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CrabHusker said:
I have literally dozens of different construction adhesives and sealants I hadn’t tried. Mostly because they aren’t viable for very long, but I’ll be trying a few out this weekend.
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Also, the general rule seems to be that anything that includes silicone works for the Shannon's Streamer as I've tried a couple, and I've read the same from others. I'm curious what happens when latex caulk is used without silicone in it, but I would expect it to not work. I'm just curious as to why.

One more tying tip on the Shannon's Streamer that is worth remembering. Any fly/streamer/lure that has a head that is significantly larger than its tail will have an undulating action in the water from the streamline effects of the water going around that larger head and then going over the tail. I tie that streamer with an extra layer or two at the very front of the fly so that it has that fish-swimming action when it's retrieved or--even better--when you let it hang in the current in front of a where you know or suspect a fish to be holding. That marabou tail will whip back and forth like a fish's tail. It's pretty cool. I even add a bit of Zap-a-Gap to the very front of the head to make it solid as a rock, which makes the action more pronounced, but don't add too much. You just want the very front surface of the fly to be solid. UV cure would probably do a better job of that, but I just realized that I've never tried it.
 
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This thread is great.

My wife and I have a quest to fish all 50 states. We have 4 left and would be done next month if corona virus hadn’t struck. We’re very late to the fly fishing game (always hire guides and have only tried 3 times, Arkansas/white river, new mexico/san juan, and montana/missouri), but when we finish the 50 I hope to do alot more fly fishing in Montana and Idaho.
 
HuskerDB said:
This thread is great.

My wife and I have a quest to fish all 50 states. We have 4 left and would be done next month if corona virus hadn’t struck. We’re very late to the fly fishing game (always hire guides and have only tried 3 times, Arkansas/white river, new mexico/san juan, and montana/missouri), but when we finish the 50 I hope to do alot more fly fishing in Montana and Idaho.
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It's a good idea to get used to handling a fly rod on the more accommodating fish species, like bluegills. It can be very, very frustrating to be standing next to a world class trout stream with a fly rod, knowing that they're not biting because you're not very good at casting and presentation.

Fwiw, I'm teaching my kids how to "fly" fish with a fly rod that has a hook with a piece of nightcrawler on it. I want them to get used to the rod and the line and casting first. Once they have that down, it's not such a big step to use flies. With that said, I still prefer catching fish to feeling self-righteous about what I was doing when I was not catching fish. Unless prohibited where I'm fishing, I almost always have a jar of salmon eggs in my vest, and usually some variety of Power Bait trout worms, butter worms, garden worms, or similar. There's nothing better than catching a native trout in a beautiful stream on a fly rod while using a fly that I tied,... but I'd rather catch fish than not catch fish in some supposedly purist way. Ditto x10 for kids learning how to fly fish.
 
uncertainbyprinciple said:
I totally agree. This stream's access is about a half hour's drive from my house. It can be a quick escape for an hour or two on the weekend. I've got a 3 year old and a 6 month old at home, so quick escapes are the name of the game for me right now.
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How far are you from Glendive?
 



Middle-aged_Ball_Coach said:
When in doubt, fish a size 10 black Woolly Bugger. You can crawl it near vegetation, and it looks like a leech. You can jig it, and it looks like a wounded minnow ... or something. I don't claim to understand the mysteries of it, but it works pretty much everywhere on everything. I hang one under my bass poppers, and I catch about 5-to-1 bass on the Bugger over the popper. I've seen trout hanging out in a heavily, heavily fished pool in Rapid City on Rapid Creek, and after everybody else had thrown everything else at them, and nothing was biting (even though you could see them still eating nymphs in the water), I put on a size 6 heavily weighted conehead Woolly Bugger, lobbed it out with my 4 wt with all of the dainty finesse of Chris Farley in a tutu, dragged it slowly across the bottom of the pool,... and promptly caught 3 trout in 3 casts. I'm pretty sure that they thought it was a crayfish. Guys were lining up behind me to fish the pool, questioning the legitimacy of my birth while also comparing my mother to a female canine, so I packed up and let them have a go at it. Since I'm here telling the story, and we're all heroes of our own narratives, obviously they didn't catch Jack Squat! Thus, the power of the Bugger.

A Clouser Minnow is great for crappies, and I also tie it on walleye spinner rigs to be dragged around with conventional gear. It works for anything eating minnows. Smallmouths especially hate that fly like it slapped their mother. It was designed for catching smallmouths. (So was the Woolly Bugger, fwiw.)

I have some others that are simple and designed mainly for bass if you ever want samples. I like cheap, simple flies that take only a few minutes to make but still catch fish.
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I've had guys throw rooster tails in the same damn pool I was fishing on Rapid Creek. There's some real alpha hotels that fish that creek. I have a spot now that doesn't get fished as hard though.
 
