Weekend Fly-Fishing Report, 5/20/2011 and 5/22/2011

I fished Friday (5-20-2011) after work in the drizzle at a public pond not far from my house. The male crappies are guarding nests in the shallows.

I also saw some good bass on nests. Tried for them. Had 3 solid hook-ups. Two on a largish Clouser Deep Minnow, one on a different minnow pattern I had tied up. 2 threw the hook, and the last one I had sort of “beached”, and tried hoisting it up onto the grass by pulling my line up. The line broke, the fish swam off with my sweet sweet fly! They were probably 3-4 pounders. Males!

Also saw grass carp in this pond for the first time. Previously, I’ve only seen swirls and such (and caught one grass carp when blind casting at night)…but I could actually SEE the fish this time. I was within casting range on a few of them, and fired away with whatever flies I thought might work...although they weren't ideal. Caught a crappie instead of the grass carp.

Saw some fair-sized bull-gills, but couldn’t catch the ones from the first group I saw. Caught some smaller ones later.

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Last night (5-22-2011) I fly-fished a different local public pond. First four fish were: Largemouth Bass, Green Sunfish, Bluegill, and Crappie. So, I had variety going for me. Caught a few more crappies, but not nearly as many as the last time there. I did find a stretch of shoreline where there were some decent bluegills apparently on nests….I didn’t see the nests, but I caught a bunch from a fairly small area….and most were fair-sized males with good colors. Most of the bluegills were caught on an unweighted "Rubberlegs", and then I switched to a foam topwater like a Chernobyl Ant/Hopper, and caught quite a few on that as well.

I THINK there were grass carp working in a certain area. I tried for them with flies only (ran out of bananas earlier in the week). No hook-ups. Frustrating creatures.

I took pictures of some of the bluegills I caught, because there were some interesting color variations:
This one had a lot of orange all along its sides

While this one had predominantly silvery blue:

And this one had a lot of metallic green on its flanks: