Night Fishing

OK...I'm not a guy that is easily intimidated...period....but fishing at night freaks me out....Dustin and I came up with the idea of giving this a whirl the other day. I usually don't have much trouble targeting Walleye on the fly, early mornings seem to work out just fine....however...everything that I read suggests that the best bite is at night. When the big boys come out to hunt...as well as all the ground dwelling animals of the North East...bears, raccoons, fishers, martins, coyote, bob cats, the mountain lions that are spotted all over but DEC claims we don't have...etc....

I normally don't let these things get into my head...but turn off the lights, deplete me of the one sense that I cling to the most, the sense that makes my living and allows me to create the art and flies that I make. The most important sense in my life..MAYHEM in my brain....Every noise, EVERY NOISE sent me into a silent panic on the inside..what the hell was that...I know I heard something....Quick grab the maglite and do an eyeball scan...That's right an eyeball scan...Take the lite and scan the woods behind us to check for little beady glowing eyes...

We had a lantern, headlights and the mag...The first night we actually ran into a couple of other guys that were doing the same...not with fly rods, but Walleye hunting none the less...Now fly fishing at night comes with it's own set of difficulties...After slapping your back or head one or two times you learn the importance of a side cast...and crushing down barbs...

The animals aside...the thing at night that affected me the most were the insects. Spiders that could walk off with your child, Dobsons that sound like B-52s flying at your head. In fact, we had a run in with a Dobson...It bombed my head, I swatted at it furiously, then it flew over and landed on Dustin...We both hiked up out skirts and screamed like school girls...After regaining composure we went to the lantern for re-rigging to find this spider hanging out.

The pic does not do it justice...If I put this spider on my palm, it would have filled my hand...Anything with more or less legs then me is not ok....end of story...Once again skirt came up and off I went back to the water...

We hit another spot after a bit and finally had a hookup. Bent the rod over and got off....I cast again this time hooking solid into a jaw...A 24 inch Walleye came up...Fat, healthy and angry. Walleye seem to fight a bit different at night. Instead of heading straight back to the bottom like early morning or daylight hours, at night they tend to pull side to side and wherever they want...The take was a lot more aggressive then the daytime as well....

We tried Friday night and Saturday night....One fish brought in between the two of us...Saturday cost me the life of my Sage Large Mouth rod...It was a dear friend that will be sent back to the company...After a big double haul with a weighted fly, it exploded like a gunshot and broke it's butt....I will try this again in the near future...as soon as the the phantom spiders crawling on me and Dobson buzzing leave my thoughts....