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!

Fly-Fishing Lunch Report - 3/13/2012

I visited a pond reasonably near work (ok, I had to drive by at least 3 others to get to this one...) to fly-fish during lunch today.  Wind was about 12mph out of the SSE, and it was sunny with a balmy March temperature of 65 degrees F.

Water was very clear, but fish weren't visible near shore.  I used a black microjig about 4'-6' below an indicator.  Nothing was happening for the first several casts, so I readied myself for disappointment.  Soon, my indicator ducked under the water, but I missed the fish.  DRAT!

Things slowly picked up after that, as I worked my way downwind along the shoreline.  I ended up catching 9 Bluegills, 1 Green Sunfish, 4 Crappies (biggest measured 11"), and I grabbed a HUGE crayfish that was marching beneath the water near shore.

Ended up being a pretty good lunch-time fly-fishing expedition!  Plus, it was so nice out that this was the first fishing outing of the year where I got to comfortably wear a short-sleeve shirt, and there was "No Jacket Required"!

Ok...now the fish porn:

Iowa Trout...Hat Trick Saturday, 3-10-2012

On a whim I decided to get out of bed earlier than I normally prefer on a Saturday...and go fly-fish for trout at a nearby lake.

Wind forecasts yesterday called for winds up to 15mph for today.  I can do that.  When I got up this morning, I checked the weather forecast again.  They had boosted up the wind speeds again.  But that was nothing compared to what REALLY was going on!  By the time I got back home again after fishing, I checked to verify my suspicions...sure enough, winds from 24-32 mph!!!  Cripes!  It was brutal indeed!

There were two gents fishing when I arrived at 7am.  One was fly-fishing.  After I had been fishing for a bit about 100 yards away, I saw the fly angler catch a trout.  He waved and started walking over.  It was my friend Dale Gooding, fellow member of Central Iowa Anglers!

Dale had caught 2 trout so far, including the one I witnessed.  He told me the shoreline I was working hadn't been producing, and invited me to join him.  He showed me the pattern he was catching fish with, which was similar to what I was using.  I'd been wanting to give him some flies I'd caught trout with at this lake in the past, so I brought out my fly box and picked out a trio for him to add to his fly box.  I decided to work a bit more of the shoreline near me, which I did unsuccessfully, and then walked down to fish near his spot.  I slowly worked down the shoreline away from him, making a half-dozen casts, then moving on.  I missed a strike.  Then had a big heavy take that quickly broke my line as I strip-set the hook.  Darn!

I caught a couple fish on the olive & black beadhead woolly bugger I'd been using.

Dale caught another fish or two.  He gave me a fly he'd tied that was working for him.  Looked good, so I accepted it and put it on my line.  Soon I was catching a few more trout.  I ended up catching 7 trout on that fly, before it started falling apart.  Not bad!  That kind of abuse on a fly gives it that ragged "Badge of Honor"!  Definitely a good fish-catching fly pattern!

Dale had caught & released 6 trout total, and decided to call it a day.  Casting into that wind was a lot of work!

I was one trout shy of a double-limit (5 trout is considered a limit, but of course I was not keeping any), so I decided to stay a while longer.

I switched to an orange-n-black beadhead bugger. I found a good spot or two, and caught some nice trout.

This was the biggest trout of the day for me...very chunky!

I caught 5 before the new fly I had tied on (one that I had tied) started falling apart.  I really need to reinforce the hackle with counterwraps of wire!  I switched back to an olive-n-black beadhead woolly bugger, and caught 2 more trout before I decided to call it a day at 11am.  I was BEAT!  It had been tough fishing conditions, and the trout were willing to hit, but hard to locate.  Plus our casting distance was extremely limited due to the strong winds.  I ended up catching & releasing 16 rainbow trout (that's a limit hat-trick plus one!), plus had long-distance releases on about 4 others, plus one broken line, and a bunch of missed strikes.  All in all...a pretty fair day of fishing.  I was happy with the results.

Thanks for the tips and the fly, Dale!

Evening Report, 3-6-2012

Yesterday during lunch, I barely had enough open water to fish since the local lakes and ponds had all iced over during the night.  Still got it done.
Today was very warm (upper 60's) and windy.  The ice disappeared during the day.  It was still sort of windy by the time I got home from work, but do-able.  It was too nice and warm to NOT visit a local public pond!

I started fly-fishing at around 5:45pm, and fished for one hour.  I used a chartreuse microjig under an indicator. I had a couple strikes at the indicator, and all the fish caught were either near shore or right at the edge of the first drop-off.  Based on these clues, I should have switched to an unweighted pattern without an indicator, but I can be a lazy fella sometimes.  I did ok with the technique I was using...I ended up catching 6 crappies and 2 decent bluegills.

Lunchtime Limit, 3-5-2012

This past Saturday was COLD and WINDY (30mph winds).

Sunday wasn't as windy, but still cold (27 degrees F).  I squeezed in about 45 minutes of fly-fishing at a nearby lake that had been stocked with trout.  Ice was starting to form along the edges of the shoreline, and it was snowing.  I managed to catch just one trout, but that was better than not catching anything.

On Monday...WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DAY MAKES!  It was sunny!  Air temp had reached 37 or 38 degrees F by noon, and wind was from the SSE at around 12mph.  During my lunch hour, I drove back to this same lake to try fly-fishing for trout again.  When I arrived, 95% of the lake was covered with ice.  In fact the only open water was a 30' wide strip along the west shoreline.  There were a half-dozen anglers with spinning gear fishing the open stretch.

I used the same olive-and-black beadhead woolly bugger that had been catching trout for me last week and over the weekend.  I started fishing near the south end of the open water since it was furthest from the other anglers. I didn't have a lot of hope of catching much.  And it started pretty slow, but I finished strong and managed to catch (and release) my 5-fish trout limit in about 30 minutes of fishing.  During that time, I saw one of the guys with spinning gear land a fish that appeared to be a trout.  I did also see a few other trout that I didn't catch.  A couple of them were pretty dark, but I wasn't able to verify whether they were Brook Trout or Rainbows.  I saved time by only taking pictures of one of the trout today.

Lunchtime Limit, 3-1-2012

I’m so EXCITED!!!!  I just fly-fished Lake Petocka from shore during my lunch hour today.  It was so fun!

I caught (and released) my limit (5) of trout, which I felt was impressive for a number of reasons:
- I had no idea what to expect...ice only recently melted off the lake, and we had 50 mph winds just yesterday!

-I couldn’t see any fish, so I was really just blind casting.

-I didn’t fish the area I had planned to, but instead just fished a  fairly random location that wasn’t ideal (for casting) based on the wind direction.

-When driving time was figured in (and yes, I probably stayed longer than I technically should have), I had only about 35 minutes to fish.

-Most of my time was spent re-tying a line (because the first or second trout demolished my No-Knot Fas-Snap) and taking pictures of each fish.

-My line was getting tangled in rocks at my feet and in sticks, trees and brush behind me.  I was a mess!

-Trout were last stocked in this lake at least 35 days ago ( on January 25th, 2012).  They generally get tougher to find/catch the longer they've been in the lake.

-Judging by the fin clips...some of these fish were from at least 2 stockings ago (October 14, 2011)!

So...as it worked out, Probably every 3rd or 4th cast resulted in a trout on the line.  I even missed one good hit!  If only I'd had more time...  I was retrieving in quick, short jerks (no indicator), and the fish hit and fought very well.

All the fish were caught on a #10 olive-n-black beadhead woolly bugger.

And the fish:

Trout No. 1

Trout No. 2

Trout No. 3

Trout No. 4

Trout No. 5

First Open-Water Fish of the Year-February 25, 2012

My friend Ben wanted to fly-fish some open water on Saturday morning.  Lots of choices as far as the local public ponds were concerned, since most of them had become 100% ice-free in the past week.  Of course, late in the previous week we got hit by a snowstorm and a brief return to colder temperatures.  How would this affect the fish?

We met at one of the ponds, fly-fished for about an hour.  We each caught one tiny crappie.  First open water fish of the year!  :hello2:

Then we headed to another pond.  We fished for a couple hours before Ben had to leave.  It was slow...we'd each caught at least 2 crappies, and missed several other fish.

Since I was there, I decided to stay after Ben left to try a couple other spots.  I ended up trying just one spot, and stood there for another hour, and caught a total of (at least) 16 crappies.  THAT was fun!

Yes, it was cold...had to fly-fish with gloves on, and also had to clean the ice out of the line guides every 2nd or 3rd cast.

It was very fun, great to finally catch some fish on fly-gear from open water again, and the fish fought well.  What caught fish for us was chartruese microjigs under an indicator.

Twist on a Crayfish Fly Pattern

I was watching a Barry Reynolds video on YouTube about fly-fishing for carp.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5eAF-ZztGM
One of the patterns he likes is Dave Whitlock's NearNuff Crayfish.
http://www.madriveroutfitters.com/p-4994-whits-near-nuff-crayfish-size-8.aspx
That's a great-looking pattern.  In searching for the tying instructions for that, I stumbled across Davy McPhail's carp-crayfish pattern video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPZd7d_YmIo

I liked Davy McPhail's pattern in that it didn't bother with claws.  Studies have shown fish will attack a crayfish without claws before striking one with claws.  I made this pattern even easier by omitting the eyes.

I think this is a good-looking pattern as well, is VERY easy to tie, and stands up nicely.  I tied these on size 8 and 6 hooks.  I can't wait to try it on some fish once the ice melts off the local waters!

Another crayfish pattern, the Foxee Red Clouser, also looks really good.  I've tied some, but haven't put them in front of fish yet.

Ice Fishing, 2-19-2012

Crazy cell phones.Why is it that I rarely hear/feel my cell phone buzzing away in my pocket...yet far more frequent are the times I  can feel it buzzing, when it really ISN'T?  Phantom buzzing?
I'd been thinking I should call my buddy Jay and see if he wants to ice fish today.  Well, here it was mid-afternoon, and I hadn't made the call.  I checked my phone.  Jay had left a couple messages before noon, and I hadn't noticed even though my phone had been in my pocket the entire time.

