Captain

RULE #5 - Choices Sometimes it's better "to have" (new reel) than it is "to hold" (ill woman). Of course you could "have" that new Curado and "hold" that pillow while you're sleeping on the couch.

I also have a "mad money" account for extra stuff. It works great! No feeling guilty about buying countless bags of worms or new rods. I think the important thing is to keep the trust. As someone once said, "where there's no trust, there's no love". My grandfather has a different approach that he has always used. He pays cash for everything and then puts the item in "hiding" for a bit. Then when he does get it out and is interrogated, he says truthfully "oh, I've had that thing for a while". Once he didn't want to wait to play with one of his new video editing gadgets, so he actually scratched it and spray painted it like one of his old ones to confuse granny. He brags about that and other creative tactics, but what's funny is that Grandma knows he does it and just plays right along with him laughing behind his back. Good woman, they sure don't make em like that anymore!

Amen - CATCH AND RELEASE!! I grew as many did keeping everything. Now the notion makes me sick. Just the other day, I was loading my boat and a guy on the bank was bragging what all he'd caught. One of the fish was a smallmouth and that really got my attention since I rarely see them anymore on many of the local waters. I said "You caught a smallmouth here?". He said sure did, I'll show it to you. He proceeded to pull it out of a bucket that he was throwing ALL of his fish in. I let him know exactly how I fealt about it and he just stood there with his jaw hanging down. There are few things that I am more passionate about than fishing and sometimes it comes through. We could all do better without the attitudes of a lot of people - who cares about the fish population, etc. "I'll just fish somewhere else and leave my trash there too". It just makes me sick. Enough ranting, just had to share my thoughts!

A ton of fun! I catch a ton of bluegill and bass on a john's hopper imitation or something similar. I prefer a more natural approach when using the fly as opposed to a bright popper. I have recently caught a couple 3 and 4lb bass and even a 10lb catfish on it. Talking about an awesome 10-15 fight.

Sounds similar to a setup I have used. A grasshopper or popper on top with a dropper down below. Sometimes I will use an ant or cricket dropper so even if I'm not catching bass, I am sure to have some action with the bream, crappie, and even catfish! Always a blast! And everytime I'm fishing the fly, I always smoke my partners with their spinning rods - makes it more fun! They used to joke me out, until one day, they couldn't get a bite and I caught like 45 fish. Now, one of them has a fly rod. I always carry mine in the boat just in case the bite is tough on spinning tackle.

I think they were may flies. I have only heard them referred to as "willow flies" here in Bama by my grandfather. I remember he used to fish for stripe with them on a baitholder hook and casting sinker. Glenn, great articles - thanks! Okay, so does anybody know when Mayflies hatch or swarm the banks?

Can anyone tell me if willow flies come in more than one time a year, and if so when. I live in the southeast and went fishing July 4th with amazing results. Where we launched the boat was a swarm of willow flies and all species of fish were going crazy after them. We caught several bass, catfish, crappie, bream, etc. on anything we fished with. We caught at least 100-150 fish before we quit. Another interesting thing happened. Once after we thought the fish had "turned off", one of my buddies cast into a tree by accident. It caused the flies to go airborne and the fish would turn on all over again. We did this over and over again to make one of the most productive days fishing ever. Has anyone else had a similar experience? BTW, excellent forum.