Evening Flyfishing, 5-22-2014

Last night sure was calm...sunny, 74 degrees.  Perfect, right?  Fishing pretty much sucked.  Nobody was catching much of anything...IF anything.  There were a LOT of folks fishing when I arrived at the pond, and the trail around the pond was busier than I've ever seen it..people walking dogs, pushing strollers, biking, roller-blading....  This is all cool, but because the pond was so calm, the fish spooked everytime somebody went by.

I started out fishing for crappies, but couldn't really move either way down the shoreline because of other anglers, so I stayed put.  I didn't catch any crappies.  I caught one bluegill, and one bass.  The pond was covered in freshly cut grass clippings from earlier in the day.  I started seeing BIG shapes under the grass.  Common Carp and Grass Carp, as far as I could tell.  I started fishing for them, and ignored the other species.

I cast out near 3 shapes, and let my unweighted fly slowly sink.  I couldn't see the fly, but my line started moving.  I set the hook and...FISH ON!  Turned out to be a 25.5" Bigmouth Buffalo!  I didn't even know there were any of those in there!

As the sun went down, good numbers of Grass Carp were lifting their heads halfway out of the water to suck in the floating grass.  It was pretty cool to see, there were more than I expected in there, and good sizes.  I cast out to them, and my line started moving away, so I set the hook.  Grass Carp on for about 4 seconds...long enough to peel off about 10 yards of line, and spook the rest of the pod of fish, which left an area of the the size of a garage looking like the U.S. Navy had dropped depthcharges for submarines!