This week's fishing tip - Polarized sunglasses may save your eyesight.
The art of fly fishing means keeping one or two flies in constant motion at the end of your line. At two points during each cast, the direction of the flies crosses the vertical plane of your face, meaning there's always a risk of hooking yourself. While barbless hooks and careful casting can mitigate some of this risk, the chance of driving a stout egg hook into your earlobe or eyeball is very real.
Polarized sunglasses serve two important functions while fishing. First, they cut surface glare and allow you to read water, look at bottom structure and spot fish that may have gone unnoticed if you weren't wearing them. They also keep you from squinting into low sunlight and glare, saving you a nasty headache at the end of the day.
Made from plastic or tempered glass, sunglasses are safety glasses, protective lenses that keep branches, debris and flying hooks from damaging your eyeballs. Hooks that end up embedded in your fingers, hands, ears, etc, aren't fun to remove, but it's often a relatively easy operation. Getting a hook stuck in an eyelid or eyeball is an emergency situation that requires immediate physician attention.
Save yourself the pain, stress and worry of a situation like this - wear your sunglasses when you are fishing the long rod. Your eyes may thank you for it!
This week's Southeast Michigan fishing report is as follows:
Lake Erie: Those fishing in open water off the docks in the Metro Park Marina have caught a couple perch or bluegill. Ice in the area is not safe. There is still one dock in at the Metro Park launch. WARNING: There have been reported sightings of a Yeti or "Abominable Snowman" on ice floes near the Banana Dyke. While these sightings have yet to be confirmed by area Yeti experts, anglers in these areas should take all available precautions. Yetis have been known to prowl popular ice fishing areas, terrorizing anglers, stealing catches of walleye and defecating in ice shanties. If your shanty has been used as a Yeti portajohn, please procure a large sample for DNA testing - yeti DNA testing information can be found here.
Huron River: Some steelhead are being caught by those using wax worms, small spoons and single egg tube flies. Water levels have continued to rise this week, due to upstream dam releases and high melt/rain conditions. Flows should stabilize by the weekend. Cold weather will have the fish hunkering down in deeper holes.
Detroit River: Is producing some jumbo perch in front of Gibraltar and along Grosse Ile. Anglers are using perch rigs with shiners off the docks, breakwalls and seawalls. A few perch were caught in the canals around Gibraltar.
Saginaw Bay: After heavy rain and near-record high temperatures last weekend, ice conditions were unsafe in most places. Anglers are cautioned to stay off the ice until the colder weather has a chance to make new ice. Perch fishing in shallow water should be possible again after a few days of frigid weather. A few pike and walleye were taken from the Hot Ponds by enterprising anglers using Polar Hair minnows.
Kawkawlin River: conditions were high and muddy. Those using long-rods caught some perch, but most were too small to keep.
Saginaw River: Walleye fishing was pretty good before the rain and snow melt, but rising water, muddy conditions and floating ice chunks made fishing nearly impossible.
Tittabawassee River: Walleye fishing was decent before the high, muddy water conditions.
Quanicassee River: Fishing was slow, with some small perch taken on minnows or wigglers.
Tight lines!
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