Fantastic Evening, 11-16-2013

What started out as a morning with hail and rain, turned into a decent afternoon of light scattered rain mixed with sunshine.  By late afternoon, the air temps had reached into the lower 60's, and the wind wasn't too terrible.  I had to go fishing!

I visited a local pond where I hoped to flyfish for Bluegills.  With the recent cold weather, and this day's rain, sun, and warmer temps...its hard to predict how the fish are going to react.  I hoped they liked the warmth, and it seemed like they did.

I ended up landing at least 15 Bluegills in 2 hours of fishing.  The bigger surprise was that I also landed 8 Crappies, and lost a couple others!  Now...I know there are crappies in this pond, I catch a few every year. But they are fairly rare.  I would guess that most years I don't catch 8 crappies TOTAL from this pond, so catching 8 in a couple hours this day was as amazing as it was unexpected!  They weren't real big...all probably 10" or less, but they were really healthy-looking, and fought well.

Most of the bluegills hit earlier in the evening, and were caught on a Brown "Rubberlegs" nymph with yellow legs.  The Crappies hit later in the evening, and were all caught on a red microjig with a chartreuse tail suspended under an indicator.

Other than the willing Bluegills and bonus Crappies...one more thing made the evening pretty special.  The sky.  It was absolutely beautiful and ever-changing all evening...so I kept snapping pictures of the sky in between catching fish.
Enjoy!

And then later, my family and I went to see the movie "Thor" in the theatres.  When we got home, the moon was playing with the clouds, and it was pretty cool! Hopefully this GIF file works:

Tuesday Evening Flyfishing, 8/21/2012

Happy 19th Wedding Anniversary, Mrs. FishnDave!  :)

After getting a car tire repaired on the way home from work, and then making dinner for our kids, I went fly fishing at a local public pond.

It already seems like it is starting to get dark much too early in the evenings.  Know what I mean?

Anyway, this is a pond I haven't visited recently.  It has some decent bluegills, mostly, but they can sometimes be difficult to locate.  I found them to be rather scattered, yet managed to land at least 15 on a black Woolly Bugger.  They were fun, and I am satisfied with that.

But there was something even better.  This is a pond that has some nice Grass Carp in it.  It is also a pond where I've rarely been able to get within casting distance of the Grass Carp.  They nearly always see me (and bolt!) long before I see them.  I have to admit I was hoping to see some tonight, but it wasn't looking promising.  As I was fishing my way along the shoreline catching bluegills, I came to an area I knew to be fairly shallow.  There were bubbles coming up in several areas.  I thought that was odd.  I cast in and around those areas.  Caught a bluegill or two, and very briefly had one or two fish on that felt a little better than the bluegills.  I moved down the shoreline to another area that had areas of rising bubbles.  I cast my fly near one bubbling spot and let it sink.  When I began the retrieve, there was weight, so I set the hook.  Grass Carp!  It ran to the far shoreline of the pond.  There was only 2 turns of fly line left on my reel...the backing was staring back at me.  I considered taking a picture of this, as well as the big bend in my rod.

After several solid minutes of battle, my hook pulled free.  Bummer!  Because of the way it fought, I strongly suspect this fish was foul-hooked, probably near the tail.  Still, I would have liked to have landed it!

I moved down the shore a few paces more and cast towards more bubbles.  Within just a cast or two, I hooked up with another Grass Carp.  For this one, I had cast to the bubbles and just let it sink while watching my line.  When thw line started to move, I set the hook, and saw the back and tail of the Grassie as it darted away from shore.  I could tell this fish was definitely hooked in (or near) the mouth.  The fish was easier to control, but was still overpowering my 5 wt fly rod.  I wasn't in a hurry, but after a couple minutes of this excitement, I decided to try putting more pressure on the fish to tire it and bring it to shore.  Once again, the hook pulled out.  This time I was even more Bummed out!  I thought I HAD that one!  

Oh well...having two Grass Carp on the line in one night is exceptional for me, and I feel I might be on to something in casting to those bubbles.  I hope I can find that situation again soon to continue experimenting.

Warmwater Fly-Fishing Report, 3-21-2012

This post is a bit out of order.  Just got back from a Spring Break trip with my family to the Dominican Republic.  I'll probably blog about that here (separately), but THIS is the blog of my first fly-fishing outing since our return to Iowa.

