White bass seminar

This morning I went to my favorite local fly shop, Sportsmans Finest, in order to listen to a seminar given by a Texas guide by the name of Billy Trimble. The presentation was over how to improve catching white bass on the fly rod through tips and techniques and other information provided by Billy.

The white bass run here in Texas, which is when the fish come out of the deep lakes to spawn in creeks and river, lasts from around Valentine's Day through about Easter. It's an excellent opportunity to catch lots of good fighting (and good eating) white bass during this time. I've gone after them strictly with fly tackle for the past couple of years with dismal results hence the need to go to this seminar.

While the presentation was only a hour long, it was packed with good information such as the advantages of using a sinking line allowing for lighter flies and keeping the fly on the bottom in the strike zone. Also, another important technique was to keep the rod tip as close to the river bottom in order to keep the fly and fly line down and in the strike zone. Another tip was using no more than a 3 foot leader, preferably of denser, thinner fluorocarbon of no less than 3X to keep the fly down as well. All excellent information that apperently I could've used years ago.

So, I look forward to trying some of Billy's proven ideas during this year's run. It seems that Sportsman's Finest will be doing almost weekly free seminars on different subjects such as "Understanding Sinking Lines", "Blue Water fly fishing", etc. from here through April so there will be more opportunity to gain more knowledge this spring. Very cool.