Flyfishing Report for Mid-April 2016

Still getting some decent bass on flies.  Size 2 baitfish/sunfish patterns and tiny 1/80 oz microjigs have been catching most of the bass.
19":

19" Largemouth Bass

18.5":

18.5" Largemouth Bass

Also catching a few Pumpkinseed Sunfish.
9":

9" Pumpkinseed Sunfish

and others:

Pumpkinseed Sunfish

Pumpkinseed Sunfish

This is a naturally-occurring Hybrid Sunfish:

Hybrid Sunfish

Have also been catching some decent bluegills:

Male Bluegill

Male Bluegill

I've been catching crappies, but the big ones recently have been throwing my fly.  Hey...the fish gotta win sometimes!

Late May, 2015

Guys I know are catching Gar, Common Carp, Smallmouth Bass, and even White Bass on flies in my area.  I'm really wanting to catch some of these other species, but I haven't been able to get away to the right waters for long enough.  Or that's what I keep telling myself.

My daughter (oldest child) just graduated from High School with Honors.  She's very smart, we're very proud of her.  So we've been busy with all the activities associated with that and with throwing her a big party for her extended family and school friends.

I've been spending time trying to get the darn Grass Carp to hit some flies, and when that fails (100% of the time so far this year), I flyfish for bass, bluegills and crappies.  At least those last 3 have been cooperating somewhat, although many (especially the larger bass) seem to be preoccupied with spawning rather than eating, and the crappies are finishing their spawn and moving away from shore.

Bluegills! Get 'em now!

The local bluegills are close to spawning.  Males are on nests in most ponds.  Females are still FAT with eggs.  Beautiful fish!

Even in the bigger lakes, the bluegills are pretty active along the shorelines.

They aren't real picky...they'll hit just about anything a flyfisherman might throw at them right now.  :)

Fishin' in the Rain, 5-15-2014

I flyfished for 1.25 hours on the evening of 5-51-2014.  It briefly rained on me, but it wasn't heavy or long enough to discourage me from fishing.

Do you have one of those places that you fish where one day it will be really good fishing, and the next trip will be just horrible, and you wonder where all the fish went?  I was fishing at one of those places last night, and my PREVIOUS trip there was the good one.

I caught a decent number of crappies that time.  This trip, I couldn't buy a single one.  There were female crappies moving into shore that evening, full of eggs.  I expected some to still be around.  We've had nothing but colder weather since then, so perhaps that has put them off?

I caught 3 bass (which was unusual...normally I don't catch any there), before deciding to try a smaller neighboring pond that has a few bluegills in it.  Good choice, as it turned out.  I caught at least one more bass there, and at least 11 bluegills, many of which were decent-sized.  There was a mix of males, still developing their spawning coloration, and females with bellies getting fat with eggs.

The fish all hit a 1/80th oz microjig about 20" below a strike indicator.

Fly Fishing with Dale and Rick, 5-14-2013

Rick Z lives in southern Iowa, just a few miles north of the Missouri border.  Rick is an avid fly fisherman, creative fly tyer, and manages the fishery for approximately 60 ponds in his area.

Rick's method of fish management on these ponds revolves around harvesting bluegills under 10", all crappies, and bass only if at least 3 bluegills are also removed for each bass.  Something like that.  If I  have misquoted the numbers or ratios incorrectly, the error is completely mine.  Contact Rick if you want the full explanation.  He has also added one or more Flathead Catfish to certain ponds that had an overabundance of stunted panfish.  The results?  He says that in about 5 years, you will have much bigger crappies and bluegills, because the population is kept thinned enough that the remaining fish have plenty of food available to allow them to grow.  Some of these ponds now have bluegills up to 12", and Crappies up to 20"!

My assessment after visiting a couple of these ponds is that...it's working!

I made arrangements for my friend Dale S and I to go flyfish with Rick on a couple of his favorite ponds.

The first pond we visited looked great...nice size one size lined with timber.  The problem we noticed right away was the water clarity.  Rick said normally the pond is fairly clear.  But within the past week they had a downpour that dumped 6" of rain in a short amount of time, followed by several days of strong winds that kept the sediment suspended.  My guesstimate was that you could see into the water only about 1.5"!  Certainly that made it hard to gauge what depth the water was that we were fishing, and also made it very difficult for the fish to spot our flies.  We fished the pond for about 2 hours anyway.

