Icefishing February17,2018

Jay and I formulated flexible icefishing plans for Saturday.  We didn't know where we might find safe & accessible ice, so we had a series of "contingencies". 

Fortunately(?) the first place we tried was accessible.  The ice looked "iffy"....lotsa bubbles trapped in the ice, surface cracks....but not really honeycombed.  6.5" of ice.  We fished here most of the day, before hitting another place for the last couple hours.

Fishing alternated between very good, to zero throughout the day for each of us....usually only one of us was having success at any one time.  And then the fish would completely disappear for both of us.  Very bizarre.

Despite not catching much for hours at a time....we had fun and we did catch some decent fish!
We caught some crazy-aggressive chunky Hybrid Sunfish:

Hybrid Sunfish (presumably a Bluegill / Green Sunfish cross)

Even the Pumpkinseeds seemed more aggressive than the bluegills:

Pumpkinseed Sunfish

(BTW...the bottom right fish in the picture above is a Pumpkinseed hybrid.)

We didn't catch any crappies, and just a few bass.  This was the biggest of the day at a chunky 20" (see picture at the top of this post.)

I was looking down the hole when that one showed up and hit!

In other news....remember the ice rod that got ripped out of my hands and flew down the back in January?  Well...that pond's water is typically pretty stained all year.  But on Saturday I discovered it was strangely clear....I could see my lure tipped with a waxworm down to 8' +/-.   When we had arrived at the pond, Jay had initially drilled a couple holes to check ice thickness/quality.  Before we left that pond for the day, I decided to try and fish those holes since we couldn't find fish anywhere else.  I picked a hole that was over 6' of water.  I didn't mark any fish.  I dropped my lure/waxie to the bottom....then noticed something off to the side a bit.  Looked like my lost rod laying on the bottom!  I drilled 2 more holes before getting directly over the top of it.  I put on a rattle spoon and dropped it down.  Within a minute or two, I managed to hook THE CORK HANDLE (not the line or rod or eyelet like you would expect)....and reeled it up. I GOT MY LOST ROD BACK!!!  We decided the chances of finding it and retrieving it were astronomical.  CRAZY how everything worked out like that!  The uncharacteristically clear water was definitely the biggest factor.

Anyway....pretty cool stuff!  Oh....and no muskrats this time, but I did look down a hole once to see a ginormous bullhead slowly swimming just a couple feet under the ice.  I would have loved to catch it...I reeled up as quickly as I could, but it never turned or showed any interest and was quickly gone from view.

Last Week of June, 2015

Algae blooms are forming broad mats along the shorelines of many of the public ponds I flyfishing.  It makes fishing and landing fish difficult.  But not impossible.
I've tried unsuccessfully for more Grass Carp.  Largemouth Bass are becoming increasingly aggressive towards topwaters.  Bluegills and Hybrid Sunfish, too.  Some sunfish are still hanging out near nesting areas, but I think the main spawn is mostly over.  A much smaller percentage of the population may continue to spawn sporadically for the remainder of the summer.

Hybrid Sunfish:

A 10" Bluegill!! :

And Largemouth Bass up to 18":

Blockhead Popper Conclusion

Nope...its definitely NOT the last time I will be using these.  They are fun to make and they CATCH FISH.  I just don't know how much more I can really say about them after this post.  So...the "Conclusion" part of the title just means I won't belabor the issue further.  Do expect future mentions of them and picture of them in fish's mouths, though.

I tied up some more blockhead poppers.  I tied 2 larger ones on Umpqua/Tiemco 8089 #6 hooks...those bass-style ones that are ginormous for their stated size.  I also tied up a couple more on the #10 size hooks of the same style.

Last night I visited 3 new-to-me ponds in my town.  Yes, and there really are even MORE that I still haven't visited in the past 13 years of living in this town!  :)  Can you believe it??  Life is good.

I fished all night with the larger size blockhead popper.  Since I recently broke my favorite 6wt rod, I was using a fast-action 7 wt rod to cast/fish these.

The first pond had a VERY WIDE and solid ring of floating algae around the edge of the pond.  I probably made 5 casts total, caught a bluegill on that larger popper.

Next pond, resulted in one 11" bass caught, and I missed a pair of great strikes from something I feel was larger.  Disappointing result from that pond.

The third pond gave up at least 5 nice bass in the 14"-16" range (guesstimate...I didn't really measure any of them).  They hit very aggressively, and fought well.  That was FUN!

A couple of the bass even struck, got off without being hooked, and then struck another time or two on follow-up casts back to the same spots before getting caught!  You can't always count on the fish being THAT aggressive!

