OBN - Up Close & Personal (Macro Shots)

I saw this first on John Montana's blog "Carp on the Fly" (http://carponthefly.blogspot.com/), and thought I would join in.  I admire his ability to narrow his choices down to just two!
Outdoor Blogger Network (www.outdoorbloggernetwork.com) posted a prompt to encourage their supporters to post "Up Close & Personal" nature shots on their blogs, such as photos shot in Macro mode.

Well, not all of these are shot in macro mode, but they are "Up Close & Personal". :o)  My previous blog post contains some backyard bug pictures, and another recent one contains some flower pictures, so I'll try not to duplicate those here....but chances are good many of these pics are located in my blogs SOMEWHERE.  I decided to stick with FISH close-ups for this post.

Lets go:



Corlorful  NE Iowa Brown Trout caught on Fly Rod.

Colorful naturally-occurring Hybrid Sunfish.

Largemouth Bass on a fly-rod nymph.

Stream Smallmouth Bass on a fly rod popper.

NE Iowa Rainbow Trout caught on Fly Rod.

Stocker Rainbow Trout from Iowa lake on Fly Rod.

Another stocker Rainbow Trout from a different Iowa lake during mid-summer.

Male Black Crappie in breeding colors.

Beautiful male Green Sunfish in spawning colors.

Big maw of a 31.5" Channel Catfish.

Male Bluegill in spawning coloration.

Healthy reservior Smallmouth Bass.

Small Wiper (Hybrid).

Good-lookin' Channel Catfish caught on Fly Rod.

Under-appreciated Freshwater Drum...this was a nice 26" fish!

Mouth of the 26" Freshwater Drum, hit a Reef Runner Cicada.

Head of a Common Carp, caught on a Fly Rod under a mulberry tree.



Found this nice Arrowhead while fishing!

Toothy jaws of a Shortnose Gar.

Shortnose Gar caught on a Rope Fly.  I liked this shot because you can see the skull joints beneath the skin.

  

"Two Eyes"....Crappie on a streamer pattern.

Crappie on a fly rod microjig.

Largemouth Bass caught on a Lefty's Deceiver.

White Bass caught on a Lefty's Deceiver.

White Bass double on topwater plug!

Yellow Bass.

The red pigmentation in the Shortnose Gar's tail area has something to do with spawning, I've heard.  Looks like blood, but isn't.

Speaking of getting "Up Close & Personal"...this Brown Pelican flew in and landed on our motor while we were heading back to the marina in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

Roosterfish from Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

These ducks weren't scared of me!

Yellow Perch.

Walleye teeth!

Northern Pike teeth!

Pucker up!

 

Grass Carp, caught on Fly Rod.

Close-up of Common Carp scales.



Backyard Scenes, 8-14-2010

Hummingbirds have been going absolutely berserk in our backyard this weekend!  They love the Honeysuckle vines and (appropriately enough) the 3 colors of Hummingbird vines (red, orange, and yellow) covering much of the fence on all 3 sides of the backyard.  I'd like to get a picture of them, but I haven't been able to get close enough.  That's not completely true...I got within about 4' of one, I think he was as surpised as I was when he flew over the fence and landed right next to me.  We eyed each other.  I knew he'd be gone as soon as I moved to raise my camera!
So....no pictures of the hummingbirds yet.
Instead, I offer up these backyard shots:

Brown-colored Praying Mantis

Buckeye Butterfly

Japanese Beetle

This is a Viceroy Butterfly, which is a "mimic" of the Monarch Butterfly.  While the Monarch has a nasty toxic taste to birds, the Viceroy has no such bad taste.  Mimicry only works if there are fewer of the mimics than the species being mimicked.  So...these aren't commonly seen.  They LOVE the Butterfly Bush, though!  I counted 3 on it yesterday, and one Monarch.

Lightning strike!

Stellar Catfish Day!

8-6-2011
My buddy Jay and I had planned to meet up at a local reservoir on Saturday to fish from shore.  We target whatever we can catch, and from past recent experience it seemed likely we would be catching some Largemouth Bass and small (<12") White Bass.  We were primarily going to be using spinning gear, since long casts are often required to reach fish from shore at the spot we had selected.

But I always love catching fish on fly-fishing gear.  The previous night, I had tied up some streamers that approximated the size of baitfish we had seen here on our last fishing trip earlier in the week, and I wanted to try them out on the white bass and largemouth bass we had caught.

The spot we had planned to fish can be pretty good when the wind is blowing, making waves across the shallow flats.  Without wind, it is generally poor fishing.  At least it was overcast, which can sometimes help keep the fish in the shallows.  My expectations weren't high as I was driving to the lake, but we'll never know if was good or not.  We never made it there.

As I was driving to this spot, I was on a high road overlooking the Marina on one side, and a huge stormwater holding pond on the other side.  There is a pumping tower on the Marina side, and when the holding pond water level reaches a certain level, the water gets pumped into the reservoir.  When the pumps are running, it creates a large boil near the tower, and the current attracts shad (the main baitfish in the lake) and other fish come to feed on the shad.  Because the pumping is cyclical, fish aren't always in the area.  You never really know what you might find, if anything.  Since no cars were coming towards me, nor behind me, I swerved over into the other lane of the road so I could get a look down at the base of the tower as I was driving by.  There was a bunch of activity on the surface...large fish putting the smackdown on the shad!  THAT'S what I wanted to see!  I pulled a quick U-Turn to head towards a parking area, and called Jay on his cell phone to notify him of a change in our plans.  He was probably 5 minutes behind me and would meet me at the Tower.

I was excited to see that fish activity, and I couldn't get there fast enough!  I parked my car and quickly walked down the long trail to the spot.  The fish were still working the shad on the surface.  I could see the backs of some of the fish come up out of the water in the "boil" area.  Scattered around the general area, some fish were leaping out of the water.  Other than the shad, the only fish I could positively identify were Channel Catfish.  For probably 3 of the 4 hours we fished, the catfish were doing this jumping, many of them completely clearing the water!  And they were NICE-SIZED FISH!  For maybe 2.5 of the hours, at least some of the catfish were working the shad on the surface of the "boil" area.  The pumps stopped pumping around then.  A bit later, it was carp that were working those fish, and then finally the surface activity away from shore ceased.  But there were still thousands of shad streaming along the shoreline rocks right at our feet, and fish were charging them.  These turned out to be Carp too.  With the combination of shad and current that were present while the pumps were running, it was VERY strange that we neither saw nor caught any White Bass here.

I started with my fly rod, casting a #4 Black-nosed Dace streamer I had tied up.  I was hooked up into my first catfish of the day when I saw Jay walking down the trail.  What a fight!

 Jay may have caught a nice catfish next.  When I say "nice"...they were ALL really nice catfish!  We measured lengths on some, but didn't weigh any.  The smallest ones were probably 22"+.  My biggest 4 went 25", 26", 26", and 27".  Jay's biggest 3 went 30.5", 31" and 31.5"!!!  According to one source ( http://www.fish.state.pa.us/pafish/catfish_channel/00catfish_overview.htm ), my biggest fish may have weighed around 9 pounds, and Jays biggest could have been over 15 pounds!  And we caught more than what is pictured here.  I landed 9 catfish (and got broke off by 3 or 4 others), and I think Jay said he landed 8 Channel Cats.  We released everything as usual.
Anyway, my next fish was this 26-incher on the fly rod.

 Jay then caught this monster, the biggest of the day, the 31.5-incher. 

 There's plenty of room left in its mouth, even with Jays hand in there!  He caught this jumbo on a 4" Big Hammer swimbait.

 Jay's next nice fish was this 30.5-incher (below):

 They weren't hitting fast enough on the fly rod anymore, so this is when I switched to my spinning rod.
I caught catfish on #3 Mepps, TNT Slab Spoons, and various white plastic shad bodies on jigheads with stout hooks.  This one was either a 25" or 26" fish.

 Jay spotted some action off to his left, and caught several nice Largemouth Bass on his swimbaits.  I threw over there too, and had a bass attack my Pop-R surface bait, but it didn't get hooked up.  I did eventually catch 3 bass, but 2 of them were tiny.
Jay then caught this 31-inch Channel Catfish:

 The action was slowing considerably, and soon ground to a complete halt.  This 27-incher was my last catfish of the morning:

This is when the catfish turned off, and the carp activity picked up.  I grabbed my fly rod, and put on a #10 Gartside Sparrow.  I didn't have my carp fly box (left it in the car), so I had to make do with what I had with me.  I had caught carp on nymph patterns here in the past, but I was skeptical they would show any interest since they seemed to be totally focused on crashing the multitudes of shad that they were trying to trap against the rocks.  Seems they will stick to their omnivorous ways!  They will eat whatever presents itself.

 The fish above demolished the fly, so I switched to a Hex Nymph pattern.  Again, I dropped it down in areas where the carp were making repeated attacks on the shad, and soon had another carp take the fly:

I had also caught a very colorful naturally occurring Hybrid Sunfish on a nymph pattern, but it flopped out of my hand and back into the water before I could grab my camera. 

More Praying Mantises

I spotted a couple of Praying Mantises in one of the bushes outside our office building as I was leaving work on 8-4-2011.
Coolest bugs ever!

Grass Carp? Catfish!

My friend Ben and I ventured out this evening to try chumming bread at a local pond for Grass Carp...then we would toss flies to them.  The first pond we tried is reported to have gotten a "mother lode" of grass carp stocked into it last year.  To the tune of 60 grass carp in a pond that covers 4.26 acres.  After about 1.5 hours, we didn't raise a single grass carp on the bread.  I caught a few bluegills while I was waiting for grass carp to show, and Ben caught a decent bass that put up an excellent fight.

Next, we decided to try this same tactic at another nearby pond where I have seen (and caught on fly gear) grass carp.  At first it was sunfish hitting the bread, but then some bigger fish showed up.  We were excited!

I tied on a "bread fly" that was mainly white marabou with a little tan marabou, tied similar to a Gartside Softhackle Streamer.  I got the first hook-up into a good fish.  It started dragging my line through the algae mats, so I had to wade out into the water to free my line up from this heavy "gunk".

Fortunately, by the time I cleared my line, the fish was still on!

Check out the bend in the rod below!

It was a good fish....but not "grass carp"-sized.

Turned out to be a channel catfish with a huge belly....and it was hooked in the side!

 Anyway, we kept baiting the area, and had some more larger fish hitting the bread.  As the sky darkened, I got another take.  FISH ON!  I had to wade back out into the muck again to land this fish.  It was another fat-bellied channel catfish, and this one was hooked in the mouth. 

Ben switched to a floating bread fly pattern he had tied, and started catching bluegills on it, despite the large hook.

It was fun fishing, and exciting to see the big fish boiling on the floating bread.  Were ANY of those boils made by our target species, Grass Carp?  Until we catch one, we just don't know.

Smallmouth Bass, 7-27-2011

After our carp adventure this morning, Ben had plans to meet a friend and fly-fish for gar.  I was very tempted to join them, since I had tied up some modified patterns I wanted to try out for the gar.  Gar are a very interesting fish, and a fun challenge to sight-fish for them.
But with the heat we've been having, I thought wading a river for smallmouth bass might be a bit cooler and more relaxing.  Its something else I've been wanting to do.  So, I went wading and fly-fishing for smallmouth bass.
I had selected a stretch of river I had never fished before, on a river I hadn't really fished since about 1990!  I got there, and the road was closed and construction work was being done on the bridge where I was going to start wading from.  So, I crossed that spot off my plans.  I could go downstream to the stretch I fished back in my college days...or I could head further upstream.  I went upstream.
The area upstream I had actually heard of before, but never knew where it was.  It was Soper's Mill on the Skunk River north of Ames, Iowa.  Its a popular canoe launch location.
I was surprised how small, narrow, and low the river was.  Oh well, I'm here and I'm ready to give it a try.

Just below the round-boulder "dam", I tried a number of fly patterns. I had a couple hits on a Foxee Red Clouser, but didn't hook up. I tried some nymphs with no hits. I tried a Clouser Deep Minnow and a largish "microjig". Nothing. I can't remember what else I tried, but I went back to a Clouser. I got a hit and hooked up! It was a 13-incher.

See the Clouser Deep Minnow?

I also caught a second Smallmouth on the Clouser, but it wasn't very big.

I waded downstream a bit and decided to try a balsa popper I had bought somewhere.  I cast it out and before I could even twitch it, a fish hit!

 With THAT kind of action, I decided to keep fishing with the popper.  I had cast to a tree branch that was hanging into the water, twitched the popper a couple times, and a nice fish pounced on it!  I thought it was a big smallie, but it cut the line immediately...I barely felt any pressure from the fish.  Its the kind of think a pike or musky will do.  So what was it?  I still think it was a bass.  Anyway, my popper floated up right away, so I waded downstream and intercepted it.  I tied it back on and headed on downstream.

There wasn't a lot of places worth casting to...I could see the sandy or muddy bottom in many places, and there was no structure that would hold a bass.  I was letting the popper drag in the water behind me as I waded through some of these featureless areas...and caught this bluegill!

My biggest fish of the trip was this 16" Smallmouth Bass:

 The sun was getting low, I was hot and had a long trudge back upstream to my car, so this was the last fish of the trip, another nice 13-inch fish.

