Early May 2018

Early May has been (mostly) warm, occasionally cool, some light rain every few days....more of a typical "Spring" that we had heretofore been lacking this year.

Bass started guarding beds in most of the local ponds by May 5.  That shut the bass bite down considerably for me, but some have still been caught.

Bluegills have been pretty active...not quite nesting yet.
I did catch this dandy 9.25" Pumpkinseed Sunfish:

Pumpkinseed Sunfish, 9.25"

Crappies have been hitting well, with the males now seemingly guarding nests (I haven't seen them on nests, but they are hitting really close to shore, so I assume this is what is happening).

I finally caught my first flyrod Channel Catfish of the year, 19":

I caught the catfish while flyfishing for carp.  They are SO MUCH FUN!  The biggest one recently has been this 28.5-incher:

And some other ones in the 25-27.5" range (one fatty was only 23.5", but made up for it in GIRTH) ;o)

All the carp and the catfish were caught on Hybrid Carp Fly pattern variations:

Overall, the fishing has been fun...fairly steady....nothing "lights out amazing".  I'll take it!

Throw Some Curves at the Fish

It had been very windy for several days.  I waited later into the evening before trying to flyfish for bass, hoping the wind would decrease.  I tried the single-jointed GameChanger-style flies that have been working well for me.  I may have had a bite or two, but no hook-ups with fish.

The fish are throwing me a curve ball here.  Well, I threw one right back.  Since the bigger fly didn't work, I went small and slow.  I put on a 1/48th oz microjig under an indicator.  I caught 5 small crappies, but did also get one bass.  And it was a beautiful 20-incher!