A year or so back I saw some fish hitting the surface on Salado creek, and tossed some small dry flies at them. Turns out it was 3" long little river minnows, the ones with the black spot on the tail. I thought that was interesting.

Tonight I was chasing big bass and catfish when I accidently snagged a 3" minnow right in the lips, which immediately got their attention. I left him hooked up and flipped that thing out there and the catfish went crazy for it (the first time), aftwerwards they were all spooked and didn't want it. Tried minnow patterns afterwards and didn't do any good.

I'm wondering if I could use a flyrod to use a sabiki rig style gang of small flies to catch minnows for bait.

Yeah, I don't always fly fish, and I love fishing with minnows.

Those minnows with the black spot are blacktail shiners. i catch itsy bitsy minnows all the time. I catch Red shiners a lot and reds are anywhere from 1-4 inches. I'll see if I can dig up a pic

I've snagged a bunch of shad while flyfishing. It is cool because a big fish will sometimes hit it on the way in!!!

brushiphileOr may I also call you minnowphile? Anyway, I thought of one of those big old long telescoping crappie poles to drag a sabiki rig through. Might give you more reach and control and, in a Salvatore Dali manner could be considered somewhat fly fishing - ish....

sight fishin:

Ahhhhh


Sight fishing for gambusia

Dave is calling his shots like Babe Ruth.

-up in the Lower Mt Fork, you go to do a roll cast or what not and sometimes you will have a creek chub on your midge, and you wont know it till it flies by your ear.

When I was first learning to cast a fly and it was a lot more rough than it is now (don't get me wrong, I still cast like a near sighted octopus in heat) I used to snag silversides and blacktail shiners fairly often in the river.

and to completely twist this thread (aka, I'm a jerk)......

Dave's fish is not a minnow, although he taught myself and several others how to catch bigger minnows on the fly rod:

you should enter that picture as "August Fish of the Month" except you'll have some splainin to do about the skullcap

Hi Dave, I'm the guy you were sitting next to at the SGFF club meeting last week.

Nice to meet you online too

I often catch minnows on midge pupa while fishing for trout in streams.

The best minnow story I've heard recently -- a friend and his buddies hired two guides to fish one of the lakes in Grand Teton National Park this past June. Cold day, cold water, and the only fish caught among the two boats (four anglers) was one 17" chub. Yes, 17"!

My chub can get that big.

uh-oh.... now I gotta correlate my online/real life personalities... this is a tough one!