Warmwater Fall Fly Fishing Starting to Improve?

I fly-fished a local public pond on Friday night after dark.  I caught 13 crappies (finally, decent numbers!), 3 bass (2 were nice ones, I measured one at 16.75”), and 7 bluegills.
All hit a #8 bead-chain eye chartreuse Kraft Fur Clouser.  Geez, that’s a pretty long title for a fly, right?

Here's the biggest bass of the night:

And here's one of the crappies:

 

Decent night for fishing. It wasn’t fast at all, but I found a couple spots where I caught several crappies each, and that helped. The bass were great fighters, and a nice surprise.

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I hit the same pond again with the same fly on Saturday night after dark, but it was slower again. 3 Crappies, 11 bluegills, and 2 bass (both 11”).

The good news is, it looks like the algae mats are diminishing on all the local public ponds.

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In other news, I tied up some fly patterns I hadn't tried before, or hadn't tried for a long time, anyway.

Here's a variant (in both tying method and materials) of a Berry's Super Stone Skwala, size 8:

And below is a Matuka that I thought turned out acceptable:

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!

Testing new Pentax Optio W90 Camera

I LOVED my Nikon Coolpix S640!  Unfortunately, it didn't survive a recent fishing trip, even though it never got wet or anything.  I don't know why it quit, actually, but quit it did.

Figuring I need a sturdier camera for fishing trips, but one that takes good enough pics & video since I really use it for EVERYTHING, I decided to go with the Pentax Optio W90.  It is rated as waterproof to 20' deep for up to 2 hours continuous submersion, shockproof from a 4' drop onto plywood (interesting rating), dustproof, and cold-proof to 14 degrees Fahrenheit (can you say ICE FISHING?).

It will take underwater pics and video.  As pleased as I was with the Nikon, I'm expecting SOME trade-off between picture quality and ruggedness with this Pentax.  But so far the pictures I've taken seem reasonably good.  Here's some examples of what I've taken so far:

White Bass from fishing today during lunch:

White Bass head: close-up (remember, click any picture to see the original size picture):

Here's a variety of colors of Uni Yarn on my fly-tying desk:

 And some flies I've tied recently...an Elk Hair Caddis:

 A Foxee Red Clouser (size 12):

 A Parachute-style dry fly pattern:

 And here's some backyard foliage, flower, and bug pics:

Pink Smoke Tree in fall colors:

 A couple of hot peppers on the vine:

 A Ladybug on the trampoline safety-surround net:

 Butterfly Bush:

 Phlox:

 I can't remember what these are.  Some sort of poisonous plant berries:

 Rose-of-Sharon:

 Weigala leaf:

 "Jumpy-Jumpy Grasshopper":

Fishing Report, Sept. 22-24, 2010

For the 2nd week in a row, I took Wedn-Fri off work to fish.  Weather was erratic, windy, rainy...to sunny, cool and windy.  The only constant was the wind, but the direction shifted, so that created its own affects on the fishing.
It wasn't quite as good as the previous week, but I still managed to catch 210 fish in the 3 days.  I managed 10 species again, but some of the species were different, compared to last week, and my total species in the past 2 weeks from one lake, fishing from shore, on strictly artificial lures, is 14 species!
This trip yielded the following species:

Smallmouth Bass to 12"

Largemouth Bass to 16"

Crappie to 10.5"

White Bass to 14"

 A DOUBLE of White Bass on a topwater lure:

Here's my buddy Jay with a nice White Bass.

Wipers to 12" (no pics of my fish)

Channel Catfish to 24.5" (all on artificial lures!)

Carp to 18" (check it...they HIT the slab spoon!)

Carpsucker...Foul-hooked on accident, but this counts, since it is actually legal to snag these fish.

Green Sunfish up to 7" long (no pictures taken).

And lastly, a small Yellow Perch around 7" long:

Another excellent fishing adventure, although no fly-fishing this time due to the heavy winds we experienced.



Fishing Log, September 15-17 2010

I took some time off work, and fished for 2.5 days!  Mostly I used spinning gear, fished one nearby lake from shore, and caught 10 species of fish.  I did do a little bit of fly-fishing and caught bass and white bass doing that, which was very fun.
Many of the pics didn't turn out very good, I'm not sure why.  I thought maybe the camera lens was dirty, but then later some pics turned out really good.  So I'm thinking maybe it had to do with water vapor condensation clouding the lens?  Either that, or it was having a tough time with its Autofocus whenever I used the timer to get myself in the pictures.

Anyway, for the largemouth bass and white bass, I often caught so many, I couldn't keep an accurate count.  So, each day I guesstimated what I caught for those species as closely as I could, without OVERestimating the number...so while I may have caught over 100 white bass one day, for instance....I ended up entering "70" in my Fishing Log.  Even so, I logged 299 fish in 2.5 days of fishing.  It was very fun!
Here's some pics (there were lots):

I caught a few walleyes, the biggest was 14.5":

I caught a small 17.5" Northern Pike (and it managed to cover itself in sand and mud before I was able to get the picture, as did a few other fish later on):

Smallmouth Bass up to 13"....in fact the biggest one hit a topwater lure:

Largemouth Bass up to 16.25".  They are always very fat and healthy from this lake.

I caught just a couple Wipers, biggest were probalby only 12"-13":

I caught a BUNCH of White Bass up to 14.25", quite a few on topwater lures, which is very exciting...and some on flies, as I mentioned before.

I even had a couple of DOUBLES of White Bass on topwater lures!

And I caught a Yellow Bass:

A 10.5" Crappie:

A couple really nice 8" Bluegills:

And a feisty Green Sunfish: