fly fishing

[letsgosioux93]

i was looking through the 2008 muskie/northern pics and saw that people where catching muskies fly fishing. where they really fishing for musikie?

[wildsmallie]

This one was caught intentionally on a fly last year. My biggest to date on a fly. I didn't measure it but it was around 48".

Its pretty hard to get one on a fly when you're trying, by accident would be really unlikely.

[letsgosioux93]

they must be alot harder to real in on a fly rod vs. a mormal rod

[mhedlund]

Its pretty hard to get one on a fly when you're trying,

You can say that again...dang nice fish you got there.

[TheHawgTrough]

Nice fish wildsmallie! Is that bunny strip fly?

I probably spend half my time musky fishing throwing flies. I think all together, I caught six last year on the flyrod. Early season in the Spring tends to be the best time for me and I can often out fish those throwing baits on a baitcaster. Best fly has been a Whister in either silver or gold.

[Ranckenstuff]

beautiful fish

[fishcast]

awesome fish bigsmallie! October? Metro area? Also wondering on the fly in its mouth?

Some of the fish you saw might have been mine, and I was definately fishing for them. The smallest size fly I threw for them was 6", and most of the time I was fishing 8 or 9 inch long flies tied on 4/0 hooks.

[wildsmallie]

The fly was a chartreuse rabbit strip tail deceiver thing that was around 8" long, tied with an extra wide strip. The fish would have probably eaten any other big fly. It was not a particularly nice looking fly, since I had tied it in about five minutes the morning I caught the fish on a 6/0 daichii hook.

It was late October on a popular metro lake. I had caught a number of pike that day, and had a couple of follows and one strike from a muskie. I was making my last pass of the day down a favorite weedbed when she hit. After a five minute tussle, she was done--I had readied my camera for a self timer while the fish was in the water. I got ahold of a gill cover, swung her in, and posed for the picture posted above. I did a quick check, the photo was good enough, and let her go.

The only bad thing was that I didn't have a beer with to celebrate, so I fired up the motor and put the boat on the trailer--I figured I wasn't likely to top that!

[letsgosioux93]

iv always wanted to try fly fishing so i might

[bisekb]

What weight fly rods do u recomed for this type of fishing, i do alot of trout fishing with a fly rod, and tie my own flies and have always wanted to start fishing muskies and pike with one. Im just curious to what you are using.

[-Marc V-]

I've fly fished for them over the past summer. I'd suggest either a 9wt or 10wt rod. I personally have a 10wt rod with Rio Clouser line (or had a 10wt rod until an airline lost it! - tick a guy off - different story).

I've heard of people using 9wts since some reels are designed to carry 8wt or 9wt lines, then switch out with a different spool. Thrify way of going about it.

Musky flies are usually larger, sometimes extremely wind resistant that need a bigger stick to toss them. Especially with any wind so larger is better in this case.

I've heard many musky fly heads speak of using full sink lines for musky, even with top-water flies. I could see the advantages. I always have at least a 15' removeable sink-tip added to the floating line, and often figure a full sink line would be a little more beneficial. I've tied some LARGE boilermakers/poppers for musky, and they sometimes skip off the water when I strip them viciously. When a sink tip is there, that tip falls beneath the surface and pulls the fly down somewhat when striping to create a loud, deep popping sound. A full sink line would help with the skipping off the water issue, but the sink tip seems to work mostly. Then a full sink would just help get those large streamers down a little deeper when not using topwaters.

When I outfitted for musky I was still stuck in the traditional trout mentaility of a fully floating line, and couldn't wrap my head around the need to a sink line. Just wasn't confident in going that route. May change it up if finances allow, but relatively low on the list at this point.

Just my 2 cents and what I now figure I would have done differently in hindsight.

[wildsmallie]

The heavier the better. I usually have 3 rods with, one each 10, 11, and 12. If you think a ten weight is a heavy rod, cast a #12 for a couple hours. You really need the heavier rod/line to move the big flies.

With a twelve, I can sling a big mop of a fly out with one or two backcasts.

My favorite fly rod for this is an 8' one piece that was actually built on a saltwater spinning blank. It casts a #11 pretty good. The best thing about it is that it is FAST like a spinning blank--there is almost no bend in the bottom half of the rod, even an extra fast fly rod will bend to the cork when you really load it up. With this rod, I can actually get a good hookset by lifting up with the rod, and don't have to rely on a strip-strike.

[TheHawgTrough]

I would use a 9 or 10 wt., but have gotten away with using a 7 wt. (Not recommended)

You'll need the heavier rod for pulling/keeping them out of the weeds.