Mack The Shark said:
I've had guys throw rooster tails in the same damn pool I was fishing on Rapid Creek. There's some real alpha hotels that fish that creek. I have a spot now that doesn't get fished as hard though.
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I was fishing in the first pool above where Rapid Creek dumps into Canyon Lake. It was around this time of year a few years ago, and I was there on the Thursday before Easter in the afternoon, so at first there was nobody around. It was a nice day, and as folks were getting off work, they began pouring into the area. I had been fishing in the lake after fishing briefly above the lake, so I waited until a couple of guys fished the pool, then followed in behind them. They didn't care because I asked them. I was fishing where they had just been, so why would they care? There were other guys still rigging up nearby, and they started fishing below me, and they could see fish that weren't biting, and they were annoyed. I don't know that they noticed or cared about me ... until I started catching fish. I was fishing out the pool and the bend that fed into it by throwing upstream, dragging it across the bottom, and then swinging it once it was below me. They started casting right up to where I was standing. I was in a great mood, and I had other places to fish if I wanted, so I pretty much just laughed it off. When I caught the second one, it was just downstream of me, and they could see the trout in the water. I was taking a step or two upstream each time, but I wasn't moving fast enough, so they began casting past me, but they still weren't getting bites. I offered to move out and let them fish through--golf style--and they eagerly did so. I thought it was interesting that they suddenly weren't in such a hurry anymore. I went back down below them in the water that they had just fished, and I caught the third one. They began swearing at me. It was awesome! They didn't leave that spot for quite awhile, despite not catching any fish, so I packed up and went elsewhere to fish.
 
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Middle-aged_Ball_Coach said:
I was fishing in the first pool above where Rapid Creek dumps into Canyon Lake. It was around this time of year a few years ago, and I was there on the Thursday before Easter in the afternoon, so at first there was nobody around. It was a nice day, and as folks were getting off work, they began pouring into the area. I had been fishing in the lake after fishing briefly above the lake, so I waited until a couple of guys fished the pool, then followed in behind them. They didn't care because I asked them. I was fishing where they had just been, so why would they care? There were other guys still rigging up nearby, and they started fishing below me, and they could see fish that weren't biting, and they were annoyed. I don't know that they noticed or cared about me ... until I started catching fish. I was fishing out the pool and the bend that fed into it by throwing upstream, dragging it across the bottom, and then swinging it once it was below me. They started casting right up to where I was standing. I was in a great mood, and I had other places to fish if I wanted, so I pretty much just laughed it off. When I caught the second one, it was just downstream of me, and they could see the trout in the water. I was taking a step or two upstream each time, but I wasn't moving fast enough, so they began casting past me, but they still weren't getting bites. I offered to move out and let them fish through--golf style--and they eagerly did so. I thought it was interesting that they suddenly weren't in such a hurry anymore. I went back down below them in the water that they had just fished, and I caught the third one. They began swearing at me. It was awesome! They didn't leave that spot for quite awhile, despite not catching any fish, so I packed up and went elsewhere to fish.
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I pulled a nice brown out of that pool off of a small Thompson when I was in college. That's my favorite part of that stretch of the creek, but it gets hit hard.
 
HuskerDB said:
This thread is great.

My wife and I have a quest to fish all 50 states. We have 4 left and would be done next month if corona virus hadn’t struck. We’re very late to the fly fishing game (always hire guides and have only tried 3 times, Arkansas/white river, new mexico/san juan, and montana/missouri), but when we finish the 50 I hope to do alot more fly fishing in Montana and Idaho.
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Guides or not, the White, San Juan and Missouri are pretty impressive rivers to list for your ONLY THREE TRIPS!!!

I bet I'd fished with a fly rod 300 times before I'd fished anywhere but the Arkansas, Blue or Eagle Rivers in Colorado. All slightly different in fundamental ways that made me learn something about the sport, the fish and their food.

I love Montana and Wyoming myself. I've never fished Idaho, but have heard great things. Been really lucky to have fished a lot of water outside of my primary three states. The Kamloops in BC and some creeks and ponds in Alaska, the Letort in Pennsylvania, Davidson in NC, but despite all of travels I bet I still have 30+ states I've never fished in. Impressive feat.
 







I remember when Grandpa brought home a box of fishing equipment from the sale barn in Wahoo. Inside, there was an old automatic fly-reel. Sometime later I found an old fly-rod at a garage sale in Lincoln. I would have been around 10 years old at the time. I put the two together and starting taking it with me when I rode around Six County on my mini-bike looking for places to fish. I initially caught some small bass and sunfish with it in some local ponds.

I eventually made a small fly out of cotton to immitate the cotton from the cottonwoods and caught a carp on the fly road. That was fun and really got my hooked. I eventaully started to use live grasshoopers to lure pike from canal ditches and platter river tributaries in Six county. When I moved to SW Missouri in the early 1980's I begin to use my redneck fly rig to fish for trout and smallmouth in SW Mo and Northern Arkansas (Roaring River, Spring River, White River, etc.)

I did not fish much in college or law school, but started practicing law in Minnesota where I started to fly fish for several warm waters species like bass, pike, muskie and even walley. The only fly fishing book I have is on streamers, which work well for some of these warm water fish. I had to learn to rig up steel leaders when targeting pike and muskie. Site fishing for large bass and pike in the multitude of lakes I lived around was the highlight of many an early morning while I lived in Minnesota.

I had the pleasure of staying at Gerry Spence's ranch in Wyoming for a month in 2016. It sits on the East Fork of the Wind River outside Dubois. I spent a week fly fishing around Jackson, Dubois and eventually ended up in the upper regions of the East Fork where I fished for days without seeing another human being. They have native cutthroat that while not huge, they are fun to catch and that area of Wyoming is my favorite area.

I moved to Bend, Oregon in 2012. This entire area is a fly fishing hotspot. The Deschutes River and Fall River are 5-20 minutes from my place. The Crooked river is also a 45 drive. The real goal for my fly-fishing future is the Upper North Umpqua. This is some of the best steelhead fishing in the world. This is less than two hours from my place.

I have been working too much to get the chance to fully engage in the fishing around me, but I literally live in fly-fishing heaven. Bend is also beer heaven and weed heaven if you are in to those things!
 

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