Panfish

THREE PATTERNS

Rick Zieger - Jan 05, 2015

It had been ten days since a fly had been put in the water. That is getting close to being a criminal act. I decided that it was a good day to head out to a pond. There were combines out all over the place. I looked at the wind direction and headed for a pond where I knew the dust would be minimal. I took a fiberglass rod that I had not used this year. This was a gift to me when my sister-in-laws husband died. No one in his family wanted to use it and they told me to take it and I also had another rod with me, and I had a couple of fly boxes with me.

The pond I am going to is far off the road when driving to it. By parking at a pull off and hiking in it is about 50 yards from the road. It is not visible from the road as a small hill blocks it.

The rods have flies on them and the first on is a hare's ear type with black widow web fibers as a tail. The other is a black fly with silver bead chain eyes. I cast each of these several time and the black fly was the successful one. I got a few nice bluegills on this. I changed the other fly to a white boa yarn fly. I cast this out and let it drop. I did this since I had a knot in the fly line after I cast the fly. It takes talent to do this. I got the knot out and found a fish on the line. It was a nice bluegill.

Since it worked once I tred it again. I cast out again and let the fly drop and caught another nice bluegill and then nothing. I moved along the pond and tied both flies again. I got a couple of fish in each place and lost a few in each place. The fish either smashed the fly so I needing forceps to get it out, or they barely hit the fly and got lip hooked. Many of those lipped hooked got off. At least I knew the flies were working.

As the water got shallower some fish wanted the fly coming in slowly right along the bottom. So the fly would go out and be brought in about a foot down to find the fish that were there. Then the next cast I would let the fly drop a long way to see if the fish were interested. If not then the fly was brought in very slowly along the bottom.

I hooked a few fish with each retrieve with each fly, and I lost several fish that were barely lip hooked. This was somewhat frustrating as they would be about eight feet off shore when they got off. It did not matter where in the water column they hit. Barely lip hooked fish got off.

I still had enough fish to eat and share fillets and it was fun catching them.

Hope you can get out on the water.
Rick

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