Lunchtime Flyfishing Report, 4/26/2013

Wow!  Today during lunch, it was partly sunny, warm (69 degrees F), windy (15mph winds from the South).
Or so the weather websites said.  In truth, it seemed much windier.

My buddy Jay and I met up at a local pond to flyfish together during my lunch hour.  The wind made casting a very REAL challenge.  Jay chose a position that enabled him to cast across the wind.  I chose a position where I was casting directly into the wind.  I must say...I REALLY love this Airflo 40+ fly line!  It just couldn't be any better than it is!  Cuts through the wind EXTREMELY well!

Anyway, we took our positions.  Within a couple casts, I hooked and landed the first scrappy Crappie.  I caught several more before Jay got his gear and casting in order.  But he found fish.  Oh yes!  Suffice it to say, in the short time we were there, we caught plenty of fish.  We both caught Crappies (mostly 9-11"...and we each caught a 13-incher), Largemouth Bass (13"-14" range), Bluegills (various sizes, nothing over 7.5").  In addition to those, I also caught a BEAST Green Sunfish!  It was a CHUNK!!

We both used microjigs about 12" below an indicator.  I used silver, Jay used chartreuse.
Some pictures from today:

My 13-incher.

Jay with his 13-incher.

An 11-incher, getting some good dark "spawning color" around its gills/throat area.

BEAST Green Sunfish.  Very wide body.  Estimating @ 9" long.

Fishing in the Rain - 4/22/2013

It is Spring, after all.  And its hard to complain about the rain after the very dry conditions we experienced last year.  So...I just put on a rainsuit and go fishing.
I had about 40 minutes to spend fishing last night, and it just so happened to be raining during that time.

The public pond I chose to fish was clearer than some of the other ponds, but noticeably murkier than it usually is.  I flyfished, using a chartreuse microjig under an indicator.  I fished quite awhile before I hooked my first fish, a decent Bluegill.

Fishing was extremely slow and I really can't explain why, unless the fish were just not in the areas / depths I was targeting.  I ended up catching just 4 fish total...3 Bluegills and 1 Crappie.  But the Crappie was a very strong 13-incher, so I was every excited about that!

Flyfishing Tuesday Evening, 9-25-2012

I flyfished Monday during my lunch hour, but spent the entire time trying to get Bigmouth Buffalo to strike a fly.  Didn't happen.  Or at least, the strike wasn't definite enough that I bothered to set the hook.  There was one time when the I did suspect a strike...but the fish could have just swam into the line.  I did have one foul-hooked for about 25 seconds.
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Now...on to Tuesday evening.  I flyfished a pond where I had hooked (and eventually lost) a couple Grass Carp about a month ago(+/-).  I did actually get a good visual on a Grass Carp that was cruising across the pond just under the surface.  I put a cast out ahead of it and started bringing my fly across its path.  Something about this spooked the fish enough to make it quickly change direction and speed just as it was coming towards my fly.  By the time I could get another cast out, the fish was well beyond range.  Nevertheless, I spent a great deal of time fishing for Grassies.  I tried both a topwater Deer Hair Pellet Fly, and a subsurface Black Ops fly.  I did catch some Bluegills on both.

After it got pretty dark, I switched to fishing specifically for Bluegills.  I ended up catching at least 10, plus two small Largemouth Bass.  The big surprise of the evening was a decent 10.5" Crappie!

Fly-Fishing Lunch Report, 5-11-2012

I fly-fished a public pond during lunch today.  Water clarity was not good.  With the sun shining, I could sort of make out some rocks that were about 18” deep...barely.  Water color is sort of a gray.  Don’t know where all that dirt came from…water was really clear there earlier this year, and this place is surrounded by acres of mowed grass.

I was hoping for some nice bluegills.  I caught one small bluegill, one nice bluegill.  I also caught 4 crappies…12”, 11”, a female I didn’t measure but it was at least 11”…and a 14.5”!!  Half-inch shy of a Master Angler Award!!!  Dang!  They were all beautiful fish, except the big one’s tail was kind of ragged from fanning a nest.

I’m flabbergasted that I caught 4 crappies from that pond!  I could probably count on one hand the number of crappies I catch out of this pond each year.   It IS the same pond I caught (and released) the 14-incher from last year, though.  Experience paid off in locating the crappies…but I’m sure there are other places in the pond that might have a few more.

I used a microjig for the first crappie and the bluegills.  For the remaining 3 crappies, I set the microjig  about 24" below an indicator.

