Saylorville Before the Storm, 6-20-2012

A big storm had been forecast and was well on its way.   Jay and I decided to squeeze whatever fishing time we could out of the evening.  We went to Saylorville Lake, fished from shore.

As I've mentioned before, I bring flyfishing gear AND spinning gear when I fish this lake.  Sometimes the spinning gear is just the better tool for the white bass.

I spent much of the time flyfishing for some carp.  I knew where they were.  But the water was extremely muddy...visibility maybe 6".  I tried a number of flies and a couple techniques I thought might do the trick...but no takers.  Frustrating!  So then I put on some streamers to try for some other species, like catfish or white bass or wipers.  I had one nice fish on, got it near shore, and BROKE my tippet.  DANG IT!  It was not going well for me.

Meanwhile, Jay had caught a couple white bass, a nice catfish, a good-size freshwater drum, and some nice largemouth bass...all on spinning gear/lures.

I tried a couple other streamers, and managed to spend a good deal of my time trying to rip my flies out of the tall weeds that were behind me.  More frustration.

I tied on a Murdich Minnow, and finally got a nice 14" White Bass to hammer it.

I made some more casts, but didn't get any more fish on the fly gear.  I switched to the spinning gear and caught about a dozen more really nice white bass, mostly in the 13"-15" range, using a Mepps spinner.
This is one of the 15-inchers:

Excellent fighters!

I had my back to the approaching storm, while Jay was fishing looking towards the storm.  The second time he said, "There's lightning!", we took off for the car...FAST!  We had just finished putting our gear in the car and were closing the tailgate when the first drops started to fall.  By the time we left the parking lot, it was coming down pretty good!  Talk about perfect timing!!

Evening at Saylorville, 6-18-2012

I took the day off work, and as luck would have it, the wind was blowing 25-30mph all day.  It seemed to taper of to something more reasonable...like 15mph or so...by 7pm-ish, so my buddy Jay called and we headed out to Saylorville Lake.

As usual on trips to this lake, I took both spinning gear and a fly rod.  With the fly rod, I was hoping to target  carp.  Even though the water was riled up from pounding waves all day, plus the big waves from the non-stop pleasure-boat traffic, I saw evidence of plenty of carp.  Couldn't really see them unless their backs were out of the water next to shore, or I'd see their swirls as they'd get spooked.  They like the rockier areas, and while they are easy to spot when they are in such shallow water that their backs are sticking up out of the water, the rocks make it pretty impossible to present a fly to them without getting hung up.  Maybe an unweighted fly with a weedguard?  Hmmmm, might have to work something up like that.

But, I haven't got anything like that ready yet, so I was tossing a Whitlock Neer'Nuff Crayfish (my version, no claws) about 6"-12" under an indicator, depending on the water depth I was fishing.

Long story short, I didn't catch any carp.  Set the hook on what I thought were strikes and managed to spook some fish.  Were they "on" it?  Dunno.

I did manage to catch two fish on this set-up, though.
First was a 10" Crappie.

Later on, I finally hooked into a nice fish near some carp...and I thought it WAS a carp...until I landed it.  Turned out to be a 21" Channel Catfish.

Jay caught a couple 10"-12" range White Bass on spinning gear.  I didn't spend a lot of time casting a topwater with the spinning gear, but I did manage two Largemouth Bass on it.  Below is the larger of the two bass.  Jay guessed it at 14.5", while I was guessing it at 15".  I had a tape measure with me, but didn't feel like digging it out for the bass.

Turned out to be a really nice evening.  Saw a deer near the trees as we were pulling out of the parking lot at the lake, then saw a fox standing on a sidewalk as we got into our town.

Lake Keomah - Father's Day 2012

I fished Lake Keomah a couple years ago for the first time.  My friend (State Fisheries Biologist) Ben and I had gone there to target Redear Sunfish.  We had hoped to hit the beginning of the spawning season and find loads of nice fish in the shallows on nests.  Turns out we were probably a week or two early.  We saw a few fish on nests, but they were bluegills.  Ben did catch a Redear that day, but I couldn't manage one.  Instead I settled for bluegills up to 9.75" and some small (12" or less) largemouth bass.

