2015 Fishing Goals

This year will be different. I genuinely mean that. This year will be a learning process. This year will more than likely bring less fish than last but that is okay. This year I will push my own limits in order to improve as a fisherman. 

This year I will not be setting a goal as to the total amount of fish, locations to fish, or amount of types of fish. This year will document what it is like to take an entire year and use it to learn, grow and improve my skill.

I will be dedicating this year to the art fly fishing. 

Top: "Bone Crusher" - 8wt. Middle: "Excalibur" - 6 wt Bottom: "Rudy" - 3 wt.

 

Last year I took a couple of fishing outings where I only took my fly rod and this forced me to practice tying on my flies, casting, fly selection, etc. The problem is that I would go weeks without even touching a fly rod, then come back and almost have to teach myself all over again. 

I figured why not take a year to bring along only my fly rod? Why not take a year to get used to the fly rod? Why not learn to improve my casting, to practice my double hauls, And in turn to learn to play and catch more fish on the fly? 

So this is my goal this year. Not to become a purist or switch entirely to fly fishing for the rest of my life, but rather to even out my skill on both types of rod. My goals are as follow:

 

- Improve Casting Technique.

- Master Double haul casting.

- Catch more fish on the fly rod.

- That is it. 

With this said, I will not ONLY be using the fly rod. Certain trips I will be using regular rods like bass fishing in the winter where they are out in deeper water or trout fishing for planters in a lake. But those will be special trips, most of the year I will only be armed with a trusty fly rod or two. 

With that said, bring it on 2015… bring it on!!

Suprises!

I have been plotting on getting a 3 wt ever since,  Mark purchased his 3 wt. Yes, I was that kid that wanted the toys that others had! But with age came better decision making and so instead of ordering one as soon as I saw Marks, I waited for the right time. 

You see, when I saw a 3 wt. and held one for the first time I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I could picture getting into some fat little blue gills, crappies and trout with one of those little guys. I waited for a few months until it was the right time to buy and finally on my birthday, I pounced! 

I have had my eye on a Redington Drift fly reel for a while now. I was so impressed with my first purchase of a Redington CT Classic Trout rod that I decided to trust their company with my 3 wt purchase.  How could you not be impressed with an affordable yet quality product that offers a lifetime warranty on their products?!

Around my birthday Cabela’s had a $20 off your $100 purchase sale. In addition Cabela’s had (currently has) Redington rods on sale for 74.45. The Drift reels were 99.95 which has stayed at that price for the entire time I have watched it so that’s as good as it gets. On top of that I had $22 in Cabela’s Club points that I have saved specifically for a moment like this. And as if this weren’t enough, I got a Cabelas gift card for $50 on my birthday! So with shipping costs, my 3 wt. Redington cost me a little under $100!

 

A couple of days ago I received my reel and it is SEXY! It is such a nice looking and sounding little reel, I love it. I need to buy backing and line for it but aside from that, I’m set. 

I received my rod a few days earlier and my first thought was that it was very long. It was the shortest 3 wt. redington rod that Cabela’s had available but it is still pretty long, 8’ 6” in length.  I have no small streams around to try that sucker out this winter so I’ll have to wait until spring. I don't have a name for my 3 Wt. yet but I will be thinking of one!

Since I can’t use it until then I picked up another toy. I ended up getting a $25 gift card to Bass Pro Shops for my birthday as well. I decided I was going to buy some sort of light or ultra light combo for trout/ panfish. I looked at their online store and found what I thought would be the one. It was a Pfleuger trion spinning combo. It was going to cost somewhere around $59 so I went looking for it. I was unable to find it but as luck would have it, another combo was staring me right in the face. There was a whole assortment of Gx2 ugly stiks on display. At the moment my favorite bass rod is a medium action gx2 I bought last year on my birthday. I ended up getting a 7’ ultralight Gx2 Ugly Stik  for $50 ($25 + tax with my gift card)  which I will eventually load up with 2 lb line and use to slay the trout soon!  

