Mid-November 2017

The weather continues to get colder and windier.  We had days that were forecast to be in the 50's, but then it never made it that warm.

For some reason, I've really struggled to catch bluegills and crappies, which are typically about the only thing reliably biting this late in the season.

As sort of a continuation to my previous post about fly size for bass, I went fishing for bluegills & crappies, and ended up only catching some decent largemouth bass.  The first two hit a microjig under an indicator, so I switched to a small shad fly and caught one more.

And by the way....on this particular day I fished 3 ponds....I got skunked at the first two.  The next time I fished the same 3 ponds, I caught fish at the first two, but got skunked at the third.  So....I guess the point might be "the fish are always biting somewhere"?

And they were hitting the larger flies again.

Unpredictable fishing seems to be the name of the game this month.  A couple weeks ago I caugth bunch of decent crappies from one pond.  So, one day I took the afternoon off work to flyfish for them again since the wind was strong from the same direction.  I hoped the crappies would be along that same windblown shoreline where they have been before.
Caught one.

But it was the only one.  I missed a few good strikes, and only managed to land one more fish....a bass.
So I headed to another pond to try and target bluegills.  I caught some:

As I was fighting one of the bigger bluegills, a BIG bass took a swipe at it right in front of me.  That was exciting!  I switched flies twice before I felt like I was using something that big bass might strike.  A couple casts later.... BAM!  That was pretty cool, and even better that I was able to fight and land it.
21.25"....the biggest bass I've caught all year!

I didn't weigh it, but some bass weight/length tables I found suggested a weight of 5.7 pounds....this is a very good bass for Iowa!  As far as I can recall, this bass probably ranks as the 5th largest bass I've caught in Iowa.

Just when I assumed I'd probably caught nearly every bass in this particular pond....This one shows up!  I was stunned by the unexpected.  After releasing the fish, the adrenaline gave me jelly legs for about 20 minutes....and I kept making these weird involuntary sounds of disbelief and even talked to myself a couple times.  This fish turned me into a crazy person!  Pretty fun!

I feel the open-water season drawing to a close.  The ponds WILL freeze over for the winter, as they typically do here in Iowa.  I'll fish the open water as long as I can and as the weather allows.  Whatever happens...this has been a pretty darn good year for flyfishing...and this bass was an exclamation point on the season!

Enjoy your Thanksgiving, everyone.

Early November 2017

The air temperature dropped quite a bit.  Highs have been in the low 40's, lows have been in the mid 20's.  The ponds are cooling off significantly, and will likely be freezing over before the end of the month.

I got out on fishing on Saturday, November 4th.  With the cool-down, I wasn't expecting much. I waited for the air temp to get above 40, and headed out the door for some local public ponds around 11am.

At Pond #1, I used a 4" Gamechanger fly for bass.

Clearly my tying skills could use some help.... :)

I had fished this pond with the same fly a week previously and had done well.  This time, the bass seemed to remember the fly.  I caught 3 decent bass, but missed a number of other strikes that just looked like the bass were charging the fly or swiping at it, but not eating it.  At least one of those actually DID eat it, and I still somehow missed it on the hookset.

At Pond #2, I put on a shorter version of the same fly.  Tied with the same materials, but total length of about 3.25", and with only ONE joint.  For comparison, the typical Gamechanger often has 4-5 articulated sections/joints.  This shorter version retained good action, while being much quicker/easier to tie, and lighter/easier to cast.

The bass loved it.  I caught 8 bass in this pond.  I saw one HUGE bass, but it didn't seem interested in eating at the moment.

At Pond #3, bass could often be seen chasing shad at the surface.  I mainly stuck with the same fly, although I eventually lost the fly to a fish and had to try some other patterns.  I caught 5-6 bass at this pond.  2 guys with baitcaster rods/reels and bass lures came down and fished for about an hour.  They left without catching anything.

At Pond #4, I tried for crappies.  One part of the pond can be really good for crappies when the wind is blowing into it.  But today the wind was calm, so I wasn't expecting much.  I ended up catching a bass, 2 bluegills, missed a fish that might have been a crappie, and then finally landed just one crappie.  It measured 12.25".

I covered some water after that, but did not manage to catch any more fish.  I quit around 6:30pm.

Crazy Good Bass Evening 7/12/2017

There had been "heat advisories" all day.  @ 5pm some rainstorms moved in.  Nothing heavy or long, just got everything wet.  The rain stopped after dinner, it was really nice out (cooler) and calm.  It was a later start than I'd prefer, but I really wanted to go fishing.

Drove past a few ponds, and my steering wheel turned me to where I needed to go.  Started fishing @ 7pm.  It turned out to be one of those precious few crazy-good evenings of fishing.  Like you could do no wrong.  I flyfished topwater for bass.  At one point I caught bass on 3 consecutive casts into the same small area.

Biggest 3 bass of the evening measured 19", 19", and 17".  Several more were in the 16"-16.5" range.  I also lost a big one that spit the fly after a couple minutes fight, and had 2 fish break my tippet during the hookset.

