RED EYES
It had rained hard one night. We got nearly two inches. Not enough to break the drought, but enough that driving into a pond could be a problem. The rain came so fast that a lot of it ran into the ponds. This made the water a little murky. Still it was time to fish.
I headed out with two boxes of flies and graphite and boo rod. Most of the flies were ones that I had received or experiments I had tied up. I hiked in so I would come in at one end of the dam.
I made several casts with the flies I had one and got nothing. I moved about 30 feet and tried again, and I picked up a few gills doing this. I decided it was time to try a few other flies. You never know how they will work if they don't get in the water.
One was a boa yarn leech with some red eyes from a necklace I got on sale. The necklace looked like it would make eyes on a fly, so it is now in my stash. Here is a picture of one of the flies I tied with the material from the necklace.
This happened to be the first fly I tried in the second set of flies. I cast it out and let it drop a few feet. When I started to retrieve the line it felt funny and I set the hook. I had a nice crappie on the line. After some experimenting it appeared that the fish seemed to hit on the drop. I tried it a few more times and got a fish each time. Curiosity struck and I tried the other fly, with no red eyes, and got nothing; so it was back to the red eyes.
Turned out I could get three to five fish out of each area. I tried several other patterns and rarely got a fish. Then I found another experiment in the second box, a Hares ear with red eyes. I tied it on and started catching fish again. Then I tried an all red fly and a Royal Coachman and got nothing.
Someday I may figure out why the red eyes were so important that day. What will probably happen is that I will give up and just fish. But I will still wonder. My better half says the fish will drive me nuts.
I did see a few other folks come into the pond to fish. There is plenty of room for everyone. At least that is what I thought. Two of the folks saw I was catching fish and came and stood a foot on either side of me. I must say they caught nothing. I told them I would leave them this place, but if they followed me again I would be unhappy.
I moved about 50 feet from them, and started catching fish again. The I noticed that another person was coming down toward me. He stopped about 25 feet away from me and waited until I had the fish in and asked if he could see what I was using. I showed him and he was intrigued. We talked and I found out that he was trying to get a meal of fish. I gave him a Hares Ear with red eyes and had him cast out and let it drop. He took a couple times to find the depth, but then he started catching some fish.
I had great fun watching him catch the fish. I decided that I needed to leave since I had about a half mile hike. More fish in the basket would make it harder.
As I was leaving he asked how I cleaned the fish. When I told him that I filleted them, he asked if I would show him how. I told him how to get to the house and I would meet him. I got home and had most of my fish done before he got there. I showed him how I do it and let him watch a few. Then I had him do a few of his. I did help him get his done.
It was fun day. Hope you can get out on the water.
Rick