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.  :)

Weird Fishing - April 2015

It has so far been a relatively dry Spring.  Temperatures have varied, and this past week saw temperatures @ 15 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than the previous week.  It sometimes seems like the fish can't catch a break.  They start to get ready to do their seasonally-appropriate spawning ritual, when the weather cools down and disrupts those plans.  But, it is still early in the season for that.

I assume it is also due to the low amounts of rainfall, that the waters in our local waters are incredibly clear right now.  In many cases, ponds currently have the clearest waters I have EVER seen in them.

So, a visit to a local public pond one evening this week, during a slight break in the seemingly ever-present wind, resulted in very clear water, but no fish in sight.  Because it was still sort of windy, I fished from the upwind pond shoreline.  I got a couple small nibbles on a microjig under an indicator while flyfishing.  Not promising.

Just a very short walk from the main pond is a smaller pond that is usually only good for bluegill, and the very occasional bass.  I fished there for the first time this year.  It was still tough...I think the fish could see me quite well.  I finally found some nice bluegills, though.

There were some very chunky fish in the mix...and not all of them were females.

I also caught one small bass and a Green Sunfish.

One other interesting thing on this trip...I was surprised to see that some ducks have already hatched out some ducklings already!

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 Flyfishing Report, 10-24-2012

Air temp at 74F.  Overcast sky.  13mph wind from the South.  Might be the last day of the year for 70+ degree weather.  Gotta fish!

I visited a public pond not far from work.  This was a pond I had made my first visits to earlier this year, but hadn't revisited since May 1.

I started out with a yellow Boa Yarn Leech on my line.  I caught a small Largemouth Bass, then had a few tentative strikes.  I switched to an unweighted black Woolly Bugger.  Action picked up then.

I ended up with a "baker's dozen" of decent Bluegills.  They were colorful, so I took pictures of a few of the males:

Some of the bluegills are reaching 8", which is what this chunky female Bluegill measured:

And one pleasanst surprise on this trip was to discover a CRAPPIE in this pond!  Excellent!

Fishing Report - October 13 & 15, 2012

I got out flyfishing for bit late Saturday evening.  The weather was warm...about 74 degrees.  Wind was gusty, but usually fishable.
I started off catching some nice Bluegills on a Springbrook Wunder microjig under an indicator.  Many were around this size:

I also caught 3 Largemouth Bass.  I took a picture of the smallest one...because it was so cute:

Later in the evening, it started misting pretty heavily.   I could see the waves of it under the nearby softball field lights.  It didn't sprinkle...it didn't really even drizzle...just a heavy mist.  Eventually, although I was comfortably dry, my glasses got covered in tiny droplets to the point I could barely see.  I called it a night.

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Monday, October 15....  I went flyfishing during lunch today.  Visited a nearby public pond.  Apparently the rain we had over the weekend had little effect on pond water levels.  The water did seem a bit clearer than it had been, though.

I caught around 20 Bluegills.  I also caught 4 small naturally-occurring Hybrid Sunfish.  All the fish were caught on a #10 unweighted chartreuse Woolly Bugger. Although the Hybrids were considerably smaller than the Bluegills I was catching, I had to take a picture of one of the colorful Hybrids:

DMACC Pond-West Des Moines, 5-19-2012

I fly-fished the DMACC Pond - WDM Saturday afternoon for about 1.5 hours.  First time I've ever visited/fished this pond.

While there, I talked to a fellow who said he has fished the pond for years.  Said there used to be a lot of BIG bass and lots of nice Hybrid Sunfish in the pond.  Then the bucketeers came, and now there's just smaller fish left.  I said, "...even with the signs posted around the pond that say 'Catch and Release Only'?"  He said that was before the signs were put up.  He seemed embarrassed to be caught out fishing with spinning gear, telling me he normally only fishes with fly gear, but he brought the spinning rod today because it was so windy.  And it was definitely windy!!

I had fun exploring a new pond.  Here's what I caught:
-4 lmb
-2 crappie
-1 hybrid sunfish
-2 green sunfish
-28 bluegill

The bass, hybrid, and green sunfish were on the small size.  The crappies were in the 8"-9" range.  I caught a lot of nice bluegills, though.  Not BIG bluegills...but nice ones.  Looking at it now, this one probably measured around 8.5".

Also saw some cool flowers behind the willows on the north side of the pond.  Anyone know what kind of flowers these are?  Look sort of like irises....but the leaves looked thinner and more narrow like a lilly.

Bass Gurgler Test,Evening of 5-9-2012

I didn't get out fly-fishing in the evening until fairly late.  I got to the pond around 8pm, and stayed until about 9:20pm.  The weather was good.  Very light breeze, temps were cool (~60 degrees F), and the water clarity was excellent.

I had read James Smith's (of Conyers, Georgia) post about how he ties his Bass Gurglers on the Fly Anglers Online forums.  (third post in this thread: http://www.flyanglersonline.com/bb/showthread.php?46069-Gurglers-for-LMB ).  I had tied one up with a marabou tail.  I tied it on my line right away.  In my first 4 casts, I had 3 bass on, and landed one.  I occasionally catch a bass or two while fly-fishing this pond, but I can go many trips here and never catch one.  My assessment is that the population of bass in this pond is LOW because of high harvest.  So...having that kind of action on a fly was, to me, ASTOUNDING!  I was thrilled!  So, I took a picture of it (after the first fish was landed):

See those "big lips"?  They really make a lot of disturbance on the surface, and the bass (and other fish) were just going NUTS for it!  I ended up landing 6 bass on this pattern, and lost probably 5 others (including a "biggie").

This wasn't the biggest bass I caught last night, but I didn't bother taking pictures of the larger bass, since it was getting dark and the pictures probably wouldn't have turned out very well.

On that fly, I also caught some NICE bluegills, some decent crappies, and even this FAT green sunfish.  I don't catch many greenies at this pond, but I know there are a few in it.

As it got darker, the action seemed to slow on this topwater pattern, so I switched to a white Boa Yarn Leech, and caught one more bass, and quite a few crappies and bluegills.

So...7 bass from this pond in such a short time, mostly on that Bass Gurgler.  I don't think I've EVER done that well at this pond on the foam bass popper I typically use for bass. Was it the fly?  Was it the weather, time of year, or some other factor?  I'll keep fishing with this fly and see how it goes.

Fly-Fishing Lunch Report, 5-3-2012

WARM and sunny today!  Not much wind, temps in the mid 80's during the noon-hour.

I visited a local public pond.  Despite the overnight rain, the water was fairly clear.  And with the bright sun overhead and not much wind, I could see into the water very well.  I thought for sure I'd be able to spot a grass carp or channel catfish if they were around.  Instead, I only saw a large turtle, lots of bullfrogs and large tadpoles, bass, bluegills, green sunfish, and a very large white goldfish.

I wasted a good amount of time casting to that darn goldfish...I WANT TO CATCH THAT FISH!!  But it ignored everything.  I need something even smaller, I think.  I had some flies with me I had tied up specifically for this situation, but I was too lazy to dig them out of the bottom of my hip pack.  I did toss a fly that this fish had hit once before, but it didn't go for it again.  I did catch some bluegills on that, though.

Anyway, I ended up catching at least 7 Bluegills on a Woolly Worm, as well as 4 nice Green Sunfish.

Vintage Lake, 5-1-2012

There is a fairly new (~4-5 yrs old) city-owned pond that I fished for the first time earlier this year.  Today I noticed on Google Earth that it is called Vintage Lake.  

As I said, its a fairly new pond, so the year-class of fish that were initially stocked are still growing.  I know there isn't anything BIG in this pond yet....it just isn't possible (unless a "bucket biologist" decided to stock some fish that were caught elsewhere into this pond).  So, that takes some of the excitement out of the equation.  It IS a nice-looking pond, though, and it was created with built-in fish structure which is awesome!

