Fishing with Carolina Fly

I had a chance to fish with Thomas Harvey who runs Carolina Fly. The goal of today was to find some white bass. Thomas had never caught them locally before and was eager to see what the bass run was all about. He is as good at fly fishing as he is at tying flies. It wasn't long before he had his first Eno white bass.The fish was caught on a bugger that was his own creation, a bugger pattern with a red bead head. The fly worked very well and what's funny is Thomas said it was tied based on what I told him a year ago. Apparently we had talked about fishing the Eno before last year and never got a chance to hook up. He had tied all of these flies in hopes of using them on that trip. I'm glad he still had them because the fish ate them like candy.There was one pool in particular that seemed to be stacked with 12inch or bigger fish. I think these were possibly the largest white bass I have ever caught. We kept just missing them or catching them for over an hour. There would have been more pics but we were busy catching fish. I had to go but Thomas stayed on the water to keep wearing the fish out. It was really productive for such a short time on the water. I think Thomas is addicted and will probably be hitting the Eno a lot more often.

Great Day on the Eno

Today I hosted a fly fishing trip on the Eno. I don't know what I was more happy about the weather or the fact that everyone showed up on time. I hate waiting for people. There was 5 of us and the parking lot was loaded with cars. We debated going to another section of river. I'm glad we didn't. The best thing about fishing with other people is finding out what works quickly. There was a guy with us who never caught a White Bass before. I showed him a run that had been good to me yesterday. On his fourth cast he pulled out this fish.While he was unhooking the fish I cast out and had a fish on my first cast. This was definitely going to be a good day. The bite slowed down and we went downstream. There wasn't as many people along the banks as I thought. I'm not sure where everyone was but I was glad they weren't where we were going. A buddy slid in to a spot where he had cleaned up yesterday. He pointed out the best spots and we all kind of lined up. I caught a few fish but I noticed my buddy catching them fairly consistently. I started to watch him and I noticed he was moving the fly in really short quick strips. I was doing more of a 4 inch strip type retrieve. Once I changed the retrieval it was a different world. I had hit or fish on almost every cast. The fish ranged in all different sizes from small males to decent size females.After everyone got the retrieve down we were all catching fish. The bass seemed fond of smaller flies. Really small for what I was used too. I was throwing a size 8 wooly bugger and the fish really liked about a size 12. The fishing stayed hot and heavy for awhile. It was really nice to catch a few on one bank then do a 180 and catch a few fish on the opposite bank.When you get on a nice school of white bass it's unreal. They fight hard and they seem to be everywhere. The bite slowed down after about an hour. We tried various spots and caught a few here and there but nothing was as great as the first section we fished. All together we probably caught over 100 fish. It's hard to beat a day like that. These are the types of days that keep you coming back and tease you all winter until spring hits.