Mid-September Weekend Fishing 2011

Mixing fishing in-between my kids' extra-curricular activities is the name of the game for 9 months of the year.  I'm pretty good at it. ;o)

Since my wife was still in Belgium, I took my son to a B-day party he had been invited to.  When I got back home, our neighbor's daughter Morgan called and wanted to come over.  Sure!  She hung out with my daughter and I for a bit, then I had to take my daughter to piano lessons.  I told Morgan she could go along if she wanted to...we could try to do a little fishing while we waited for the piano lessons to finish.  She called home to make sure it was OK with her mom.  It was, so off we went.  It was 7:30pm when we dropped off my daughter, plus it had been a cloudy, drizzly day...so it was pretty dark outside already.  I mourn the passing of the long evenings of summer!

I picked a public city park pond that has some lights around it, to help us see.  We just shared one fly rod, since Morgan isn't comfortable casting a fly rod yet.  I would cast out a microjig under an indicator, and she would work it back in.  We missed a lot of strikes, but Morgan landed a couple of crappies.  She was pretty excited about that.  At first she didn't want to take the fish off the hook, but later she let me work the fly in, and when I'd catch fish SHE wanted to take the fish off the hook!  We ended up catching probably 10 more crappies, 1 bluegill, and 3 green sunfish.  The last fish of the night was a BIG CHUNKY Green Sunfish which, compared to the tiny crappies we'd been catching, seemed like a BEAST of a fish!  Its all a matter of "scale".  ;o)

Saturday morning, I took my daughter to Swing Choir practice.  That was scheduled to last for 5 hours.  Morgan came over right after her soccer game.  She played video games with my son for awhile, then she asked if we could go fishing again.  OF COURSE!  My son didn't want to go, he was really into the video game.  We had about an hour before my daughter would be ready to pick up.  Off we went.  It was cloudy and cool.  Fishing was kind of slow.   I took 2 fly rods.  I'd cast one out for Morgan, let her work it in while I cast the 2nd fly rod and work it in.  Morgan had a few hits, but didn't catch anything,  I caught 6 bluegills before we had to go pick up my daughter.

My wife got home from her work trip on Saturday afternoon!  Sunday evening, my son wanted her to play the video game with him.  Its fun to watch for a little bit.  I decided my time was better spent next to some water, so I got permission to go fishing.  I called my buddy Jay, but he wasn't feeling the best, so declined my offer to fish together.  So, I just headed to the closest public pond.  It was around 5pm when I got there.  It drizzled/rained intermittently the entire time I was there.  I fly-fished for bluegills for awhile, and caught some, but it was slow.  I tossed some bread to attract some catfish or grass carp, but only got bluegills to show up.

I could occasionally see the backs of pods of fish out away from shore in one area.  They would occasionally spook, but seemed to remain near the same area.  I put on a soft hackle wet fly pattern, and cast around that area.  I caught bluegills and crappies.  And then a green sunfish.

Crappie on a soft hackle.

As it got darker, action slowed on the soft hackle, so I switched to a chartreuse microjig under an indicator.  I caught mostly crappies on this rig.  I ended up tallying 15 crappies, 8 bluegills, 1 green sunfish, and 1 small largemouth bass for the trip.  I think this was the first trip since early Spring that I'd caught more crappies than bluegills from this pond!