A Day on the Water

I have been working for over a decade on getting a good walk the dog action into surface and sub surface flies.  I've got it with this Bullet Dog pattern. On this kind mid November afternoon, I made one last trip to Point Mouillie SGA hoping to get another top water shot at some of the big Pike and Bass in the shallow weedy water there.  The lily pads and cattails are all dead.  I  started in a narrow pass that holds big fish.  The water was muddy from all the  duck hunters motoring back and forth  through there.  I...

I had a 3 day weekend with family on the far northeastern coast of Michigan.  I tried the Thunder Bay River Dam, the Charlevoy Dam and the AuSable River Mouth Pier. I fished three half days trying 6 spots with only one fair hooked king salmon landed.  It took a Glo-Pink headed 1/32 ounce size 6 jig tied with olive marabou tail with rubber legs embedded in a dubbed thorax.  In past seasons, I got some steelhead and a couple of Cohos on this pattern, it has a history of taking one fish after I have been futilely pounding the...

Fished Belleville and Hudson lakes Thursday evening and Friday Afternoon and evening.  Bass were hitting the 5/0 Chartreuse Bullet Dog fished maximum force rips so it tore up the surface making Pop, Chug, Slashing noise as well as darting randomly of at sideways angles or downward plunges.  I was trying to bring up a fall Musky which are stocked in both lakes.  I saw no fishermen and got two 12  inch and 2 15 inch smallmouth on Belleville Lake.  Many more bass some bigger hit or rushed the big floating diver.  This 18 inch bass from Hudson Lake has a...

I tied up 3/0 and 4/0 Bullet Dog Walk the Dog Prototypes.  The 4/0 Bullet Dog is not available now.  It had better action and once it warmed up enough, it became very popular with pike.  It got a small bass and maybe got hit by 3 pike, the.  The last pike was bigger than average and hit in a thicket of stout cattail stumps.He tangled the leader badly.  I could see him in the clear shallow water.  He had enough space to keep lunging violently against the tangled leader and he cut the 40lb bite leader. I will tie...

My Brother In Law, an accomplished photographer, and canoeist accompanied  me to photograph and video the action of some fly lures and get some bass and pike hits at higher zoom than my cellphone videos.  He got this great series of still shots of the 6/0 Banana Dog, sashaying across the surface Left, Right, Left.  Amazingly, nothing was there to blow it up in the lily pads where we tried it.     5 6 7  10  12  13 You can see it turns to one side with a short crisp strip.  Its sideways position in the water sets it up...