Those #6 poppers were noticeable more difficult to cast than the #10's.  I think I will go back to using the #10's for the immediate future, but I will keep some of the bigger ones with me at all times, in case they want the bigger mouthful.

Blockhead Popper Field Test, 7-17-2014

In my previous post, I showed the first blockhead-style flyrod popper I tied.

I went flyfishing after dinner last night for a couple hours.  When I arrived at one of the local ponds, I made my first cast with the other foam-head style popper that I've been having good success with this year.
I cast to an area where I've lost a really nice bass on 2 previous trips to this pond this year.  The first one broke the line, the second one threw the popper.  Well, last night the fish broke my line again.  10 lb test tippet!!!  The fish probably is 5lbs or less, so I'm not sure why it keeps breaking my line.  Maybe it has genetically mutated giant sharp fangs.  HA!  Unfortunately, I'm not sure how many more times I can trick it into hitting a topwater!  Its gonna get wise.

The good news is, my popper floated to the surface maybe 10 seconds later.  The bad news is the wind blew it farther from shore, and I was unable to retrieve it.  Maybe I'll find it later this year.

Anyway, so then I tied on the blockhead-style popper.  I like it.  Casts better than I expected given its shape, and that square flat face gives a better pop than the other style.  I can't argue with all the bass I've caught on that other style, though.

The first fish to take the blockhead popper was a bluegill.  What was she thinking??

The next fish was a truly giant Sunfish.  I suspect it is a Hybrid Sunfish, but it really has strong Green Sunfish features.  It measured 9.5":

Then I caught 3 bass on it:

The third one was the biggest one (picture above), an while trying to drag it to shore through the algae mats, my TFO BVK 6 wt. rod broke in 2 places!  I'm BUMMED!  Fortunately, TFO has a Lifetime "No-Fault" Warranty.  So, I'll need to ship the pieces back along with $25 to get replacement sections or a new rod.

There were grass carp around, so I went back to my car and got my switch rod.  I put on a floating grasshopper pattern and spent the last hour trying for Grass Carp…even put some blades of grass and weed leaves on the hook, but they would look but not hit.  Actually they might have hit once or twice, but they didn’t submerge the hopper for very long, so I never set the hook.  I caught one more bass and a crappie on the hopper.

Grass Carp sometimes seem to be like Geese.  They always seem to have one “sentry” at the surface keeping watch, while the others are feeding.  There was a BIG one with his back, fin, and top of his tail out of the water, and he sat or slowly went back and forth in front of me pretty much for the entire hour I fished for them.

New Pond, Visit #2

My first trip ever to this pond (as you will remember from my previous blog), last week, resulted in catching a bunch of bluegills, and a fair number of Hybrid Sunfish and some Pumpkinseeds.

Last night's flyfishing outing, my second trip ever to this pond, I again caught a bunch of bluegills, decent numbers of Hybrid Sunfish…

...but I didn’t catch any Pumpkinseeds for the first hour.  I recalled that the first trip I had tried 3 different colors of microjigs, and almost all the Pumpkinseeds hit the chartreuse.  I also recalled that I thought I had a crappie on last trip, but didn’t land it.

Unlike last trip, this time I saved a little bit of remaining daylight for fishing the channel and beyond.  The north end of the main pond turns into a narrow channel that cuts across to the backs of some townhomes sort of near my neighborhood. There it opens up again into a smaller pond basin area.  Actually, the smaller basin looked bigger than I thought it would.  I didn’t really get to fish the smaller pond area, except right where it connects to the channel, because it just got too dark to see my strike indicator.  Anyway, at first I was still using a gold microjig that I had used on  the main big pond area.  I went up the channel to just beyond where it first widens out slightly.  I was casting towards the far shoreline, and caught a couple crappies!  I ended up catching at least 7 crappies scattered throughout the channel area.

I also caught 3 bass this time.  2 were small, one was a nice feisty “medium size”….maybe 13”. 

Right after I caught that bigger bass, I threw back in the same spot and hooked another something nice.  I thought maybe it was another bass.  It turned and ran straight up the channel and angled towards the opposite shoreline.  I mean it ROCKETED up that channel!  It was peeling line out of my hand and off the reel.  And I was using a 6wt!  In hindsight, I should have horsed it more.  My line would have held, but I was worried about the hook pulling loose.  In the end, the fish found some weeds/muck, and got free.  DANG!  Whatever it was…it was NICE.  Not like 10lb catfish nice…but a solid fish and FAST/strong!  I really wonder what it was.  I still suspect bass (maybe 18-19” range?), but it could have been grass carp, BIG crappie…heck, it could have been a muskrat!  There was at least one swimming around the area around dusk.

