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07/15/12

fly fishing hawaii:

ultralighting the lake and (of course) still more summer fun.

 

as you all know from the last blog, i’ve been busy holding down the fort while sean was on, and recovering from, another epic trip to christmas island.  i often get asked when is the best time to fly fish here.  my answer is always the same, “whenever you can”.  this doesn’t always go over so well with the question asker, but it is the truth.  i am always acutely reminded of this whenever sean is away and i’m left “holding the bag” so to speak.

 

true to my word, i got in some dinner and dunking sessions after closing the shop on a few days.  no bites except for one super small hammerhead that matt caught and a big strike that roy took and lost.  for me, even though i caught absolutely nothing and it was dunking with bait,  it was still fishing.  that along with good food and good company was enough to feed the need and get me through the week.  one evening we even got treated to a post fourth of july fireworks show... how can you beat that?

 

then last sunday, i shot up to the lake with craig in the late afternoon after he finished work (what was that about whenever you can?).  in the rush to get up there, craig forgot his reel for his sage bluegill rod.  that left him with only a sage spl 181-3 center axis one weight.  the sage spl center axis rods were these cool ultralight trout rods that had a modified 3100 reel that could be screwed directly into the handle of the rod.  i just happened to have brought my sage 3710-3 txl 3wt. and a sage 3100 reel that i haven’t used in a while.  both of these rods were predecessors of the current sage txl-f line of rods.  since craig didn’t have a bigger rod i told him that we would just go ultralight and use the 1 and 3weights.  super light rods like these are made for small stream trout fishing.  they are great fun for red devils and peacocks as well but they do have drawbacks.  it can be a bit tricky making long casts in the wind with these types of rods as they were not designed to do that.  also,  the size and weight of fly that these little sticks handle well is very limited.  they perform best with tiny almost weightless dry flies.  not always the ticket on the lake.  we fished size 8 to 10 flies less than an inch long with tiny beadchain eyes and had a blast hooking red devils, bluegills, and the small peacocks that were willing to eat our tiny offerings.  could we have caught more and bigger fish with five or six weight rods and a little larger and heavier flies?  probably.  would we have had more fun than we did on the lake that afternoon... probably not.

 

sean finally returned to work (somehow the shop survived his absence) and i got to get out for a quick switch bone session on friday.  the tides this past week were of the raging bull variety and by the time we got out on the water the tide was already pretty up there and rising by the minute.  doug and i are not early morning fishermen by nature.  in fact, my belief in this regard is that i work hard at becoming a good fisherman so i don’t have to go early.  anyway it was another fun albeit short session with the boyz and i did manage to get into some “blog”  fish before we were drowned off the flat.

 

that’s pretty much it for now but stay tuned.  i have the proverbial “big plans” for the upcoming week.  i’m not going to say what... but i think i hear kauai calling.  i’ll see you on the water.

 

when fishing sometimes you just gotta get lucky... how lucky was this?

 

craig started the afternoon off with a one weight sage 181-3 spl center axis, a small peacock, and a blueg (bluegill).

 

peacocks like this will put a nice bend in a three weight fly rod.

 

later craig and i switched rods and sight fished some devils.

 

this was the first time i ever fished a sage center axis rod... pretty nice.

 

craig was also able to do some damage with the sage 3710-3 txl three weight.

 

ultralight lake double.

 

then it was back to the beulah switch rod and the bones of summer...

 

and this guy.  weke (goatfish) are pretty tough little creatures and are always welcomed.

 

the best time to fish is always whenever you can.  good times.

 

clay.   


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