Since the wind was blowing good out of the south today during lunch, it screwed up the other fishing options I was entertaining in my mind, so I went to this Vintage Lake and fished it from the south shoreline.  The shoreline is overgrown with the hardened remants of last years giant varieties of vegetation...whatever kinds of weeds that get 6' tall!  I had a number of "I feel like an idiot" moments of untangling my line and/or fly from things that weren't in the water.

Good-looking water!  Reasonably clear…but not TOO clear (meaning…it looks like it’ll be a healthy pond).  I could see bottom down to MAYBE 3’ deep or so. Shallow shelf near shore has some weeds/algae growing on it.  Then it has a very defined drop-off.  The fish were all within about 7’ of the deep side of the drop-off today.  I hooked at least 3 bass, but only landed 1, and it wasn’t the biggest one.  The biggest one MIGHT have gone 12”.  Hey, it’s a young pond!  I caught at least 10 bluegills.  Feisty!  A couple were smaller, most were around 7.5”, and I actually measured the big one of the day…it was 8” long!  I was surprised at that!

I attached a couple pictures…one of the small bass, 

...and one of the bluegills…this was NOT the 8-incher, I just thought it was colorful.  The sunlight sort of washed out the colors in the picture.

After Work Bass, 4-6-2012

Not a lot to say on this one.  I got home after work on Friday to discover my family was not there and would not be home for about 45 minutes.  Out the door I went!

I fly-fished a public pond I had not fished yet this open-water season.  I was targeting bluegills.  It was really windy, but blowing from the side, so casting wasn't overly difficult.  I caught  5 bluegills.  The last fish I caught before my 45 minutes was up was a chunky bass that gave me a good battle.

Weekend Fishing Report, 3/23-3/25/2012

3/23/2012
Had 30 minutes of free time after work.  Took advantage of it and fly-fished a local public pond.  Landed 8 bluegills and 2 crappies.

3/24/2012
Called my buddy Jay to see if he wanted to fish for a few hours on Saturday morning.  We decided to meet at Saylorville Lake.  Lots of people fishing there.  I fished for 2.5 hours and used fly-fishing gear along rocky shorelines.  I landed (at least) 25 largemouth bass (all under 12"), 1 bluegill, and 3 green sunfish.  Almost all the fish I caught were within 5' of shore in water 2' deep or less.

All fish were caught on the  Beadhead fly shown above with white marabou tail and  silver holographic mylar chenille body.

3/25/2012
I drove a carpool downtown DM on Sunday, and had an hour to fly-fish at Copper Creek Lake.  Lots of folks out there!  Saw a guy catch a really nice bass....maybe a 4-pounder.
I caught 12 bluegills, most on a Boudreaux, one on a topwater Chernobyl Ant/Hopper, the rest on a black Beadhead Furl-Tailed Mohair Leech.

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Later on, my family settled down to watch a movie we had recently seen, so I decided to go fishing while they watched it.  It was almost dark by the time I started fishing.  I fly-fished from 8pm-9:30pm.  I caught 20 crappies and 13 bluegills.  All fish were caught on an unweighted chartreuse Woolly Bugger. Not bad for fishing in the dark!

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That was 84 fish for the weekend, and brings this month's total to 215 fish.  I checked my fishing logs back to 2006, and this is the most fish I've ever caught in March (even though I was gone for a week on Spring Break).  March typically sucks because we get that time period where the ice on lakes is too poor to fish on, but the water isn't fully open yet, or the water is too cold for the fish to be active.  This year is a FREAK year!

Mid-September Weekend Fishing 2011

Mixing fishing in-between my kids' extra-curricular activities is the name of the game for 9 months of the year.  I'm pretty good at it. ;o)

Since my wife was still in Belgium, I took my son to a B-day party he had been invited to.  When I got back home, our neighbor's daughter Morgan called and wanted to come over.  Sure!  She hung out with my daughter and I for a bit, then I had to take my daughter to piano lessons.  I told Morgan she could go along if she wanted to...we could try to do a little fishing while we waited for the piano lessons to finish.  She called home to make sure it was OK with her mom.  It was, so off we went.  It was 7:30pm when we dropped off my daughter, plus it had been a cloudy, drizzly day...so it was pretty dark outside already.  I mourn the passing of the long evenings of summer!

I picked a public city park pond that has some lights around it, to help us see.  We just shared one fly rod, since Morgan isn't comfortable casting a fly rod yet.  I would cast out a microjig under an indicator, and she would work it back in.  We missed a lot of strikes, but Morgan landed a couple of crappies.  She was pretty excited about that.  At first she didn't want to take the fish off the hook, but later she let me work the fly in, and when I'd catch fish SHE wanted to take the fish off the hook!  We ended up catching probably 10 more crappies, 1 bluegill, and 3 green sunfish.  The last fish of the night was a BIG CHUNKY Green Sunfish which, compared to the tiny crappies we'd been catching, seemed like a BEAST of a fish!  Its all a matter of "scale".  ;o)

Saturday morning, I took my daughter to Swing Choir practice.  That was scheduled to last for 5 hours.  Morgan came over right after her soccer game.  She played video games with my son for awhile, then she asked if we could go fishing again.  OF COURSE!  My son didn't want to go, he was really into the video game.  We had about an hour before my daughter would be ready to pick up.  Off we went.  It was cloudy and cool.  Fishing was kind of slow.   I took 2 fly rods.  I'd cast one out for Morgan, let her work it in while I cast the 2nd fly rod and work it in.  Morgan had a few hits, but didn't catch anything,  I caught 6 bluegills before we had to go pick up my daughter.

My wife got home from her work trip on Saturday afternoon!  Sunday evening, my son wanted her to play the video game with him.  Its fun to watch for a little bit.  I decided my time was better spent next to some water, so I got permission to go fishing.  I called my buddy Jay, but he wasn't feeling the best, so declined my offer to fish together.  So, I just headed to the closest public pond.  It was around 5pm when I got there.  It drizzled/rained intermittently the entire time I was there.  I fly-fished for bluegills for awhile, and caught some, but it was slow.  I tossed some bread to attract some catfish or grass carp, but only got bluegills to show up.

I could occasionally see the backs of pods of fish out away from shore in one area.  They would occasionally spook, but seemed to remain near the same area.  I put on a soft hackle wet fly pattern, and cast around that area.  I caught bluegills and crappies.  And then a green sunfish.

Crappie on a soft hackle.

As it got darker, action slowed on the soft hackle, so I switched to a chartreuse microjig under an indicator.  I caught mostly crappies on this rig.  I ended up tallying 15 crappies, 8 bluegills, 1 green sunfish, and 1 small largemouth bass for the trip.  I think this was the first trip since early Spring that I'd caught more crappies than bluegills from this pond!

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!

I tried the banana peel on a fly again last night on a different pond for Grass Carp ( I just realized I didn't blog about the first time, but suffice it to say no Grass Carp were caught then). Once again no takers. The main problem seems to be that the water is really clear, and I haven't been able to cast the rig very far (have to be very careful when casting, otherwise the banana peel falls off...so its more like "lobbing" than casting), and it ends up drifting back into shore. And those Grass Carp are WARY, SKITTISH creatures. Oh well.

I had a good evening anyway. I was casting around again to pass the time while the grassies went about their business of ignoring my offers to "come and play".

I was excited to FINALLY find a handful of NICE male Bluegills in this pond. I caught the one below on a black microjig. Then I caught one on a brown craft fur Clouser with blue beadchain eyes. Then I caught at least a half-dozen Bluegills (males and females) on foam topwaters at dusk. After dark, I switched to a brown & orange boa yarn leech and caught at least another half-dozen on that.

The males were mainly on shallow flats on nests, and the females were out over deeper water, but apparently near the surface (or at least they would rise to take the topwaters or unweighted boa yarn leech). The females are getting big bellies. Most of the males were 8"-8.5", and the biggest female I measured was a solid 9-incher.

I caught a couple Largemouth Bass on flies, too.

Lunchtime Report, 5/19/2011

Rain is in the forecast, but it didn't look like it would get here until after lunch.  So...I went fly-fishing during lunch!

