A Banner Day At Rufus Woods!!!

3 of us set out from Bridgeport first thing in the morning. It was nice to be the first boat up the reservoir as the very first bit of morning light was starting to filter into the canyons. When we got to the net pens there were no other boats there until around 8 am or so....by that time we had caught 28 fish and the biggest was a fat one, a few ounces over 11 pounds.

The fish were still there and we were using the usual fish pellet flies, tied in a dark brown color pattern with just a tiny bit of the hook visible. This is probably the most important part of using these flies effectively as the fish are very smart from having seen many many different baits, hooks and lines in front of them. I leave just maybe a quarter to eighth inch of the hook bare. Any more of the hook exposed than that and it can make the difference of not getting even close to the number of fish that you could, (some of the first pellet flies I tied I had left more hook exposed and didn't get the results we get now). Other nice things about using this fly is that the fish do not get hooked deep, its very easy to take the hook out of the fishes lip because its barbless and you don't have to use up fishing time always rebaiting, just take the fish off and cast out again!!

There were a few stretches of time where it was taking me 3 - 5 seconds to get a fish to hit my fly. A few times I put the fly in the water and before I could even get set there was a fish on!! It was simply fabulous fishing!!

Another thing is to keep your line on the light side, we were using 3 and 4 lb. line and only broke off two fish in a 200 plus day of fishing. When your catching that many fish, breaking off a nice one is not really that big of a deal. One of my fishing buddies was using 8 lb. line and wasn't getting much at all till he sized down.

We left with 6 fish for the 3 of us and the smallest was 7lbs., 3 oz., a very nice day! There was a moon out at night but the clouds kept it pretty much hidden so that may be why it was better this weekend than last when the moon was very bright.