Fly Rod Carp, 7-27-2011

Hopefully you've read the previous blog entry.  After yesterday morning's success, we tried it again this morning.  Carp are smart, and perhaps they've learned our strategy already.  We had very few carp show up today, and when they did, they would take one or two pieces of our bread "chum" and then disappear again.  It was frustrating.
I started fishing for bluegills.  There were some good-looking fish in the 7.5" - 9" range.

 The one above is a male bluegill, the one below is a female bluegill.  You can tell by the size difference of the black "opercle" on their gill plate.

 The fish below is a naturally-occuring Hybrid Sunfish.  Very colorful and feisty.  I suspect it is a Green Sunfish x Bluegill cross.  I've seen others around the docks, but this is the first one I recall catching from Saylorville Lake.

 With the last of our bread supply, we chummed one more time.  A couple carp showed up!  Ben spotted one cruising along one dock and landed a perfect cast just in front of the fish.  It grabbed it, and the battle was ON!  At first it charged around not far below the surface, but then it dove straight down and peeled line off Ben's reel.  He worked it back up, and after a lengthy battle, we landed it.  This one weighed 9lbs 11 oz.

I had a good carp on, but it swam under my kayak and headed back under the docks.  I had the rod tip down in the water, but it was an awkward position.  The fish eventually broke my line.
Another good day on the water.

Fly-Rod Carping, 7-26-2011

Catching carp on fly-fishing gear is FUN!!!
For at least the past year, my friend Ben (his blog site is located at http://bent-rod.blogspot.com/ ) and I have been talking about trying to coax the carp at the marina of a local reservoir into hitting bread flies.  There is a restaurant at this marina, and kids and adults occasionally toss bread into the water to see the big carp come up to feed on it.  Its pretty exciting seeing those big fish in a wild feeding frenzy.  Without bread in the water, the fish disappear.
So...our plan was to "chum" with some actual bread.  We hoped this would get the carp to show up and start feeding.  We'd toss our bread flies and....catch fish!  Sounds easy, and it sort of is.  Cheating, maybe.
We've had a few weeks of blazing hot temperatures.  The fish seem to be deeper, or hiding under the docks or something.  We got some fish to show up today, but not as many as I'd hoped.  Still, we caught fish, and had an absolute BALL fighting these powerful fish on fly gear.  And several times, the carp beat us.

I've caught carp on flies before, but this was to be Ben's first time.  Ben is an experienced fly-fisher, for sure.  His casting is spot on.
Ben fished from his float tube, and I fished from my kayak.
We selected our location near the marina restaurant docks, and tossed some chunks of hot dog buns.  After about 10 minutes, a couple of carp showed up.  Ben hooked up first.  We had been concerned that the fish would get tangled in the cables under the docks that secure them in place.  Fortunately, his fish soon headed for open water.

With an audience of a mom with her two kids, the battle was on.  And right after I stopped taking the video above, my line took off and I was hooked up as well.  My fish darted under the docks, then turned and headed straight for Ben's fish.  It was taking me on a "sleigh ride" in my kayak!  It circled Ben's float tube.  Ben threw my line over his head to avoid getting wrapped up, and somehow our fish didn't tangle the lines together.  We were able to land Ben's fish first.

His first fish measured 24"+ and over 7lbs.  After pictures and measurements, he helped me land my fish.  Mine was 25"+ and @ 8.5 lbs.  These were both CHUNKY fish!

As I recall, Ben landed another carp in the 8.5 lb range, then caught this 27", 12 lb jumbo in the picture below.  It was the biggest fish of the day!

 I had a BIG carp that I'd just hooked drag me towards the dock, then turned and dragged me sideways, slamming into the dock to my right side!  GEESH, STRONG FISH!  I couldn't turn it, and eventually I could feel that it had wrapped around a cable.  I could still feel the fish on.  Ben pulled my kayak away from the dock, while I worked at trying to free the fish from the cable.  My line eventually broke.  That was a nice fish!  I did catch another.  My biggest carp of the day was this 9 lb 11oz fish.

 If you can change your thinking, they ARE kind of pretty!

Ben had at least two other fish on that broke his line.  I think we did land the one he's fighting in the picture below, however.

We weighed most of the carp we caught.  They ranged from 7lbs to 12 lbs, with the average being around 8.5 lbs.  Lengths were tough to get accurately since neither of us had a long enough flat area on which to lay them.  As best we could manage, the fish were at least 24" to 27" (and possibly up to an inch or two longer).
Oh...and I also caught an 8" bluegill.

The carp battles were epic, the shortest probably being 10 minutes.  We had a blast!

Praying Mantis

Saw this little gal in the backyard last weekend.  Why do I say "gal"?  The female praying mantis has a broader abdomen than the male.