A beautiful day out there, winds under 6 mph at mid to upper 70s, bright clear blue skies!
One of the things that I've noticed is that when the fish inhale or sample the lure or bait, they have the opportunity to really get a feel for the material. General observations are that if it is not something organic they are immediately going to spit it out. If it is they may choose to really engulf it or just sort of hover with it in their mouth to continue the analysis. So my prior experiences with various things as lures or baits confirm this observation. I've been able to catch fish using a blade of grass on a hook if I presented it in the right way. Typically a nice slpash near a poised fish. The splash illicits a strike or investigation response.
Knowing this I've been trying out various materials available to me at low or preferably no cost in producing my own flies. So my initial experiences have been with using scrap sewing materials, yarn, bird feathers, and etc. Each of those had limited success both as dry and wet fly configurations. It is also my exploration into developing my fly tying skills with the various materials too.
Recently, I considered creating some hair jigs and flies. I figured I'd start with the flies first as those are smaller and easier. I was going to initially harvest some hair obtained from the dog's brush but found the length to be too short for me at my current skill level. Although I might revisit that sometime later. That led me to think about my hair, what little is there. I figured when I got a haircut, I'd retain some for making flies.
My initial construction technique was basic, just lash them on so it looks sort of like a streamer, nothing fancy. I quickly built up a half dozen on size 10 and 12 hooks. So I've got these bug looking hooks in an old spice jar. It would be some time till the conditions were appropriate for me to try them. The environment and the season have now come to where we have the sunfish in both pre and spawn conditions.
My fly fishing rig also needed to have some attention applied. The traditional length poles are just too long for me and my current use. Fortunately in the prior year I had purchased a short ultra-light pole for use with a spinning reel. Unfortunately the reel seat with this pole is the rudimentary slip ring setup. So I chose to retask it to a handy light weight fly rod. So with my new 3 weight line and a 4 foot ultra-light pole, we can go fishing!
The sunfish love seeing the lure splash near them. Most of them focus their attention immediately. Others that are more aggressive will charge the bait. Over the past few trips, I've found moving the bait slightly works to get them to commit to obtaining the bait. I had quite a few instances where they would suck it in their mouth and then blow it right back out. This compelled me to keep the line tighter with my rod tip down near the water's surface to minimize the response time for tensioning up on the strikes. So far that is working to my advantage. This afternoon's session is confirming that with more hookups in shorter timeframes. During my few minutes out there I was able to get just less than a dozen to shore.
One thing I've got to remember, those dorsal fins are sharp!
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