Flyfishing Report, Evening of 7-10-2012

Got out to flyfish a nearby public pond rather late again.  Seems to be the status quo, not getting out to fish before 8pm!

I spotted at least one large fish (boil/swirl) almost immediately. I always assume it is a Grass Carp, but it might be a catfish, bass, or turtle.  Never know unless you get a good visual or CATCH the fish.  My hope is to do the latter.  Trying to get close enough for the good visual nearly always results in spooking the fish in this pond, so I don't bother.

I started out with a Boa Yarn Leech.  Caught a bluegill.  Switched to a "Blind Squirrel" (read about it here:  http://missouriflies.com/carp-fly-patterns/my-new-go-too-carp-fly ).   Here's a picture of the ones I had tied:

I had one or two hooksets that might have been on Grass Carp, but I either missed them completely or felt the hook pull out of a heavy fish without sticking.  I did catch at least on bluegill and a couple bass on that.  


It was getting pretty dark, and some large fish were in the shallow weedy junk, so I switched to a deer hair pellet fly that looked like this:

I hoped a Grass Carp would hit that, but instead had this 17.5" Largemouth Bass take it.  That was a nice surprise and a good fight.  Skinny fish though.

A bit later, I caught this 13" Yellow Bullhead on the same fly.  Its my largest bullhead on a fly so far.

This fish was more mottled than the previous two Yellow Bullheads I had caught from this pond, so I was thinking maybe this was a Brown Bullhead.  I checked into it, and discovered that Yellow Bullheads can ge the mottled coloration in some waters, and only Yellow Bullheads have white chin barbels.  Brown Bullheads and Black Bullheads have dark-colored chin barbels.

 I did catch a couple more bluegills on a different fly later on, but overall the action was extremely slow...and still no Grass Carp.  I was hoping the "Blind Squirrel" would find me a Grass Carp "acorn"!