Click on the above pictures to view close up photos.
The flys pictured above were made especially for Georgian Bay & are much larger than one would use in other places like Ohio. Georgian Bay fish like big lures & flies & the bigger the better.
If fly fishing is your thing you can not beat the Georgian Bay period.
I like to fly fish for big pike & smallmouth bass & largemouth bass.
I have yet to hook a muskie but have had a few of them scare me over the years.
I make & tie all of my own flies except for poppers.
It is a lot of fun to try them out.
I use nothing but five, six, seven, eight & nine weight Fenwick Feralite fiberglass fly rods from 7 1/2 to 9 foot long.
I use Pflueger Medalist reels that cost less than $40.00 & take five of them with three different line weights.
I have twelve different fly rods including expensive ones but like my vintage Fenwicks the best.
If you can find an Ugly Stick fly rod in six or seven weight eight & one half foot long they are great & hard to break.
They quit making them so they are hard to find.
They also make a nine foot 8/9 nine weight that is really strong & well made for a cheap fly rod but a bit on the heavy side.
A good bass bugger that can throw a big popper a long way eighty feet or more will have a field day on largemouth bass in The Bass Hole.
If you can throw a big nine weight rod & big wind resistant pike flies you can get all the big pike you want in the shallows when they come up out of the deep to feed but you have have to use a cable to keep them from biting you off.
I use 4 foot twenty pound mono leaders for Georgian Bay & tip it with a fifteen pound test braided wire cable & tie that to the fly eye with an s knot.
Tapered leaders are not required for this type of fishing so I just make my leaders out of Stren.
You have to re-tie after every hookup anyway just to be safe.
Get the book called Fly Fishing For Dummies to learn how to do that or anything about beginning fly fishing.
I only use a four to six foot leader when I use a cable or popper.
All of my fly lines have a bass bug or pike taper.
The fly line does all the work in fly fishing & not the rod or reel anyway.
I can cast any thirty dollar fly rod as well & as far as anyone using a thousand dollar rod.
It is not the rod so much as who is casting it.
Ugly sticks are the strongest rods made & they are made in China & cheap & a good buy for the money.
They are not the largest selling rod in the world for nothing.
You can double haul & shoot line with a broom stick if you know how to do it & the big 8/9 weight Ugly Stick will handle anything that swims including tarpon.
Fly fishermen are suckers for big money outfits & all that but the very best fly rod I own I bought for 27.99 at Walmart & it is a 7 weight made in China & has the name Ausable on it.
Fly reels do nothing so the Medalist is all anyone really needs.
I like heavy & strong fly rods that don’t break easy & could care less what they weigh or what the drag materials are made of or what experts say or try to convince you to buy so they can drive very nice cars & live in big fancy homes.
I bought a five piece rod for $235.00 that is guaranteed for life & that is a good thing because the tip on mine broke the first time I took it to Georgian Bay when I set the hook on a pike.
They made me pay $19.00 postage to send them the whole rod back & then they put a new tip section with it & sent it back to me all at my expense.
Why they didn’t just send me a new tip section for $3.00 is beyond me.
What good is a garuntee if you can buy a whole new rod at Walmart for what it cost for all the postage & shipping and hassle of mailing it all back & forth just for the hell of it.
Remember that if you fall for a Reddington Rod like I did. They claimed it cast as good as the thousand dollar rods & all that. My fiberglass rods cast much better than it does & specially with big heavy wind resistant flies.
At a company called Hook & Hackle that you can find on the inter-net has rods for $60.00 or less made in China that are ten times better than Reddingtons but they also sell them to if you want one.
Reddington is over hyped & priced in my opinion but well advertised for sure. Fiberglass rods were never fragile like the new composites called graphites but were more expensive to mfg. so they quit making them just for the sake of more profit margin. I used fiberglass rods for forty years & Fenwick was the very best & still is if you can find them. The Ugly Stick is the strongest & best selling rod in the world. Why? It has a fiberglass tip that will not break like graphite. Graphite tips break like tooth picks. Fiberglass tips do not. That is why they have to gauruntee expensive graphites for life. Who would buy one if they didn’t? Everyone I know has broken many of them at the tip & many have had ruined fishing trips because of that.
