- Chester Moore takes a deep dive on warmwater flyfishing in Texas and the South for largemouth bass, bluegill, crappie and more with an Orvis-endorsed flyfishing guide and rod maker.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the program.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
This is Chester Moore and I had to honor and
privilege of being here with my good friend Captain Steve Stooby,
known as Captain Scooby up on toledle beIN Reservoir. I
met him through our friend Derek York a few years back,
and what I've learned is this guy is essentially a
mad scientist of fishing. I've learned so much about different
(00:26):
approaches to fishing from Captain Scooby. And so we're gonna
be talking about warm water fly fishing and you're probably thinking,
I've heard of fly fishing. What in the green heck
is warm water fly fishing? So to talk about this.
Welcome to the program, Captain Scooby. Welcome, Well, thank you
for having me. Yeah, this is kind of weird of
(00:46):
my own facility. Yeah, so I'm actually recording this at
Scooby's lab up onto there you go. Yeah, if you
see it in nighttime, you hear strange sounds of like
glowing lights. It's coming out of his fisheries lab here
where he creates his super secret flies and custom living
the odds. So you never know what you're going to
run into here. But what I want to talk about today,
Scooby was sure, just warm water fly fishing. Because we
(01:08):
say fly fishing, I guarantee you ninety nine percent of
the public immediately thinks of someone in Montana or somewhere
in a beautiful stream making a fly cast and maybe
catching a rainbow trout or a brook trout or a
brownie or something like that.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
But there's a lot more to fly fishing.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
And you know, you basically have a dividing line in
fresh water between the cold water stream fisheries and then
warm water fisheries, which we live in Southeast Texas and
this is very warm water in.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
The ninety ninety one. Well typical. My phone never stopped ringing. Yeah,
I was like, all right, well, let me sorry about
that growth.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
It's okay, Well edit that. I'll remember to edit that out.
It's all good, so I get.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Just turn it off.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Yeah, sorry.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
The problem warm water fly fishing, the idea of like
there's a dividing line in fresh water on fly fishing
between like your streams, your mountain streams, you know, and
then your colder waters. And then you have what's done
here in the South, and we're in Southeast Texas. For
the water this morning was ninety degrees and where are
very very warm water. Every trout in America would have
(02:27):
been dead fifteen degrees ago, you know, yep. And so
what is warm waterfly fishing? We're just basically just talking
about fishing in warm water.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Right, just a hot bathub. You think about it, it's
a hot bathub. They're always there. They can't go anywhere.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Fishing for species other than trout essentially, you know, it's
fishing for largemouth bass, maybe small mouth bass, bluegill, crappie,
all your fresh water, warm water Midwest and southern fishes.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
So that's what we're that's what we're after, right, Yeah.
And it's just a.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Different approach where you're seeing a guy out making the
cast or just doing them like we call it, you know,
a role cast in its right, and it goes by
This is more about kind of like picking apart targets,
you know.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
By the target to shoot the rod to her, where
to point that rod that line will follow.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Okay, So let's just go back to like the genesis
of fly fishing. Okay, you know what is what would
you say fly fishing is.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
About, Oh my gosh, it's about the experience slowing down.
It's another level that I've been fishing forty years with
my wife, North America, South America, Canada, all up in there,
conventional fishing and offshore, all that kind of stuff, and
fly fishing to me brought back tranquility.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Peace. Yeah, brother.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
And it's just like I don't care if it's two
inches long or two feet long, it doesn't really matter.
But when they really pull on that little whimpy, little
little rod, the little purple perch plucker like you used
this morning, Yeah, it's just you can't be grown up enough.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
No, And you know Captain Scooby's right. So I fly
fish a little bit when I was like in my twenties.
A couple of times different places. I went a little
Red River Arkansaw. I caught some rainbows, did some of
the Guadaloupe out by Curville when I was out there,
having some hunting guiding. But I just never really got
seriously into it. And then in twenty and nineteen I
decided I wanted to do more out west and said, well,
(04:21):
I got to get a fly ride back out because
out west I'm going to catch some trout.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
But then the pandemic hit.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
You know about six months later, you know, and here
we are in the pandemic, and I'm like, you know what,
I've caught every large mouth bass in those ponds I
have access to by my house with a top water
or a crank bait or a worm on conventional gear.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
I'm just going to make a rule for myself, and
I'm only going I have so for five years, I
haven't four and a half years. I haven't done anything.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
But fly fish those pond.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
I can contest to that.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Yeah, and it's it's made me want to do it.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
So you mentioned bringing the fun back to it, right,
But let's say someone, I don't think there's a way
to go wrong getting started, But to me, getting started
with sunfish is the best way to go.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
I'm never off of them.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Yeah, yeah, that's true, dude.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
I mean, look with you you ever smiles, grin to
ear to ear. Everybody in the boat like.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
And I didn't catch any big ones this morning.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
It's caught a few small We had several rights made
the cast and I pulled and got the hook set
and the and the and the pan fish.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Flew behind us.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Literally almost hit Paul with one this morning. Yet, And
but we caught some nicer ride. Yeah, but just too
much power, too much.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Dry but fun smiles. Yeah, and this is a guy me.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
I've been in Spain fishing, Venezuela and Mexico, Canada, you know,
and it's like.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
I'm at Clee.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Have been two hours from my house from the north
central tier told have been catching smaller fish on the
fly rod, having a great time because it was so fun.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
It's numbers, It just it never end. You move forward feet.
There's another one. You know, you found a blue gill
bed right off to the full moon or three days
before or after. Yeah, we got it on kind of
the backside, so they already were out of the little
nesting areas.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Yeah, we're gonna kill in this sevening though.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
Yeah we were at daybreak, so it's kind of like
low light conditions. And I mean, I don't blame my
hunker down. Big old black bask will come in here
and eat you. So you better not move so you
can see what's coming.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
So if someone wants to say I'm gonna start fly fishing,
I'm gonna start fly fishing, and I'm gonna I've got
plenty of access. Now we've got to go on what
we call thing. Our friend Paul Fazenski, we work with
the Aptitude Outdoors. If we say perch, he thinks of
a yellow perch, which is a specific fish in the northwest.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Northwest.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
We call everything in Texas a perch. It isn't a bass.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
It can be a CRAPPI would call perk, yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Perch, white perch, you know. Yeah, the term brim is
used a lot.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
The primary brim or panfish sunfish is the family of fish,
but the primary one you typically catch are two really
in our area, and that would be the bluegill and
the red air. So those are the main two we
would catch. Someone wants to start with that. What you
hear about weight, rod like, it's a five weight, it's
a three weight, it's a ten weight. Let's talk about
(07:00):
weight and size, rod and reel to start off with.
If you want to go just for panfish, just for perch, brim,
all the things we.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Call him here, I would probably I think Paul mentioned
it one way. He's always dreamed to having a one weight,
which you're using sewing thread. If you can get down
to a one pound or something like that, I would
recommend it. We were throwing threes and fives because we
really didn't know you might have a big predator. Bask
them in there, catch him on the three away. You
can pretty well do it, but you've got to work
(07:29):
the rod and enjoy it because it's a pretty whimpy rod.
It has a parabolic bend in the middle and not
at the tip like a standard bass rod. Their first
foot or two a bass rods all the power and
then you have the backbone at the bottom of the handle.
On our glass rods, the parabolic bend starts probably two
feet from the handle and it has a lot of
flecks which you can actually slow down on your cast,
(07:49):
and it just propels the line. It does not prepare
the lure or the fly fly fishing. You're casting the
line and the energy goes forward until the energy drops
out at the end, and then that's when the fly
lands on the water. But I would use just a
light rod or like about a five and a half footer.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
I have my custom high colon Wildlife Mudfish.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah, if you have your own customer series.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
I have the custom series here and I use that one,
and I have like a cheap old Martin I'll keep
in my truck. You can get started cheap, and I
have a five weight because I've caught six pound bass
on it, which is a struggle.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
But I got it. It's in the blue gill.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
But you know what, you I fish with a three
weight before I use your purple perch plucker. In Colorado
and me and Paul Fazenski were out filming and we
were in the big Thompson River and we were catching rainbows, you.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Know, and I used it there and it was great.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
But today, kind of in my natural habitat, which is
you know, going along and finding brim beds or you know,
going to find a cyper stumps and shooting, I found
that three weight for if I'm going to go, like
I know, I'm mainly going to be catching bluegill and stuff.
I found that perfect. Yeah, absolutely exactly.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Yeah, yeah, I found that perfect.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
So so we're kind of matching the size. Like, if
I got to fish a lot of power, like twenty
four inches long, I'm out of move up to a
five way. Yeah, if I've got something like thirty inches,
I might move to a six or seven. And then
a bass has a lot of a wider tail fish
or with a lot more power. I need more horse power
at the bottom end of the road, like an eight
waight or up to a ten weight, which we throw
eights and ten here for big bass.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
I have one of your eighths, and I caught my
first red fish, red fish, three red fishes, and they're
like twenty six twenty eight red fish down and fishing
down in a Port Isabelle, South Padre Island area.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Oh that's a higher colleing series again it is, they've
got another away we are again.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
I got an eightweight down. If you want information, go
to Mudfishingvision dot com. But the power and stuff, but
I think the I think getting started with with the
smaller fish is a great way to get going.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Yeah, a shore ride six and a half seven footer.
