First Fly Outing on Smith for the Kentucky Spots

Monday was my first trip this year for me to fish for the Kentucky Spots using the fly rod on Smith Lake. I started out using a size 4 Boggle Bug in dark turquoise on my 4 wt. After a few minutes of casting I discovered that the size 4 popper was a little too much bug for the 4 wt because it required to much effort to get the distance I wanted. I had my 5 wt with me but it was rigged with a cream Wooly Bugger. I usually fish the size 4 Boggle Bugs with the 5 wt, but I needed the backbone of the 5 wt for the Buggers, to help with hook set. With all that said I lost the lone Spot of the morning on the turquoise popper, and never got to stretch the leader again with that fly. The top water action was not happening so I decide to go to the Wooly bugger and a Craw. I did manage to land two Spots using a cream bugger and the other three spots was landed using a unique craw pattern tied by Pat Cohen from the blog Warm Water Journal. This craw is amazingly life like, and will be one of my top producing flies this season. Pat ties some exceptional flies and this pattern is just one of many he ties. The spots in this lake feed heavily on crawfish and this fly is the perfect imitation to entice big hits. The down side of this whole trip was the fact I only got to fish an hour, because my crack battery went out. I have learned over the years if you own a boat, there is always something that is going wrong with it, and today was an example.

Good fight on the 5wt--the lake is super clear so this spot had no trouble seeing the Craw. I expect to land some larger Spot using this fly.

This Craw pattern is going to be a winner on this lake for me, because the bass have not seen anything like this pattern before

The Tornados That Hit Our State

Needless to say I didn’t accomplish my goal of landing 100 bluegills during the month of April. The horrendous Tornados that hit Alabama this past week put an end to my quest.  I must say I have never seen destruction like my family and I have seen this past week. It all started Wednesday morning with the start of over 100 tornados that pounded the state all day and into the night. Power is not restored as of yet to most of the state, and parts of the state will not have power restored for weeks. The subdivision that my family and I live in lost electricity Wednesday morning and was not restored until Friday night. Our area escaped with some minor damage such as trees down and power lines down. We feel very blessed that we survived all three tornados that came our way and pray and feel for all those that lost family and all their belongings. You don’t realize how precious life is until you go through and experience something like we witnessed and went through this past week.  I am sure most of you have seen the destruction and damage through the news media, but for those of you who may have missed the footage the videos below show the actual events.