Sunday Evening Fly-Fishing, 6-3-2012

I fished last night at a nearby public pond.  The wind was supposed to lay down, but  it was pretty breezy on the downwind side of the pond!  I didn’t get out until about 8pm.   There were quite a few people fishing there.  I caught more than anyone, of course.  In fact, I probably caught more than the other folks combined, and they were using nightcrawlers.

I lost the two biggest fish of the evening.  I was using my new flyfishing favorite bass topwater (the Gurgler).  I had customized this particular one just a bit...to make it interesting and give it extra-powerful fishing MOJO (see picture below).  I cast out beyond the weedline, and something SIPPED it off the surface….no big splash, just took it under.  I set the hook and OH MAN!  It bulldogged, which was fine, I was putting a lot of pressure on it because I wanted to make sure the hook penetrated deeply.  There were a lot of weeds along the shore and out about 15’.  The fish was dogging just on the far side of the weeds.  And then I watched my line head for the surface.  OH CRAP!   The bass jumped clear of the water and threw my Gurgler back at me, then bombed back into the pond.  At least I got to see it!  It seriously looked 20”+.  It was a NICE FISH!

And then about 15 minutes later down the bank a bit, I had another good fish on.  Assuming it was a bass, I would guess it was probably more like a 17-incher…very nice, but not as big as that first fish.  But I never saw it.

Then I caught like 4 more bass on it (12”-14”) before I somehow managed to cast it off and lose it in the darkness.  

Now...check out that MOJO!  ;o)

Oh, and I saw a BIG ol’ bullfrog on the shoreline.  I crept within about 15’ of it and took its picture in the near-darkness.  Didn’t turn out very well.

It was in my way, since I wanted to work on down along the shoreline.  Since I was going to scare it anyway, I decided to drag my big ol’ Gurgler in front of it.  Like lightning it struck so fast, and managed to hook itself.  It was a crazy hopping, kicking battle for a minute has I tried to control it so I could get it off the hook.  But it managed to free itself and dove into the water.

After losing the Gurgler, I tied on a smaller chartreuse subsurface fly pattern and caught at 14 Crappies, and around 10 bluegills.