You don't need a nine.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Foot This is probably my favorite warm water fly fishing
discussion that I've ever had with Captain Steve Stouby. You
can hear the rest of it when we come back
on More Outdoors right here on News Talk five sixty
kl v I. Welcome back to More Outdoors on News
Talk five sixty k LVI and get the podcast this
(10:07):
program via iHeartRadio and all the places you download your
podcast go to KLVI dot com You can see the
archives of this program, and you can follow my blog
at Higher Calling dot net, follow me at the Chester
More on Instagram, and hire Calling Wildlife on Facebook. Continuing
our conversation about warm waterfly fishing with Captain Steve Stuby. Yeah,
(10:30):
and you know, the neat thing to me is a
lot of you people listening. You know, maybe you have
a work at one of the refineries or whatever. You
pass canals and ponds every day, you don't have a
lot of time. Now, well maybe you could go to
ark we work early one morning, you spend thirty minutes
with a shot a flylight becomes an adventure again. Or
on the way home, you know, you oh man, that
way you can still spend time with your family. You
(10:51):
can spend a little bit of that transit time fishing,
and there's plenty of places to go do that. Then
it becomes an adventure again, because look, not everybody's gonna
have even if you have the bank for it. Now,
everybody has the time to get the boat, to go
to launch the boat and go out to the jetties,
or go up at Tulut a bend tier or whatever
they're gonna do. But everybody passes these ponds and canals
(11:12):
and ditches, and they're loaded with fish.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
And a three weight makes that an adventure.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Yep. And probably a four piece rod. Is Murford travel
again on a plane? Yep, they do. We building my fishing.
And a two piece also you don't have all the components.
You can actually still put that behind the seat and
pickup truck.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Yep, it's in two pieces.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Yeah, I travel with a I've traveled with a fly rod,
carrying it on car, carry on right, carry on to
Montana to Wyoming. I've flown into Denver, to Miami, UH
to Nashville, you know, different places, flown across the country
with it, and many of those places multiple times, and
(11:53):
just go there and you're at bam, Oh there's a stream.
I'm gonna go catch a few little trout or whatever's
going on in Miami. I'm catching small peacock bass and
catching these weird cichlids and all this awesome you know,
exotic stuff out there.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
But it's made it like an adventure. So you got
the rod.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
You know, we're not really gonna go and know we
can you can read blogs and stuff. We'll talk about
maybe line selection and all that. We'll just get you
on the basic trajectory. But let's talk about the flies themselves.
When you're going to fish for a blue gill. You
know what's a general good blue gill type pattern?
Speaker 3 (12:26):
Well, I know you like anything black with a black
bug with a red little tail.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Oh that this is like my this is like my
rabbit hole.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
That's right, And it's so bigger than your thumbnail. Basically
I have a tie.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
I'll use a tiny thing.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
And I've caught two six pound bass on that, and
I've caught a lot of bluegill. And I get the
cheap bass dash off Amazon set like one hundred flies
in it, and it comes with three black with the
red tail, and those always go first.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
We call them the liquorice. Yes, we call them liquorage flags.
Everybody gets a black liquorice first.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Right, get the blackers, know you not?
Speaker 3 (13:01):
I get that when you get the orange one.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
See yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
And then my friend Gray Thornton, these are masterfly fishermen,
and Tire sent me some.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
He made me some.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Oh wow up, and I've lost two of those, one
of them one fish, one of the one of limb.
I've cast him a thousand times out there and that
color works for me. But when you're up here in
to the bend, a lot of people fish to lead
a rayburn. We were fishing with something today that looked
like maybe a water bug.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Yep, And it was kind of a call.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Just a sharp tree traped around a little hook about
the size of a U eraser. Get the end of
the eraser about that thick on a very small little
brim hook. With the long shanks, you can get the
foot back out. Now. We were throwing little guinea guinea
flies to day that we make here, and we were
making them last night for today's use this morning. Yeah,
and you had a lot of ones on that. So
we try to move out the hook size up a
(13:47):
little bit better so that we don't catch all the
smaller ones we catch the bigger ones that were to target.
And the hook size makes a.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Difference, yeah, you know.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
And that's the thing about some of this is the
fact that still a little thing like the longer shanked
clunk for being able to you know, unhook things and
all that kind of stuff going on. That's that's just
a little positive here. But you know, we often talk
about matching the hats and fly fishing. There's nothing shartrous
in that water. No, so is it because of the
(14:17):
water was a little bit dingy and you got some contrast.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Yeah, they they just like shartrus. I was told of
the poppers on the old days when they would make them.
If it wasn't shartrus, you're not gonna catch anything, you know.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
It's funny. I hate sharks.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
Well you don't eat them every day. I hate it,
But I fished it this morning. It worked great up yet. Yeah,
but the water looked a little different world typically fish.
So it's all about what works in your area.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Yeah. But if you get one of these like you know,
these bash dash kits or something like that, they got
a bunch of collars. Figure out Now they'll hit any
kind of bug it hits the water, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
You know.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Well we have to find out also what the cadence
needs to be. Yeah, we were dry. We were doing
I guess casting three or four times in the air
to dry the fly out and then lay it down
and it would stay on the not brust the surface,
and then once it got wetter and wetter, it would
start kind of fall slowly.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
Uh, And that's when and then when you started moving
it a little faster on the caters, and that's when
they'd run out. You get it right. They wanted nothing interesting,
They wanted it moving today. They did not want it falling.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
To because nine of the ones I catching the bayous
and stuff, or just letting it float and make one
a little pop and when it sink. Yeah, today it
was when I was making about the back cast and
shoot another I get hit.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
You know, it's crazy, yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Kind of.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
It's just different cadences. Every single day is different depending
on what the sunlight doing, sunlight penetration, what bugs are
being hatched right now. I can't really tell you what
bugs they prefer every day. I didn't see a spider
on the surface today at all.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
You saw those water beetle things, yeah, or they don't
nothing eating.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
I don't know what the deal is, but you would
think that small, that black would be something they'd eat
all day long. But they will not touching.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Yeah, it's not like seeing a grasshopper going across down
you know.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
So I think we were throwing it actually from deep
water where the boat was to the bank, which about
six inches off the bank, off of a little pea
gravel or sheer bluff with boulders on it.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
We didn't really hit any grass flats today because we
were targeting at a different area today and they wanted it
like a grasshopper would fly a foot off the bank
into the water. They were ready for that. Yeah, and
then you went a little bit deeper because the water
temperature was ninety one eighty nine somewhere in there. It
was hot. But it'll be different today when the sunlight's
up full blast, it'll change up to ninety bearing probably
(16:25):
ninety one. We'd go out this evening and we'll see
a whole different cadence, whole different setup.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Do you fish little paupers for times?
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (16:34):
I try to go a little bit bigger poppers because
I love to. I like to see the explosion. Oh yeah,
you know, cause you go too small. They've got to
get them every time.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
I have a hard time working the tiny tiny pot Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
Yeah, we chewed through some last night.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
More.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Yeah, like the real micros.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
I don't like a skip. I like a pop and
sit let it set. Yeah, So what size would you was?
It was like the size of a thimble or.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
That's hard. The fish have to tell me, I've got
so many different flies we make or buy or you
can buy on Amazon, and then just work your way small,
work your way up, and the fly is gona tell
you what size fish you're going to get. They want
an after dinner mint or they want a full meal.
Every day is different depending on their feeding pattern.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
That's really cool.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Now when you're looking at the you know you have
your fly line, Okay, what about what what is the
line for? Everybody doesn't know that connects to your fly line,
your tip. It just talk about this, okay?
Speaker 1 (17:26):
And is this made.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
From any kind of special material compared to a regular
fisherman's life.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
Well, you can buy stuff on the market that's already
eight foot long and tapered down. It has we'll say
a fat end and a real thin end where the
fly goes on, and then you can cut it back
as you go. So the energy from the fat end,
the energy as you cast forward, it actually gets thinner
and thinner, and the energy to diticipates at the end
of the in the fly falls cause you're actually casting
the line, not the file to fly. Okay. So what
(17:56):
I do is on our five weights and up or
even any of our lines will take the actual fly line,
which are what we call it floating line that floats
on top of the water and different colors to it.
And then we tie what's called a nail knot onto
that direct line with what we call I call it,
it's called a hard mason. We using an offshore fishing.
It's a harder leader material. It's about the size of
(18:18):
a twelve pound, twenty pounds, thirty pound, and what happens
is it stays pretty stiff. So when you run that
energy forward, it actually loops forward. How can I say this?
The loop follows itself in a tight line. I guess
if you use a thinner like a regular mono fishing line,
it's got to collapse before the energy goes out. It's
(18:41):
a lot more like a heavier wire. It's not a wire,
but it's a heavier mono basically, And that would be
your main leader down and then we go down to
the tip it and that would be what you're gonna
tie your fly to. And if you've got too big
a tip it, you won't be able to go through
that small eye of that fly. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
So trout fishing is a thing called image.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
No, thank you.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
They're horrible to tie. It's the size of it, like
a maybe a piece of rice or something big one
very hard.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
And what's amazing about just a sidebar on trout is
you'll go to some fly shop and you know, Montana,
and they'll be like, yeah, they want a hopper, which
is like a grasshopper, then on the back like a
little think of a leader off the back, and you'll
have a midge on it, and they want the they
want the medium purple midge and you're thinking, you can't
even see the thing, and then you'll go out. I'm
(19:28):
I'll buy one just in case, and I'll have my own.
They're black, it's dark. Who cares you catch nothing on
a dark one? You put the medium purple one on
and immediately catch.
Speaker 5 (19:36):
How do the fish that little that little bit of whatever?
Speaker 2 (19:40):
But that you know, thank the Lord, our warm water
fish aren't quite as horrible, but they do sometimes.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Get Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
It's kind of like I do I want an ice
cream or a conduct bar? Yeah yeah, yeah, one day's
better than the other one. I'm gonna have that one.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Like today, e we're doing the Klondike bar, you know whatever.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
When we come back on doors, we're gonna talk more
about warm waterfly fishing. Welcome back to More Outdoors on
News Talk five sixty KLVY. I follow my new blog
Golf Great Whites at Golf great Whites dot com, all
about great white sharks, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico.
Follow me at the Chester More on Instagram. Continuing our
conversation about warm waterfly fishing with Captain Steve Stuby.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
You forced me to eat one. I really didn't want one, Yeah,
but you forced me to eat it.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
I got you so that that that's just to get
people sort of ideas started and having so much fun
catch and the panfish and all those kind of things.
Early and late really good sometimes, but sometimes the middle
of the day pedal, the time where you're at, you
know what's going on, the moon phase, and it's all
the typical fishing stuff. You just apply that to fly
fishing like you would traditional fishing. My favorite fish in
(20:47):
the world to catch other than like superstarfish like bonefish
or you know, you know, peacock mass or something, or crappy.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
I love crappy. I've been here with you Mudfish Adventures with.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Fact destroyed, destroyed, the crazy we catched a bunch of crappy. Well,
I'm like, I'm in because that's my favorite fish to eat,
a favorite fish to catch.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
It was unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
But I've been able to start catching a few on
the fly, and that's kind of a challenge because a
lot of times our crappi are off in the deeper
water and that's not as easy to fly fish. But
I've had access to a few private lakes that have
some crappy in them and kind of what I've done.
It was the first one was by accident. I was
just fishing because I knew I knew that there. It
(21:31):
was kind of early evening and typically in this pond
that I fished, I knew there are a big couple
of crappie maybe in it caught before. But I was
fishing with a big old bluegill in there, and I
just take that little nymph, which is basically like a
little moth pattern, threw it out and just let it
sink as far as I can let it sink, and
then just you know, edge it and then you could see,
you know, you would see a big blue gill come
(21:51):
up and maybe hit at it, and you're making retrieve
and I got an extra hard hit and it was
a big old white croppy. And then so I've caught
a few like that. But what I've kind of done
is just take the same basic patterns I fish for,
like a blue gill, matching the colors. What I think
with the water clarity, I use more of a natural
color brown the water is clearer. If it's muddier, I
(22:12):
might use the you know, the more edgy colors. And
then I've used that same like slower cadence and retrieved
for the crappie.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
You know.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
But I've talked to guys who like fish clousers, which
are like a little longer streamer and just kill them
like they're bass fishing for it.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
But it depends what the bait is. If the bait
got long minutes or like you go to the bait chop, say,
I want to have a large minut as well. That's
what they're feeding on. Most of the guys here that
are fishing deep, they want the small at menows they
can get because the hatch is not grown that big yet.
So you got to try different flies, and sometimes you're
gonna have a fly has a long tail on a
long tail feather. Take their scissors and cut it off,
cut it back, try it long first, and then start
(22:48):
cutting it back and you might be surprised.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
So actually adapting the fly that you have. I'm getting hit,
but not taken it right. Shave it off a little
bit shortened. Ut see what happens, and maybe you'll get
that get that dream two and a half pound crappie
on the fly, right, that would be I love it.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
Here they are.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
They're such a cool.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
Fish and they don't quit.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Very interesting story is you know, Pure Fishing is a
the public doesn't really know the name, but Pure Fishing
owns about twenty percent of the sport fishing market.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
They own a ton of companies.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Including pen About, Garcia, String, Berkeley, you know a ton
of different lines. So when you buy this of you're
buying Pure Fishing products a lot.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
They have a fish testing facility.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
And research facility in Spirit Lake, Iowa, and a man
named John Prott now has been there for years and
I actually got to go out and do some of
the gulp test with him, the latter gulp test. When
gulp just hit the market, they were gonna, you know,
some new gult pattern.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
It was really cool.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
But we were talking and I'm like, tell me about
your fish testing facility, and I said, what is the
smartest fish? Is there a fish that gets line shy,
allure shy, whatever will fat? And fascinating answer was first
thing is it was a carp He said, by far
a carp.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
But he goes you know what number two is?
Speaker 2 (24:05):
I said, what, he goes a crappy. He talked about
how quickly the crappy and I got to ask in
the same question sixteen seventeen years later at a thing
I did at NASA with pure fishing this January.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
It's a NASA facility.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
They did a special event, and he said again, crappy
was very very smart fish as well.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
Smartfish are a line sensitive, just smart in terms of
I didn't get to go super deep, but like they
would get shy of stuff real fast, like he was
too shiny of a jig.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Whatever work, it was just whatever was something turned them off.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
And what happens is I think crappy are so prolific
that it looks like, well, you know, you're catching everyone
down there. But if we went and did the the
forward facing sonar stuff for him, and.
Speaker 5 (24:53):
You learn real fast, most of them are there's a
ton of them that never even go look at your
lit And so that told me that, like, you know,
the fishery, like something's wrong there.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
I'm coming back and bam.
Speaker 4 (25:05):
You know.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
So I could see that with like you talked about
those shaving and adjustments yep, cut back that it might
make sense like well that didn't work with that works,
you know, and like it's just really really really neat stuff.
But you know, I guess here in the warm water
fisheries in the South, we're not even talking coastal We're
just talking fresh water stuff.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
The grand prize for most people is the old.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Largemouth bass, absolutely and.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
I love bass fishing on the FLI It's really what
got me back into dealing. It was targeting those bass
on poppers at my ponds a friend of mine has,
and I mean like maybe this is the first week
ild call like a three on a popper and I'm like,
it's pretty fun on a little five weight and a
little tiny popper. But uh, bass fishing on the fly
to me is like the rabbit hole. I mean, because
(25:52):
there's me who's using small stuff, Like I'm using these
small flies and some mediums sized poppers. And then I
go to this thing called The Hunter's Podcast and meet
Captain Scooper and he has these things a little like
a full grown more a eel, you know. They're like
these giant, like eight nine inch long streamer clouser things,
(26:15):
And I go, is that for like tarping?
Speaker 3 (26:17):
It's like bass on Toalito bit my ass on Teleda
band at a certain time of year, okay, a certain
temperature range. Not now, it's just too hot.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
So now that we've given this spoiler alert, let's just
talk about bass. You're obviously gonna go up to I
use a five weight a lot, but maybe an eight weight,
like you use eight weights a lot.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
The eight weight, it would be the lowest I'll use.
We mainly throw a ten weight. You got to throw
the ten today. But unless you're a weightlifter, the ten
weight's gonna wear you out about it.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
I'm like, I'm throwing this thing and I'm getting like
three quarters what I normally get, and you like, you
give me the three weight, and it's like, see gotcha.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
And it's a shorter rod you use, so you're using
a heavier fly rod.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
In general, w Yeah, we have to be able to
throw a wet sock if you look at it that way, yeah,
it's not. The sock is wet. It's pretty heavy, so
you have to have a lot of power in the
bottom end. I designed the short flyer. We've been here
at the facility twenty years now, so we designed a
short flyer that broke eight fly rods of a high
end caliber and cheap rods. So I said, I've got
to design my own, so we started building rods. I'll
(27:17):
be fourteen years ago. We developed the short flyer about
twelve years ago and we haven't broken any rods since.
We have twenty six state records on our rods now,
and I have a lot of guys that started to
catch their bass now because there's so much power in
the bottom ends of when they set the hook on
a top water big popper or something like that, there's
enough power to get that hook to drive into that
(27:37):
bone at the top of their mouth or in their
lips and with like a fire. Well, like you said,
if you don't know how to play the fish, and
if you don't know to have a strip set before
you lift the rod, that basket got to come up
and just spit it out because he's still holding on
to it. He just never got hooked. But we use
seven odd hooks here, five odd hooks, two odd hooks
on some of our big flyes that are twelve inches long.
(27:58):
So we're looking we're a state record. We had Texas Fishing,
not Fish gam sorry, Southwest Fly Magazine come in. They
did to shoot years ago and we had won over
ten pounds on one wow. But the gentleman never set
the hook. He just lifted the rod and we were
all kind of like, that's a trophy there, but you know,
you wren't ready. You know, that's why we try to
(28:19):
have the heavy gear, so we are ready and you've
got to be alert when that happens.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
When it happened, let's tell me these big flies, okay, mate,
what was what was the idea behind?
Speaker 1 (28:28):
I know, bigger bait, big fish.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
Now, I just wanted to throw something different. We have
our fish feeders here behind the property here up at
the mudfish facility, and I just noticed a big shad
going through there and the shad were twelve inches long,
you know, red thin fad, you know, two or three
inches of standard shad whatever body's but these big ones
were coming in. So what are these bass master guys throwing.
Now there's on these big swim baits all over the country, right,
(28:53):
so no one's done it with a fly, so let's
develop one multi jointing. Was a big fly, so we
had to develop the rod and twelve way rods. Dandy'll
be able to handle that big sock. So now we've
got the gear ready, We've got thirty pounds tipet line ready,
we got the twelve inch flies with seven night hooks
and them. I just needed for the stars.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
To all line up to find the fish.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
That's February at a certain full moon, at a certain
water temperature. When those big girls move up, We're ready
this show.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
What's the biggest you've caught on one of those?
Speaker 3 (29:23):
I've got record here four and a half pounds here,
but we've got some bigger than out six sixty five.
But I wasn't interested in records. Then people say, Scoob,
you start getting the record your rod.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Yeah, I caught a six yeap back in April. Okay
on my little stuff, yeah, but on your rod, you
know it has you know, on the five weight with that,
you know, but you're going you're gunning here.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
This is a different thing that I'm doing.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
When we come back on More Doors, we're gonna talk
more with Captain Steve Stuby about his goal to catch
record bass onto Liederman Reservoir with fly fishing gear, exclusively
here More Outdoors on Talk five sixty klv I. Welcome
back to More Outdoors on News Talk five sixty klv I.