So that's my surprise, new additions to the family! lol Anyway, that’s it on my side for now. Haven’t been fishing since earlier this month so no fishing reports.

I'm Not Here to Get Skunked...!

There was something that Mel over at the Pondstalker said that on my previous post that really sank in:

So even though it was a windy day, I figured it wasn't too warm and I grabbed Excalibur (My sage reel on a Redington Rod) and headed back to cache creek to explore the pond I found downstream.

Now I tied on a few different flies including two sizes of popper and  two different streamers but there were two different flies that produced for me: the Light cahill and of course, the royal humpy. 

The royal humpy is a fly that I have come to love because it appears that panfish love them! It has become one of my go to flies and this trip only solidified that. Second cast of the day produced my first fish, a green sunfish. The pond has tons of these guys and they are fun little fighters! 

Nothing could have prepared me for my second catch of the day. I tossed my RH in a deeper looking direction and something nailed it! It was a much harder fight than the sunfish and as it jumped out of the water, I realized, it was a smallmouth bass! I reeled on in and sure enough I caught my first Smallie on the fly! It wasn't the biggest smallie in that creek but it's enough to meet half of my 2014 goal of catching a Smallie and a largemouth on the fly. I even ended up catching a second smallie a few casts later!   I must tip my hat to Jay over at The Naturalist's Angle who has been giving me pointers on catching my first smallmouth bass on the fly. 

The green sunfish were really killing the Royal humpy, especially after it got too wet to float and sank. I was slaying them with the RH so I decided to tie on some poppers and go after bigger smallies. Even though I could see some looking at them and even bumping them, they wouldn't commit. 

As it was getting darker and the mosquitoes came out I tied on a light cahill because I figured it looked a lot like a mosquito (and didn't have an mosquito patterns on me). I ended up catching a bunch of panfish off of the cahill. At one point my wife called and I continued to slay the Green sunfish while on the phone with her.

A skunk even came next to the creek to hang out (or possibly die?) I guess he didn't get the memo... I wasn't there to get skunked, I was there to catch fish!

 I had to snap a couple of pictures of the sunset and also the mandatory panoramic shot of my fishing holes, kind of a tradition I have this year. I was glad I did some recon and found a new honey hole.

These 14 green sunfish put me at 50 panfish for the year and it's only May. That buys me a little time to try and pursue some other species and try to meet other goals. I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to meet my 70 panfish goals this year but now I'm only a couple of good panfish days away from exceeding that goal and I haven't even caught any at the bee hive yet, so when that heats up (probably already has) it will be crazy! I need to try to get into some stripes and trout soon. Summer will belong to the kitties and the buckets!

Break that bank, folks!

Total Fish: 2 Smallmouth bass + 14 green sunfish = 16 fish

The Waiting Game

So it is official, I am officially the proud owner of my first 8 Wt Rod. I have officially ordered a Cabelas RLS+ Combo. Like I said, it is an 8 wt.  4 piece Rod and reel Combo . It has a fighting butt and everything. You might recall that I didn’t have the best experience with my last rod and reel combo from Cabelas. 

Aesthetically the rod and reel were beautiful. Cabelas makes some fantastic looking products.  I got more than a few compliments on what a nice looking combo I had. And in all actuality it handled very well. Unfortunately it didn’t have a carrying case, just one of those rod bags. I really liked my Wind River combo but at one time it started making a scraping/screeching sound every time I reeled in. I really debated on whether or not I wanted to return it. It was a great combo with what was perhaps a manufacturers defect so I never discounted the Cabelas brand.  Unfortunately I had to return it but after adding a bit more to the price I was able to purchase Excalibur; my Sage reel on a Redington CT rod. In all, I was pleased with the outcome.

Well, I have been thinking about an 8 or 9 wt rod for a while. I wanted something with some back bone to be able to withstand a fight with some big bass, stripers, carp, steelhead (if we ever get enough water in the American again) and maybe even some catfish! Hopefully that is exactly what I will get with the RLS+. Well now it’s nothing but a waiting game and I feel like a child a few weeks before Christmas!