Rick and Dale both noted they each had one or two bites, but no fish.  Worse, Rick broke his fly rod!  I caught 14 bluegills up to 9" long, 2 bass that were twins at @ 13"each, and a crappie that was @ 10".  I used 2 patterns that Rick had tied and given us, and caught fish on both.  One was a black Boa Yarn Leech with red plastic eyes.  I caught a couple bluegills on that before I lost it.  Another was a gold sparkle eyelash yarn leech pattern. It seemed big, the the bluegills loved it, as did the crappie.  I lost that fly to a tree overhanging the water.  I caught the bass and a few smaller bluegills on a gold microjig with a black tail.

Dale S took this picture of Rick at the first pond.  I'm WAY in the background..on the dam...in front of Rick's hat.

Apparently there is a thriving Amish population in the area.  We saw a few road signs that said "BEWARE OF HORSE DRAWN TRAFFIC".  And we saw such traffic.

After lunch, Rick led us to a 2nd pond.  Here the water was still stained, but it was a bit clearer than the first pond.  We were all into fish soon.  We each caught bluegills and crappies.  I also caught a bass.  The crappies weren't too big, but the bluegills were BEASTS!  I measured a good number of 9-inchers, and they were freakishly deep-bodied fish.  Very healthy indeed!  Rick said he had caught 12" bluegills from both ponds we had fished, and I can believe it!

We kept the bluegills and crappies we caught for Rick to clean for a few meals.

Photo courtesy of Dale S.  Rick and I with a basket of fish!

Oh....and while fishing the second pond, Rick broke his rod!  So between the 3 of us, we had 2 broken rods on the day!  What are the chances of that ever happening?

Weekend Flyfishing Report, 4/26/13 - 4/28/13

My buddy Jay joined my Friday evening, to flyfish a local public pond...the one with the Pumpkinseeds in it.
We both caught Crappies, Bluegills, Hybrid Sunfish, and a few Pumpkinseeds each.  I also caught a couple Largemouth Bass.
Here's one of the Pumpkinseeds that Jay caught:

Sunday I flyfished a public pond in a nearby town.  I caught 10 Crappies and 23 Bluegills in about an hour.  The biggest Bluegill was this 9.5" female:

Sunday evening I flyfished another local pond, hoping to maybe find a crappie or two.  No such luck.  I did catch a couple Largemouth Bass, and 18 feisty Bluegills.

Lunchtime Beast Bluegill, 10-16-2012

Skewed are my perceptions.  Gone are the days when 10" Bluegills were common.  These days, in the waters in my part of the world, an 8" Bluegill is a NICE Bluegill.  9-inchers are even uncommon in nearly all local waters.

Today during lunch, I headed to a local public pond.  Actually, it was Choice #2.  Choice #1 has small but plentiful Crappies, Bluegills, and Green Sunfish.  For reasons of my own, I was hoping for a "good numbers" lunchtime flyfishing outing.  But the parking lots around Choice #1 were practically overflowing, and folks out and about around the pond.  I prefer my crowds sparse or nonexistent.  Hence Choice #2, which has far far fewer numbers of fish, but the chance to catch some larger, 8" Bluegills...and usually few people during lunchtime.  This pond gets hit very hard on evenings and weekends, though, which is why the fish numbers are low.

Anyway, I tied on an unweighted black Woolly Bugger.  I fished a short stretch of shoreline in the 30 minutes I had to spend at the pond.  I managed just 4 Bluegills, and missed a few other strikes.  The 2nd fish caught was this BEAST (by my standards) chunky 9" female Bluegill.  This might not do it for most folks, but it got me pretty excited!  :)
The pictures just don't do it justice.  Beautiful healthy fish!

Dwarfs my hand!

Fishing Report, Last Weekend of September 2012

Saturday morning I fished the same place as in my previous 2 blog entries.  No Freshwater Drum.  Just caught another Crappie, but this one was smaller than yesterday's fish...probably 9".  I did have a good fish hit the Black Ops while it was sinking.  I set the hook and fought it for 30 seconds or so.  Good fight.  Had it all the way to shore at one point, but it managed to shake free.  Don't know what it was.

