Weekend Report - April 20-21, 2013

I have to say that in the middle-to-later part of the week, the cold weather and almost constant rain really had the fish put down.  The cooler influx of water would have been very welcome during the summer months, but the water really hasn't had much of a chance to warm up yet locally.  What we ended up with was basically an influx of cold water into the local ponds, colder than the water that was already there, waters rose 2-3 feet in most ponds, strong wind and wave action stirred up the water and turned it muddy...reducing visibility considerably.  I got skunked at two out of 3 ponds during one stretch in the later 1/2 of the week.

But this weekend, the sun finally came out, the wind died a little bit, and the air temp warmed up some.  The fish were as ready to play as I was!

Saturday around noon, I got to flyfish for a couple hours.  I paid my 3rd visit to the local pond where I had discovered the Pumpkinseeds.  I spent most of my time in the shallow channel area between two pond basins.  I used a gold microjig under an indicator, and caught some Crappies, Bluegills, Hybrid Sunfish, and 4 more Pumpkinseeds.  The last two trips were made in the evening under cloudy conditions, and I felt the pictures didn't do justice to the coloration on these beautiful Pumpkinseeds.  So I took advantage of the sunlight and snapped plenty of pictures:

Saturday evening I also got out again, this time to another local pond.  There was a lot of dead time between fish as I worked my way around the pond until it got too dark to see.  I ended up catching 8 Crappies and 11 Bluegills, using a chartreuse microjig under an indicator.

Sunday evening I got out once more, and visited a 3rd local pond.  The wind was blowing strong, the pond was REALLY muddy, and there was a rainstorm approaching.  I started flyfishing where water was flowing into the pond, and the water was a little bit clearer than the rest of the pond.  I set the chartreuse microjig just  12" under the indicator, because I knew the water wasn't deep here, and I proceeded to catch a decent number of really nice, hard-fighting Bluegills up to 8.5", and a couple of Hybrid Sunfish up to 9" long.  Each fish was really stout, and each fought extremely well.  I was pretty excited about those bluegills!  I'd left my camera at home, otherwise I would have taken some pics for sure.  The spot died, so  I also hit a few other spots around the pond, and caught a few more scatter Bluegills and 1 decent 13" Largemouth Bass.  Before I left, I went back to that first spot and caught some more really nice Bluegills again.