Fast forward 2+ years.  I've since caught a couple Redear Sunfish on flyfishing gear.  They may have been females or bluegill/redear hybrids.  In any case, they didn't have the awesome bright red edge to their gill opercle that the spawning males have.  So, my goal in heading back to Lake Keomah was to pursue those Redear Sunfish once again.  Reports from lakes reasonably close to Keomah was that the Redears were in the shallows...but those reports were 1-2 weeks old...so their was some doubt that they would still  be in the shallows on this day.

This day....Father's Day 2012.  A time when families get together and kids gush and smother their patriarch with well-deserved affection.  I'm sure that would have happened at my house...but my (almost) 15 year-old daughter is performing/touring Italy with the Iowa Youth Chorus.  And my wife decided that would be a good time to take my son on a week-long vacation to Seattle...and she invited her parents along on that trip. Actually I think my wife had some work-related conference or something to attend while there.  I could have gone along, but in their absence it was an excellent opportunity for me to actually have a full day on a weekend to fish a lake I normally don't have the time to visit.  And take the kayak!

So this is what I did.  I took my time getting there.  I fished from 10:30am-5pm.  Weather was mostly sunny, high of 86 F, wind from the south at 7-10 mph.  Water clarity was about 1.5' - 2'.

Here's some shots of the lake from one location.  From here you can't see up either of the two arms of the lake.  You can't see it from these pictures, but one side of the east arm has houses with yards that back up to the water.  How that happened at a State Park, I'll never know.  The lack of shoreline cover there allowed me to quickly dismiss that area as a good fishing area.

In that last picture, you can see the concrete walls of the outlet structure on the end of the dam, and about in the middle of the picture you can sort of see a boat ramp and floating dock.  Although I spent most of my time at this end of the lake, I had launched my kayak at a boat ramp on the far end of the lake, up in the end of the east arm.

There was shoreline fishing access along almost another entire shoreline, and since there were a lot of people out enjoying the Holiday with their families, I also avoided those areas.  And then my choices were further pared back when I discovered a nice shoreline north of the beach had a lot of suspended sand in the water and the weedbeds had been pretty well smothered by these drifting particles.

Redear Sunfish are also called Shellcrackers.  This is because they have a definite fondness for eating snails.  So... fish where there will be snails, and the Redears should be there.  Right?  Now, where would you find snails?  Snails like scouring algae off aquatic weeds and submerged rocks and logs.  I tried a couple weedy areas at first, but only managed a couple of Largemouth Bass.  I had also heard that maybe Redears might prefer shady areas over sunny areas.

So, I found an area with overhanging trees and caught a few bluegills, then some crappies.  I decided to anchor up and work the area more thoroughly.  I was using a dark-colored microjig under an indicator to help keep it up out of the weeds.  I finally had a good strike followed by a blistering strong run that went in several directions before I could start to gain a little line.  Then I saw the fish flash near the surface and saw the bright red spot that gives the Redear its name.  I was so excited I started talking out loud to myself.  Doesn't matter what I was saying.  I even grabbed the landing net because I was afraid of losing the fish before I could get some pictures!  All went well and the fish was landed.  At 9.5", this was a nice Redear, but they can definitely get into the 11"-13" range in Iowa, which as it happens is pretty much at the north edge of their range.  They have been introduced into the southern 1/3 of Iowa.
Check it out!

Maybe 10-15 minutes later, I caught another Redear of about the same size.  Again, a VERY strong fight on the 5wt fly rod.  I'm guessing the fish above is a male, and that the 2nd fish was a female.  It also had the bright red edge on its gill, but the red edge was a lot shorter...about 1/2 the length the fish above had.  So I didn't photograph it.  Now I wish I would have!