Some small fish were hitting SOMETHING at the surface.  Not sure what these fish were.  Could have been small sunfish, or maybe just weird-acting shad?  Check the short video below:




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Saturday evening I flyfished a local public pond.  Fishing was slow, but I managed around 10 Bluegills and one Green Sunfish before dark.  The biggest fish was this dandy 9" female Bluegill.  Compared to the Bluegills I typically catch locally, this seemed HUGE!

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Sunday afternoon I flyfished a different local pond.  Fishing was very slow.  Geese and ducks had the water around the edges pretty muddied up.  I had hoped to catch a few crappies, but only managed about 4 Bluegills.  I switched to a bass topwater fly that worked well earlier this year.  I caught 3 Largemouth Bass on it.  Two were small, the third was decent, but not huge by any means.  Good fighter:

There is a smaller pond near this pond.  I walked over and started fishing it for bluegills.  The bluegills in this pond are healthier fish, if only a bit longer.  Also caught a couple bass, including another about the size of the one above.  It dove into the weeds and mud, so I didn't photograph it.

I did take a couple pictures of the bluegills.  These weren't the bigger ones I caught, but they had good colors:

Lunch Fly-Fishing Report, 3-23-2012

During lunch today, I fly-fished a nearby public pond. This one was close enough to work that I actually fished for about 45 minutes.

This pond was the one that got destroyed by overfishing during the winter about 3 years ago.  Its isn't what it was, and has several problems ongoing such as filling in, algae, lack of bass, etc.  So...no high hopes for today, just wanted to give it its yearly "test".

I caught 15 bluegills and 2 green sunfish.   All on a beadhead woolly bugger...black & olive.

This is an improvement over the past few years.  The optimistic news was that nearly all the bluegills were very thick-bodied and healthy...although they still probably don't measure more than 7.5".  I was pleased, because this at least gives a ray of hope for the bluegill population in this pond over the next few years.

Chunky male Bluegill...about 7.5" long.

Nice Green Sunfish...also about 7.5" long.

Same fish as the first picture...just a closer look.

Evening Fishing Report, 10-6-2011

Went back to Prairie Ridge South pond last night to fly-fish.  We had a pretty good SSE wind all day, but it seemed to be more ESE while I was fishing.

I used a black microjig with some turns of dry fly hackle just behind the head. I had figured the wind might require me to use a strike indicator, but I never did put one on the line.  My first 5 casts resulted in 4 Bluegills landed.  Then that spot sort of cooled off, so I moved down the shoreline one way and would stop and make casts along the way. I picked up some more Bluegills.  The fish seemed to be suspended a couple feet down, about 10-15' out from the near-shore drop-off.  Most strikes were really aggressive, and the fights were excellent.

I was fishing shorelines that get fished a lot, and I noticed the average size bluegill I was catching last night was a bit smaller than bluegills I caught during the previous trip to this pond.  But all the fish were healthy fish.

I eventually moved back the other direction around the pond, still fishing periodically along the way.  I ended up catching at least 15 Bluegills in about 75 minutes.

9-26-2011

I fly-fished a local public pond during lunch today. It was cloudy, cool and very WINDY. I managed to catch 5 bluegills. This time of year, larger subsurface patterns seem to get the attention of the bluegills. I started out with a black Woolly Bugger. I caught several 'gills on that.

I then switched to a microjig under an indicator. I caught one or two more bluegills on that, but the fish were smaller.

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Around 7pm I had a chance to get back out and fly-fish another local public pond for an hour.  It was drizzling, windy, and getting dark early (thanks to the cloud cover).  I tried the microjig first, and caught 2 or 3 decent bluegills on it.  I put an indicator above the microjig and tried that for awhile, but didn't catch much except for a feisty 12" Largemouth Bass.  I switched back to the unweighted black Woolly Bugger, and caught several more nice bluegills. 

The fish seemed to be near shallow flats, probably hunting whatever aquatic insects were jarred loose by the waves and current.

