NO RHYME OR REASON
I took another chance to get out on a pond. Not driving in to many of the ponds since we had too much rain. Many of the ponds looked like chocolate milk. So it was a walk in thing again.
I have a friend in the mid stages of Alzheimer's, and I know that he likes to go fishing and that it gives his wife a break. So, I called him up and made arrangements to pick him.
We got out to the pond and found that it had about a foot of visibility. Despite that it was better than any water that I had seen for a few weeks. Dan does not want to walk very far so he started fishing on the west side of the pond. I hiked around so I could get to the east end of the dam. I had two rods with me, a 5 weight graphite and a 5 weight bamboo. I had a white boa yarn fly and a hare's ear on the two rods. It seemed to be a good place to start.
I made my first cast with the white boa yarn fly and hooked a nice gill. The fish causes the tip end of the rod to dance a lot. Sure is fun when that happens. The next cast landed about a foot from shore. The wind had more effect than I thought it would, but I caught a six inch bass. My next cast landed about four feet off shore. About halfway back another nice gill hit the fly and cut several dido's. It was lots of fun. Then nothing more happened.
I moved about 30 feet and tried again. I got one small bass near the shore on the hare's ear. I moved again and got a few more small bass every time the fly got near the shore.
On the next move I changed flies. I decided to use a yellow boa yarn fly and a black mohair furl tailed leech. I wanted to see how they would work. For the most part not any better than the other flies did. I made a cast with the yellow boa yarn fly and got a wind knot in the line. Not many people may have the talent to make wind knots, but you have to be really good to get it between some of the line guides. By the time I got this untangled and started to retrieve the line the fly is on the bottom, in about five feet of water. I have barely moved the fly and a fish was on the line. This was a fat, feisty gill that had no desire to be on the line.
Not always being the brightest bulb on the wire, I made another cast and let the fly drop again. It was down and barely moving again when another bluegill attacked it. This was a huge gill. It was a little longer than my foot, which put it in the 12 inch range. It squirted milt and got to go back in the pond.
It seemed like this might be the ticket, but I made several more casts and had not hits. I cast the line out and started to retrieve it so the line would be on the reel so I could use the other rod. It had moved about five feet and the rod tip went down and another nice bluegill spent sometime in the air. What is a gill doing hitting a fly moving that fast? I was dumb enough to try it again and got another fish, and then nothing more.
I tried the mohair leech and got a few fish; some of them on the bottom and other when reeling the line in. But it was a few fish and then nothing.
Another friend came into the pond. He was going to go a good distance away from to fish, but the crispiest bug bit me. I asked him to cast a curly tail in the area. He picked up a few fish. I changed one of the flies and tried again in the same area and caught a few more fish.
I moved to another spot and tried again. I would get a few fish on each fly I tried. In the one place, eight flies went in the water in a 10 foot by 10 foot area. Each of those flies caught one or two fish. Some deep and some shallow, in fact most of the flies all caught a fish deep and shallow.
Dan came and told me that he was very tired and needed to get home to rest. So we left, but I had a good time and Dan said that he did.
I had fillets to eat and share.
Hope you can get out on the water.
Rick