Panfish

CANOE BY BUMĀ 

Rick Zieger - November 15, 2010

It has rained some more. I should have put rice in the garden. We had about 4 inches of rain over three days which is enough that the access to ponds is gone again. I want to fish from the canoe so I head to a lake where this can happen.

This lake is a mile long and from 60 to 100 yards wide. It is part of the city water system. This is much larger than the size I normally fish, but one of the few places that are accessible to launch the canoe. I start out with four rods, and I have a white boa yarn leech, a Goldie Jr., a hares ear type fly, and a popper on the four rods.

I try the area were the road crosses this lake. I hoped there might be some fish in the area where the water comes in under the bridge. It was a great theory that the fish had not subscribed to.

I moved around the area of the lake where I was looking for fish, and finally decided to really look at the lake and see if there were any features that might attract fish. I wanted to see if there were any places that looked like the places I fish on smaller ponds.

About 100 yards from where I launched the canoe there is a bay on the south side of the lake. This drains some of the pasture that is above it. This seemed to be a good place to try. The bay is about 100 feet deep. From the time the drought caused the lake to drop a lot I know the first 50 feet out is very shallow,

I made the decision to fish from the outer part in. Why go over fish and spook them, if they are there. The white boa yarn fly was the first rod that came into my hand. No plan, just grab one and get the fly in the water.

I cast the fly out and let it drop, but I waited too long as I was into the weeds and had to pull a gob of them in. It could be said this is salad, but I did not save any of it. I made the next cast and did not let the fly drop as long. The fly had not moved far when a crappie decided to take it.

I got this fish in. It was not huge, but big enough to use the fillet knife on. More casts were made to this area, but it took a long time to figure out how long to let the fly drop and how slow to retrieve the fly. When the combination was right a fish would take the fly. It seems that the fly had to be just over the top of the weeds; to low and the weeds were on the hook, to high and the fish would not take it. Other flies were cast into this area, but the while boa yarn fly was the only one the fish were interested in.

This area produced a fair number of fish before everything shut down. I tried some other places, but did not get the fish to show any interest in any of the flies pitched. I had some other things to do so I headed home. I had fillets to share and the battery was charged from being on the water.

Hope you can get out on the water.

Rick

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