New Pond, Visit #2

My first trip ever to this pond (as you will remember from my previous blog), last week, resulted in catching a bunch of bluegills, and a fair number of Hybrid Sunfish and some Pumpkinseeds.

Last night's flyfishing outing, my second trip ever to this pond, I again caught a bunch of bluegills, decent numbers of Hybrid Sunfish…

...but I didn’t catch any Pumpkinseeds for the first hour.  I recalled that the first trip I had tried 3 different colors of microjigs, and almost all the Pumpkinseeds hit the chartreuse.  I also recalled that I thought I had a crappie on last trip, but didn’t land it.

Unlike last trip, this time I saved a little bit of remaining daylight for fishing the channel and beyond.  The north end of the main pond turns into a narrow channel that cuts across to the backs of some townhomes sort of near my neighborhood. There it opens up again into a smaller pond basin area.  Actually, the smaller basin looked bigger than I thought it would.  I didn’t really get to fish the smaller pond area, except right where it connects to the channel, because it just got too dark to see my strike indicator.  Anyway, at first I was still using a gold microjig that I had used on  the main big pond area.  I went up the channel to just beyond where it first widens out slightly.  I was casting towards the far shoreline, and caught a couple crappies!  I ended up catching at least 7 crappies scattered throughout the channel area.

I also caught 3 bass this time.  2 were small, one was a nice feisty “medium size”….maybe 13”. 

Right after I caught that bigger bass, I threw back in the same spot and hooked another something nice.  I thought maybe it was another bass.  It turned and ran straight up the channel and angled towards the opposite shoreline.  I mean it ROCKETED up that channel!  It was peeling line out of my hand and off the reel.  And I was using a 6wt!  In hindsight, I should have horsed it more.  My line would have held, but I was worried about the hook pulling loose.  In the end, the fish found some weeds/muck, and got free.  DANG!  Whatever it was…it was NICE.  Not like 10lb catfish nice…but a solid fish and FAST/strong!  I really wonder what it was.  I still suspect bass (maybe 18-19” range?), but it could have been grass carp, BIG crappie…heck, it could have been a muskrat!  There was at least one swimming around the area around dusk.

Anyway, it was exciting.  As the cloudy light started to get dark, I did switch to a chartreuse microjig, and caught more crappies in the channel, and 3 more Pumpkinseeds…plus a few more bluegills.  Here's a couple of the Pumpkinseeds:

So…all in all it was an interesting evening of flyfishing.  That channel area is intriguing.  It is not very deep, and I have a feeling by late spring/summer it will be overgrown with weeds…so I think I will try to fish there a bit more while the weather is still cool.