Anyway, it was exciting.  As the cloudy light started to get dark, I did switch to a chartreuse microjig, and caught more crappies in the channel, and 3 more Pumpkinseeds…plus a few more bluegills.  Here's a couple of the Pumpkinseeds:

So…all in all it was an interesting evening of flyfishing.  That channel area is intriguing.  It is not very deep, and I have a feeling by late spring/summer it will be overgrown with weeds…so I think I will try to fish there a bit more while the weather is still cool.

Evening Flyfishing Report, 7-29-2012

Excuses, excuses...I didn't get out fishing until really late last night (after 8:30pm)...not much light left, the sun had already set.  And then for the past few months I've been spending a LOT of largely fruitless time chasing after catfish and grass carp with the fly rod.  So, my catch rates and fish totals have severly plummeted.  Average size is up, however.  Definitely a trade-off.

Last night I tried some white bunny leeches and caught just 3 fish, one Bluegill, one Crappie, and one 17" Largemouth Bass:

Evening Fly-Fishing, 5-13-2012

It was a fairly calm evening, so after dinner I headed to one of the public ponds in town to do some fly-fishing.  Quite a few other people had the same idea.  Only one other fellow was flyfishing.  The rest were using spinning gear.

I started out with a bass Gurgler I had tied up, after having such good success with the first one.  This 2nd tie was tied on a #2 streamer hook, slightly larger than the previous one.

First cast, I took the fly away from a fish that was investigating it.  Next cast, FISH ON!  This was a good fish, and it went completely airborne, and re-entered the water with a huge splash.  Cool!   This bass measured 17".

When I released this one back to the water, it charged away from shore with gusto!

Now, I honestly can't say for sure that the next fish came on the very next cast.  Maybe it did, but it more likely was a 3 or 4 casts later.  Anyway, it hit aggressively, I set the hook, and this fish just TOOK OFF!  It charged for deep water and went DOWN.  Then it turned to parallel the shoreline and was swimming straight away from me.  The pressure I was putting on the fish brought it up from the depths somewhat, because I could tell where it was by the swirls and wakes of other scared fish taking off out of its way.  And some of those looked like they were from good-sized fish!

I did get the fish turned and brought it back to me, and soon landed it.  NICE BASS!  This one measured 19", which goes into a 3-way tie for my biggest Largemouth Bass caught on a fly rod.  Such a strong fighter!

I released this one, and it mosied away a bit more calmly than the previous fish.
I resumed casting, but the strikes I was getting seemed to be from smaller fish that didn't want to get hooked.  I moved along the shoreline a ways.  I put a cast out sort of parallel to the shoreline, and got another good strike.  When I set the hook, the line parted immediately.  Darn!  That fish took my new fly!  I was sort of bummed.  Within a few minutes, a nice-sized bass leapt for the sky out near the middle of the pond, and I had a feeling that was my fish...trying to throw the Gurgler out of its mouth.

I tied on the "older" Gurler.  I got strikes from small fish, and caught a smaller bass on.  Then I started changing through different fly patterns to target crappies, bluegills, and hoped for catfish.  I saw some catfish porpoise as they were feeding near the surface.  I also saw several grass carp around with their backs occasionally sticking above the water.  Pretty large fish!  Of COURSE I wanna catch more of these on my fly rod, so I spent a fair amount of time trying to cast to them.  I was unsuccessful in hooking into one...but was heartened to see these in this pond being so VISIBLE.  I know they are here, but almost NEVER see them.

I did catch just one bluegill, and 8 crappies before trying the Gurgler one more time.  I had some really nice, loud strikes on it, but didn't hook anything.  I wondered if maybe if these strikes were from catfish or smaller bass.

I am definitely going to be tying up a few more of these Gurglers.  They are definitely working well for me!

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 Lunchtime Report, 5-9-2012

I hadn't fished for a WHOLE DAY...but it seemed like at least 2 whole days...which is WAY too long for my liking!
Anyway, I decided to hit the young pond again where I discovered carp and buffalo late last week.  The wind was from the direction I wanted it to be, but was a bit stronger than I hoped for to be able to sight-fish.  The sky was mainly overcast, with the sun peeking out once in awhile.  When it was cloudy, sight-fishing was hopeless.  Plus, a retired fellow (because he made a POINT of telling me repeatedly that he was retired) was just finishing his circuit of the pond cast lures for bass.  I think he scared the carp away from the shallows.

