Panfish

LAST OPEN WATER 2011

Rick Zieger - January 10, 2011

It is the middle of November and there is still open water. That means that it is time to go out and get a line in the water. I get everything loaded, including the vest so I have a full assortment of flies to use.

I head off to a pond that I don’t get to very often. It has a crop field that leads into the pond. It is farmed from edge to edge, so there is no way to drive in while crops are in the field. It is also one of the ponds that can take about one days harvest of fish out of it. My thought is the fertility of the pond is the problem. I rarely snag a weed in the deep water of this pond.

I get the canoe to the water and try a few casts. There are no cooperative fish out in this area. I was fairly sure of that as the canoe is going in the shallow end of the pond.

There is very little wind and I decide to let it push me toward the dam as I fan cast over the area. The water has cooled off and I am not really sure where the fish might be. I have four rods with me. I have a Goldie Jr. white boa yarn leech black fur tailed leech and a hares ear type fly are on the four rods.

I cast each of them as I slowly drift down the pond. Try them at different depths and different retrieves. There is not pattern but I do pick up a few fish. All of the fly patterns are working about equally. My guess is that if the fly is near the fish they take it. With the low fertility of the pond the fish don’t pass up anything that looks like food.

I change the hares ear type fly as the dam is approached. There is a break line with a six foot drop for about the last 50 feet going to the dam on each side and across the face of the dam. I tied on a hares ear type fly with a tungsten bead head. I wanted a fly to drop along the face of this break line and get deep.

I cast the unweighted white boa fly out and let it drop down the face. Then I grabbed the tungsten bead head fly and cast it out along the break line. I watched the line of the boa yarn fly to see if I needed to grab that rod and set the hook. I depended upon feel for the other fly as I had cast them that far apart. The beaded fly had dropped to as far down as it could go. I could tell this as I could see the first couple of feet of leader. Then the fly went to the side. I set the hook and had a nice crappie on the line. When I had this fish in the canoe I saw the line with the boa yarn fly moving. Upon setting the hook I had a feisty gill on the line.

About each third cast with each fly I would get a fish. The beaded fly had to be hanging as deep as it would go, about 7.5 feet. Crappie would take the fly there, but not if it was moving. The gills would take the white boa fly when it was about 5 feet down. I would not know until the fish had pulled the fly line to the side that anything had happened.

Got enough fish to share them with other folks. Had great fun being out on the water. Had a flock of resident gees fly about 30 feet above me while in the pond. Fun to watch them.

Hope you can get out on the water.
Rick

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