Catching fish with Isla Jean

Made a trip over to Morrison Lake today with my son and his half brother, Cody, (my ex's son) to try and find a few crappie. A little background first.

I am amazed at some of the jigs the Crappie.com members tie. I thought it would be cool to be able to tie my own but didn't know where to start and really didn't want to spend the money on the tools and supplies needed. Two weeks ago I was at a garage sale and they had a bunch of tying tools and supplies that I was able to buy for an insanely low price. I got thread, dubbing, chenille, feathers, maribou, fur and hair. I got a nice oak tying table, two vices, bobbins, scissors and on and on. So I watched a couple of youtubes and went to work.

My first batch were not good but after about 100 I started to get the hang of it. Todays trip was to test some of my 2nd generation ties to see if they would catch fish.

We were on the water by 6:15 and the lot was 2 spaces from being full. We were long lining at about .8 mph and Cody hooked up first using a white body, chartreuse tail and got a decent pike to the boat before it broke his line. I was next, landing a 15 1/2" bass on a jig I named the "Isla Jean". It has a pink, orange, purple and chartreuse maribou tail with flash and a chartreuse/pink chenille body. Colorful and with some sparkle, just like Isla. Cody landed 2 crappie on a black/chartreuse and I got two crappie on the Isla Jean.

We never did find the huge schools and by 10:30 we had enough. I'm glad we left when we did, the launch was turning into a circus. Water temp was 80 and there is a nasty algae bloom going on. All in all a good day and all but 1 of my creations caught fish. The Isla Jean is getting retired and hung in my office and hopefully some day I'll be able to tell her the story of how I caught fish on "her" jig.

When we got home I tied a few for Cody, letting him pick the color combinations, so he can try them the next time he goes out with his cousins.