2018 Flyfishing Review

2018 Seemed to be characterized by an early ice-off, followed by a mild and dry Spring, a hot wet summer, and a very wet and cool Fall.

I reached some goals.
-I completed 12 consecutive months of catching an 18" or bigger largemouth bass from the local city public ponds.  January and February fish were caught by icefishing, the rest by flyfishing.

-I caught 15 Largemouth Bass 18" or bigger this year, 13 while flyfishing (the other two while icefishing).
-I caught 16 Channel Catfish while flyfishing this year, 15 were 18" or bigger.
-I caught 27 Carp while flyfishing this year, 26 were 18" or bigger.
The above totals 54 fish 18" or bigger while flyfishing (yes, all artificials) this year...all from the local public ponds!

-I caught a 10th Iowa Master Angler-qualifying fish species.  That resulted in obtaining the Iowa Master Angler Gold Award.  I was the 21st person in Iowa to reach that goal, and the first to do it entirely by flyfishing.  Pretty cool.

Speaking of Master Angler fish, I caught 7 qualifying fish this year, of 3 species...including Largemouth Bass (3), Pumpkinseed Sunfish (3), and a Common Carp (1).

I caught 18 fish species while flyfishing this year.

I caught my personal best Common Carp, 33", while flyfishing.
4 of the Channel Catfish I caught on flies measured 26"-28.5".
My biggest bass of the year measured 21.5".

Pretty good year.  Some really nice fish.  Only complaint is the mid-summer thru mid-Fall rains kept the local rivers very high at a time when they are usually wadable.  So, I only managed to get in two Smallmouth Bass wading trips.  That same high water kept the local reservoir way above normal pool...I only managed to get out once to flyfish the Fall white bass run before the water level got too high.
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As far as flies that worked exceptionally well for me this year:

For Largemouth Bass, Blane Chocklett's GameChangers continued to catch some nice fish for me.  Mylar chenille bodies and feathered bodies both worked really well...and I had some with as few as 1 articulation, on up to maybe 5 articulations.  They all caught fish.  The more articulations, the better they swim when retrieved steadily.  With an erratic retrieve, they all have great darting action. I love this fly design.  These flies are achingly tedious to tie (not hard, just time consuming)...its like tying a separate fly for each articulation.  But the action of these streamers in the water is outstanding.  I tied them from 2.5" to 4.5", but a fly tier could go even even smaller and almost infinitely larger.  7"-14" versions have become popular for fly anglers pursuing Muskies!

Blockhead Poppers still caught a lot of nice bass for me.  I added another popper style to my arsenal, ones that use a Howitzer popper head.  I tried a variety of body styles behind this head, and they ALL worked well and caught bass.  The head gives a really nice pop. Just a bit different sound than the blockhead poppers, and I think that helped me catch some more fish that have seen my blockheads many times already. 

Here's another surface pattern that bass really reacted well to earlier this year.  At some point I stopped using it in favor of the popping patterns, but I will definitely be tying some more of these over the winter.  My version doesn't look as good as the original I saw...I don't recall the name of the fly or who originated it.

For common carp, variations of John Montana's Hybrid Carp Fly continued to produce decent numbers of carp for me.  Especially version tied with metallic gold chenille bodies.  If these fish are as smart as I think they are, I will probably have to use some other patterns this coming year for carp, because they've seen what I used this year enough times this past year and are probably getting wise to it.

That's really about it.  I flyfished for either carp or bass most of the time this year,  and didn't target bluegills and pumpkinseeds nearly as much.  I did well on crappies early in the season in particular, and they continued to hit a chartreuse microjig under a strike indicator.

I did ok on channel catfish while flyfishing this year, but don't really feel like I ever had a good, consistent fly pattern for them.
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Below are some of my better fish caught in 2018:

First part of April

The first part of April 2018 was unusually and unseasonably cold.  We had snows, some ponds even partially iced over as late as April 17th!  The pond ice had initially melted off the ponds back just prior to March 3rd!  Lots of days with highs in the 30's and low 40's.  Water temps have been hovering around the upper 30's to low 40's F...compared to last year's water temps of 58 degrees by this time.  So....we've had about 6 weeks of NOT SPRING-LIKE WEATHER!

Now, as of April 19, the extended forecast is filled entirely with hi temps in the upper 50's to mid 60's F.  FINALLY...SPRING!!!!!

But, if there's open water and temperatures above freezing, I am likely to go flyfishing.  As the previous blog entry showed, some decent fish have been caught.  The rest of the fishing highlights from this prolonged cold spell are shown below:

Crappies have usually been hitting well.

13" Crappie...this is the biggest of the year so far.

Some nice bluegills have been caught, although I usually catch so many bluegills I almost never take pictures of them anymore.
This one might be the biggest so far, at 9.25"...I know that might not sound big, but around my area from public waters...anything over 8" is a nice bluegill.

Since my last blog entry, I've only caught one Pumpkinseed Sunfish:

And one Hybrid Sunfish:

I've caught some bass.  No recent ones over 18", but a close one at 17.75":

I don't recall if I measured this one:

These two measured 16" and 16.5", and were caught when it was 37 degrees, drizzling, with an 18mph wind:

The 33" Common Carp in the previous blog entry was my first carp of the year.  Since then, I've landed 3 more....all 3 from a pond where I've NEVER caught carp before, even though I've known they were in there, and I've tried for them.  So far this year, all 4 carp were caught while flyfishing for crappies and bluegills...I wasn't actually targeting the carp, and in fact I didn't even see them before they hit.  So....that's kinda like getting hit by lightning 4 times within a month!  Crazy!
After the 33-incher (from the previous blog entry), the next one (from a different pond) measured 31":

And the next one measured just 25.5" but had an 18.5" girth....so I used the "length x girth x girth / 800" formula to come up with a weight of 10.9 lbs on this one below:

And the next one was really cool too...certainly not because it was big...but because it was a MIRROR CARP!  I think this is my first Mirror Carp on a fly:
(this picture is just two pictures combined of the same fish, of course)

Mirror Carp on a fly, this cute little guy measured just @17".

So....fishing has been mostly decent, despite this long, cold early season.  Its about to heat up...probably rather quickly.  I look forward to seeing how that affects the fishing.