I visited a local public pond at Westside Park, one I rarely fish and even more rarely is it worth the time invested (for me).  Meaning, I don't catch much, or they are really tiny Green Sunfish.  After ice-fishing there once this past Winter, I discovered there were some decent bluegills, green sunfish, and crappies.  Nothing HUGE, mind you, but certainly worth catching.  Some fish would be near shore, guarding nests, but I felt some of the better fish would be out in the middle and a bit deeper than I had fished the pond previously.  In past years, I fished mainly topwater or unweighted subsurface patterns.  Since then I've been using microjigs more often, and small beadchain-eye Clousers, which fish deeper.  I've been doing well with these.

So, I get there and tie on a dark-colored microjig thinking it will look more natural since the water here is very clear.  I put a Thingamabobber strike indicator about 4' up the line.  I'd cast out, let it sit...retrieve a foot or so, let it sit 5-10 seconds, retrieve some more...you get the idea.  I actually had some pretty good strikes at the indicator!

I saw some big tadpoles, an adult bullfrog, some green sunfish, a handful of crappies, and a decent bass.

I caught 8 Green Sunfish up to 8", 4 Bluegills also up to 8", and an 8.5" naturally-occurring Hybrid Sunfish.  I had 2 crappies hooked (one was pretty nice!) but both got off.  I messed around with 2 other crappies I could see guarding nests.  One just swam away.  The other one I coaxed into tasting my microjig a couple times, but it didn't take it in far enough for me to set the hook.  I really wanted to catch at least one of the crappies, so I guess that gives me a good excuse to fish this pond again soon.

I've fished ponds where the bluegills get a nice purple color during the spawn.  Others get a lot of orange.  The ones today had a pretty green cast to them (click images for larger version):

I also admire the pretty colors on spawning Green Sunfish:

And below is apparently what happens when Bluegills and Green Sunfish accidentally bump into each other on a dark night at this time of year:

Ocotber 9 & 10, 2010 Fly-Fishing Outings

The algae blooms on the local public ponds have been horrific for at least the past 3 weeks.  Most places, the algae mats extend 15feet or MORE from shore, with random floating and submergent algae beyond that.  Its as bad as I've ever seen it.  I'm sure it can be attributed to the deluge of rain that was our Spring and Summer this year, which would have brought a lot of lawn nutrients (and shoreline waterfowl droppings) into the pond.  The nutrients are pretty much locked in the system now, unless cleaner water flushes it out.  The algae, unless removed (not likely), will die off, sink, decay over the winter (hopefully not causing a winterkill...keep your fingers crossed), and the nutrients will remain in the pond in some form or another.

The algae has made fishing from shore difficult, but as long as you don't mind cleaning junk off your hook after each retrieve, its do-able.  The algae is only one issue lately.  The other issue is the bluegills (and crappies) have been ultra-finicky.  Willing to hit almost everything, but not wanting to hang on to anything long enough to get HOOKED.  So, I've been tying up a variety of patterns I normally don't use, in order to try and pinpoint something the fish will take and hold onto longer.

First was a variation of John Scott's CFC October Caddis.  I left the rubber legs/antenna off this example:

A nighttime crappie picked it off the surface near shore:

And here's a bluegill that took a blue version of the same fly:

The most successful pattern last night was this woolly-bugger type pattern, tied with a ginger/brown rabbit fur tail, dubbing of cat hair salvaged from our pet's brush, and some black hackle.

 Here's a couple of the bluegills that liked this:

Here's a parachute pattern with an extended body.

A largemouth bass hit that, and then the thing wouldn't float very well, so I had to change flies again.

And finally...I was staring at some Chamois material while sitting at my fly-tying desk...and it occurred to me to tie up some of these.  I'm not sure if anything like these have been done before (I've seen San Juan Worm patterns tied with double hooks similar to this), so for now I'm just calling it a Chamois Bluegill Worm.

I was excited to try them out on the bluegills.  It needs more experimentation, but it DID catch fish!