During a couple of sunny moments, I did spot at least one carp slowly cruising in open water, and also spotted a few buffalo feeding beneath the surface in open water.  I tried (separately) a San Juan Worm and an egg pattern under an indicator.  Got some really good casts to the buffalo, looked like the fish was going RIGHT FOR the fly...but it kept on going without any signal from my indicator.  The rest of the time when it was cloudy, I fished with a beadhead furl-tailed leech and caught 3 Largemouth Bass and 4 Crappies.  I caught 2 Hybrid Sunfish on the San Juan Worm, and 5 Bluegills.  The Bluegills hit several different flies, including the egg fly, the San Juan Worm, the leech, and a Pheasant Tail Nymph.

So...catching 4 species was good, but I still didn't get either of the 2 species I was HOPING for.

Here's some pics:

The Crappies were sporting their darker spawning coloration:

This is one of the smaller Hybrid Sunfish I've caught...but they are so colorful!

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.

Dreary Saturday Fly-Fishing, 4-28-2012

I thought the weather forecast for Saturday had called for substantial wind.  When I finally rolled out of bed and looked out the window, the leaves on the trees were just barely moving.  I checked the hour-by-hour forecast to see if this was just a temporary lull in an otherwise windy day, but the next few hours looked pretty good.  So I grabbed a quick breakfast and headed out the door.

I probably should have gone to some more distant destination, since my family had no big plans for the day (which is extremely rare on weekends!)...but I couldn't come up with a better idea of where I wanted to go, so I went to one of the local public ponds I fish frequently.  In fact, the last time I fished this pond, I knew a bass was marking out a nest in one corner of the pond.  While I was unable to see the fish, I could see his wake when he charged around chasing the bluegills away.  I went directly to that spot and started fishing, hoping this fish that I couldn't get to strike last time would be easier to fool this time.  I tried topwaters, and a variety of baitfish-imitating fly patterns...but couldn't get any reaction from this fish.  I did finally get to see it, and it wasn't as big as I'd hoped it would be.  Probably a 14" fish.

Discouraged, I switched to an unweighted black woolly bugger, and set about the business of fooling some bluegills.  This was working ok.  I worked my way to another corner of the pond, and cast up near the shallows of the corner.  I set the hook on a strike and had a GOOD fish on the line!  It bulldogged, headed for deeper water, and then jumped clear of the water.  Nice bass!  Fortunately the hook held.  It went on several more good runs and jumped clear of the water again.  The second time I coaxed it into the shallows, I was able to reach down and grab the fish's lip to land it.  It measured 17.5".  Here's the cell-phone picture I took:

I released it back to the water, and it swam away.  I turned and started fan-casting the area...not so much because I thought there'd be another bass that size in this corner, but because I figured the bluegills would be more aggressive now that this big bass was tired out.  Within just a couple minutes, a large bass (I hesitate to suggest it was the SAME bass, but there are so few large bass in this pond, it seems unrealistic that there would be another large bass guarding a nest in the same area) was charging into that same corner and chasing the bluegills away.  I switched back to the bass patterns I had with me...the topwater and the baitfish patterns.  I did get a few small strikes that I must have just been some larger bluegills or maybe crappies.  I didn't get the strike I was hoping for from that bass.

I decided to try for a bluegill again, and then see if the hooked bluegill would elicit a strike as I brought it in to shore over the area I suspected the bass to be.  This worked immediately.  The bass grabbed the bluegill and ran.  I fed it line.  The fish came back almost to my feet again, as I slowly stripped the slack line back in.  The fish swam out again, a bit farther this time.  It eventually turned and slowly made its way back near me as I regained the line.  A good 5 minutes had elapsed since the bass had grabbed the bluegill.  I hoped by now the bass would have it far enough down its throat that I could attempt to land the bass, and this is what I set about doing.  The bass started fighting right away, and went on two good runs.  Then it headed for the sky.  It completely cleared the water, and as it shook its head, the bluegill came flying back towards me.

All I could do was shake my head and smile.  That was pretty cool!  I moved on and continued fishing for bluegills, and caught some pretty nice ones for these ponds.  I measured one at 8.5".

As I summarize this trip, I can't help but wonder about a few things.  If those bass are chasing bluegills away from their nests, and are obviously willing to grab and eat them if they catch them...then why weren't the baitfish-imitating fly patterns getting more attention from the bass?  Conversely, I landed 3 bass on the day (the other 2 were smaller)...and they all took smaller flies I was using for bluegills.  Why would the bass eat this small stuff they normally ignore?

