Bass on the Fly

First of all I'll be honest, I did use a boat this weekend. That is if you call a leaky 10 ft rectangular piece of metal a boat. The goal of my day trip was to catch largemouth on my 5wt fly rod.  I only had one fly on hand (black wooly booger) so I did my best to make it work.  The beauty of using a fly setup for these bass is that it's very effective on these lockjaw winter bass.  All I did was let the fly sit suspended around cover and twitch it every once in a while.  The result was 7 bass in a matter of a couple hours. None were anything to write home about, but tons of fun nonetheless. Plus a 1 pound bass on a small fly setup with a very light tippet is plenty strong enough to give you a good fight.  Next time I'll be more prepared with more flies to try, but my little wooly booger worked just fine for this trip.

      Many people seem to have the misconception that fly fishing is all about expensive gear and usually only done for trout in mountain streams, but this is completely untrue.  You don't need the most expensive Orvis gear complete with fancy vests and nets, and you can fly fish for just about any species that swims.  A simple inexpensive starter combo bought at Walmart will get you where you need to be as a beginner.  Also, YouTube can teach you just about anything you need to know to learn how to start (casting, flies, etc). I'm no expert by ANY means, but I do manage to take my bass pro combo out and have plenty of fun catching fish in a way many never try. So if you're getting bored with catching 'em on conventional tackle, give fly fishing a try.