(30:07):
This is Chester Moore wrapping up our conversation with Talita
ben Guy, the fly rod maker Captain Steve Study about
warm water fly fishing. If you've ever wondered about catching
fish on the fly in local waters, you need to
go back and listen to the archive of this program.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
If you haven't caught.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
The whole show here live, so go back and listen
to on the podcasts. You don't want to miss this
fascinating conversation.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
You're gunning for record fish.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
I want one big fish.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
On you're gunning for that double digit for right?
Speaker 3 (30:36):
I need one over ten. Yeah, you're done to make
a statement with a fly rod.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Yeah. And if you're doing you're not doing this at
Lake four.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
No, no, no, you're not doing this at uh you
know some lake in Alabama or somewhere.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
You're doing it right here at till in my backyard.
Why not my backyard? You know, Tammy and I've been
all over the world. Yeah, why can we do it
in our own backyard? Why all I got to fly
to Argentina or South America or northern Canada. Yes, the Amazon.
Everything is right, You're in our backyard.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
That's pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
You know. It's just we just geared up, got the
right equipment. So but I'm not saying you have to
buy expensive equipment. You just need the right equipment.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Right equipment is let us talk a little bit about
the right equipment versus.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
Expensive equipment.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Okay, give me give.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
Me a difference here.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
If you have a rod that someone could get that
would be good enough for their task, but you could
maybe upgrade a little bit for their thing and be
an expensive version of it.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
When you start adding more money to the rod blank itself,
you're buying a better quality rod.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Blank.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
It's going to have more power to certain power band
in that depending on your handles. We make custom handles
here to fit your hand which is a little bit
more expensive than just a wooden handle or just a
core handle. Yeah, you know your price range. What you're
adding the components about the eye I built rods that
go down to Hawaii and they're catching giant tra volli
(31:58):
and stuff on them. Those are made out of titanium. Wow,
that's a twelve to eighteen hundred dollars rod. Because when
that fish hits, he's eighty five seventy five pounds. When
he's running, he'll actually spoil that fly line. It's burning
that line through those eyes. So I've got to have
something that's not going to burn the line. So that's
a different kind of component of a rod. But I'm
for what you're doing here. We could go by well,
(32:19):
like you say, you're Martin that you like throwing a lot,
it's one hundred dollars could get you in the game.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
Yeah, So that's what I want to get out, Like
something can get you know, everything in the game.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
You can do one hundred dollars to get in the game.
But you're not gonna I don't want to say casting
fly rod. You have to do some practice, sure, you know,
to get good at it. But the more better equipments
that you buy, it makes it easier, doesn't make it,
cause that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
That's exactly That's what I was asking, Like, you know,
is it does?
Speaker 1 (32:42):
It does? Make it easier.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
But you know, we got people that listen that are
you know, and I'm probably the only guy in the
media that does this. I know people in the industry,
and I'm a figure in the media that has an audience.
So I get to get endorsements like your company and
different people. People will give me stuff for endorsements. I
could not afford a lot of this if I were
just taking out of my paycheck. So I'm always honest
and saying, hey, I got this because I have these
(33:05):
relationships and I can promote and it's wonderful, or I
wouldn't use it. But if you can't afford it, there's
this over here that'll get you at least going right. Yeah,
And it will always hate when I watch something like
some outdoors showing and there's a guy with a five
hundred dollars spinning rod catching crappie and he's like, this
is the only thing that'll get the job done here,
(33:26):
and I'm like, I have a nineteen ninety five Berden
rod at the house and get the same fish pow.
It's okay to talk about that, but be honest about
how people what they need it for.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
You know, if you've got a family of three kids. Dude,
that's hard exactly. You know, I can't buy a ranger
boat or all the high end boats. Well, I can
buy a used boat and still get out there right
next to you.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
But the thing I want to talk about and make
my little pitch for you is if someone is a
fly fisherman and they want to go after the monster
and have the patience to do it and maybe be
that guy that sets that record. Okay, they could hook
up and do a guide trip with you. Absolutely, Yeah,
And so people need to plan this out. What is
(34:07):
the perfect time of year you're talking about that February
to early March period.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
Yeah, I need a sixty eight to seventy two Okay,
somewhere in that game, when it gets down to fifty
five and sixty they start moving up a little bit,
the big girls will be there. I need something. What
you see the lights on the boat. We get there
and electronic before daylight, and we stay after dark. That
is our twilight time. That is when those fish move
at four o'clock in the morning, before daybreak. They're feeding
(34:30):
between four thirty five. I've already got to be on
the spot, ready to go. I can't wait till eight o'clock,
go eat breakfast and try to go do That's a
different kind of ball game. If you're a trophy hunter,
we know the times to kind of go.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
So you're gonna go do the maximum time. You're gonna
put some experimental gear, stuff you've tested. But yeah, it's
not you're readily available. No, you're not gonna find it, period,
it's not available.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
I'm the only how that does it?
Speaker 2 (34:53):
Custom stuff here from Captain Scooby at Mudfish Adventures and
if someone wants to re how do they do that?
Speaker 3 (35:01):
You can call the one eight hundred. It's one eight
four four six eight three three four seven four and
that twenty four to seven goes right to my phone.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
Also Mudfishadventures dot com com, follow him at Mudfish Adventures
on Mudfish Adventures LLC on Instagram, and Mudfish Adventures on Facebook,
and you do a lot of fun updates and you
get a lot of information out and stuff like that
for people just want to follow up. Was it was
kind of cool. I put some stuff about fishing with
Captain Scooby and just like dude, you're a Captain.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
Scooby, everybody's already heard of him here.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Yeah, it is kind of cool.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
Yeah, we've been in the outdoors twenty something plus years.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Yeah, and so that is a very cool thing.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
And it's just really cool to be here, you know,
get to know your wife and get to know you
know you even even more and see the heart and
soul that goes into what you do and the experimental
nature of it. I mean, you're you're out there trying
different stuff every day, you know, it's always and you know,
he had he brought my muddy Paul Vezinski's here, and he.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Brought several tackle boxes full.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
And we'll end with this all handsoff some handmade lures
and there was traditional lures. Yeah, like you know, I
saw a little crank baits in there, top waters everything,
shirt baits, all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
And used to have a competition. Tell us about this competition.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Well, there's a guy named I've been here twenty years.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
So a neighbor was building a house well across the street.
This guy used to make handmade lures. His name was
Bill Gray. And got to be friends with mister Gray
as I was helping a guy build a house. And
then three or four guys got together every week and
all right, here's an antique lure book. See if you
could make one. Here's some measurements, here's the colors. Three
(36:46):
or four guys would come back on a Sunday after
church and we go, hey, let me see what you have.
And then that's how it all started. That went for
years and years and years. So every week I had
to make a wooden lure. I had a red seedar
or white seater. Different woods flew different. And Tim and
I had a home in Spring, Texas. We had a
swimming pool there. So what I would do is build it,
(37:06):
paint it, and I'd actually swim it in the swimming
pool and let the sun high noon twelve o'clock one
o'clock shining the rays down and you could actually see
the wave action on the bottom of the pool, so
you could see the wave, the pressure wave age. Guess
you'd see not the current wave, but the pressure wave,
the sonic wave. And then that's how I'd have a
(37:28):
guy buy probably ten at a time, and he'd come
by and check each one. I'm out in my pool
and one would swim different, it would hunt different, he
called it, and those are the ones they would buy. Wow,
So you know there was a fifty dollars lure any
times one times ten or whatever. And then he would
go to the tournaments and that's what he'd won fish
on a tournament. Then the word got out and I
was building lures and this guy got tired of building lures.
(37:50):
And then we come up here to the lake house
and i'd try him here on the baths since we
didn't have bass in the pond, which we did put
him in the pond one day when I got muddy
or whatever, but I got up in the filters in
my life, said you can't be putting fish in this
email line.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
The limitations is over on this by the way.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
Yeah, So anyway, so yeah, and the fish would tell
you how they want them. They wanted a double spinner
or they want a single spinner on them or something.
And it was really interesting. You learned a lot that way.
So then we got into fly fishing and then it's
history after that. So wow, it's a different world. It's uh,
but you can take five fish all over the world.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
And one thing about youngsters when they come here. We
have a facility here. We have over five hundred books
on the wall of any kind of fly you want,
to tie. We just pulled the book down and set
it on the table and it's just page by page
how to do each component and what the materials are,
what we call the formula, and then you can make
that fly and go fish for that fish.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
So if you want to book a trip ye Captain
Scooby Mudfish Adventures dot com. You can get them a
Mudfish Adventures LLC on Instagram, mush ad Adventures on Facebook,
and you have a phone number.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
As well YEP one eight four four six eight three
three four seven for it is my hotline to me.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
It's always great having Captain Steve stu be only such
a wealth of information and I get a lot of questions,
I mean a growing number of questions about fly fishing
because people are seeing me out there on my Instagram
count at d Chester more or maybe on my Facebook
and higher calling Wildlife Facebook. And I'm out there locally
most of the time catching blue gills and long haired
(39:21):
sunfish and crappie and largemouth bass on the fly.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
It's super fun.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
And I wanted to do a program that was real
in depth on the warm water fly fishing because most
people's idea of fly fishing's our river runs to it
up in Montana somewhere, which is awesome, But this is
a different kind of fishing and it's absolutely just as fun.
Let me give you a hint. Our blue meal fight
way harder than trout for their size. I know a
(39:47):
lot of trout guys won't like that, but it's a fact.
So fly fishing changed my life as a fisherman. It's
not the only fishing. I still do standard fishing, but
it's easy to carry a fly ride on my truck,
pull over to a canal and go fishing. Thanks so
much for listening to program Tonight, God bless and have
a great outdoors weekend.