Here's the first crappie, a 12" male White Crappie with the dark spawning coloration:

 And then the 11" male (an 11" crappie in any of the public ponds is a NICE crappie, btw):

And then the lighter-colored female White Crappie:

And finally...the BEAST 14.5" male White Crappie:

Lunchtime Fly-Fishing Report, 4-17-2012

I fly-fished a local public pond near work during lunch today.  It was a bit cooler than I'd hoped, and a bit windier as well, but all in all a decent day for fishing.

This pond still had just a tiny bit of run-off from our weekend rain still flowing into one corner of the pond.  Well...more like a trickle, but fish notice this!  There was evidence around this pond, like others I'd seen, that the water had been up about 2' above normal during the storm, and had since receded to normal.  Definite signs of shoreline erosion, and the water was murky compared to recent trips to this pond.

I hoped to find some catfish active near where the water enters the pond.  I haven't seen any catfish in this pond for a couple years, but I'm hopeful they are still there.  I did not see any today.  Discouraging sign.

I also hoped to spot some grass carp, but once again did not see any.  I saw some earlier in the year, so I KNOW that are there...somewhere.

I actually had a rather GOOD time at this pond!  Caught more and larger fish than I have for several years.  Large is a relative term in this case, but this pond is "recovering", and seems to be doing ok so far.

I ended up with a dozen Bluegills (mostly 7.5"-8"), 5 nice Green Sunfish (7.5"-8" and FAT), and a surprise Crappie (just over 11").  I can probably count on one hand the number of crappies I've caught from this pond over the years.  This one was CRAZY strong for a crappie!  I caught most of the fish on a black "Daedalian Damsel".

On to the fish pics...first, the Green Sunfish.  Recent pics of Green Sunfish from this pond, had showed the normal progression of Green Sunfish coloration that tends to get more bright yellow in the belly and pelvic fins as spawning time approaches. This first one especially showed a lot more BLACK, and had a lot of black spots.:

This one was a bit more normal, but still had a lot of black on its pelvic and anal fins.

Just thought I'd throw this close-up head picture in for kicks, to show the coloration and mouth size.

This is the 11+" Crappie that fought so hard:

And finally, a couple of the Bluegills.  This one had a lot of metallic blue between the eye and opercle.

And this one was pretty colorful as well, but the sunlight disappeared behind clouds by this time.

One last thing that had me sort of excited.  I saw a large (~12"?) white goldfish swimming around.  Seemed to be following me around a bit.  I left it alone the first time I saw it, but later it was just hanging out near me, so before I headed back to work, I put on a smaller fly under an indictor and tossed it out.  After a couple casts, I got the "drift" by the fish that I wanted, and I think it hit the fly!  The indicator twitched a bit.  I didn't set the hook because I was waiting for the indicator to do something more than that.  It never did.  Nevertheless, I was that much closer to catching a Goldfish on my fly rod.  Some day....!

Group Fly-Fishing Outing, 3/27/2012

My friend Ben had a couple of  fly-anglers (Mark and his wife, April) that he wanted to bring to one of the local public ponds for an evening of fishing.  Ben is originally from Utah...Mark and April recently moved to Iowa from Washington State, where they fly-fished for salmon and steelhead in one of the larger rivers there.  Pond fishing is still a fairly new experience for them.  They took to it like....fish to water!  :)

April has ideas and aspirations to maybe become another April Vokey (fly-fishing guide/author).  Why not? ... same first name, similar passion for fly-fishing!

I met up with them at the pond around 6:30pm.

We were all catching Crappies and Bluegills.  Not super-fast fishing, but relatively steady.  It was windy and warm.  Chartreuse microjigs seemed to be working the best.

There was occasional "big fish" activity at the surface... swirls or splashes.  Not a lot...but some.

April hooked into a big fish, and the rest of us came to offer assistance as she fought it.  The fish was landed, and April caught her very first Channel Catfish ever...on a fly rod!  It was a CHUNKY 23.5" fish.  Awesome!

A little bit later, I hooked into a big fish as well.  It put itself "on the reel" and did NOT want to come near shore!  It was a really nice Channel Catfish too!  I didn't measure it.

See the microjig?

Next I caught another bluegill (I ended up landing 5 Crappies and (at least) 15 Bluegills for the trip).  Then I hooked what I thought was a much heavier Bluegill or Crappie.  When I got it to shore (it was getting pretty dark by this time), I thought maybe it was a small Channel Catfish, which would be weird, since they aren't usually able to spawn successfully in these ponds.  Turned out to be a 10" Bullhead!  A "first" for me on the fly rod!

Bullhead on a fly rod...who woulda thought??

Very enjoyable night!  Got to fish with Ben, met some new friends, caught a big fish, and a new fly-rod species!

Fly-Fishing Report, 10-9-2011

It was once again my turn to drive the carpool of teenage girls to their Iowa Youth Chorus rehearsal in Des Moines.  I had 1 hour 15 minutes to fish at nearby Copper Creek Lake before I needed to pick them up again for the return trip home.

It was a sunny day, unseasonably warm at 85 degrees, and rather windy at 15-17 mph, with gusts to over 20mph.  The area of the lake closest to where I like to park was also the end of the lake that had wind blowing directly into it.  This should make for good fishing, but also a bit more work for fly-casting.

I've noticed over the past week that the algae mats and weedbeds have nearly disappeared, as they do every Fall.  Its been really warm and sunny lately, so it must be an "angle of sunlight" thing?  As the weeds die off and start decomposing, the water clarity diminishes a bit because of the release of nutrients back into the system.  Then the water clears up again as the water temperatures continue to drop for Winter.

Anyway...so the water clarity was noticeably worse than my last visit to this lake 2 weeks ago and this was no doubt worsened by the churning of the wind & waves over the past several days.  I could still see down at least 12".

In this lake, darker colored fly patterns have been good to me, so I used a black microjig with a black dry-fly hackle collar.  I tried it at various times both with and without an indicator about 3' above the microjig.

I caught a decent, but skinny, bluegill right away, and then nothing for awhile.  I eventually caught 5 very small largemouth bass, and 2 more bluegills.  I moved up and down the shoreline, trying some different areas before I left, and found one spot where I caught 2 crappies.  The first one was the bigger of the two, very deep-bodied.  I'd guess it was close to 12".  Then I had to head out.

Right before I'd left the house to start the carpool, I looked out on the back deck and saw a gray female Praying Mantis working on something in a spiderweb.  I grabbed the camera and went to see what was going on.  She was feeding ravenously on SOMETHING.  Judging by the size of her abodmen, she will be depositing her egg case soon.  I could't positively identify what she was feeding on, but I strongly suspect it was the funnel-web's owner, a large spider.  The Mantis seemed quite comfortable walking on the web without getting stuck.  I checked later and it was gone.

Fly-Fished a Local Public Pond Last Night, 9-5-2011

To finish off the holiday weekend, I went fly-fishing to a local pond last night from about 7pm-9pm.
It started off slow.  I could see fish hitting the fly, but they weren't getting hooked, just batting it around.
I figured a surface pattern would do the trick, but I couldn't quickly locate what I wanted in my hip pack.

So I tried a variety of subsurface patterns, and finally settled on a gold Springbrook Wunder.  In the meantime, I had my eye competitive eye on an angler using spinning gear on the far side of the pond.  He seemed to be taking some stuff off his lure...I assumed were fish, but could have been weeds.  He was using a lure under a bobber for awhile.  Then I watched him struggle to reach the lure which somehow got stuck in the back of his shirt.  He finally had to remove his shirt to free the hook.

The Springbrook Wunder worked very well.  I caught at least 20 bluegills and a couple of crappies on that pattern.

As the sky grew dark, I switched to a bucktail streamer I had tied with a short chartreuse craft fur tail, silver mylar cord body, white kiptail, pearl angel hair & chartreuse bucktail wing, and I had wound some chartreuse hackle at the head.  I caught a few bluegills on this, but more crappies (as I had hoped), at least 10 before I decided to quit for the evening.

Evening Report, 5-24-2011

I fly-fished a local public pond last night from around 8pm-9:30pm.


I fished a short section of shoreline I had never fished before, and a section where I had caught some decent male bluegills a few days ago. The section I had fished before produced only a few scattered fish.

The new section produced a variety of sizes of bluegills...from about 3" to a couple really nice fish that were probably in the 8"-8.5" range...males & females. Mostly is was small fish, though.

That area also produced a 10.5" crappie. Not a BIG crappie, but noticeably bigger than all the other ones I have caught from this particular pond this year.

I also caught a beautiful Hybrid Sunfish (unless somebody can tell me its a Pumpkinseed?). The pictures on this fish just don't do it justice.

I also caught a new "fly rod first" for me. I have to admit it put up a very interesting fight!....you may not be able to tell from the picture, but...its a BASEBALL!

Copper Creek Lake, 5-12-2011

I fly-fished Copper Creek Lake in Des Moines last night from about 6:35pm-7:30pm.


