A Monday flight left me with more than half a day of fishing time in Minneapolis, so a quick hour drive put me on the Snake near Pine City by 3PM. I hit the
canoe access below Cross Lake.
The river is VERY rocky and difficult to wade. Baseball to basketball sized rocks, very little silt to hold them in place and you can imagine how hard it is on the ankles! Such a great habitat for smallmouth is exciting to a fly fisher and the amount of crayfish I saw was startling.
I fished a crayfish imitation first thing and took a couple chunky smallmouth on an Orvis FullFlex 6wt 7' glass rod. But the wind was gusting hard to 20mph and I needed more line to control the casts. The pic above was taken on the way out after things died down. I went back to the car (no easy task) and switched to the Ross FlyStik that I'm reviewing. At 8' and 8wt, it's quite a lovely rod for $169 retail. The 6wt is excellent, but the 8wt was insanely great on this rocky creek.
Tan caddis were emerging and the crayfish fly wasn't really producing, so I stopped to watch for a while. I saw a couple real charges across the creek and realized the shiners were onto the size 18 caddis and the aggressive smallmouth were onto the shiners. It was easy to see what to do after that. I tied on a great new pattern the guys at the Illinois Smallmouth Alliance gave me a few weeks ago at their outing. It's a rabbit strip shiner imitation. A couple casts later...
Fish on!
I worked my way downstream for a few hours and took a couple more dandies...
The rod casts just great with awesome power combined with good delicacy. I used a new Fish Creek Hawg Hunter 8wt bass taper line from TL Johnson and the new Fish Creek reel. Very nice stuff, look for an upcoming review.
Another bent-rod shot. I love those!
Here's the creek again...
Joe C.
The river is VERY rocky and difficult to wade. Baseball to basketball sized rocks, very little silt to hold them in place and you can imagine how hard it is on the ankles! Such a great habitat for smallmouth is exciting to a fly fisher and the amount of crayfish I saw was startling.
I fished a crayfish imitation first thing and took a couple chunky smallmouth on an Orvis FullFlex 6wt 7' glass rod. But the wind was gusting hard to 20mph and I needed more line to control the casts. The pic above was taken on the way out after things died down. I went back to the car (no easy task) and switched to the Ross FlyStik that I'm reviewing. At 8' and 8wt, it's quite a lovely rod for $169 retail. The 6wt is excellent, but the 8wt was insanely great on this rocky creek.
Tan caddis were emerging and the crayfish fly wasn't really producing, so I stopped to watch for a while. I saw a couple real charges across the creek and realized the shiners were onto the size 18 caddis and the aggressive smallmouth were onto the shiners. It was easy to see what to do after that. I tied on a great new pattern the guys at the Illinois Smallmouth Alliance gave me a few weeks ago at their outing. It's a rabbit strip shiner imitation. A couple casts later...
Fish on!
I worked my way downstream for a few hours and took a couple more dandies...
The rod casts just great with awesome power combined with good delicacy. I used a new Fish Creek Hawg Hunter 8wt bass taper line from TL Johnson and the new Fish Creek reel. Very nice stuff, look for an upcoming review.
Another bent-rod shot. I love those!
Here's the creek again...
Joe C.