Welcome to the program.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
This is Chester Moore and I had to honor and
privilege of being here with my good friend Captain Steve Stooby,
known as Captain Scooby up on toledle beIN Reservoir. I
met him through our friend Derek York a few years back,
and what I've learned is this guy is essentially a
mad scientist of fishing. I've learned so much about different
(00:26):
approaches to fishing from Captain Scooby. And so we're gonna
be talking about warm water fly fishing and you're probably thinking,
I've heard of fly fishing. What in the green heck
is warm water fly fishing? So to talk about this.
Welcome to the program, Captain Scooby. Welcome, Well, thank you
for having me. Yeah, this is kind of weird of
(00:46):
my own facility. Yeah, so I'm actually recording this at
Scooby's lab up onto there you go. Yeah, if you
see it in nighttime, you hear strange sounds of like
glowing lights. It's coming out of his fisheries lab here
where he creates his super secret flies and custom living
the odds. So you never know what you're going to
run into here. But what I want to talk about today,
Scooby was sure, just warm water fly fishing. Because we
(01:08):
say fly fishing, I guarantee you ninety nine percent of
the public immediately thinks of someone in Montana or somewhere
in a beautiful stream making a fly cast and maybe
catching a rainbow trout or a brook trout or a
brownie or something like that.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
But there's a lot more to fly fishing.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
And you know, you basically have a dividing line in
fresh water between the cold water stream fisheries and then
warm water fisheries, which we live in Southeast Texas and
this is very warm water in.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
The ninety ninety one. Well typical. My phone never stopped ringing. Yeah,
I was like, all right, well, let me sorry about
that growth.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
It's okay, Well edit that. I'll remember to edit that out.
It's all good, so I get.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Just turn it off.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Yeah, sorry.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
The problem warm water fly fishing, the idea of like
there's a dividing line in fresh water on fly fishing
between like your streams, your mountain streams, you know, and
then your colder waters. And then you have what's done
here in the South, and we're in Southeast Texas. For
the water this morning was ninety degrees and where are
very very warm water. Every trout in America would have
(02:27):
been dead fifteen degrees ago, you know, yep. And so
what is warm waterfly fishing? We're just basically just talking
about fishing in warm water.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Right, just a hot bathub. You think about it, it's
a hot bathub. They're always there. They can't go anywhere.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Fishing for species other than trout essentially, you know, it's
fishing for largemouth bass, maybe small mouth bass, bluegill, crappie,
all your fresh water, warm water Midwest and southern fishes.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
So that's what we're that's what we're after, right, Yeah.
And it's just a.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Different approach where you're seeing a guy out making the
cast or just doing them like we call it, you know,
a role cast in its right, and it goes by
This is more about kind of like picking apart targets,
you know.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
By the target to shoot the rod to her, where
to point that rod that line will follow.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Okay, So let's just go back to like the genesis
of fly fishing. Okay, you know what is what would
you say fly fishing is.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
About, Oh my gosh, it's about the experience slowing down.
It's another level that I've been fishing forty years with
my wife, North America, South America, Canada, all up in there,
conventional fishing and offshore, all that kind of stuff, and
fly fishing to me brought back tranquility.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Peace. Yeah, brother.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
And it's just like I don't care if it's two
inches long or two feet long, it doesn't really matter.
But when they really pull on that little whimpy, little
little rod, the little purple perch plucker like you used
this morning, Yeah, it's just you can't be grown up enough.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
No, And you know Captain Scooby's right. So I fly
fish a little bit when I was like in my twenties.
A couple of times different places. I went a little
Red River Arkansaw. I caught some rainbows, did some of
the Guadaloupe out by Curville when I was out there,
having some hunting guiding. But I just never really got
seriously into it. And then in twenty and nineteen I
decided I wanted to do more out west and said, well,
(04:21):
I got to get a fly ride back out because
out west I'm going to catch some trout.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
But then the pandemic hit.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
You know about six months later, you know, and here
we are in the pandemic, and I'm like, you know what,
I've caught every large mouth bass in those ponds I
have access to by my house with a top water
or a crank bait or a worm on conventional gear.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
I'm just going to make a rule for myself, and
I'm only going I have so for five years, I
haven't four and a half years. I haven't done anything.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
But fly fish those pond.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
I can contest to that.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Yeah, and it's it's made me want to do it.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
So you mentioned bringing the fun back to it, right,
But let's say someone, I don't think there's a way
to go wrong getting started, But to me, getting started
with sunfish is the best way to go.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
I'm never off of them.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Yeah, yeah, that's true, dude.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
I mean, look with you you ever smiles, grin to
ear to ear. Everybody in the boat like.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
And I didn't catch any big ones this morning.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
It's caught a few small We had several rights made
the cast and I pulled and got the hook set
and the and the and the pan fish.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Flew behind us.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Literally almost hit Paul with one this morning. Yet, And
but we caught some nicer ride. Yeah, but just too
much power, too much.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Dry but fun smiles. Yeah, and this is a guy me.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
I've been in Spain fishing, Venezuela and Mexico, Canada, you know,
and it's like.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
I'm at Clee.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Have been two hours from my house from the north
central tier told have been catching smaller fish on the
fly rod, having a great time because it was so fun.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
It's numbers, It just it never end. You move forward feet.
There's another one. You know, you found a blue gill
bed right off to the full moon or three days
before or after. Yeah, we got it on kind of
the backside, so they already were out of the little
nesting areas.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Yeah, we're gonna kill in this sevening though.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
Yeah we were at daybreak, so it's kind of like
low light conditions. And I mean, I don't blame my
hunker down. Big old black bask will come in here
and eat you. So you better not move so you
can see what's coming.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
So if someone wants to say I'm gonna start fly fishing,
I'm gonna start fly fishing, and I'm gonna I've got
plenty of access. Now we've got to go on what
we call thing. Our friend Paul Fazenski, we work with
the Aptitude Outdoors. If we say perch, he thinks of
a yellow perch, which is a specific fish in the northwest.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Northwest.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
We call everything in Texas a perch. It isn't a bass.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
It can be a CRAPPI would call perk, yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Perch, white perch, you know. Yeah, the term brim is
used a lot.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
The primary brim or panfish sunfish is the family of fish,
but the primary one you typically catch are two really
in our area, and that would be the bluegill and
the red air. So those are the main two we
would catch. Someone wants to start with that. What you
hear about weight, rod like, it's a five weight, it's
a three weight, it's a ten weight. Let's talk about
(07:00):
weight and size, rod and reel to start off with.
If you want to go just for panfish, just for perch, brim,
all the things we.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Call him here, I would probably I think Paul mentioned
it one way. He's always dreamed to having a one weight,
which you're using sewing thread. If you can get down
to a one pound or something like that, I would
recommend it. We were throwing threes and fives because we
really didn't know you might have a big predator. Bask
them in there, catch him on the three away. You
can pretty well do it, but you've got to work
(07:29):
the rod and enjoy it because it's a pretty whimpy rod.
It has a parabolic bend in the middle and not
at the tip like a standard bass rod. Their first
foot or two a bass rods all the power and
then you have the backbone at the bottom of the handle.
On our glass rods, the parabolic bend starts probably two
feet from the handle and it has a lot of
flecks which you can actually slow down on your cast,
(07:49):
and it just propels the line. It does not prepare
the lure or the fly fly fishing. You're casting the
line and the energy goes forward until the energy drops
out at the end, and then that's when the fly
lands on the water. But I would use just a
light rod or like about a five and a half footer.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
I have my custom high colon Wildlife Mudfish.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah, if you have your own customer series.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
I have the custom series here and I use that one,
and I have like a cheap old Martin I'll keep
in my truck. You can get started cheap, and I
have a five weight because I've caught six pound bass
on it, which is a struggle.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
But I got it. It's in the blue gill.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
But you know what, you I fish with a three
weight before I use your purple perch plucker. In Colorado
and me and Paul Fazenski were out filming and we
were in the big Thompson River and we were catching rainbows, you.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Know, and I used it there and it was great.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
But today, kind of in my natural habitat, which is
you know, going along and finding brim beds or you know,
going to find a cyper stumps and shooting, I found
that three weight for if I'm going to go, like
I know, I'm mainly going to be catching bluegill and stuff.
I found that perfect. Yeah, absolutely exactly.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Yeah, yeah, I found that perfect.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
So so we're kind of matching the size. Like, if
I got to fish a lot of power, like twenty
four inches long, I'm out of move up to a
five way. Yeah, if I've got something like thirty inches,
I might move to a six or seven. And then
a bass has a lot of a wider tail fish
or with a lot more power. I need more horse power
at the bottom end of the road, like an eight
waight or up to a ten weight, which we throw
eights and ten here for big bass.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
I have one of your eighths, and I caught my
first red fish, red fish, three red fishes, and they're
like twenty six twenty eight red fish down and fishing
down in a Port Isabelle, South Padre Island area.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Oh that's a higher colleing series again it is, they've
got another away we are again.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
I got an eightweight down. If you want information, go
to Mudfishingvision dot com. But the power and stuff, but
I think the I think getting started with with the
smaller fish is a great way to get going.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Yeah, a shore ride six and a half seven footer.
