they don’t seem to be around yet. There were a few bass hanging around. I through a few lures and only a heddon torpedo got a few strikes from some smaller guys. I tossed out one with a nightcrawler on a classic rig but couldn’t get a single bite. The other was a nightcrawler on a simple bobber rig. The catfish pole didn’t get a single bite. The other attracted some small bass. In all I was able to catch three bass which didn’t have much size to them but I certainly cannot complain about getting into some bass action.

Total = 3 Largemouth bass

 

 3.  I took the RLS+ and a regular rod out to Boss Pond. The big difference that we all noticed was that the water was stained this time around. Last time our confidence was higher because the fish were visible. This time around you could hardly see the fish but as the day progressed, we had strikes without solid bites. My spot under the tree produced 2 small bluegills on nightcrawlers that I gave to Ol Pops to use for catfish bait. As for the bass, they were sucking up our baits, including a brown wooley bugger on the RLS but it quickly spit it out. That was the story the rest of the day at Boss Pond. Once again, I at the very least didn’t get skunked.

Total: 2 bluegills

Total Fish 3 bluegills + 3 Largemouth bass = 6 fish