Tonight was a much different experience. It started slow. The water was low and slightly stained, with about 12"-18" of visibility. I started swinging streamers with no luck. I decided to give the hair bugs a try. Now I have never had any success fishing top water flies for bass before. I've read about it, I have some poppers, hair bugs, and divers in my box. I've fished them all before with no luck at all. I tied on a blue and orange hair bug that is meant to be a blue gill imitation. I cast it a few times and striped it in over some boulders, nothing. I moved down stream and cast the fly right below the boulders I had been fishing just before. I stripped the fly in as it swung down stream and wham! In a splash of furry I had a smallie on the line. Now it was a small fish, surprisingly small for the size of the fly. Size didn't matter, I was thrilled to catch this fish on a top water fly. Here is a picture of the fish with a huge fly hanging out of its mouth.
On the very next cast, I caught a chunky rock bass on the same top water bug. Here is the picture of that fish.
I moved up river and around the bend and began to fish a faster tail out and just missed a good size bass, I know it was a good size because it fully breached the water as it went for the fly! I was too quick to strike and pulled the fly from the bass before it was hooked. I moved up river again to a nice slow moving section that was covered with rocks and boulders on the bottom, the bigger boulders created shallower places and the voids between them created deeper pockets. I cast the same blue gill hair bug down and across and stripped it in. Bam! Another bass! This one was bigger than the last two... The night just kept getting better. Here is a picture of that fish.
I began to move back towards the access point as it was about 10 minutes until sunset. I saved the hole near the access path for last so I could fish until it was too dark to fish any more and still walk out easily. This time I had a tube jig fly that Jerry Darkes showed me how to tie. I cast the fly into some slack water between two faster currents coming into the channel from opposite directions, just below some large rocks visible from where I was standing. after a strip or two, it was fish on! This was a nice fish, about 15" with big shoulders, it was probably a 2 lb fish, maybe larger. The best fish of the day anyhow. The picture of that fish is below.
Here is a good shot of the fly of the day, the blue gill hair bug.