You don't need a nine.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Foot This is probably my favorite warm water fly fishing
discussion that I've ever had with Captain Steve Stouby. You
can hear the rest of it when we come back
on More Outdoors right here on News Talk five sixty
kl v I. Welcome back to More Outdoors on News
Talk five sixty k LVI and get the podcast this
(10:07):
program via iHeartRadio and all the places you download your
podcast go to KLVI dot com You can see the
archives of this program, and you can follow my blog
at Higher Calling dot net, follow me at the Chester
More on Instagram, and hire Calling Wildlife on Facebook. Continuing
our conversation about warm waterfly fishing with Captain Steve Stuby. Yeah,
(10:30):
and you know, the neat thing to me is a
lot of you people listening. You know, maybe you have
a work at one of the refineries or whatever. You
pass canals and ponds every day, you don't have a
lot of time. Now, well maybe you could go to
ark we work early one morning, you spend thirty minutes
with a shot a flylight becomes an adventure again. Or
on the way home, you know, you oh man, that
way you can still spend time with your family. You
(10:51):
can spend a little bit of that transit time fishing,
and there's plenty of places to go do that. Then
it becomes an adventure again, because look, not everybody's gonna
have even if you have the bank for it. Now,
everybody has the time to get the boat, to go
to launch the boat and go out to the jetties,
or go up at Tulut a bend tier or whatever
they're gonna do. But everybody passes these ponds and canals
(11:12):
and ditches, and they're loaded with fish.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
And a three weight makes that an adventure.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Yep. And probably a four piece rod. Is Murford travel
again on a plane? Yep, they do. We building my fishing.
And a two piece also you don't have all the components.
You can actually still put that behind the seat and
pickup truck.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Yep, it's in two pieces.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Yeah, I travel with a I've traveled with a fly rod,
carrying it on car, carry on right, carry on to
Montana to Wyoming. I've flown into Denver, to Miami, UH
to Nashville, you know, different places, flown across the country
with it, and many of those places multiple times, and
(11:53):
just go there and you're at bam, Oh there's a stream.
I'm gonna go catch a few little trout or whatever's
going on in Miami. I'm catching small peacock bass and
catching these weird cichlids and all this awesome you know,
exotic stuff out there.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
But it's made it like an adventure. So you got
the rod.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
You know, we're not really gonna go and know we
can you can read blogs and stuff. We'll talk about
maybe line selection and all that. We'll just get you
on the basic trajectory. But let's talk about the flies themselves.
When you're going to fish for a blue gill. You
know what's a general good blue gill type pattern?
Speaker 3 (12:26):
Well, I know you like anything black with a black
bug with a red little tail.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Oh that this is like my this is like my
rabbit hole.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
That's right, And it's so bigger than your thumbnail. Basically
I have a tie.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
I'll use a tiny thing.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
And I've caught two six pound bass on that, and
I've caught a lot of bluegill. And I get the
cheap bass dash off Amazon set like one hundred flies
in it, and it comes with three black with the
red tail, and those always go first.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
We call them the liquorice. Yes, we call them liquorage flags.
Everybody gets a black liquorice first.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Right, get the blackers, know you not?
Speaker 3 (13:01):
I get that when you get the orange one.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
See yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
And then my friend Gray Thornton, these are masterfly fishermen,
and Tire sent me some.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
He made me some.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Oh wow up, and I've lost two of those, one
of them one fish, one of the one of limb.
I've cast him a thousand times out there and that
color works for me. But when you're up here in
to the bend, a lot of people fish to lead
a rayburn. We were fishing with something today that looked
like maybe a water bug.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Yep, And it was kind of a call.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Just a sharp tree traped around a little hook about
the size of a U eraser. Get the end of
the eraser about that thick on a very small little
brim hook. With the long shanks, you can get the
foot back out. Now. We were throwing little guinea guinea
flies to day that we make here, and we were
making them last night for today's use this morning. Yeah,
and you had a lot of ones on that. So
we try to move out the hook size up a
(13:47):
little bit better so that we don't catch all the
smaller ones we catch the bigger ones that were to target.
And the hook size makes a.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Difference, yeah, you know.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
And that's the thing about some of this is the
fact that still a little thing like the longer shanked
clunk for being able to you know, unhook things and
all that kind of stuff going on. That's that's just
a little positive here. But you know, we often talk
about matching the hats and fly fishing. There's nothing shartrous
in that water. No, so is it because of the
(14:17):
water was a little bit dingy and you got some contrast.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Yeah, they they just like shartrus. I was told of
the poppers on the old days when they would make them.
If it wasn't shartrus, you're not gonna catch anything, you know.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
It's funny. I hate sharks.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
Well you don't eat them every day. I hate it,
But I fished it this morning. It worked great up yet. Yeah,
but the water looked a little different world typically fish.
So it's all about what works in your area.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Yeah. But if you get one of these like you know,
these bash dash kits or something like that, they got
a bunch of collars. Figure out Now they'll hit any
kind of bug it hits the water, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
You know.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Well we have to find out also what the cadence
needs to be. Yeah, we were dry. We were doing
I guess casting three or four times in the air
to dry the fly out and then lay it down
and it would stay on the not brust the surface,
and then once it got wetter and wetter, it would
start kind of fall slowly.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
Uh, And that's when and then when you started moving
it a little faster on the caters, and that's when
they'd run out. You get it right. They wanted nothing interesting,
They wanted it moving today. They did not want it falling.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
To because nine of the ones I catching the bayous
and stuff, or just letting it float and make one
a little pop and when it sink. Yeah, today it
was when I was making about the back cast and
shoot another I get hit.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
You know, it's crazy, yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Kind of.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
It's just different cadences. Every single day is different depending
on what the sunlight doing, sunlight penetration, what bugs are
being hatched right now. I can't really tell you what
bugs they prefer every day. I didn't see a spider
on the surface today at all.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
You saw those water beetle things, yeah, or they don't
nothing eating.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
I don't know what the deal is, but you would
think that small, that black would be something they'd eat
all day long. But they will not touching.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Yeah, it's not like seeing a grasshopper going across down
you know.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
So I think we were throwing it actually from deep
water where the boat was to the bank, which about
six inches off the bank, off of a little pea
gravel or sheer bluff with boulders on it.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
We didn't really hit any grass flats today because we
were targeting at a different area today and they wanted it
like a grasshopper would fly a foot off the bank
into the water. They were ready for that. Yeah, and
then you went a little bit deeper because the water
temperature was ninety one eighty nine somewhere in there. It
was hot. But it'll be different today when the sunlight's
up full blast, it'll change up to ninety bearing probably
(16:25):
ninety one. We'd go out this evening and we'll see
a whole different cadence, whole different setup.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Do you fish little paupers for times?
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (16:34):
I try to go a little bit bigger poppers because
I love to. I like to see the explosion. Oh yeah,
you know, cause you go too small. They've got to
get them every time.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
I have a hard time working the tiny tiny pot Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
Yeah, we chewed through some last night.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
More.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Yeah, like the real micros.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
I don't like a skip. I like a pop and
sit let it set. Yeah, So what size would you was?
It was like the size of a thimble or.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
That's hard. The fish have to tell me, I've got
so many different flies we make or buy or you
can buy on Amazon, and then just work your way small,
work your way up, and the fly is gona tell
you what size fish you're going to get. They want
an after dinner mint or they want a full meal.
Every day is different depending on their feeding pattern.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
That's really cool.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Now when you're looking at the you know you have
your fly line, Okay, what about what what is the
line for? Everybody doesn't know that connects to your fly line,
your tip. It just talk about this, okay?
Speaker 1 (17:26):
And is this made.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
From any kind of special material compared to a regular
fisherman's life.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
Well, you can buy stuff on the market that's already
eight foot long and tapered down. It has we'll say
a fat end and a real thin end where the
fly goes on, and then you can cut it back
as you go. So the energy from the fat end,
the energy as you cast forward, it actually gets thinner
and thinner, and the energy to diticipates at the end
of the in the fly falls cause you're actually casting
the line, not the file to fly. Okay. So what
(17:56):
I do is on our five weights and up or
even any of our lines will take the actual fly line,
which are what we call it floating line that floats
on top of the water and different colors to it.
And then we tie what's called a nail knot onto
that direct line with what we call I call it,
it's called a hard mason. We using an offshore fishing.
It's a harder leader material. It's about the size of
(18:18):
a twelve pound, twenty pounds, thirty pound, and what happens
is it stays pretty stiff. So when you run that
energy forward, it actually loops forward. How can I say this?
The loop follows itself in a tight line. I guess
if you use a thinner like a regular mono fishing line,
it's got to collapse before the energy goes out. It's
(18:41):
a lot more like a heavier wire. It's not a wire,
but it's a heavier mono basically, And that would be
your main leader down and then we go down to
the tip it and that would be what you're gonna
tie your fly to. And if you've got too big
a tip it, you won't be able to go through
that small eye of that fly. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
So trout fishing is a thing called image.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
No, thank you.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
They're horrible to tie. It's the size of it, like
a maybe a piece of rice or something big one
very hard.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
And what's amazing about just a sidebar on trout is
you'll go to some fly shop and you know, Montana,
and they'll be like, yeah, they want a hopper, which
is like a grasshopper, then on the back like a
little think of a leader off the back, and you'll
have a midge on it, and they want the they
want the medium purple midge and you're thinking, you can't
even see the thing, and then you'll go out. I'm
(19:28):
I'll buy one just in case, and I'll have my own.
They're black, it's dark. Who cares you catch nothing on
a dark one? You put the medium purple one on
and immediately catch.
Speaker 5 (19:36):
How do the fish that little that little bit of whatever?
Speaker 2 (19:40):
But that you know, thank the Lord, our warm water
fish aren't quite as horrible, but they do sometimes.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Get Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
It's kind of like I do I want an ice
cream or a conduct bar? Yeah yeah, yeah, one day's
better than the other one. I'm gonna have that one.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Like today, e we're doing the Klondike bar, you know whatever.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
When we come back on doors, we're gonna talk more
about warm waterfly fishing. Welcome back to More Outdoors on
News Talk five sixty KLVY. I follow my new blog
Golf Great Whites at Golf great Whites dot com, all
about great white sharks, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico.