Anyway, I didn't get any more redears from that spot, but did catch one later in the day from a different spot.  In fact this last one had all the other markings of a redear, but the red marking on the gill was a light orange and not very prominent at all.  This 8.5-incher may also have been a female, or it may have been a bluegill/redear hybrid:

I ended up landed a total of 10 crappies that ranged from about 9" to slightly over 10".  Some of them put up a surprisingly good fight!  They weren't scared of the kayak at all.  I drifted over the top of one that was positioned over a large lone boulder.  It didn't spook, and then I cast to that boulder and caught 2-3 crappies from it.

I caught 17 Bluegills which came in all sizes, with the biggest ones measuring 8.5".
This is an 8.5" male bluegill:

And this is an 8.5" female bluegill:

Although I wasn't fishing for them, I caught 10 Largemouth Bass that ranged in sizes up to 15".  The battle of the 14" and 15" bass on the fly rod was unreal!  This one was 14" and had a really fat belly, which isn't as obvious in the pictures:

And one of the last fish of the day was this 13-inch bass:

One observation I made is that an 8.5" to 9.5" Redear Sunfish fights harder than a similarly sized Bluegill...and the fight is equal to that of a 13" Largemouth Bass...but not as hard as a 14-15" bass.  FYI.

It was a good trip to this lake.  I caught what I had hoped I would (Redear Sunfish), and caught plenty of bass and bluegills and even the surprise crappies to keep things interesting.

The Hobie Outback kayak worked perfectly.  I heard a number of people commenting on it throughout the day.  Lake Keomah is an "electric motor only" lake, and from what I could see, my kayak travelled a lot faster than the electric motor-powered boats, and faster that the other kayaks and canoes that were there.  You know they gotta hate that!  :)

Oh...one last observation.  As I was anchored up in one spot casting into the shaded area beneath overhanging trees, I started hearing some strange chirping/chattering noises.  I couldn't tell at first exactly where it was coming from.  Could have been some weird bird that I was unfamiliar with?  I started looking up into the trees, and then finally spotted the sound-generators back in beneath the branches along the shoreline.  There were at least 3 raccoons, two of which you can see here:

Saturday 6-16-2012

I visited a nearby public pond to ONCE AGAIN badger the grass carp.  The running record is overwhelmingly in the grass carps' favor.  I flyfished, made some casts into the vicinity of several grassies.(Ok, I can pretty much only see them when they are pretty much sitting with their backs out of the water, or when they leave a big swirl as they swim away...so casting into a very general "vicinity" is about the best I can hope for.  Ask me how well this has paid off so far.  No...don't.)
This resulted in 6 bluegills landed, and one hookup with a grass carp.  After a short battle, I reeled in a large scale on the fly hook.  It wouldn't have counted.

Also...don't you just hate it when you start to feel crowded at your fishing spot?  There I was, minding my own business, enjoying some measure of solitude even though there were others fishing on the other side of the pond.
And then...The GANG arrived.  Down the shoreline they came, coming straight for me.  Their nefarious intentions were clear from the beginning...I was about to get MUGGED.  It was obvious they just wanted dough.  The problem is that if you give in and toss them the dough, they don't leave...they just want MORE.  Never satisfied.  Where's the police when you need them?  I didn't give them what they wanted, and eventually they moved on.  I managed to get a snapshot, in case the cops need help to I.D. the perps:

And for my fellow fly-tyers out there...some of these feathers sure look useful!

And then it started to rain, very gentle at first, and I thought I could keep fishing and outlast the rain.  But then it started raining more heavily.  That's when the lightning started striking close by.  So, I got chased off by the storm, and it got the best of me, since I was pretty well soaked by this time.
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A few hours later, the sun was out once again.  I headed back to the same pond.  No grassies were visible anymore, so I started fishing for crappies and bluegills.  I ended up catching about (conservatively) 25 of each on a silver Springbrook Wunder microjig.