Our flight got in around 10pm, but you never know about possible delays, so I took the following day off work as well.  The kids are still officially on Spring Break.

I'd stayed up late and unpacked, so I was ready to go fishing Wednesday morning.  I didn't get up very early.  The sky was cloudy, threatening more rain to follow the overnight rain we received.  I went to a local public pond and started fishing around 9am.  Fishing was good!  In the next 3 hours, I caught 28 Bluegills, 13 Green Sunfish, and 7 Crappies.  I measured one decent crappie at 11", then caught an even bigger one that measured 13".  That is a very nice crappie for around here, and HUGE for any of the public ponds.  I was very pleased!

Here's pictures of a few of the fish:

Bluegill

A nice Crappie.

Love the colors and patterns!

An 11" Crappie...very chunky fish.

This (and the picture below) is the 13" beast Crappie.  All the others I caught were Black Crappies...this was the only White Crappie I caught this day.

I also spotted this large Bullfrog under the water amongst the rocks near my feet:

Oh...and I CAUGHT a Crayfish on my line!  I saw it walking around underwater, so I dropped my microjig to the bottom near the crayfish and moved it a bit.  It turned and started chasing it.  Once it grabbed hold of the microjig, I lifted it and swung it out onto the grassy area behind me, where it finally let go and dropped to the ground.  Fly-fishing for crayfish!  :)

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I tallied up my fish total for the morning, and discovered I was 2 fish shy of 50.  I decided to hit another pond on my way home.  I fished the 2nd pond for 1 hour, and caught 12 Bluegills.  For the entire 4 hours I spent fishing then, I caught 60 fish total....which works out to an average of 1 fish every 4 minutes.  Not bad!

Lake Petocka Fly-Fishing Report, 11-7-2011

I took the day off yesterday (Monday) and did some fly-fishing for the trout at Lake Petocka. When I requested the day off work, the forecast was for 10 degrees warmer than what it turned out to be, and low temps almost 20 degrees warmer than it turned out to be.


Still, it was a nice, sunny morning and early afternoon, with reasonably low winds.

Fishing was S-L-O-W. Very few "rings" from surfacing fish within casting distance of shore. No big groups of fish. In talking with some folks, there was some great fishing a week ago, and reports are that folks were keeping a lot more than their legal limits. I even talked to a couple guys out there who said they had caught their limits (a week ago Saturday), took them home, then came back. They left it to my imagination as to whether they kept any on their 2nd trips of the day. But anyway, all the harvesting (both legal and illegal) seems to have cut the trout population down considerably over the past 3.5 weeks. That's good from the DNR's point of view that the fish get "used" and enjoyed. It just makes fishing a lot more challenging.

Most folks I saw out there yesterday who were using lures or live bait didn't catch ANYTHING. The best I saw was one guy using minnows...he took home 4 trout.

Comparitively, I did well and caught 9 trout on flies....8 Rainbows and 1 Brookie. I stayed about an hour-and-a-half extra trying to catch "1 more fish to make it an even 10"....but it was dead, and it didn't happen.

I tried surface patterns as well as nymphs under an indicator, but didn't catch fish on them. I did best with streamers like beadhead woolly buggers and simple patterns using gold mylar tubing bodies with a marabou tail. Although fish were very rarely visible from shore, I caught almost all of my fish within 15' of shore.

Fly-Fishing for Trout at Lake Petocka, 10-25-2011

The 10-day weather forecast suggested that this MIGHT be the last 70+ degree day for the year.  Such a nice day should be spent outdoors FISHING, so I took the day off from work.  I had stayed up until almost 1am the previous evening tying flies for the day's adventure, so I was tired when the alarm went off at 6am.  I went back to sleep until almost 8am.  I looked out the window, and the remaining leaves on the trees were still...it was very calm.  ALRIGHT!  I figured that would help me located some trout near shore once I got to the lake.

I quickly got dressed and descended to the kitchen.  I looked out the back windows and...WIND???  Darn!  I knew it was coming (forecasted 10-15mph winds), but I hoped I would be at the lake before it started to blow. Oh well.

I ate breakfast and quickly got the few items I needed into the car and headed to the lake.  When I arrived, there were already 4 cars parked around the lake with fishermen scattered around the shoreline.  I parked, and decided to walk around the lake until I saw signs of trout, or otherwise found a spot that looked worthy fishing.