Follow me at the Chester More on Instagram. Continuing our
conversation about warm waterfly fishing with Captain Steve Stuby.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
You forced me to eat one. I really didn't want one, Yeah,
but you forced me to eat it.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
I got you so that that that's just to get
people sort of ideas started and having so much fun
catch and the panfish and all those kind of things.
Early and late really good sometimes, but sometimes the middle
of the day pedal, the time where you're at, you
know what's going on, the moon phase, and it's all
the typical fishing stuff. You just apply that to fly
fishing like you would traditional fishing. My favorite fish in
(20:47):
the world to catch other than like superstarfish like bonefish
or you know, you know, peacock mass or something, or crappy.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
I love crappy. I've been here with you Mudfish Adventures with.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Fact destroyed, destroyed, the crazy we catched a bunch of crappy. Well,
I'm like, I'm in because that's my favorite fish to eat,
a favorite fish to catch.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
It was unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
But I've been able to start catching a few on
the fly, and that's kind of a challenge because a
lot of times our crappi are off in the deeper
water and that's not as easy to fly fish. But
I've had access to a few private lakes that have
some crappy in them and kind of what I've done.
It was the first one was by accident. I was
just fishing because I knew I knew that there. It
(21:31):
was kind of early evening and typically in this pond
that I fished, I knew there are a big couple
of crappie maybe in it caught before. But I was
fishing with a big old bluegill in there, and I
just take that little nymph, which is basically like a
little moth pattern, threw it out and just let it
sink as far as I can let it sink, and
then just you know, edge it and then you could see,
you know, you would see a big blue gill come
(21:51):
up and maybe hit at it, and you're making retrieve
and I got an extra hard hit and it was
a big old white croppy. And then so I've caught
a few like that. But what I've kind of done
is just take the same basic patterns I fish for,
like a blue gill, matching the colors. What I think
with the water clarity, I use more of a natural
color brown the water is clearer. If it's muddier, I
(22:12):
might use the you know, the more edgy colors. And
then I've used that same like slower cadence and retrieved
for the crappie.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
You know.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
But I've talked to guys who like fish clousers, which
are like a little longer streamer and just kill them
like they're bass fishing for it.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
But it depends what the bait is. If the bait
got long minutes or like you go to the bait chop, say,
I want to have a large minut as well. That's
what they're feeding on. Most of the guys here that
are fishing deep, they want the small at menows they
can get because the hatch is not grown that big yet.
So you got to try different flies, and sometimes you're
gonna have a fly has a long tail on a
long tail feather. Take their scissors and cut it off,
cut it back, try it long first, and then start
(22:48):
cutting it back and you might be surprised.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
So actually adapting the fly that you have. I'm getting hit,
but not taken it right. Shave it off a little
bit shortened. Ut see what happens, and maybe you'll get
that get that dream two and a half pound crappie
on the fly, right, that would be I love it.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
Here they are.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
They're such a cool.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
Fish and they don't quit.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Very interesting story is you know, Pure Fishing is a
the public doesn't really know the name, but Pure Fishing
owns about twenty percent of the sport fishing market.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
They own a ton of companies.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Including pen About, Garcia, String, Berkeley, you know a ton
of different lines. So when you buy this of you're
buying Pure Fishing products a lot.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
They have a fish testing facility.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
And research facility in Spirit Lake, Iowa, and a man
named John Prott now has been there for years and
I actually got to go out and do some of
the gulp test with him, the latter gulp test. When
gulp just hit the market, they were gonna, you know,
some new gult pattern.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
It was really cool.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
But we were talking and I'm like, tell me about
your fish testing facility, and I said, what is the
smartest fish? Is there a fish that gets line shy,
allure shy, whatever will fat? And fascinating answer was first
thing is it was a carp He said, by far
a carp.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
But he goes you know what number two is?
Speaker 2 (24:05):
I said, what, he goes a crappy. He talked about
how quickly the crappy and I got to ask in
the same question sixteen seventeen years later at a thing
I did at NASA with pure fishing this January.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
It's a NASA facility.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
They did a special event, and he said again, crappy
was very very smart fish as well.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
Smartfish are a line sensitive, just smart in terms of
I didn't get to go super deep, but like they
would get shy of stuff real fast, like he was
too shiny of a jig.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Whatever work, it was just whatever was something turned them off.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
And what happens is I think crappy are so prolific
that it looks like, well, you know, you're catching everyone
down there. But if we went and did the the
forward facing sonar stuff for him, and.
Speaker 5 (24:53):
You learn real fast, most of them are there's a
ton of them that never even go look at your
lit And so that told me that, like, you know,
the fishery, like something's wrong there.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
I'm coming back and bam.
Speaker 4 (25:05):
You know.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
So I could see that with like you talked about
those shaving and adjustments yep, cut back that it might
make sense like well that didn't work with that works,
you know, and like it's just really really really neat stuff.
But you know, I guess here in the warm water
fisheries in the South, we're not even talking coastal We're
just talking fresh water stuff.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
The grand prize for most people is the old.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Largemouth bass, absolutely and.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
I love bass fishing on the FLI It's really what
got me back into dealing. It was targeting those bass
on poppers at my ponds a friend of mine has,
and I mean like maybe this is the first week
ild call like a three on a popper and I'm like,
it's pretty fun on a little five weight and a
little tiny popper. But uh, bass fishing on the fly
to me is like the rabbit hole. I mean, because
(25:52):
there's me who's using small stuff, Like I'm using these
small flies and some mediums sized poppers. And then I
go to this thing called The Hunter's Podcast and meet
Captain Scooper and he has these things a little like
a full grown more a eel, you know. They're like
these giant, like eight nine inch long streamer clouser things,
(26:15):
And I go, is that for like tarping?
Speaker 3 (26:17):
It's like bass on Toalito bit my ass on Teleda
band at a certain time of year, okay, a certain
temperature range. Not now, it's just too hot.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
So now that we've given this spoiler alert, let's just
talk about bass. You're obviously gonna go up to I
use a five weight a lot, but maybe an eight weight,
like you use eight weights a lot.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
The eight weight, it would be the lowest I'll use.
We mainly throw a ten weight. You got to throw
the ten today. But unless you're a weightlifter, the ten
weight's gonna wear you out about it.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
I'm like, I'm throwing this thing and I'm getting like
three quarters what I normally get, and you like, you
give me the three weight, and it's like, see gotcha.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
And it's a shorter rod you use, so you're using
a heavier fly rod.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
In general, w Yeah, we have to be able to
throw a wet sock if you look at it that way, yeah,
it's not. The sock is wet. It's pretty heavy, so
you have to have a lot of power in the
bottom end. I designed the short flyer. We've been here
at the facility twenty years now, so we designed a
short flyer that broke eight fly rods of a high
end caliber and cheap rods. So I said, I've got
to design my own, so we started building rods. I'll
(27:17):
be fourteen years ago. We developed the short flyer about
twelve years ago and we haven't broken any rods since.
We have twenty six state records on our rods now,
and I have a lot of guys that started to
catch their bass now because there's so much power in
the bottom ends of when they set the hook on
a top water big popper or something like that, there's
enough power to get that hook to drive into that
(27:37):
bone at the top of their mouth or in their
lips and with like a fire. Well, like you said,
if you don't know how to play the fish, and
if you don't know to have a strip set before
you lift the rod, that basket got to come up
and just spit it out because he's still holding on
to it. He just never got hooked. But we use
seven odd hooks here, five odd hooks, two odd hooks
on some of our big flyes that are twelve inches long.
(27:58):
So we're looking we're a state record. We had Texas Fishing,
not Fish gam sorry, Southwest Fly Magazine come in. They
did to shoot years ago and we had won over
ten pounds on one wow. But the gentleman never set
the hook. He just lifted the rod and we were
all kind of like, that's a trophy there, but you know,
you wren't ready. You know, that's why we try to
(28:19):
have the heavy gear, so we are ready and you've
got to be alert when that happens.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
When it happened, let's tell me these big flies, okay, mate,
what was what was the idea behind?
Speaker 1 (28:28):
I know, bigger bait, big fish.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
Now, I just wanted to throw something different. We have
our fish feeders here behind the property here up at
the mudfish facility, and I just noticed a big shad
going through there and the shad were twelve inches long,
you know, red thin fad, you know, two or three
inches of standard shad whatever body's but these big ones
were coming in. So what are these bass master guys throwing.
Now there's on these big swim baits all over the country, right,
(28:53):
so no one's done it with a fly, so let's
develop one multi jointing. Was a big fly, so we
had to develop the rod and twelve way rods. Dandy'll
be able to handle that big sock. So now we've
got the gear ready, We've got thirty pounds tipet line ready,
we got the twelve inch flies with seven night hooks
and them. I just needed for the stars.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
To all line up to find the fish.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
That's February at a certain full moon, at a certain
water temperature. When those big girls move up, We're ready
this show.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
What's the biggest you've caught on one of those?
Speaker 3 (29:23):
I've got record here four and a half pounds here,
but we've got some bigger than out six sixty five.
But I wasn't interested in records. Then people say, Scoob,
you start getting the record your rod.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Yeah, I caught a six yeap back in April. Okay
on my little stuff, yeah, but on your rod, you
know it has you know, on the five weight with that,
you know, but you're going you're gunning here.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
This is a different thing that I'm doing.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
When we come back on More Doors, we're gonna talk
more with Captain Steve Stuby about his goal to catch
record bass onto Liederman Reservoir with fly fishing gear, exclusively
here More Outdoors on Talk five sixty klv I. Welcome
back to More Outdoors on News Talk five sixty klv I.
(30:07):
This is Chester Moore wrapping up our conversation with Talita
ben Guy, the fly rod maker Captain Steve Study about
warm water fly fishing. If you've ever wondered about catching
fish on the fly in local waters, you need to
go back and listen to the archive of this program.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
If you haven't caught.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
The whole show here live, so go back and listen
to on the podcasts. You don't want to miss this
fascinating conversation.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
You're gunning for record fish.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
I want one big fish.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
On you're gunning for that double digit for right?
Speaker 3 (30:36):
I need one over ten. Yeah, you're done to make
a statement with a fly rod.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Yeah. And if you're doing you're not doing this at
Lake four.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
No, no, no, you're not doing this at uh you
know some lake in Alabama or somewhere.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
You're doing it right here at till in my backyard.
Why not my backyard? You know, Tammy and I've been
all over the world. Yeah, why can we do it
in our own backyard? Why all I got to fly
to Argentina or South America or northern Canada. Yes, the Amazon.
Everything is right, You're in our backyard.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
That's pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
You know. It's just we just geared up, got the
right equipment. So but I'm not saying you have to
buy expensive equipment. You just need the right equipment.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Right equipment is let us talk a little bit about
the right equipment versus.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
Expensive equipment.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Okay, give me give.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
Me a difference here.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
If you have a rod that someone could get that
would be good enough for their task, but you could
maybe upgrade a little bit for their thing and be
an expensive version of it.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
When you start adding more money to the rod blank itself,
you're buying a better quality rod.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Blank.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
It's going to have more power to certain power band
in that depending on your handles. We make custom handles
here to fit your hand which is a little bit
more expensive than just a wooden handle or just a
core handle. Yeah, you know your price range. What you're
adding the components about the eye I built rods that
go down to Hawaii and they're catching giant tra volli
(31:58):
and stuff on them. Those are made out of titanium. Wow,
that's a twelve to eighteen hundred dollars rod. Because when
that fish hits, he's eighty five seventy five pounds. When
he's running, he'll actually spoil that fly line. It's burning
that line through those eyes. So I've got to have
something that's not going to burn the line. So that's
a different kind of component of a rod. But I'm
for what you're doing here. We could go by well,
(32:19):
like you say, you're Martin that you like throwing a lot,
it's one hundred dollars could get you in the game.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
Yeah, So that's what I want to get out, Like
something can get you know, everything in the game.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
You can do one hundred dollars to get in the game.
But you're not gonna I don't want to say casting
fly rod. You have to do some practice, sure, you know,
to get good at it. But the more better equipments
that you buy, it makes it easier, doesn't make it,
cause that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
That's exactly That's what I was asking, Like, you know,
is it does?
Speaker 1 (32:42):
It does? Make it easier.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
But you know, we got people that listen that are
you know, and I'm probably the only guy in the
media that does this. I know people in the industry,
and I'm a figure in the media that has an audience.
So I get to get endorsements like your company and
different people. People will give me stuff for endorsements. I
could not afford a lot of this if I were
just taking out of my paycheck. So I'm always honest
and saying, hey, I got this because I have these
(33:05):
relationships and I can promote and it's wonderful, or I
wouldn't use it. But if you can't afford it, there's
this over here that'll get you at least going right. Yeah,
And it will always hate when I watch something like
some outdoors showing and there's a guy with a five
hundred dollars spinning rod catching crappie and he's like, this
is the only thing that'll get the job done here,
(33:26):
and I'm like, I have a nineteen ninety five Berden
rod at the house and get the same fish pow.
It's okay to talk about that, but be honest about
how people what they need it for.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
You know, if you've got a family of three kids. Dude,
that's hard exactly. You know, I can't buy a ranger
boat or all the high end boats. Well, I can
buy a used boat and still get out there right
next to you.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
But the thing I want to talk about and make
my little pitch for you is if someone is a
fly fisherman and they want to go after the monster
and have the patience to do it and maybe be
that guy that sets that record. Okay, they could hook
up and do a guide trip with you. Absolutely, Yeah,
And so people need to plan this out. What is
(34:07):
the perfect time of year you're talking about that February
to early March period.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
Yeah, I need a sixty eight to seventy two Okay,
somewhere in that game, when it gets down to fifty
five and sixty they start moving up a little bit,
the big girls will be there. I need something. What
you see the lights on the boat. We get there
and electronic before daylight, and we stay after dark. That
is our twilight time. That is when those fish move
at four o'clock in the morning, before daybreak. They're feeding
(34:30):
between four thirty five. I've already got to be on
the spot, ready to go. I can't wait till eight o'clock,
go eat breakfast and try to go do That's a
different kind of ball game. If you're a trophy hunter,
we know the times to kind of go.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
So you're gonna go do the maximum time. You're gonna
put some experimental gear, stuff you've tested. But yeah, it's
not you're readily available. No, you're not gonna find it, period,
it's not available.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
I'm the only how that does it?
Speaker 2 (34:53):
Custom stuff here from Captain Scooby at Mudfish Adventures and
if someone wants to re how do they do that?
Speaker 3 (35:01):
You can call the one eight hundred. It's one eight
four four six eight three three four seven four and
that twenty four to seven goes right to my phone.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
Also Mudfishadventures dot com com, follow him at Mudfish Adventures
on Mudfish Adventures LLC on Instagram, and Mudfish Adventures on Facebook,
and you do a lot of fun updates and you
get a lot of information out and stuff like that
for people just want to follow up. Was it was
kind of cool. I put some stuff about fishing with
Captain Scooby and just like dude, you're a Captain.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
Scooby, everybody's already heard of him here.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Yeah, it is kind of cool.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
Yeah, we've been in the outdoors twenty something plus years.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Yeah, and so that is a very cool thing.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
And it's just really cool to be here, you know,
get to know your wife and get to know you
know you even even more and see the heart and
soul that goes into what you do and the experimental
nature of it. I mean, you're you're out there trying
different stuff every day, you know, it's always and you know,
he had he brought my muddy Paul Vezinski's here, and he.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Brought several tackle boxes full.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
And we'll end with this all handsoff some handmade lures
and there was traditional lures. Yeah, like you know, I
saw a little crank baits in there, top waters everything,
shirt baits, all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
And used to have a competition. Tell us about this competition.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Well, there's a guy named I've been here twenty years.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
So a neighbor was building a house well across the street.
This guy used to make handmade lures. His name was
Bill Gray. And got to be friends with mister Gray
as I was helping a guy build a house. And
then three or four guys got together every week and
all right, here's an antique lure book. See if you
could make one. Here's some measurements, here's the colors. Three
(36:46):
or four guys would come back on a Sunday after
church and we go, hey, let me see what you have.
And then that's how it all started. That went for
years and years and years. So every week I had
to make a wooden lure. I had a red seedar
or white seater. Different woods flew different. And Tim and
I had a home in Spring, Texas. We had a
swimming pool there. So what I would do is build it,
(37:06):
paint it, and I'd actually swim it in the swimming
pool and let the sun high noon twelve o'clock one
o'clock shining the rays down and you could actually see
the wave action on the bottom of the pool, so
you could see the wave, the pressure wave age. Guess
you'd see not the current wave, but the pressure wave,
the sonic wave. And then that's how I'd have a
(37:28):
guy buy probably ten at a time, and he'd come
by and check each one. I'm out in my pool
and one would swim different, it would hunt different, he
called it, and those are the ones they would buy. Wow,
So you know there was a fifty dollars lure any
times one times ten or whatever. And then he would
go to the tournaments and that's what he'd won fish
on a tournament. Then the word got out and I
was building lures and this guy got tired of building lures.
(37:50):
And then we come up here to the lake house
and i'd try him here on the baths since we
didn't have bass in the pond, which we did put
him in the pond one day when I got muddy
or whatever, but I got up in the filters in
my life, said you can't be putting fish in this
email line.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
The limitations is over on this by the way.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
Yeah, So anyway, so yeah, and the fish would tell
you how they want them. They wanted a double spinner
or they want a single spinner on them or something.
And it was really interesting. You learned a lot that way.
So then we got into fly fishing and then it's
history after that. So wow, it's a different world. It's uh,
but you can take five fish all over the world.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
And one thing about youngsters when they come here. We
have a facility here. We have over five hundred books
on the wall of any kind of fly you want,
to tie. We just pulled the book down and set
it on the table and it's just page by page
how to do each component and what the materials are,
what we call the formula, and then you can make
that fly and go fish for that fish.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
So if you want to book a trip ye Captain
Scooby Mudfish Adventures dot com. You can get them a
Mudfish Adventures LLC on Instagram, mush ad Adventures on Facebook,
and you have a phone number.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
As well YEP one eight four four six eight three
three four seven for it is my hotline to me.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
It's always great having Captain Steve stu be only such
a wealth of information and I get a lot of questions,
I mean a growing number of questions about fly fishing
because people are seeing me out there on my Instagram
count at d Chester more or maybe on my Facebook
and higher calling Wildlife Facebook. And I'm out there locally
most of the time catching blue gills and long haired
(39:21):
sunfish and crappie and largemouth bass on the fly.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
It's super fun.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
And I wanted to do a program that was real
in depth on the warm water fly fishing because most
people's idea of fly fishing's our river runs to it
up in Montana somewhere, which is awesome, But this is
a different kind of fishing and it's absolutely just as fun.
Let me give you a hint. Our blue meal fight
way harder than trout for their size. I know a
(39:47):
lot of trout guys won't like that, but it's a fact.
So fly fishing changed my life as a fisherman. It's
not the only fishing. I still do standard fishing, but
it's easy to carry a fly ride on my truck,
pull over to a canal and go fishing. Thanks so
much for listening to program Tonight, God bless and have
a great outdoors weekend.
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