I returned his call, and we made plans to ice fish the next morning, as I had other plans in the afternoon.
We were on the ice and started fishing around 8:30am.We had 8" of pretty good ice under us, as well as some sunken cedar trees with fish around them.  Fishing waxed and waned, but there was always some "chasers" or "lookers" to keep it interesting.

A friend of ours joined us out there around 10:30am.  We all caught plenty of fish.  Very conservatively, I'd say I caught at least 45 crappies and 5 largemouth bass before I left at 12:30pm.  Jay caught even more than I did.  The crappies were very fat and healthy.  I measured a half-dozen of my larger ones (all were released), and they were 11.5-inchers.  Jay's biggest was a fat 12.5-incher.  Most of the bass were small, with the biggest one being  a chunky fish of maybe 12"-13".

I caught some fish on a small Salmo Chubby Darter, but by far the most fish were caught on a Swedish Pimple spoon, which I usually tipped with a Gulp! 1" Fish Fry.

Very fun morning!

Me, happy to have my first crappie of the morning!

Crappie that hit a Salmo Chubby Darter.

Chunky crappies!

Love the subtle colors of a crappie!

Jay, with the biggest crappie of the morning, a 12.5-incher.

Fly-Fishing Lessons Learned in 2011

I try to do this after each year, in hopes that I will remember SOME of what I thought I learned from each year's fishing adventures.

Here's some of the things I learned:

-Stream Trout.  I had never fly-fished for stream trout before.  I discovered that I really enjoy it.  Too bad the nearest trout streams are a 3-4 hour drive away, and there is so many other good places to catch fish that are much much closer.  Anyway, I learned at least one way to catch these fish.  I used a large nymph pattern and an indicator.  I fished pools, deeper slicks, and bank hides.  I look forward to doing this again in the future, and start exploring more streams.

-Carp Riddle Solved.  One behavior of local river carp that had perplexed a handful of local fly-anglers is when carp will line up along the shoreline or current break just beneath the surface.  They often appear to be snacking on nothing, or maybe the foam that is floating on the surface.  A variety of techniques were unsuccessfully tried on these fish.  I decided to try fishing a nymph extremely shallow beneath an indicator to these fish.  The belief was that the indicator would scare the fish away.  Carp are pretty smart and wily, after all.  Turns out it worked just fine.  I'd fish the nymph just 8" to 18" beneath the indicator.  I tried a variety of wet fly patterns, and all worked.  I used a Thingamabobber, which is translucent like the foam on the water.  After losing several fish to lines that broke at the Thingamabobber, I've decided to try a different style of indicator.  I'm certain it will still work.

-Channel Catfish/Bread  Connection.  While attempting to improve my success with flyfishing for Grass Carp, I discovered that chumming with bread in the local ponds during the summer can be effective in bringing the catfish to you.  Once they are nearby and feeding, you can often (but not always) be successful in enticing the catfish to hit artificial "bread flies" or white streamers.

-Channel Catfish and Streamers.  I discovered that the "Jumpin' Catfish Nymph" works for catfish.  I also learned that white streamers are very effective for Channel Catfish.  I used white hair streamers in two situations...the "bread" situation in ponds that I discussed above...and when the catfish are chasing shad in a large local reservoir.  I can't say it was the MOST effective method of catching these fish, but it DID catch some, and it was F-U-N!!!

-Walleye on Flies.  Catching a walleye on flies was a goal of mine this year.  I figured my best chance was during our fishing trip to Canada in the late Spring.  Before I could get there, I "lucked" into one in Iowa while fishing a lake for sunfish from my kayak.  I did end up catching something like 5 or 6 on flies while in Canada, both nymphs and streamers.  And then I caught another one in a local river here in Iowa in the late Fall.  How cool!

-Smallmouth on Poppers.  I FINALLY tried fly-fishing a central Iowa stream for smallmouth bass.  I'd caught smallies on fly gear before on a stream in Illinois, but hadn't really tried it since moving back to Iowa.  So I went, during the middle of the afternoon of the hottest week of the summer, and the river level was about as low as it gets.  I tried Clousers, nymphs and streamers.  I worked at it pretty hard and landed a couple of fish, but it was TOUGH.  I decided to try a popper.  First cast had barely hit the water before I had a fish hooked.  It worked really well, and I caught several more fish on it. And of course watching fish crush topwaters is always exciting!

-Stocker Trout.  Weeks after the trout had been stocked in a local lake, typically the trout get hard to catch.  I took a day off work and tried to see what I could get to bite.  I had solicited suggestions on my favorite fly-fishing website.  One suggestion was to try the "Blue Thunder" streamer.  I tried a few other patterns first with less than satisfactory results, then tried this streamer.  It worked GREAT!  I've used it a few times since, and it can be hit-or-miss...but it is certainly worth trying, and plus its a fairly easy and good-looking streamer to tie.

I also caught my first stocker Brook Trout, and learned that I REALLY like these fish!  Its not that they are much different than catching a rainbow trout...but they are a Char, rather than a trout, historically native to Iowa, and such a colorful fish.