Tying Bender

Finally, a weekend all to  myself.  Since I lead such an exciting life I pretty much stayed in all weekend and tied flies.  Alaska is only 4 months away so I need to get cracking.  It may seem like that is a lot of time but warmer weather is right around the corner and soon I will be chasing walleye after work and everything else on weekends.

Before I got started I made up quick trip to Schultz’s Outfitters to pick up some more pink.  They also got some of the new waterproof Plan D articulated fly boxes so of course I had to buy one and fill it.  I really like these boxes.

Once that was full it was on to filling a regular old Plano box.  Not as fancy but it serves its purpose.

Here are a few close ups of some of the flies.

More to come.  Still need to tie up the top water stuff for the Rainbows, Grayling and Coho’s.

I’m Back

Hello everyone, sorry for the long absence.  I had a lot of stuff to deal with in my personal life and I really didn’t feel like writing.  With the weather being all over the place as well I wasn’t doing any fishing.  I did tie some flies (more on that later) but for the most part I just kept to myself.  Now that Spring is close by, even though we got 5-8 inches of snow yesterday, it’s time to start thinking about a new season.

A few weeks back I attended a meeting of The Downriver Walleye Federation.  The guest speaker was Ali Shakoor, fisheries biologist and walleye tournament pro.  I was hoping he would get more into the numbers and science of our local walleye population.  He did and he pretty much shut down some of the stupid theories I hear every year on where the walleye are.  The one thing he did mention, that really surprised me, was that the estimated population of walleye for Lake Erie was over 100 million fish.  That’s right, 100 MILLION.  That is almost triple what the estimated population was just a few years ago.  This harkens back to the days of the late 80’s and early 90’s when fish were everywhere, creel limits were 10 a day and just about anyone could catch them.  I couldn’t believe it so I did some digging and I found a few articles that backed up the claim.

http://www.toledoblade.com/MattMarkey/2017/12/25/Lake-Erie-headed-for-another-walleye-fishing-boom.html

This is shaping up to provide some epic fishing for the next 10 years.  I’m curios to see if they will increase the daily limits for Michigan this year.  They probably will for Lake Erie but the river will more than likely stay the same.  No big deal for me.  I can only eat so much walleye anyways.  Some of my handlining friends who have to travel a bit may be doing a lot of catch and release this year.  All those throwbacks we had last year will now be legal.  I could have days where I limit out in minutes.

Steelhead

Not much to report on this.  Winter froze up the Huron early and then blew it out with an early thaw.  As I type this the playground at Huroc Park is underwater.  It’s gonna be awhile.  Early catches on some of the northern streams are giving me high hopes for a good Spring Season.  There may even be an early trip up to the north shore of Lake Superior.

Flies

As I said earlier I have been tying a fair number of flies.  I have to, I have a trip to Alaska in August and I need to tie up a bunch of big stuff in mostly pink and fuscia.  When I have them all done I’ll dedicate a blog entry to everything tied.  I’m also tying up a bunch of articulated streamers for my home waters to catch some Smallmouth, Largemouth and Pike.  They have been a learning experience, so many materials all crammed into one pattern.  Hope they catch something.

After this I don’t think I could go back to tying a #16 Adams.

 

That’s it for now.  The way things are going I’ll be walleye fishing in a couple of weeks.  Once daylight savings kicks in I’ll start steelhead fishing after work.  I can actually leave at 5 every day now with my new job.  My boss even told me I can come in earlier or later if I want to work around fishing.  Got to appreciate that.