Thank God for Panfish!!!

I had to find a way to get my fly line tight, after dealing with the hassles of life. Work, home life just wears a good man down. Also, my roof needed to be resurfaced, so I had to get my dogs out of the house. The best way to conquer this situation was to head up to the Sierras with my best fishing buddies. There I could recon some smaller streams, hoping that they would not be totally blown out from the spring run off. All of the rivers in Northern Cali are flowing strong. The trick is the find a stream where a fly guy can get their fly down to where the fish are. I headed up to the Tahoe National Forest in search of such a place. The first stop was Sagehen Creek. The best thing that happened to me here on this day, was that I found some Eagle Feathers and some Rabbit fur for future Fly Tying. The flow from the creek was just too fast for me to have any type of success, so me & my buddies moved on. Our next stop was the Lil’ Truckee River. Again, with the high flows it was impossible to try to get your flies down to the level of the fish. Disappointed me & my buddies headed home, with memories of slack lines and missing flies. The next day I continued to have the urge for fly fishing and tight lines. Also, I wanted to test the state of my float tube. I figured that I could spend a couple of hours at Mather Lake to satisfy my urges. Hell, it is just around the corner and the previous outing that I had there, I believed I found where there might be a Bass friendly meeting place To make a long story short, my observations of that fishy area at Mather provided correct. The one thing I realized was that I needed to use a size 14 -18 fly. Poppers seemed to work the best. The one with the most success was this green lil’ popper that was given to me by one of my bros at the Granite Bay Fly casters For the first time in my fly casting life, I felt that I was out fishing the conventional anglers on the lake. They were using baits, spinners, or lures to entice a bite. Hell, to me using poppers is a lot like using a jig, but I had tight lines. The funny thing is that the smaller Blue Gills fought harder than the Bass. Oh well, chalked that as a lesson learned. And for the record, I tallied 8 fish that I was able to bring up to my tube (6 Blue Gills and 2 Bass). Also, I found out that the tube indeed had a slight leak. I figured that I will give those streams about a month in a half to two months before the flows slow down to acceptable levels for me to hook into some trout. Then I can provide more Sierra fly fishing tales