While there, a couple younger fellas came down with spinning gear to fish for bass.  They both caught at least one each.  One was big enough to cause major excitement on their part.  Unfortunately, it was bleeding heavily from a gill when they landed it.  They tried releasing it but it was floating belly-up.  One worked for a good 5 minutes or so at reviving it, and the bass did eventually swim away.  I fished for a couple hours after that, including the area where they released the bass.  It never floated back to the surface, so hopefully their efforts will allow that bass to heal and continue living.  If not...well, I hate seeing large bass harvested from these public ponds since they are about the only thing that keeps the bluegill populations somewhat regulated.  But then...turtles gotta eat too.

Towards the end of my outing, several kids (a couple of them recognized me from fishing at this pond before) and a mom came over and wanted me to catch some fish for them to see.  That would be a lot of pressure to put on someone, since the other folks fishing at the pond were struggling to catch anything at all.  But I was catching pretty steadily, so I showed them a couple crappies and a couple bluegills.  They thought I was pretty cool, and they enjoyed releasing the fish back to the water.

Tuesday Evening Fly-Fishing, 6-12-2012

First...some recent updates:

I got out Monday night to the Prairie Ridge South pond.  It was windy, and I’d hoped to see (and fish for) grass carp back in the east end of the pond, but there were several other people fishing back there, so I didn’t even go on that side of the bridge.  I ended up catching a couple bass and around 20 bluegills, with some nice ones up to at least 8.5”.

I fly-fished during lunch on Tuesday at the backwaters below Saylorville.  Tried for carp.  Might’ve had one take, but no hookups.  There were some visible carp feeding in the area, and I made casts to a handful of them.  Mostly tried an egg pattern, both with and without an indicator.  It was really shallow where I was fishing.

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Last night I went to Georgetown Park pond.  It was pretty calm for a change.  Caught 15 crappies, 8 bluegills, 1 bass, and 1 catfish (25.5").

The catfish was awesome fun and extremely strong.  Since it wasn't 27", it isn't the same one I had caught at least 3 times before.  I caught the catfish and most of the crappies on an unweighted #8 white Woolly Bugger.

I also finally hooked another grass carp!  I had cast near the grass carp, and it looked like the grass carp moved towards the fly, then sunk out of sight.  Then my line started moving away so I set the hook.  I fought it for quite awhile...but every time I got it to the surface it was coming in TAIL FIRST...so I think it was snagged/foul-hooked.  I'll never know for sure because as I was trying to drag it over the top of the weeds/algae near shore, my line broke.  Pretty exciting while it was on, though...it was making huge boils on the surface and peeling line!

FINALLY! Carp on Fly Rod for 2012

With all the carp I've been seeing and casting to lately, I really thought it would have happened before now...but at least I've finally got those first fly rod carp of 2012 in the books!

I had some time to fish this evening, so I called my buddy Jay.  He prefers to fish the BIG water of nearby Saylorville Lake, rather than fish the local public ponds I frequent.  My friend Dale had stopped by and was going to flyfish one of the ponds nearby that actually has some carp in it, too, so either choice would have been fine by me.  But we chose Saylorville.  I took a fly rod AND a spinning rod.

We walked the long walk to the water from the parking area.  We reached the water and started walking up the shoreline to a point.  Almost there, we spooked some carp from along the shoreline.  It was extremely murky water.  The fish were nearly right at the waters edge in the shallows, but you could only see them on occasion when waves from the oddly "super-high for a Monday night" boat traffic would recede and expose the fish.  As soon as the water would start to settle down to where sight fishing might be possible, another boat would go by.  This went on nearly the entire time we were there!

Anyway, I put on a Mr. P's Carp Carrot and tried to drop it near spots I suspected the carp to be.  I missed a fish or two before finally hooking up with one.  Landed...YES!  First fly rod carp of the year for me!  I was trying to get the camera ready for a photo when the fish thrashed, unhooked itself and made its way back to the water before I could grab it.  Dang.

