Pickerel on the Fly!

[CMA719]

I realized that many of the posts that I make are about catfish, but we do a bit of fly fishing as well! We learned to fly fish and tie flies last year, and so far we were perfectly content fly fishing in streams for panfish and rock, smallmouth and largemouth bass.

I decided to introduce a new challenge for the kids-let's try for pickerel on the fly rods! We've caught some nice pickerel on spinning rods in the past, but haven't specifically targeted them with the fly rods.

We tied up some clouser minnows and wooly buggers over the past few weeks. Below is a picture. Theirs come out nicer than mine!




So we took a trip down to a spot where we knew there would be pickerel lurking, and were successful. What a blast pickerel are on a 5wt rod. These aren't lunkers by any stretch (some of them were the smallest picks we've ever caught) but what a fun day. I didn't get too many pictures because we were busy casting and catching, but 7 pickerel in all for the day.

Side note: we were very careful with them. They were out of the water for a minimum amount of time, did not touch the ground (we put the net on a towel when we put it down) and all of them were released unharmed. I taught the boys about the slime layer and how it protects the fish. I think it's good practice for them to get used to this for when we finally go forward with fly fishing for trout.





Thanks for looking!