5 Species Suprise! 4-7-2012

Our incredibly warm weather in March has given way to more seasonally normal (cooler) weather in April.  I woke up Saturday morning, looked outside to see a good breeze, clouds, intermittent drizzle.  Dreary conditions.  I asked myself, "If I were going to go fishing today, WHERE would I go?"

That really warm March weather warmed local water temperatures FAST.  A nearby lake, Lake Petocka, that had been stocked with trout during the winter offered up some good trout-fishing immediately after ice-out, but the fast-warming shallows caused the fish to drop to waters further from shore...difficult to reach with fly gear.  I thought maybe this cooler weather might encourage some trout to come back in near shore again.  So...Lake Petocka is where I thought I would try.  I mentioned this to my wife, and she said, "Go."  I had to be home around Noon.  I arrived at the lake a little before 10am.  Total time fished was 2.25 hours.

Wind was from the South.  I fished from the North shoreline.  I started at a spot that produced a fair number of trout when I last fished the lake.  I didn't get any strikes there.  I moved down the shoreline a bit further, and got something on my line!  It wasn't a good sign that the first thing I happened to catch was...a clam shell!

 I worked my way down the shoreline.  While at one spot, I noticed a large area just a bit further down the shore that looked like a bunch of fish or baitfish just crashed the surface.  So I moved down to that spot.

I saw a silvery fish slash across the surface.  I started casting.  I was using a beadhead woolly bugger.  After a few casts and a few missed strikes, I got a solid hookset.  A fantastic battle ensued on my 5wt.  I was surprised when the fish came in that it was a nice White Bass!  I shouldn't have been so surprised...My friend Dale G. reported that had caught some on his last trip to the lake a few weeks back.

Let me take a step back here and explain that in all the times I've fished this lake, I have caught MOSTLY Trout (Rainbows and some Brookies), maybe a half-dozen or so Bluegills, a couple small Green Sunfish, and a few small Largemouth Bass.  Without the trout, there really aren't enough fish in this lake to make me want to pick this lake over the dozens of other choices I have closer to home.

Back to the fishing.  I measured this White Bass at 14", and it was a nice healthy fish.

I decided to switch to a Clouser.  I selected a gray-over-white one from my fly box.  I was so excited to get back to fishing, I dropped the fly and started casting.  I quickly realized I hadn't actually ATTACHED the fly to my line!  Total Rookie mistake!  :)

I thought I had chucked the fly into the water, so I didn't look for it, I just dug another one out of my fly box.  The next one I selected was a chartreuse-over-yellow version that was sort of large...in the 3"-4" range.

I caught another white bass.

 I love catching White Bass, so I was pretty excited already (obviously).

Next, I hooked into a different fish.  It looked like about the size and shape of a trout, but the flash was yellow.  Couldn't be a brown trout, they've never been stocked here.  I got it closer to shore.  Yellow Perch!  No way, this couldn't be happening!  It measured 10.75"

That Clouser was a big bite for this fish!

This spot died...so I continued on down the shoreline.  Next fish was the species I had come here targeting, a Rainbow Trout!  I measured this one at 12.5".  

The Clouser was a pretty big bite for this fish too, even though trout DO have large mouths.  Nevertheless, I was still sort of surprised.

I continued moving along the shoreline.  At one spot I got a couple missed strikes, had a nice fish on briefly, and then lost the Clouser to another good strike.  I switched to an unweighted deer hair streamer in a similar color scheme to the Clouser I had just lost.

 Next fish was a Largemouth Bass.  Nothing big, but it fought well.

Next fish was another White Bass.  I didn't measure the last two, they probably weren't quite as big as the first one, but they were nice fish, probably more like 13"+/-.

I quickly fished my way back to the spot I first caught fish.  On the way, I caught another Largemouth Bass.  It wasn't much different than the first bass.  No picture.

I got to that first spot again, and it seemed pretty dead.  I did get a couple small strikes, and then caught a little Smallmouth Bass!

It was time to head home.  I was really excited to have caught 5 Species from this lake in one trip...3 of them were species I had never caught from this lake before, and the White Bass and Yellow Perch especially were nice fish.  I had some excellent battles with fish today.

I had the lake to myself the entire time, with the exception of the last 20 minutes, when another angler with spinning gear arrived, but was fishing a good distance away from me.

I have to wonder if this combination of species has ever been caught before on a fly rod from one lake on one trip?