Spring Iowa Largemouth Bass on the Fly

 

Iowa Largemouth on The Fly

 

Testing fly rods can sometimes be a tough gig, but I’ll take it.  We’ve been “testing” our new El Jefe Saltwater series for months now.  The verdict is in, and they are AWESOME.  That’s coming from anglers that fished top of the line gear for years.  I can compare our new El Jefe rods to some of the top brand name rods I still own.  I’m so proud of the quality of the gear my small family owned company brings to our customers.  

 

El Jefe Fly Reel

 

I’m super lucky that my Dad lives on a lake near Des Moines, and has a fishing boat.  We haven’t been able to get his boat in the water for around five years.  We both wanted to make sure his boat was working well before we headed out together, and today was the testing day.  We were both amazed that all the batteries were good to go.  I left Des Moines around 5:30am and was on the water around 6:30.  

 

El Jefe Eight Weight

 

Today, I fished our new El Jefe four section eight weight combo rigged up with 3X tippet and a handful of flies I tied up over the winter.  I’ll call our fly of the day The Creeper Worm.  It’s a pinkish color fly with a cone head using an incredible material I got from SpawnFlyFish.com.  Happy to share if you are interested, shoot me an email.  If you guys want to see a video of me tying this one up, let me know.  I‘m not a professional, but I do love tying.  

 

Creeper Fly

 

One of the positive/negative aspects of throwing smaller flies for bass is that you get to hook up with smaller fish.  What’s awesome about that is that smaller fish are super aggressive.  There is nothing better than panfish, bluegills, or sunfish on the fly rod.  If you haven’t targeted them on purpose, you are missing out.  We actually have some incredible 0-2 weight combos in production right now that will be top of the line for the price for sure. Here are a few of those beautiful fish for reference.

 

 

 

Green Ear Sunfish on the Fly

 

 

Giant Iowa Sunfish on the Fly

 

 

Panfish on the Fly

 

Back to the largemouth bass.  From my experience, fishing for largemouth bass from a boat on a lake is a great challenge.  You need to control the trolling motor, cast a long way to the shore, and strip effectively to entice the strike.  

 

Largemouth Bass on the Fly

 

What’s funny is these damn sun fish, which I love, keep nailing my fly.  Not joking, but I’ll bet I caught 50 of these things today.  They are beautiful fish, but I was about ready to start keeping them for a fish fry.  Why are 7 inch fish eating my 5 inch fly?  Stop it already!

 

This is not a small net!

 

My first largemouth bass came pretty early, he swarmed the fly and I was able to watch the take.  As most of you know, watching the take is a pretty cool thing when fly fishing.  Strip setting into them is essential vs setting the hook with the rod to avoid pulling the fly from their mouth.

One thing I’m proud of is that I’m tying my bass flies with barbless hooks.  I’m doing this for a couple of reasons, maybe not what you will think though.  I do this because they penetrate faster.  Yes, you need to maintain constant pressure, but a good angler will do this.  From my experience, large barbs on large hooks that we normally use for bass or even large streamers for large trout sometimes don’t penetrate fast enough to get the hook into the fish’s mouth.  Think about it.  Barbless hooks also are better for the fish and penetrate better, so win win.  Good news, I lost zero bass today.  

 

 

The next largemouth was a bit larger, this one came out of the shallows and inhaled the creeper worm.  I estimated it around 2 or 2.5 pounds.  

 

 

The next one was even larger, maybe 3 pounds.  This time it was a pretty cool situation.  You guys tell me, have you ever seen a bunch of small fish swarming a fly and miss, and ultimately have the largest fish come in later and eat the fly?  Never in the history of fishing does the larger fish get the fly, but it happened today. 

 

Iowa Largemouth Bass on the Creeper Worm

 

Then, if my largemouth bass fishing wasn’t good enough, I ended up hooking up with a couple of smallmouth bass.  What an incredible bonus.  

 

 

The great news today was that Dad’s fishing boat is up and running, bass are eating, and we are ready for our next adventure.  

 

Jeff Ditsworth, Owner of Pescador on the Fly

 

Until next time, tight lines my friends!

Jeff