January 22, 2023

 Air temps below 40 degrees F.  Fish activity when I started fishing was NIL.  I'm not sure what turned it around, but it ended up being a pretty good day of flyfishing.  I ended up catching 27 Koi and 19 Goldfish in ~5 hours.

I had tied up microjigs with some new materials I had bought...UV Mottle Galaxy Mop Chenille, and Eggstacy chenille.  I used one fly tied with Cheese colored Galaxy Mop (no tail).  I caught a lot of fish on that, and it eventually fell apart.  Next, I used one tied with Candy Pink Eggstacy, with a white rabbit fur tail.  I caught a lot of fish on that too.

Here's some of the fish caught:

Koi:

This was the biggest Koi of the day.  I've caught this one a couple times before.

Goldfish:

January 7, 2023

 Having caught Koi and Goldfish already, I tried to get some more species on the board for this year.  Cold day, but I managed to get 6 species while flyfishing, which I was happy with for early January!

I caught Rainbow Trout, White Crappies, Black Crappies, Largemouth Bass, Bluegill, and Green Sunfish.

I also spotted a turtle just "chillin'" in the cold water near shore:

January 2, 2023

 Well... after the frigid "bomb cyclone" that iced over the local waters in late December, 2022, the follow-up was an unseasonable warm-up with high temps into the 60's.  Some waters still have ice, so I went with the Koi and Goldfish ponds again, since I knew they'd be largely open water.

I ended up catching 15 Koi and 5 Goldfish as my first fishes of 2023!

Koi:

Goldfish:

December 31, 2022

 A week ago we had a deep-freeze 3-5 day span....at least one day the HIGH temperature was 7 degrees F.  Local waters were already starting to freeze over prior to that, but that knocked ice formation into high gear.  Did not think I'd get another shot at trying to reach 200 Koi caught in a single year on fly rod.  But the terrible cold was followed by some much nicer weather.  The ponds still had ice on them, but also still had some open water where there was current.  I hit it on the final day of the year.  (Now...disclaimer...this was NOT a goal until late in the year, when I felt like it was within striking distance.  I fished for a lot of other species, and other places, so I'm sure if I REALLY wanted to see how many Koi I could catch on the fly rod in one year, that number would look very different.  Last year I caught exactly 100 Koi on fly.  Just pushed the needle on the scale a bit further this year. 😁 )

Fishing started of REALLY SLOW.  Very few fish seen, not very active, all smaller fish, hanging a bit deeper in the water, nearly out-of-sight.  I needed 5 to reach 200.  My previous 2 trips yielded 3 Koi and 2 Koi.

I caught the first Koi of the day at 10:55 am.  Then, not another fish caught until over 3 hours later...2:04 pm!  But just before that, I saw a larger Koi swim by..first bigger one I'd seen all day.  Thought maybe that meant they might finally "turn on" and start eating.  I was right.

The next fishes came spaced out like this:

3. 2:08 pm

4. 2:11 pm

5. 2:14 pm

6. 2:15 pm

7. 2:43 pm

8. 2:48 pm

9. 3:12pm

10. 3:40pm (Goldfish)

11. 3:50 pm

12. 3:55 pm

13. 4:13pm

So, I ended up with 12 Koi and 1 Goldfish for the day.  That brought my 2022 totals for those species to 207 Koi, and 133 Goldfish!

That's also the most Goldfish I've caught in one year on the fly rod.  (Last year ended with 87 Goldfish.)

Most Koi caught in one day was 31 this year.  I fished for them 17 days....so the average per day is 207/17=12.2

Most Goldfish caught in one day was 20 (last year).  I fished for them 20 days this year, so the average per day is 133/20=6.7

On to the pictures!