Some of the really expensive rods are really hard to break if you get one made for salt water like a Sage.
I do not use a cable for poppers for largemouth or smallmouth so I always take plenty in case the pike are hitting them which they usually are.
The cable is to heavy & sinks them & they are supposed to float.
Sometimes I will put a forty pound line in the eye & tie that to my twelve pound leader with an Albright Special Knot or will even double the tip of my line with a Bimmini Twist like salt water fishermen do & most pike or muskie will not bite through that unless they get it in the corner of their jaws.
You will need to learn all the fly fishing knots if you do not know them.
Especially the Albright Special to tie wire cable to mono.
Fly fishing off the islands in & around shoals can be fabulous at times & you can get some really big trophy bass & pike.
The smallmouth fishing is really good out there in the summer & six pounders are plentiful.
If you would like to warm water fly fish & you do not know how that book I mentioned called Fly Fishing For Dummies is a good place to start.
It is one of the best beginner books available. Has all the special knots & everything & flying tying basics for beginners including all the equipment you will need to get started.
It takes a long time to learn how to double haul & shoot line in order to sail big wind resistant flies with eight or nine weight rods but once you master that you can easily catch all the big fish you want in Georgian Bay or anywhere else as far as that goes including salt water.
You can lay poppers right on top of Lilly Pads & or in holes in the center of weed beds and they are deadly even when bass won’t take surface lures or live bait.
The water is clear in Georgian Bay so long accurate casts are a must & you must be able to do that in windy conditions as there is usually a good breeze on the water out & around the islands, rocks & shoals. I can throw big flies 80 feet up to 100 feet if there is no strong wind but most beginners are in the 40 to 50 foot range & that is not good in clear water.
I put pictures of the flies I use on my blog but I can tell you Wooly Buggers, Clouser Minnows & Deceivers are great on Georgian Bay smallmouth & easy to tie.
Out on the big water areas you can get out on small islands & cast rock piles & shoals walking around & the smallmouth fishing can be fabulous at times & many times schools of big pike will also come in close to these islands & shoals to feed.
Crawdad imatations can be deadly at times on smallmouth while big poppers seem to get more largemouth.
Six weights rods are great for tossing Wooly Buggers, Clousers & Deceivers if they are not to heavy or large.
If you are new to fly fishing the best all around rod is a 6 weight by 8 1/2 foot & you can use that for everything including pike up to twenty five pounds if you get them in dead water clear of weed beds.
I like to make epoxy flies on a wheel that resemble Rapalas & I make four to six inch long rabbit strip pike flies to throw on my nine weight.
I also have some Velcro minnows I make that murder pike in Georgian Bay.
Use white Velcro & then color them with markers to look like perch or Rapalas.
You can buy the good markers at stores for professional artist & they do not fade or come out in water.
A pure white or yellow or chatruse rabbit strip with a touch of red hackle up front with no weight works great as the wire leader takes it down anyway.
Sometimes all black with no red works well.
The big pike like really big flies that resemble the cisco or perch or small pike or walleye.
You can make pike flies out of white rabbit strips & then use markers to make them look like perch or ciscoes.
I also make pure maribou flies for pike where you wrap the maribou feathers like hackle & mix in orange, black & yellow gold that resembles perch colors.
Marabou flies are deadly if you know how to tie them & fish them.
Almost anything will work if you move it fast after it hits the water.
Indians used to catch all the pike they wanted with white cloth on a hook.
I use a stripping basket in my boat when I stand up & fly cast for pike.
You have not lived until a 25 pound pike has grabbed a fly & took off.
Checkout Fishing Jones a very good source for fly fishing blogs & good information.
If you live in Ohio here are a list of fly fishing clubs you can join to learn how to tie your own flies & cast fly rods.
These people love to show newcomers how to do things & they also like to display their skills that took them years to master.
Fly fishing is different & really takes a lot of practice & hard work to master but well worth it in the end.
You will feel very proud when you get proficient at it.
You could never master or learn everything about it in a lifetime & that gives you something to do in the boring off season.
Practice Fly Casting At Your Local Ponds Which Is The Only Real Way To Learn How!
