Panfish

STONEFLY?

Rick Zieger - Jun 18, 2012

I was out at a pond to try my luck. I had time to get out, but I did not take a lot of time to grab everything. It is a fairly long hike into the pond, so I only grabbed two fly rods, the fish basket and two boxes of flies in a fanny pack. I did not take my vest as I was wearing a fairly heavy coat. The wind was blowing about 25 mph with gusts up to 35 mph. The temperature was about 45 degrees. Wind chill was not real fun.

I had a hare's ear and a black furl tailed mohair leech on the rods. I cast each several times and got a couple of fish on each of them, but I wondered if other things might work better. I changed to a Goldie Jr. and decided that the stonefly (I don't know why it was in this box) looked like it should be in the water. Since the stonefly went on second it went in the water first. The fly had dropped a couple of feet under the surface and something slammed the fly. I got the fish in and it was a nice crappie, so I made another cast and had a gill try to annihilate the fly. Several more casts did not produce any more fish.

I moved about 20 feet and tried again, and I picked up a few fish very quickly on this fly. Then it was over. Based on these results I made the decision to fish the pond quickly. I would make a few casts and then move on. The fish seem to be scattered, but there were a few of them at each place, and all of them hit the fly hard. I managed to get several crappie on the stonefly, and I even picked up three bass that all weighed about three pounds.

It's great fun to have the fish take the fly so hard, but I wondered why a stonefly pattern was working so well. Not that there was an argument that it would be taken off the line, but what did it represent to the fish? I did get a few fish on the Goldie Jr., but the fly of the day was the stonefly.

I headed home with cold hands to fillet the fish. I had 14 gills and 12 crappie.

Good eating fillets to share.

Hope you can get out on the water.

Rick

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