Spent some time this morning at the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Reserve. It's been six weeks or so since I've been there and figured it was time for another visit. I planned to try out some "sqwirm worm" flies that I've been tying of late. I found instructions for tying this fly on the internet: http://www.laflyfish.com/flies/sqwirm-worm.php For a long time now I've been looking for a fly that would act in the water the way a plastic worm does. Plastic worms are deadly on largemouth bass using spinning equipment but are too heavy to fling with a fly rod. I bought the materials for tying these sqwirm worms and managed to produce a dozen or so. Mine are pretty rough, as I don't have access to my fly tying tools where I happen to be right now. I had to tie these flies without a vise to hold the hook, or a bobbin to hold the thread or even a good pair of scissors. Nevertheless, I managed to produce some flies that might work on some gullible bass.
When I arrived at Lox this morning, the wind was already gusting in from the northwest. I started out throwing a plastic worm with spinning tackle just to gauge how active the fish would be. On my first cast a fish grabbed the plastic worm, then let it go when I began to reel it in. This fish was probably a bluegill or warmouth. These fish can suck in one end of a plastic worm but have mouths too small to swallow the hook that the worm is attached to. So I quickly switched to one of my fly rods, which was rigged with a tiny green popper. The fish that went after the much bigger plastic worm weren't interested in that small fly. I switched to a heavier fly rod and a much bigger popper. I cast that popper right up against the water hyacinth floating up against the bank. Pretty soon some bass started hitting it. I caught about half a dozen, which encouraged me to give the sqwirm worm a try. These things don't float on the surface the way a popper does. They begin to sink immediately but if you start retrieving the line in short jerks you can make it look like a tiny snake. Before long, a couple bass went after the sqwirm worm, just as they had the larger popper.
Around 12:30 I turned around and allowed the wind to push my kayak back south along the canal toward to the boat launch where I'd put in earlier. I let the sqwirm worm trail behind the boat and caught several more fish, including a bluegill, over the next half hour or so.
We had another cold front come through last night and the air was much cooler and drier this morning. This usually turns off the fishing. Not today, though. Biggest fish I caught was around 12 inches but I had pretty good action most of the time I was out there. Best part was catching fish on a fly I had tied myself.
Video from this morning's trip can be seen at:
http://youtu.be/jI0OLq6gTtI
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