7-13-2011 Maumee River - Independence Dam

Quillbacks are nothing but trouble. Plain and simple. I went down to the Independence Dam on the Maumee River for yet another round of warmwater fly fishing. I had a lot of strikes, but I just couldn't make many connections. I assume most of the strikes were from gar because they were everywhere around me. I saw many of them surfacing. I wish I had some rope flies with me today because I would have caught tons of gar. I did manage to connect with a nice freshwater drum. I lost another fish I never seen, and I lost another quillback. The quillback from the Maumee are very talented when it comes to jumping off of the hook. But this quillback ruined my fly line. It had some size to it and as I was fighting it, it ran my line across a sharp rock and cut into it. The core of the line is still intact and I should still be able to get some use out of it until I can pick up a new line. I wrapped some fly tying thread around it to help fill in the cut, and then I covered it with a little bit of zap-a-gap.

For flies, I used a black bead-head woolly bugger and a dubbin' craw. The drum took the bugger, but the unknown fish and the quillback took the dubbin' craw.

Freshwater Drum caught on a black woolly bugger.