I then put an indicator about 5" above the fly and worked the very shallow water near shore where the carp seemed to be.  It was some time later that I finally hooked a second carp and landed it.

These were not large carp by any stretch of the imagination, but still very fun.  I worked the area longer, but failed to hook up again.  I felt there were larger carp in the slightly deeper water, but couldn't get any takes there.
Jay hailed me to come down to where he was fishing.  He had located some white bass and had seen more carp in the shallows there.

I fished with the spinning rod with a Pop-R topwater lure.  I caught 8 nice white bass up to 13", and 4 largemouth bass also to 13".

Jay caught the biggest white bass with a 15-incher.

I tied a Murdich Minnow on my flyfishing gear and tossed that out.  I had several good strikes, but the fish had been hitting the tail of the lure, and were probably hitting the tail of the Murdich Minnow...and unfortunately in this instance, the fly had its hook near the head.  But the attention it got gave me more confidence that this is going to be a good pattern to use for white bass & wipers later in the summer when the shad grow up a bit.

As it got dark, I moved to another spot where there were visible carp, but I couldn't get any hook-ups on the Carp Carrot/indicator rig.  It was so dark and the water so riled up, I don't think they could find the fly in the water well enough.  Thought about switching out the Carp Carrot for a yellow or chartreuse egg pattern that might be more visible to the fish, but I was too lazy to make the change.

It was a fun evening with some nice fish caught and...
FINALLY...got some fly rod carp IN THE BOOKS for this year!  :)

Lunchtime Fly-Fishing 6/4/2012...Nothing to Show

I had planned to try fly-fishing a certain public pond during lunch, but it was much windier than I wanted to enable good sight-fishing for carp.  Instead, I went to a different pond just to kill time with some bluegill fishing...but there were already 2 people there fishing, so I went to a third pond which was near the second pond, and is NOT a pond I like very much because of low numbers of fish and murky water.  I had several bluegills come unbuttoned before I got them in, then saw "bubble trails" and tried for carp.  Tried an indicator and egg pattern.  Had the indicator go down once, but missed the hookset, and then saw a big cloud of sediment get kicked up...so I'd say that WAS a carp, and I missed it.  But I got a strike and that is a bonus.   Oh, and I had another strike before I had switched to the egg & indicator set-up.  It was on a black woolly bugger, and when I set the hook, it broke my line.  I feel confidenat that THAT was a carp too!

As my buddy Jay noted....."I'm getting closer!"

Sunday Evening Fly-Fishing, 6-3-2012

I fished last night at a nearby public pond.  The wind was supposed to lay down, but  it was pretty breezy on the downwind side of the pond!  I didn’t get out until about 8pm.   There were quite a few people fishing there.  I caught more than anyone, of course.  In fact, I probably caught more than the other folks combined, and they were using nightcrawlers.

I lost the two biggest fish of the evening.  I was using my new flyfishing favorite bass topwater (the Gurgler).  I had customized this particular one just a bit...to make it interesting and give it extra-powerful fishing MOJO (see picture below).  I cast out beyond the weedline, and something SIPPED it off the surface….no big splash, just took it under.  I set the hook and OH MAN!  It bulldogged, which was fine, I was putting a lot of pressure on it because I wanted to make sure the hook penetrated deeply.  There were a lot of weeds along the shore and out about 15’.  The fish was dogging just on the far side of the weeds.  And then I watched my line head for the surface.  OH CRAP!   The bass jumped clear of the water and threw my Gurgler back at me, then bombed back into the pond.  At least I got to see it!  It seriously looked 20”+.  It was a NICE FISH!

And then about 15 minutes later down the bank a bit, I had another good fish on.  Assuming it was a bass, I would guess it was probably more like a 17-incher…very nice, but not as big as that first fish.  But I never saw it.

Then I caught like 4 more bass on it (12”-14”) before I somehow managed to cast it off and lose it in the darkness.  