I had walked about a 1/3 of the way around the lake, when I saw some boils and swirls.  TROUT!  As I got closer, I could see a dark patch about 20' off shore, which was a pod of trout.  I had a yellow Boa Yarn Leech on my line from fishing for bluegills, crappies and bass the previous evening, so I tossed it out beyond the edge of the pod.  I didn't want to cast or retrieve directly through the pod in case this would make them scatter, so I tried to pick fish off the edges.  I caught the first Rainbow Trout of the day on that Boa Yarn Leech.

Since I had a good visual on the pod of trout, and found them to be willing to hit flies, I switched to a Blue Thunder streamer pattern, originated by Ian James.  I didn't have purple Flashabou, so I used pearl Krystal Flash under a thin topping of purple bucktail.

This was one of the patterns I had tied the previous night, and I wanted to see what the trout thought of it.  Turns out....THEY LOVED IT!  I was catching fish or missing strikes on nearly every cast for quite some time.  I caught both Rainbows and Brookies on it.

Although the streamer was holding up really well to catching all those fish, I eventually I had to take the fish-shredded remnants of the streamer off my line and try some other patterns.  I caught quite a few fish on a beadhead softhackle nymph pattern:

And a few Rainbows on an olive Woolly Bugger with black hackle:

An angler who had been fishing unsuccessfully about 70 yards away with spinning gear and an in-line spinner noticed my success, and he moved his gear down to the opposite side of me. He fished there for a bit, but wasn't catching anything. He was amazed at how the fish were going after the fly I was using. He came over and asked what I was using. I said I would show him, and just then missed a good strike. My line, leader, tippet and fly flew out of the water and wrapped around John's (that was his name) spinning rod. I laughed and said, "Well, there it is!" We disentangled our gear, and he looked at the streamer. He said he has a fly rod, but has never really used it. He was amazed at how I was able to catch fish on nearly every cast (a slight exaggeration). I told him how I had spotted the fish, showed him the darker patch of water that was the pod of trout, and told him how I was trying to pull fish off the edges of it. I also told him to go ahead and walk down beyond the pod, so we could each cast to the fish from opposite sides. Over the next hour or so, he caught 5 trout on his spinner, compared to around 30 that I caught on flies. He got more and more interested in fly-fishing, and would sometimes just watch what I was doing, and ask questions. I tried to get him to try casting my rod, but he refused. I told him I at LEAST wanted him to see what one of those trout feels like on the end of the fly line, so I cast out about 20 times, and let him work the fly back in (by this time, I had a beadhead nymph under a strike indicator). He missed a few fish, but he eventually hooked, fought and landed 2 Rainbow Trout. He thought that was fantastic! He was saying how he was going to have to dig out his unused fly rod and start learning how to cast, so he could do this on his own. RIGHT ON! I also told him how fly fishing also works really well for Crappies, Bluegills, Bass, Catfish, Carp....just about everything!

John took this picture of me with a Brook Trout:

Anyway, the action had declined, but we had spent a good hour talking about fly-fishing and whatnot. He had kept his limit of 5 trout, which he wanted to give to his neighbor. He needed to get home and clean the fish, so we parted ways.

I had already caught 43 Rainbow Trout and 4 Brook Trout by this time. I moved to the opposite side of the lake so I wouldn't have to cast into the strong wind anymore. There wasn't much fish activity over there, but I stayed and fished. I caught a few more Rainbow Trout, then tied on a foam Chernobyl Ant/Hopper. I caught a couple more Rainbows and a Bluegill on it. It wasn't floating as well as I wanted, so I put on a larger foam Hopper. I caught a Brook Trout on that, which I thought was just fantastic!  The two pictures below are of the same fish.

Final fish tally was 48 Rainbow Trout, 5 Brook Trout, and 1 Bluegill. What I had hoped to achieve this day was to catch a good number of trout (did that) on fly-fishing gear, I wanted to catch at least a few of the Brook Trout on fly gear (did that), and catching one on a surface pattern was really icing on the cake! Although the action had started off very fast and then tapered off to almost nothing...I was very pleased!

My buddy Jay called and said the White Bass were hitting really good at the local reservoir, so I decided to give it up on a GREAT day of fly-fishing for trout at Lake Petocka.  I left at around 3pm, stopped by my house to pick up appropriate White Bass fishing gear, and headed for the reservoir to meet up with Jay. But THAT report is in the NEXT blog!