Another Pig Redear Fly Fishing MVL

Another Pig Redear on a Five Weight.  Weighted just a hair under 2 lbs

Even with wacky weather this past week, Chul and I hit MVL once more before he sets off to the Tahoe area to fish some "real" trout waters.  With rain, overcast and cold weather we were hoping the bass would not be lock jawed.  Theoretically the bass should be still in the three stages of the spawn but given the early warm weather this spring I was not sure if they spawned early and are now finished.  Speaking with the boys at the marina, the bass we still spawning and the bluegill were just beginning. 

I gave Chul the Sage DS2 590-2 I built him and he fished that first with a gurgler.  Armed with my RPLX 10 wt, I started with a monster rattle popper Webb gave me.  The Charleton Reel, I was using was loaded with an ancient shooting head.  So ancient that the running line wasn't even integrated into the head.  This set up sucks.  Do they even still make set ups like this?  I certainly hope not.  I bored rather quickly with the 10 wt, as I usually do when I fish big rods.  So I switched to my recently repaired T&T 5wt.  I've said it before and I will say it again, I absolutely love this rod.  Going from the 10 to 5 wt was like night and day.  I felt like I was casting air.  After seeing some bass in the shallows Chul switched to his 6 wt and sinking line.

The Days Arsenal.

Chul continued to get short struck until he finally landed a trout sized juvenile bass on an olive clouser.  I had snagged my Gourmet Silverside Minnow fly on some submerged structure thereby losing that fly, so I switched to a lightly dumbell eyed  purple wooley bugger.  Within a few cast I got hit hard.  I yanked him to the surface and it was another monster Redear.  Unlike the last time I caught one here, this one had a prominent red mark behind this gill spot.  This one measured just barely under 2lbs.  Although I come to MVL for the bass, I will never turn down monster panfish.  Both of us would missed a few more hits here in this location until we decided we should move.  The boat was crapping out on us so we had to go back to the marina and get a new one.  Very disappointing.

From then on, the rest of the day it shut down.  Literally.  Hundreds of casts and various flies produced not even a single strike.  The sun was starting to poke out of the clouds by then.  For whatever reason the fish became lock jawed and would follow the fly for a bit but refused to honor us with a take.  We did find two other locations that held monster bass.  I would guess at least 10 lbs maybe bigger.  Its always hard to judge fish size when they are in the water, they always look smaller than they actually are.  Towards the end of the day we did find a bluegill nest with at least 10 huge bluegills in the immediate area.  They were fighting, mating, spawning, or protecting but none wanted to open their damn mouth.  I have no ideal what happened to the water and why it just shut down.  Although the fishing sucked after having to come back to the marina, we at least managed not to get skunked.  We found 2 new locations where some of the monster bass are located.  Chul got to fish his new rod and I managed to fish two of my favorite rods that are now finally back in my arsenal (Sage RPLXi 890-3 and my T&T Helix 5wt S).