Now...check out that MOJO!  ;o)

Oh, and I saw a BIG ol’ bullfrog on the shoreline.  I crept within about 15’ of it and took its picture in the near-darkness.  Didn’t turn out very well.

It was in my way, since I wanted to work on down along the shoreline.  Since I was going to scare it anyway, I decided to drag my big ol’ Gurgler in front of it.  Like lightning it struck so fast, and managed to hook itself.  It was a crazy hopping, kicking battle for a minute has I tried to control it so I could get it off the hook.  But it managed to free itself and dove into the water.

After losing the Gurgler, I tied on a smaller chartreuse subsurface fly pattern and caught at 14 Crappies, and around 10 bluegills.

Lunchtime FlyFishing Report, 5-30-2012

Last night I fly-fished and saw good numbers of gar, but wasn't able to hook into any of them.  Hopefully next time!

Today, my buddy Jay said, "Today's a good day for you to go after carp!"  Well...why not?  The 7-10 mph winds were the calmest its been in weeks, it was sunny, but only 65 degrees.  Doesn't everyone else wear a Polo shirt, slacks, and casual dress shoes to go carp fishing??

Maybe it helps to look the part of an elitist fly-angler, regardless of target species?  HA!

Anyway, I found feeding carp.  Biggest problem was water clarity.  Deeper than about 4" of water, the fish disappeared.  I could see bubble trails and mud clouds that I hoped indicated feeding carp.  Would they even be able to see a fly more than a few inches away??  Strike detection was a problem when carp don't move much to eat anyway.  Watching for fish movement or opening mouths was definitely out of the question when the fish simply AREN'T visible.  Waa waa waaa...listen to me cry a river over muddy water!

I may have gotten some strikes.  A couple of times I actually bothered to set the hook, I spooked fish.  I may have been a tad late, or the fly may have bumped the fish.  I'll never know.  I did foul-hook one decent carp in the dorsal fin.  It was a fun fight but I was already a bit tardy to head back to work, so I put a lot of pressure on the line, and the fly popped out.

I didn't get skunked.  I caught a small channel catfish.

Evening Fly-Fishing Report, 5-28-2012

Post-frontal, dropping temps, substantial winds...  The bane to comfortable fly fishing.
The seemingly incessant winds are getting old.  I got out to do some flyfishing in the evening anyway.

I started with a the Bass Gurgler, trying to fish it close to shore that was was slightly protected from the winds, but had no takers along one stretch of shoreline, so I changed to a #8 black Daedalian Damsel with beadchain eyes.  Put it under an indicator to help moderate its speed, depth, and drag in the water.  This worked ok.

I ended up catching 20+ Bluegills on that, mostly 8"+ deep-bodied males:

...but also the occasional female.  In fact, the biggest one I caught last night was a female bluegill that was just barely shy of 9":

I also landed 3 largemouth bass up to 15", and had another one shake free right in front of me next to shore.

After dark, the last spot I fished was an area that crappies like to spawn around.  I had a really nice fish on here for a few seconds before the hook pulled free.

The coolest thing was that when the wind was really howling, there were quite a few big grass carp porpoising on the surface.  Appeared to be a feeding behavior since I could often see their mouths open wide before they dove under again, but it could have been some sort of air-gulping behavior.  I've not heard of grass carp gulping air like a gar or buffalo might do...so I don't want to say this IS what they were doing.

The water was pretty muddy (visibility only about 12"), plus the low light and choppy surface didn't help.  I could ONLY see the fish when they surfaced...then they immediately disappeared again.  And as seems to almost always be the case with these wily fish, they were almost always beyond casting distance from me.  On a calm evening, I might have been able to reach them...but not with the big cross-wind I was battling last night.  These Grass Carp continue to TAUNT ME and HAUNT ME!

