Bass flies

[Dryrod]

[center][cool][font "Poor Richard"][#008058][size 4]What fly[ies] have you found to be most effective when bass fishing?[/size][/#008058][/font][/center]
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[TubeDude]

[cool][#0000ff]Hey, DR, I have never found a fly that bass would NOT hit at one time or 'nother. That being said, the same rules apply to bass flies as trout flies. Serve 'em up something that resembles a primary forage item and you will usually do better.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]The two major food items in the diet of most basses are minnows and crawdads, depending on the size of the fish. Small bass eat anything they can get their mouth around, including lots of aquatic insects, but the bigger ones go for larger items.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Besides the customary poppers and hair bugs, I like to take a few streamers and wooly buggers to any bass water I target. Streamers in whites, golds and silvers, on sizes 4 through 4/0 hooks, will usually represent whatever forage fish is most common at the time. Buggers in black, brown, olive or purple will usually do a good job of imitating small crawdads or big water bugs.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]So much for "matching the hatch". Bass are notorious for smacking "attractor" patterns too. Red and white, blue and white, black and chartreuse, yellow, yellow and red...there are a lot of bright colors that bass will hit with a vengeance.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Probably some of the most exciting fly fishing for bass comes during the summer, when the dragon flies are flitting around the shallows. Lots of bass chase them around, just under the surface, and leap clear up out of the water to try to snatch them out of the air. Those bass are usually not the largest in the lake, but what they lack in size they make up for in spunk. Slap a decent dragon fly imitation on the water, anywhere near one of them, and the strike will be memorable.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Whenever you find bass herding threadfin shad, or other minnows along the bank, it is usually a "gimme" if you can lay a streamer along the edges of the fleeing bait. And, if you are lucky enough to find yourself within casting distance of a "boil", where bass are attacking a school of baitfish on the top of the water, you can catch a fish per cast until the predators go back down. Use poppers or streamers. But, a white/crystal bugger will usually get the job done too.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]During the cold months of late fall and early spring, there is no topwater action. Then you get out the sinking lines, or at least a sink tip, and drag a big ugly black zonker or wooly bugger right on the bottom. Tie them with mono weed guards and fish them slow. The take will usually not be much more than a "rubber band" feel, so you need to strip through your fingers and stay in tune with what is going on down there.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]How's that?[/#0000ff]
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[Dryrod]

[cool][font "Poor Richard"][green][size 4]Hi there TubeDude - wow! ask and yea shall receive. Thanks for the detailed report. Hopefully other interested FFM&W will find this information quite useful.[/size][/green][/font]
[font "Poor Richard"][green][size 4]Heard you all got a taste of winter the other day. Time to put skis on your float tube. [/size][/green][/font]
[font "Poor Richard"][green][size 4]Take care.[/size][/green][/font]
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[TubeDude]

[cool][#0000ff]We have had a couple of "dustings" of the white stuff, but the fishing in some of our trout ponds is really turning on. Strawberry Reservoir is seeing the big cutts and some rainbows returning from the deep water to shallow shoreline areas. This is the time of year you can wear out your rod arm on fish that average two or three pounds, and go up to five or six.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]By the way, I don't let a little snow slow me down when I wanna go tubin'. Here's a link to a post I put up around the first of January this past year. [url "http://www.bigfishtackle.com/cgi-bin/gforum/gforum.cgi?post=178414;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;forum_view=forum_view_collapsed;;page=unread#unread"]TUBE SLEDDIN'[/url].[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]I have never been accused of having an excess of common sense.[/#0000ff]
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