We have been on the water a lot this year and it looks like things are beginning to wind down for our guiding for the year. It has been both frustrating and glorious all in the same season sometimes in the same week. We started the season with terrible conditions that really never seemed to relent into late June. We have had a good run of fishing and weather since the early time period spending a lot more of our time on the Tippy than ever before. Here is the latest with the fishing and other sundry items.

Tippecanoe River

We have now seen one of the coldest Octobers in recent memory; this following one of the coldest summers on record and a pretty cold September. You have seen our reports for the Tippy in those months but we are a little behind on our October reports. This October has been a mixed bag of okay fishing and very good fishing. For the most part the cold nights and occasional release of water from the dam has made fishing pretty ordinary most days. We have pretty much fished pink/white half and half’s and a new crawdad I have been working on for the Tippy. I have been developing a larger crawdad meant to cover more water than some of the others I have developed over the years. This fly is meant to strip as a streamer, which is really what it is, rather than bottom bouncing or jigging it; most crawdad patterns are not created to cover water. There is a reason I am trying to develop more crawdad patterns to strip. Most crawdads, including mine, have an inherent problem. They are most all built to fish in a deep hole almost vertically. I wanted a crawdad that could cover more water horizontally and had a larger profile that fish might see well at distance or in fast water. So I have been experimenting a little lately and have come up with a new streamer crawdad that has worked very well over the last several weeks. If you are interested in seeing it come by the store and I will show you how to tie it. We are probably going to do very limited trips for the rest of the year because of the temps and leaf invasion that will make fishing the Tippy harder. That doesn’t mean we won’t fish, the fishing can be pretty good all winter long. It just means we are getting near the end of our guiding for the season.

Scott was out on Thursday and did an upper section float and had a marvelous day with lots of fish coming to the surface. His day was an example of what is possible with a couple days of warm weather.

So to recap the year on the Tippy I would consider it one of the best years in my 14 years of guiding. We probably numbers wise saw more fish than last year and bigger fish were about the same. We caught lots of different fish this year as usual and the Musky sightings were a very interesting development. Hooking a few of them was like an out of body experience. I still can’t believe there are Muskies in the river I fished as a kid.

I want to thank you all for booking your trips on the Tippy this year. The total trips we did on the Tippy this year were way up. We did over 50 trips August through October and they were worth the extra drive to the river for you and us. Not to mention giving Sugar Creek a break is always a good idea.

Regulations for the Tippy

I had the opportunity to speak to the committee where rules and regs start for the state a couple of weeks ago. This committee takes suggestions from the public and forms suggestions to the state for further regulations. While it is not where the rules are made it is an important step to create new ones. I had a few minutes to speak and gave my best shot at further harvest restrictions for Smallmouth specifically in the Tippecanoe River. This committee will meet privately again in December and I would like to do a little more to sway them in the mean time. If you are interested in helping please write an email in support and get it back to us. THIS IS IMPORTANT!!! Smallmouth Bass are our greatest asset as fly anglers in the state of Indiana. We need to let the DNR know that the decisions made for Sugar Creek were good and they need to continue down this path. With the help of good friend Rick Cockrum we have already started the momentum with the 20 inch size limit for Sugar Creek. These are our native fish lets give them the respect they deserve.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 9:43 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.