Fly-Fishing: 9-22-2011 Evening and 9-23-2011 Lunchtime

I had 1 hour to fish on Thursday (9/22).  I visited the closest public pond, which was in a nearby 'burb, since that is where I was at the time.  Like the last visit here, there was still a LOT matted floating algae around the edges of this pond...and the water clarity is still rather poor.  I neglected to fish the spots where I've had the best success in the past, because it would have been too much of a hassle trying to get a hooked fish up and through that much algae and get it to shore.
I fished a couple spots where the algae mats were less obtrusive.  I tried a microjig & indicator.  I had some hits, and even caught a couple bluegills, but it was tough and slow.  I had a few good strikes at the indicator, so I tried a foam topwater pattern, the Chernobyl Ant/Hopper.  Got some good strikes on that as well, but couldn't hook up with the fish.  I switched to a yellow boa yarn leech and caught a couple more bluegills on that.  There were some healthy 8-inch bluegills! I switched one more time to a chartreuse Docaroo, and fished my way back to the car.  No more fish were caught, however.

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Today (9/23) during lunch, I fly-fished a local pond for 1/2 hour.  I had the chartreuse Docaroo still tied on, and I fully planned to change flies right away...until I walked down to the pond.  There is a large fountain in the pond, but it was not on this time.  The wind died down several times, and combined with the bright sun and clear water, I could see the tops of aquatic weeds almost everywhere.  Even out in the area I'm pretty sure is the deepest part of the pond!  The weeds came to within 12"-18" of the surface in most places, and even touched the surface in a few places.

I decided to go ahead and fish with the Docaroo.  I could see a few fish near shore, most were small.  Well, small is a relative term, I know.  There are Crappies in this pond that might touch 10", Bluegills might top out at 8" to 8.5" and the abundant Green Sunfish are all sizes from 1"-8".  I didn't see or catch any Crappies today.  I did catch 4 nice chunky Bluegills, and at least 10 Green Sunfish...mostly the larger ones, but I did catch 3 of the tiny ones too.  They're rather cute when they are that small!

I thought about taking some pictures of the fish I was catching, but in the end I didn't bother.

Back to School Bluegills

...Well, sort of.  My kids actually started the new school year 1 month ago already.  How time flies!  With school comes the "after-school" extracurricular activites.

My wife, who has a much more interesting job than I, is working in Belgium (Europe) this week.  So, all chauffer duties are my lot.  I don't mind, especially if I get a chance to squeeze in some fishing while waiting for these activities to finish for the night.

As it turns out, there IS a public pond in the town (another suburb of Des Moines) I had to take my son to last night.  I haven't fished this pond since early Spring.  This pond has a few bass, but generally I catch mostly bluegills, with a chance at a hybrid sunfish or crappie.

One thing I noticed right away was that there was about 15'-20' of algae clogging the shoreline on my side of the pond.  The second thing I noticed was that the water clarity was about 6".  The third thing I noticed was that there was no visible fish activity on the surface at all.  This was going to be tough fishing.

I had a beadchain-eye nymph on already, so I made some casts with it.  It was very difficult to fish deep and slow along the outer edge of the algae mats without actually getting my line or fly caught up in the algae.  I thought maybe one fish that took a swipe at the fly might have been a nice little crappie, but I'll never know for sure, as it didn't stay hooked long enough.

I switched to a Springbrook Wunder microjig set about 2' below an indicator.  I really didn't know how deep the water was where I was fishing, or if there were weeds or submerged algae or whatever beneath the surface.  I did pick up 4 bluegills this way, and most were fairly nice-sized bluegills for this pond.

In fact, one fought so well that I wasn't able to force it to the surface before it got into the algae.  I was lifting pretty hard, too!  Turned out be be a 8.5" Bluegill, which is very good for this pond.

I had gotten a few hits at the indicator I was using, so I took the indicator and microjig off my line and put a Chernobyl Ant/Hopper on.  I got a few big hits with it, but only landed 2 more bluegills.

I moved to another side of the pond, and it was also crowded with mats of algae.  I switched to a dragonfly nymph with beadchain eyes and cast that for several minutes, but had no more hits/hookups.

It was time to go back and pick up my son.  This pond usually fishes very well right before ice-up and just after ice-out.  So, as the water cools down during the Fall here, this pond will be worth fishing again.  Hopefully next time there will be less algae mats to deal with!