Also saw several large snapping turtles.  One was so big I started fishing next to it, thinking it was a big rock in the water.  Then I noticed the head and neck start to move.  It's shell was fairly smooth and covered with stringy algae. The smooth shell made me wonder if it was a big mud turtle or something OTHER than a snapper?  Big head and neck on it!

Another thing about this pond...last time here there was quite a bit of weed growth around the pond edges.  This time nearly all the weeds were gone, and much of the algae was also gone.  This makes me relatively certain the City has been on this pond and sprayed chemicals for weed control...maybe about a week ago.  Just when the crappie, bass, and bluegill fry are needing some place to hide for protection from predators!

Evening Fly Fishing Report, 5-24-2012

I had 2 separate fishing outings this evening.  The first was at a public pond in a nearby town, while my son was at one of his activities.  Tough conditions with a front that moved through around mid-afternoon.  Fish weren't very active.  Weeds were also pretty thick along shore.

I decided to try the Bass Gurgler on this pond, just to see what I could come up with.  It is extremely rare for me to catch ANY bass at this pond.  I ended up catching at least two bass (nothing big), and had several others on that managed to not get hooked or quickly freed themselves.  About the time I had to leave, I found a spot that had probably 100 bluegills in a small area.  I'm sure I could have switched flies and caught a bunch in short order, but decided to let them be...this time.

The second fly-fishing outing of the evening was after we got home.  It was a little after 8pm, and the sun was still above the horizon.  I went a public pond not far from my house.

I still had the Bass Gurgler on my line, so I stuck with it pretty much the entire night.  I ended up landing 8 Largemouth Bass on it, had about a 1/2 dozen decent fish (bass) that managed to shake free before I landed them.  I also landed 2 bluegills on the Bass Gurgler.  The biggest fish of the evening was this 16.5-inch bass.  It looks recently "spawned out".

I also watched a "tail" waving on the surface right near shore.  I slowly fished my way towards it, and it was still there.  I was hoping it was a grass carp, but as best I could tell in the fading light, it was a channel catfish that was VERY intently feeding on the bottom.  I can't know for sure, but I suspect it may have been feeding on fish eggs?  I spooked it away several times, and it returned to the same spot several times, but eventually seemed to disappear.  Then again, it was VERY dark by this time.

The foam on this Bass Gurgler is getting "chewed up" by bass teeth.  "Badge of Honor" and all that...Its still working very well.  I need to tie up a few more spares, because this pattern is WAY outperforming the foam bass poppers I was previously using.

Evening Fly-Fishing Report, 5-21-2012

I was hoping I'd get a chance to fly fish today.  It was the calmest day we'd had in 2 weeks.
My son had a cancelled extracurricular activity, but I didn't get confirmation of that until I drove him 1/2 hour to get there.  Long story about horrible communication skills by certain people, which I won't detail here.

By the time I got back home, it was 8pm.  I grabbed some mosquito repellant (a.k.a. "cigar"), a few recently tied flies, camera, and headed out the door.

I arrived at the pond to find a couple other folks fishing with spinning gear.  I'm not sure if they ever did catch anything.  I started out with the Bass Gurgler I recently posted about.  Once again it was a fish-catcher.  No biggies this time...but I did land 2 largemouth bass on it, lost a third one near shore, and had a handful of missed strikes.  In that short amount of time, a tot on a Razor scooter stopped behind me to watch.  He no sooner went on his way, when a Dad and son stopped by to watch.  They followed me around  1/3 of the pond, during which time I caught zero fish.  I know, impressive, right?  But I had spotted a grass carp back, and had begun stalking it.  Cast after cast with a deer hair "pellet" fly.  I may have actually gotten one strike on this, but no hookup.  Then I switched to an unweighted white woolly bugger.

When I had arrived at the pond, I noticed a woman on the opposite side of the pond chucking some bread into the water for the ducks.  I actually like to see this, since it often gets the catfish active, and it should get the grass carp active.  But those darn grass carp...frustrate me to no end, and I want to catch more of them SO MUCH!