 

Family back down to just one!

Tragedy strikes! I am all excited about my new Redington Crosswater combo, I get it and the damn thing is broken!!  I opened it up and these were the problems with it:

1.    There was no invoice. 
2.    The item was not fastened into package and in fact, was not correctly placed in package. This made me believe it might have been opened before. 
3.     All the zip ties were broken, which confirmed that the thing HAD been opened before. 
4.     When I unzipped the case, the reel fell into my hand. When I looked at the foot of the reel I noticed it looked kind of strange and then I realized part of the foot was broken off!! When I looked at the rod, I realized that the missing part of the foot was lodged in the reel seat. 

I was pretty bummed but at the same time I was relieved because the reel itself looked super flimsy. I think it may have been a thin aluminum but the thing felt like plastic. Also, the simple fact that it was broken to begin with doesnt give me much confidence in it. The rod itself looked and felt like good quality.  Anyway, it took forever to get here and hopefully it doesn’t take forever to get back to them and for the money to go back into my account. 

With that said, I have been scoping another fly fishing outfit.  It is a Cabelas RLS+ combo and according to the reviews it is a real piece of work. I like Cabelas products and their customer service is superb.  I was actually pretty impressed with the original Wind River combo I bought from them so if this thing is still on sale when I get my refund, I think I’m going to buy this in an 8 Wt.  I will keep you guys posted.

Random Updates

Good news, I made it out of the wilderness and back into civilization! For those of you who don’t know, I was camping out at Usal Beach in Mendocino County this weekend.  I am in the process of writing a post on that entire experience including a bit on the history of this tradition. 

Another cool thing that happened was that Bryan over at the Rogue Outdoors sent me more flies! This guy is a class act, I can’t say enough about him!  I asked him about catching carp and what does he do, he sends me a bunch of carp flies! I don’t know much about tying but Bryan ties some amazing flies.  They look like amazing quality and with spring already upon us, I look forward to slaying some fish with them very soon!  Thanks again Bryan! 

And last but not least, very soon there will be an addition to the family! NO I’m not talking about a baby! Lol I’m talking about a new fly rod. Now I must admit I didn’t do a ton of research on this product… I saw the name, the weight and the price and I went for it. I have been looking for an 8-9 weight rod and reel for a bit now. I want to get into some large bass, carp, striper, steelhead, etc. so I figured I would get myself an 8 weight to toss out some heavier poppers and also have a little more backbone in case I catch the big one! Plus I wanted an extra setup in case I wanted to teach somebody else how to fly fish. Also, I just wanted a new fly rod, who am I kidding?

I saw an ad for a Redington Crosswater Outfit. Honestly I just saw Redington and jumped all over it. It was cheap and it had more positive reviews than negative ones. The negative reviews seemed to be more user mistakes than defective rods so I went for it. After researching a bit more I came to find out that this combo only has a 1 year warranty as opposed to most other Redington products which have a lifetime warranty. Also I saw a very solid review from an experienced angler that made me think I made a good choice. 

The combo is a “beginner combo,” which I kinda dislike mainly because of the label, “beginner. “ My pride tries to tell me that I’m better than a beginner because a beginner has no idea what they are doing and I do , but honestly, I am a beginner. The first time I held a fly fishing outfit was last may and it wasn’t until August that I bought my first combo. Furthermore I have never even touched anything above a 6 weight so A beginner combo is perfect for right now. Nonetheless it is a handsome combo and it comes with a carrying case so I'm excite to receive it!  I guess if anything is going to go wrong with it I should find out within a year. Plus when I outgrow it I can always sell it or gift it and buy one of those super expensive combos for “advanced” anglers. Until then It looks like Excalibur (my name for my other fly rod) is going to have a brother! Yes, I am that nut that names his fly rods. 

Anyway, that’s it for me, Usal post coming soon! Hopefully some fishing posts will come soon as I am able to get out on the water.  Thanks for reading!