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04/28/13

fly fishing hawaii:

more of the same... good friends and good fly fishing hawaiian style.

 

this past week was almost a carbon copy of last week (which was pretty up there on the fun meter).  weather around here seems to be getting more stable as spring rolls on making the fish trend toward the happier side.  still some fronts and rain around but it seems like it is decreasing.  hopefully april showers will bring may flowers. 

 

on wednesday i fished the lake with doug and his cousin stan from seattle.  stan had never been on the lake and it was the only way i could get doug up there again (he’s not that into lake fishing).  the lake had come up six feet or so since the previous friday when i fished it last.  we fished mainly for red devils as the guys like to sight fish.  we caught a bunch of devils and i got a peacock that looked like it was a spawner or at least looking to spawn.  then we found out first hand why the water level had increased.  we absolutely got pounded by rain.  the lake is known to bomb rain but i have not experienced that kind of a deluge in a long time.  we stuck it out and after a while it cleared up for a little bit and we got a few more cracks in before the late afternoon rains came to finish us off.  a good day but i could have done without the soaking of absolutely everything in the boat.  you know what i say... sometimes like that.

 

on friday it was a bonefish quick hitter.  the full moon on thursday brought the big fast tide this past week.  the flats go from dry as a bone to ragin’ cajun, helm’s deep in just a few hours.  the up side of this tide is that sometimes the bones will come in hungry with the big push.  the down side is that the window to get on them is small and sometimes the bones won’t come on the flat until the tide is almost too high to see them.  but you’ll never know unless you go.  i used my fiberglass 7wt. as i have been doing more sight fishing lately and i love that old stick for sight fishing.  on that i used, what else, the abel switch reel which i use all the time now as do the few other guys i’ve gotten to give it a try.  doug and i decided to walk around and take turns taking shots at fish.  something we like to do every once in a while.  the fish were coming on the push of the tide but for whatever reason weren’t  that bitey.  we encountered many disinterested fish, but it was nothing either of us hadn’t seen before.  doug got the stink off by catching a whitey (trevally)  that grabbed his fly while a rather disinterested bone was sort of on it.  we both thought he had hooked the bone for a fraction of a second before realizing what had actually happened.  pretty neat and what i would call "how exciting".  i have to say, i was a little bummed because i love hooking trevally but so far this year have not caught that many on the fly.  we pressed on and squeezed out a few bones from the “not biting” population we faced.  we lost a number of bones that simply popped off because they weren't hooked well.  a common symptom of fish that are not that aggressive.  then, right before we left, a little gift from the gods.  i was fooling around with this new fly i tied that morning and bammo!  a nice whitey of my own.  needless to say i was super stoked.  for me there is nothing better than a fly fresh from my twisted mind, coming right off the vise and getting a smash of approval.  i’ll see you on the water.

 

 

stan's first devil on the lake.

 

a rare picture of doug and a devil... the boy's just not that into it.  as our other buddy harold would say, he is "strictly for the bones!"

 

here's a guy that is more from the school of "have flyrod(s) will cast at anything".  especially with a sweet... sweet bamboo rod.

 

got this peacock using the sage bass II 230gr., abel classic...

 

and a "reef special" like fly i call the "parrot".

 

before the rain annihilated us we caught a bunch of devils including a few doubles.  two humpheads.  moldy devil on the left and a nice clean one on the right (i don't like the moldy devils).

 

doug even got a black devil.

 

another double and, i think, a new devil lover.

 

perhaps one day i will write the difinitive blog on devlin' and my love for it.  but, for now, it is back to this past friday and salt...

 

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