Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Night Fly-Fishing 9-19-09

Beautiful night last night...calm...mid-60's. No ducks or geese on the pond!! Great night for fishing, right? YEAH!
Well, really fishing was S-L-O-W. I fished for a about 2 hours...from 7:30pm-9:30pm. Caught 10 crappies, 5 bluegills...and a minnow.

A muskrat had been swimming along in front of me, and kept splashing everytime I would move or cast...but he'd come right back up and continue to swim around in front of me...like 20 feet away. Finally, it swam along the shoreline to my right and then swam to the bank, where I could no longer see him. Just a couple minutes later, I hooked something big...and it splashed a several times, and I was sure I'd hooked that darn muskrat. It swam across in front of me, so I turned on my cap light...and it was a fish! The minnow. BIG MINNOW!

It was a trick to land by hand, alone in the dark, but I managed. The "minnow" was a 29" Grass Carp. SWEET!!
Plugging the length into a couple of weight-to-length conversion equations specifically for Grass Carp yields an average calculated weight of 12 lbs. Not bad for the 5wt fly rod!

I used a yellow boa yarn leech pattern again, although I had started off the evening trying something like a Thunder Creek minnow pattern tied with yellow calf tail...(had some bumps on that, but no fish).



Monday, October 19, 2009

October 16, 2009

Wasn't sure if the weather was gonna get any better, so I went fly-fishing after dark on Friday. Air temp was around 43 degrees. Fishing was slow at the local public pond I elected to fish. I managed 6 crappies, 6 bluegills, and a 16.5" largemouth bass that provided a heckuva good fight! Also lost another good fish, that was probably either another bass, or possibly a catfish.


The fly I used was one that has worked really well for me on this particular pond all year. It is a #8 yellow boa yarn leech, which you can see in the bass's mouth below: