First Of 2018

Area - LK - Tributary

Wade/Float - Wade

Water Level - KSB; Fairdale @ 2.45ft.

Water Temp - 50.06

Clarity - Crystal Clear

Fly/Spin - Fly

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Is Winter over yet?

Good God!!! What an awful Spring this has been.

I think it has snowed like 3 times this week leading up to this outing. No kidding!

Grabbed my fly rod and a box of flies that I spent a few hours putting together, and headed out to the creek. As I approached the creek, I must say that I was very happy to see the creek running clear. I was probably 25 yards away and could see rocks on the creeks bed. The plan for the day was to fish a fly I had tied that is suppose to mimic the tube that I use with the spin gear. I fished hard and I fished long without any luck. The fly I had tied wasn't working so I switched over to a Clouser Minnow. Again nothing. I was beginning to feel desperate so I tied on a new Blockhead Popper I tied up. I made about 5 casts with the Blockhead and I just kind of felt silly. A smallmouth isn't going to take a popper off the top this early in the year. Throwing a popper this early in the season is like wearing flip flops when you shovel snow from your driveway. Getting back to the outing.... I have been out wading in the creek now for 4+ hours and I don't have a damn fish to shoe for it. On my way back I ran into a couple fishing buddies (Ted & Jim) and they were telling me of what success they had run into. Really??!!! Ends up a non-weighted streamer in a dark color, cast up-stream and allowed to drift naturally down-stream without any strips, was the hot. So the few hours I spent putting together my selection of flies for my fly box the night before ended up being a big waste of time as for some stupid reason I didn't add those flies to my selection. I even tied some up the day before. Anyway. I ended up tying on the tube fly again and fished it in the same manner as described above. and picked up my first smallmouth of the 2018 season.

A nice 17 1/4" smallmouth.....