After my salmon fishing trip to Scotland, I was talking to some friends who like to fly fish.  Craig Tucker decided to tie some salmon flies for Edward,my son in law and my host in Scotland. Fly tying is an art, I think, just like painting . The result is just as beautiful. Here is a photo of the box of flies.

He also enclosed a page describing each fly and some info on how they originated. Here is the page:

You will note that on the lower right of the page is a fly that Craig designed that he named “The Metcalfe”. It is gorgeous.  He sent a photo but the file size is larger than the Bitespot will take. I think all the flies are beautiful and I encouraged Craig to tie some to put in the next Greenville Arts Council art show.  He will win for sure.

I was back fishing at the Private Hole at 12:05 this afternoon. Recency bias, doing again what worked last time, had me going clockwise around the hole rather than counter clockwise as I usually start.  I have started to try different baits for a short while and if there are no results quickly change to something else. A 5-XD, a shaky head, a red eye shad were tried but nothing. The DT-6 caught one on its first cast, albeit a small one. It caught another after a few minutes but then hit a dry spell that lasted halfway around the hole. The other baits came out but couldn’t change things. Not even one bite. The 5-XD came out at the spot where I usually start and it started going on. I started out deep and caught one on the first cast. Another on the second, and on the third I could see two fish trying to take the bait out of the mouth of the one that was hooked. NOW !  The fish were not any tight eyes either. I was scared of getting hung on a log that is deep in that spot but the fish were so close to it I just hoped I would be lucky and not get hung up. The fish kept biting and finally I found the log. Of course when the fish are biting like that, I took no chances and set the hook when I felt something. Set it so hard I squeaked the drag. I eased over to the spot and since it was 14 feet deep I used my lure retriever on the rope. After working with it, the bait finally came loose and I had a tangle of rope and fluorocarbon line.  I eased off the spot to get back in action. This is a photo of the retriever.

The neat part about it is you can insert the line into those loops on the top without taking anything loose . It saved the 5-XD twice today. When I returned to the action it had subsided somewhat. I decided to go at it from a different direction.  Sometimes that works to get things cranked off again. The bass in the Private Hole move around a lot so when I came at the spot from a different direction I covered  some new water too.  It worked and I started catching them again. Finally they really did quit in the deep, or went somewhere else, so I moved to the shallow. I threw the red eye shad into some shallow water and started out when I got what I thought was a bite. I set the hook and had it coming but it was feeling more and more like a stick. A  3 1/4 pounder jumped right at the boat  to dispel the stick idea. On the way back around the hole I threw a DT-6 by a log sticking up in 20+ feet of water and got a bite. When  set the hook the line quickly broke. Luckily the DT-6 floated up and was recovered. After tying it back on, I tried the log again and to my surprise got another bite. It ran toward the boat so fast it was hard for me to keep up but I was able to, and good thing, 5 pounds even. After trying the good spot again and catching nothing I called it a day at 5:00. The total was 21 bass with a 3-4, a 4-7, a 4-0, a 4-3 and that FOD 5-0.  No water Mexicans today but I was sharing the hole with a big gator. I was lucky that I went the wrong way because the fish would have probably not been at the good spot when I was.

I arrived at the Private Hole shortly after lunch Tuesday to find it covered with leaves. The wind blew them mostly to one end, which was a help, but fishing in leaves is tough because, if the leaves are thick enough, they hang on your hooks on almost every cast. I put the battery in the boat but the trolling motor would not run. The squirrels had cut into the wire in several places but it did not appear to be completely cut into. After taping the cuts, wiggling the connections, and checking the battery connections, I still couldn’t get it to run. Finally in desperation, I turned the foot switch on and off about 20 times and it ran. Not only did the rodents cut the wire but they chewed on any part of the motor that was plastic. Once I set sail, I pulled out a topwater and got a strike on the first cast, from a bream.  After seeing a topwater was not going to work, I put on a DT-6. Not too long after I put on the DT-6 I caught the first bass.  It was in a spot where you used to  could sit in the same spot and catch 20 but I could not get another to bite.  If they were too lazy to chase a crank bait then they might hit a worm, so I got out a Texas rigged worm and caught 3 or 4. The bites were hard to detect because they were so light. After the worm fishing slowed I tried a XD-5. I was pulling it fast when I hit a deep log. Thinking at first it was a bite, I set the hook and the bait ricocheted off the stump and stopped. When I caught up to it with the reel there was a fish on. Some of the fish looked to me that they would weigh 3 pounds but I had to laugh at myself because four I weighed were 2-13. That seems to be my favorite weight.  I put on a 1/4 ounce Red Eye Shad to fish some shallow water and caught the FOD a 4 – 8 with a 6 1/2 pound head and a sunken belly. A pretty good drought was next until I went to the other side with a DT-6 and caught a few where the wind had positioned them. The snakes are still out because  I saw a water moccasin, water Mexican, as Hal calls them swimming across the hole. If you go to the woods you still have to watch your feet. As the mosquitoes came out I quit with 14 fish. Most were the 2-13 size except the FOD and a few of this years spawn that have grown to 9 inches long.