Anyway, I worked my way around to where the bread was.  Some smaller fish were playing with it.  The grass carp I was stalking was hanging out near it, but about 30 feet further away from shore from the bread.  As I was casting to this grassie, a couple other large fish that I suspect were also grass carp that were slightly deeper, showed their locations with some large rings at the surface.  Eventually (and after my audience finally gave up on me), one or two large fish started coming in closer to shore for the bread.

I cast a bit beyond the floating bits of bread and slowly brought the white woolly bugger back through it.  Sooner than I expected, my line tightened...FAST.  Big fish on!  I didn't want my hooked fish to disturb any other fish in the area more than it needed to, so I immediately started walking the fish down the shoreline away from the area.  This was a strong fish, but mostly slow.  I could walk it around like a dog on a leash, but it would simply parallel shore.  Whenever I leveraged the 6wt to try to get the fish to the surface, it would turn and make a powerful run for deeper water again.  The happened repeatedly, and I still hadn't gotten a visual on the fish.  Plus, it was getting dark.  From the way it was fighting, I was SO SURE it was a grass carp.  I was so happy!  FINALLY hooked another one, after a hiatus of over a year!

I finally got the fish up into the shallows near shore, and it made one more short run before I was able to get my hands on it.  Hands.  I pinned it down with one hand, but couldn't secure a grip across its back (by this time, I realized it was a nice channel catfish instead of a grass carp, and was sort of bummed....but I love catching catfish on the fly rod too).  I set my rod down and got on my knees and put two hands around the fish's midsection, with fingers on either side of its pectoral fins.  With this grip, I was able to lift it onto shore.

This was a really nice male channel catfish.  I measured it at 27", which would put it in the 9-pound range.  I snapped some photos and released it.

I love it when a fish makes my gear look small!

See the beat up white woolly bugger hanging from its lip?

Here I'm holding the fish down so I can hold it still while I photograph it.  Looks like I could have picked it up with one hand...but I really couldn't get an adequate grip with just one hand.

I returned to the breaded area.  A couple nice fish showed up on it, but nothing was feeding quite as aggressively as before.  I switched to a fresh white woolly bugger that was bit larger, since the catfish had beat up the first one pretty good.  I caught at least a dozen crappies on it before I left.  I also caught a couple bluegills, but found it very odd that I foul-hooked almost 10 bluegills!  Its very rare that I foul-hook a bluegill EVER...and to snag that many from one spot was bizarre!  All I can figure is the fish were pecking away at the bread and were either slapping at the fly to break it into smaller pieces, or were oblivious to my line/fly passing near them while they were distracted by the bread?

Anyway, its always a great night when one can land a big fish on a fly rod!

The Murdich Minnow

I'm a big fan of the Fly Fish Ohio website.  Lots of great info there, and tying instructions for a good number of useful fish-catching fly patterns.  The website's Publisher, Joe Cornwall, wrote a book called Fly Fishing Warm Water Rivers.
http://www.flyfishohio.com/Fly_Fishing_Warm_Water_Rivers.htm

When I purchased my second copy of his book (long story), he sent me a fly he had tied up for Smallmouth Bass.  On the website, there is an excellent write-up about the pattern, and step-by-step tying instructions.
http://www.flyfishohio.com/Murdich_Minnow.htm

One thing that especially caught my attention in Joe's write-up is his mention that this pattern was very successful on catching Ohio River Wipers.  Those Wipers are accustomed to chasing/eating shad, just like our local Wipers are.

So, I finally sat down this weekend to tie up a few. The one change I made was to cover the head/attach the eyes with Sport & Outdoor GOOP adhesive.  I unsuccessfully tried 3 different stores looking for the Liquid Nails Clear Small Project Adhesive.  This version of the GOOP sounds like it has the same attributes as the Liquid Nails product...it is waterproof, dries clear, and remains flexible.

I can't wait to show these to some fish this Summer/Fall!