Wipers On The Fly

Dynamite….now if you grew up in the 70’s you know that only JJ Evans (aka Jimmy Walker) could deliver a DY-NO-MITE unlike anyone else; still think of him each and every time I hear the word or even think of it. If you go to the dictionary you will get many definitions…but one of those is to blow up, shatter or destroy with dynamite. This past week (last week of October) I found out exactly which fish could have their photo in the dictionary beside “dynamite”; I grabbed my boat, 2 ½ horse outboard engine and made my way to Allen’s Creek on Lake Monroe…I was in search of Wipers, which are a hybrid of the white bass and striper.

I eased my boat away from the ramp and noticed that there wasn’t hardly a breath of wind moving, it was dead calm on the lake and that doesn’t happen too often. I hadn’t fired up my little outboard engine since the spring and frankly I was curious to see if it would start easily or if it would give me trouble. I made all the adjustments and pulled the cord about 4 or 5 times and heard the engine cough…another pull and it fired right up! You might think 2 ½ horses is small…you are correct, but it does a very good job of pushing my small electric boat around, especially on still water. In about 15 minutes I had ‘purred’ my way to the opening of Allen’s Creek and began to fish my way back toward the ramp using my dual electric motors.

I was in hot pursuit of wipers but also at the same time looking for largemouth bass. I had along with me my 5 weight TQR rod with a Rio sink tip line and my 8 weight Ross rod with a floating line and a large frog popper. Keeping the north side of the area to my left I made cast after cast with a silver shad pattern…stripping it erratically and leaving it set for seconds at a time to recreate a dying shad.

The lake continued to be calm and occasionally you could hear what sounded like someone throwing a dog into the water…this was the attacking and thrashing of larger wipers as they crashed in and fed upon schools of shad. Now this is where I have to admit that I had never caught a wiper before as I just don’t take the time to fish the ‘big lake’ too often. On a couple of occasions I had fish rise within casting distance of the boat and would hurriedly cast toward the eruption…but the first hour went by with no hook-ups or even any contacts from largemouth bass. I eventually came up behind the only other boat in the area and decided to cross over to the south side of the bay and fish the structure (downed trees) for bass.

Being up in the boat is nice…usually when I am fishing from one of my tubes you are so low in the water that you really can’t see much of what might be going on behind the fly. I made a cast beside a large downed tree and was erratically stripping the fly back towards me when I saw a large silver flash in the water in the direction of my fly. I quickly made another cast back into the same area and once again another flash…but no hook-up. As they say….third time is the charm and as soon as the fish hit I knew it wasn’t a largemouth bass because I had dynamite on the end of my 5 weight rod. I had been told that wipers really fight hard but the first few seconds were impressive. I quickly sat down in my boat and used my foot pedals to steer me and the fish away from any trouble because I wasn’t sure I could stop the fish if it chose to make a jail break for the trees and trash around the edge.

What seemed like a long time was probably only about 3 minutes and I could tell that I was starting to wear the fish down and that I had a good hook set. I worked my fly line into the leader and then reached down and lipped what was an 18 inch wiper. I didn’t weigh the fish but would guess it was close to 3 pounds…once again, dynamite comes in small packages. The next hour was very exciting as I hooked up with 2 more fish…didn’t land either of them and then as I was nearing the boat ramp I had my 8 weight rod out and was making long cast with the frog popper…searching for anything that might be hunting in the shallows; the popper was gurgling and popping back towards me when an explosion occurred. I set the hook and whatever bass specie it was blew me up…took my favorite frog popper and made his escape. I didn’t even have time to react when the fish surfaced again and tail walked-shaking his head viciously trying to lose my popper that was hooked in the corner of his mouth. I actually thought it had indeed pitched the fly loose and hustled the boat over to the area…but I wasn’t that lucky and all I had left was part of a piece of tippet.

I eased the boat on into the ramp, hopped out and backed down my truck and took a minute to look back out into the middle of the bay as yet another big wiper came up and busted whatever it was pursuing. I knew that I was hooked. This was one of the more exciting short trips I had been on…and I would be back; back to yet again try and capture lightning in a bottle…or dynamite on the end of a fly rod. Nature has its way of intriguing all of us…even in failure and an occasional loss I truly love and Enjoy the Great Outdoors.