Quite a few other folks out fishing. I started with a 1/100th oz microjig. I changed colors a few times, most colors seemed to work. I caught 7 bluegills and 1 crappie on these patterns. Check out the dark coloration on the head of this nesting male crappie:

I saw a bass chase the microjig once, and then it just sort of seemed to be staying in the area. There was a small stump in the water that I thought I would catch some panfish near, but I wasn't catching any there...then it dawned on me...maybe the bass had staked a claim to that spot, and the panfish had cleared out? I put on a simple pattern consisting of a hook, a staple, and the rubber leg off a childs toy. The rubber leg looked sort of like a worm, the staple was tied to the hook shank to act as a "barb" to prevent the rubber from slipping down the hook shank. Anyway, I tossed it in, let it slowly sink, twitched it a few times. I watched my line, but didn't see any movement. I started lifting up on my line to cast again, but there was weight there...so I set the hook. Fish on! After a nice little battle, I landed this 16" Largemouth.

After close to an hour, I had to leave. I hadn't seen anyone else around me catch anything.

Evening Fishing, 4-11-2011...Nice Crappie!

4-11-2011
Local Public Pond
Fly-fished
Time Fished: 7:30pm-8:30pm
Weather: Sunny/dusk, 61 degrees F
Wind: 15mph from the North
Fish sought: Bass
Fish caught: 9 bluegills, 1 crappie
Best pattern: microjig

The wind was finally blowing out of the right direction for me to try some topwater poppers for bass. No takers along the short stretch of shoreline I fished. A guy with spinning gear on the opposite side of the pond did catch a small bass (<12").

I saw a nice Grass Carp porpoise within casting distance, so I chucked the popper in front of it, but no luck.

I'd seen some surface activity that I figured was bluegills, so I switched to a microjig. The first one (mostly black) got some attention, but no hookups. I switched to one with an olive grizzly marabou tail and an olive sparkle dubbing for the body. I caught all the fish on this.

The biggest bluegill was a chunky 8.5" female, which is the biggest I've caught on the fly rod so far this year.

The fish that got me all excited (and still couldn't fall asleep 2 hours later) was the crappie. It was a BEAST! Its my "Personal Best" on the fly rod, although I've caught bigger on spinning gear. It is a white crappie, and measured 14". It fought really hard, taking line a couple times. I was sure it was a bass, until it finally got closer to shore! I released all the fish, as usual.

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!

Evening Report 4-7-2010

The day-long rain stopped, the sun came out, the wind died...made for a nice evening, except it was sort of cold. It was 48 F as I headed for the pond. I had an 1.25 hour time slot to fish, between 7:45pm and 9pm.

This was "experiment night". I had tied up some flies earlier in the evening, plus had some previous ties I wanted to try out.

There was already a "Rabbit Fly" on the line, so I started with that.

Didn't take long to get the first crappie.

I think I caught one more fish on it, then switched to a very small (1"-1.5") EP-style minnow and caught a couple crappies on that:

Then switched to a craft fur minnow about 2.5" long...olive over bright yellow over white, and caught at least one crappie on that:

Then I put on a fly I had tied up last night. I had planned to tie up Joe Cornwall's Crappie Killer (http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=3434069&id=52479137997), but changed the body from chenille with tinsel ribbing to using estaz. I figured it would add flash, as well as some bulk for night fishing. I used pearl estaz on one, and the GRAND size chartreuse pearl on the other. I tied on the chartreuse one. This fly worked really well! I caught pretty good numbers of crappies on it, even after it got dark.

I also tossed it over in front of a storm culvert that empties into the pond. I figured the current from today's rain would bring some fish there. First cast yields a good fish! I admit I was sort of hoping for a catfish, but it turned out to be a rather chunky bass. I didn't measure it, I would guess it at about 15".

I wondered if a boa yarn would still outfish the new (modified) Crappie Killer fly. I put on a silvery-gray one. First cast...Crappie! But then that was about it for that fly. Maybe they couldn't see it as well as the usual yellow one I use? But I've done well on that color at night last year, so I know it can work.

But, for the remaining time I had left, I went back to the modified Crappie Killer. Caught more crappies. And last fish (again) was a bluegill. For a 7.5" bluegill (not very big), it is a mystery how he got enough of that big fly (#6 3xl streamer hook) in his mouth.

So, total was (at least) 17 crappies, 1 bass, 1 bluegill.

Night Fly-Fishing 9-10-09

Had family activities after work last night. Got home from those around 8:20pm. It was such a nice night, even though it was dark already...So, I decided to go fly fishing at a local public pond.Used a yellow Boa Yarn Leech, and did pretty well. Fished for 2 hours, and stopped when I reached 40 crappies. Also caught 4 bluegills, and 1 channel catfish.The bluegills were smallish. The crappies were "medium-sized"....averaging around 9", but I measured one bigger one that went 11". The catfish was 20.5".