Old is Now New

June 7, 2023

Sometimes we get so caught up into the new thing, we often forget the old is often the best choice.  The last few outings I've been experimenting with various flies.  This had resulted in some mixed bag of results even when my partner Luc was doing fantastic.  Being sick of not doing well I decided to forgo experimentation and go back to fishing  proven patterns.  With that in mind I decided to to tie an old bass patterns that did me so well 20 years ago.  I'm not sure why I quit tying them but I did.  Most likely because they were so simple.  Back in the day I tied them without weedguards so I made a few with them for added protection.  Also the old flies were epoxy coated and they've yellowed over time.  Still fishable but ugly so I wanted a fresh batch.

While rigging my fly set up the night before I thought of starting with the CJ Freaky Frog, the fly I landed my hog on the last trip, but decided against it and try old faithful.  On the ride to the lake Luc told me on his last outing he caught a few bass that spit up shad in the 5 inch range.  Since my fly was within this range I thought I made a good choice.  It proved to be the right choice.  Within 25 minutes from when we launched I was on my first bass of the day.  It took so delicately and didn't fight much I thought it a small fish but once landed proved to be much bigger that we initially thought.  A few casts later I was on another fish that took explosively and fought much harder for its size.  The rest of the day takes and fights would be more like this.  I would get fish after fish for the first hour or so. When I tied this fly I rushed it and forgot to super glue the body to the hook and only the mylar tubing was holding it to the hook.  I forwent the epoxy but put a small bead of UV resin around the eyes and base of the fly.  After each fly I have to readjust the popper body back into place.  It was some apparent the fly wouldn't likely last the day.  In one cove I hooked up on one that felt heavier than the previous four or five and after a brief fight the hook flew back at me without the popper body.  I had only tied two flies for this trip and by this time Luc was fishing the other (this one glued properly).  He gave me his fly because he wanted to try something else.  Fishing slowed when the wakeboarders came out and started to create waves.  Manged to get at least a dozen blowups landing at least half of those with fish ranging from 2lbs to pushing 4lb.  Luc went one for three.  Losing two very good sized ones from bass breaking off on structure and the other on jagged boulders.  We had a short session less than four hours.  I was beyond satisfied and since my shoulder was acting up I didn't mind calling it early.   I left the fly for Luc to use on his next outing and promised to tie more for the next time.