I could see pods of tiny shad (guessing...but I do know there are shad in here) scattered many places, and fish would occasionally blow up on them.  In several instances, bass were going hi-speed horizontally airborn, attacking and chasing baitfish.  A couple had to have cleared 6' horizontally.

Nice Hybrid Sunfish were attacking the baitfish as well.

Crazy good evening!  Oh, and I did pick up tick #7 from around this pond.  Fortunately none have attached.

Flyfishing for Mid-May (2017) Bass in Iowa

We had some windy days recently that I chose to flyfish anyway.  I caught a bunch of crappie that hit on a microjig/indicator.

Then we had a stormy day when winds reached 60mph.  The next day was decent, so I flyfished during lunch, and caught 8 bass from a pond where catching even one or two would be consider a good lunch hour!  Most hit a topwater (blockhead popper), and a few hit a dark-colored bunny leech variation.

That evening, it was cloudy and breezy-to-windy.  I fished 2 other ponds for bass.  They were still hitting well on the topwater, it was wall I needed to use.  I probably caught a total of 16 more bass in the 2.5 hours I fished until just after dark.
At one point I set the hook on a bass and my line snapped.  Fortunately, my popper came floating to the surface.  It was beyond reach, so I tied on a new one.  The old one was close enough to try to retrieve, so I started flicking my new popper near the old one, trying to snag it for reuse.  I was getting close to that goal, when I watched a large bass rise up slowly, ignore my moving popper, but instead sucked in the old popper floating on the surface, then sunk back out of sight.  I thought it would soon spit the popper back out, but it never floated back to the surface.  Darn!

September 16-18, 2016

Quick update on some flyfishing I've done in the local public ponds.

Summer Topwater Bass

I flyfished a local pond I had not fished yet this year.  I fished with a couple guys who fish even more than I do.  They provided the tip about this pond.
We didn't get to the pond until it was pretty late in the evening.  Fishing was tough for a fly angler like me....tall weeds along the steep bank, emergent aquatic weedbeds around the pond.  It took considerable skill to cast a blockhead popper beyond the weedline...they cast like a kite!

I managed to land 6 bass, and missed the hookset on at least 3 others.  5 were decent fish, good fights, and tough to bring through the weeds.  Good thing I had just put on fresh 10lb tippet once I arrived at the pond!  The biggest bass measured 19".  The smallest bass was about 1", and he was impaled on the hook after I was ripping the popper back through the weeds.  I'm sure he was going for the fly though, right?  :)

Keep Trying New Places

As I've mentioned numerous times, I live in a fast-growing town of (currently) ~50,000 population.  At last count, there are 30+ public ponds scattered throughout town.  I've gotta say....its pretty awesome!

I usually try many of the ponds each year at least once, and then revisit based on how good the fishing is at that particular pond, what fish species it has....and how close it is to my home.

Yesterday, my flyfishing friend Chad told me about his results from flyfishing one of the ponds I had not ever fished.  The numbers sounded great, but the sizes didn't strike me as particularly noteworthy.  I don't have plans to visit that pond yet.  But there's another pond near that one I've been thinking about trying again for some time.  I had fished it once very briefly several years ago.  The cattails surrounding the pond had made flyfishing from shore a real challenge and chore.  I think I caught one nice bluegill during that 10 minutes of fishing.  I hadn't gone back.

I'd heard one of the residents living near the pond now keeps the cattails mowed down.  And although the pond is very shallow for a wide band around the perimeter and develops serious algae mats during the summer, Chad suggested I try it now....before the algae gets bad.  Great idea!

So, after dinner last night, my friend Jay and I visited the pond, flyrods in hand.
Fishing started out very tough.  The pond is roughly square.  We started at Corner #1 and we fished an entire side of the pond before finally striking a few fish near corner #2.  I fished almost the entire time  with a #8 black mohair leech with a red glass beadhead. First fish was a nice crappie with a big belly.

I started to catch a few fish here and there....but only picked up a few more bluegills by the time I fished along and rounded Corner #3 and reached Corner #4.  Corner #4 had more fish in it, possibly because it was the downwind corner.  I caught some nice bluegills, another crappie or two, and some small and medium-sized bass.

Jay had reached about shoreline 2.5, before backtracking to Corner #2 and refishing shoreline stretch #1, and finally returning to Corner #1 as the sky began to darken.  The strong wind also subsided at about the same time.  At some point, he had switched to a blockhead popper, trying for bass.  He'd gotten some great strikes, and had lost a few fish.  So...I decided to give that a try along shoreline #4, as I worked my way back towards Corner #4.

It was pretty exciting fishing!  I ended up catching another 5-6 bass in the 14"-16" range.  All nice healthy, strong fish.  I was amazed at how shallow the water was where the fish were when they struck the popper!

Very fun evening! I look forward to returning to this pond again, before the algae inevitably will make fishing difficult.