bigmouth buff???? (help me dead head!)

[carpmanjake]

i finally made it up to fergus today.

and i saw a big bigmouth buff, easily over 20lbs. sitting in a slack water area. couldnt get it to bite.

afterward i saw many around 5lbs, but same story

can anyone give me tips on how to fish for, and catch bigmouth buffalo?

thanks!

[mainbutter]

Pray

These guys are primarily filter feeders and pretty notorious for being hard to get to bite. I wonder how many of the ones that are caught aren't just snagged in the mouth by accident.

[DEADhead]

was this one of the guys you were after? I can't give you much advice Jake except to ditch the bait and fish small nymphs like caddis or chironomid patterns. I don't know much about catching buffs with bait.

[Comit 2]

Just throw a small nymph up stream of the Buffalo so that it has time to sink to its mouth level, so the buffalo can suck it in. It's all a matter of timing.

That is the best I can do.

[ec30_06]

I catch both big mouth and small mouth buffalo on the MN river in the spring on crawlers.

[carpmanjake]

was this one of the guys you were after? I can't give you much advice Jake except to ditch the bait and fish small nymphs like caddis or chironomid patterns. I don't know much about catching buffs with bait.

looked to be a bit bigger than that. not sure though.

i was fishing with a few things, also spent quite a bit of time fly fishing.

i was fishing a size 12 scud type patterns for a while, but i couldnt quite get it to get down there. also fished a bunch of other nymphs ranging from size 12-8, with no love.

how do you know if you get a bite? as you can tell, im a complete newbie at fly fishing in current...

[DEADhead]

either fish an indicator or watch your line tip. If there's any resistance or a slight pause it's either your fly hitting the bottom (a good sign) or a potential bite. Gotta be quick on the reflex as the take is often subtle. Might need quite a bit of lead, especially due to the insanely high flows right now. I was fishing tungsten beadheads czech nymphs and still needed one or two additional splitshots to get my fly down, if that tells you anything. The current flow right now is typical for spring flows, even though there hasn't really been any melt entering the rivers yet. I'ts gonna be a another nasty spring...

[carpmanjake]

either fish an indicator or watch your line tip. If there's any resistance or a slight pause it's either your fly hitting the bottom (a good sign) or a potential bite. Gotta be quick on the reflex as the take is often subtle. Might need quite a bit of lead, especially due to the insanely high flows right now. I was fishing tungsten beadheads czech nymphs and still needed one or two additional splitshots to get my fly down, if that tells you anything. The current flow right now is typical for spring flows, even though there hasn't really been any melt entering the rivers yet. I'ts gonna be a another nasty spring...

ok, i was afraid to add extra weight, figured it would ruin the drift.

thanks! im probably not going to hit fergus again until the snow really starts to melt. i need to pick up a new fly rod and reel, as well as line.

[DEADhead]

there isn't much of a drift when flows are over a 1000 cfs down there, record for this time of year