DIFFERENT DAY
Last week the fish took every fly that hit the water so I headed out to another pond to see what I could do. On this day I had four different rods with me. I'm trying to change rods every time that I go out. I did have a bamboo with me.
When I arrived at the pond the water looked pretty good. The visibility was about four feet, and there was no rain and just a breeze that lets things settle nicely. I tried from the shore, but no fish were interested. I hoped in the canoe and got out on the water.
I put a black boa yarn leech on one rod, a white boa yarn leech on another rod, and a Hares ear on another rod. The last rod had another experiment on it.
I cast the fly out and let it drop so it would be down about 3 feet. I was hoping to draw fish up from the dirtier water. A great theory, but it turned out to be lousy in practice.
I tried all these flies in each place. I fished the shallow water, a drop off and over deep water, and then I changed flies and tried this again. I got one nice gill on a Goldie Jr. Tried this many more times with no success.
I decided it was time to go weird and see what might happen. So I put on an orange fun fur leech, a purple boa yarn leech, a blue midge pattern, and a green-yellow woven pattern. I tried these flies in several places, with several different retrieves. I found that the best fly was the orange fun fur fly. The fly had to come in on a lift and drop retrieve. If it was just above the darker water and dipped down into the darker water then a fish might take it. It did not happen often, but better than any other fly. It did not matter where I cast this fly; it was the one that worked. The fly had to move very slowly. The strikes were not hard at all. If the line felt different then a hook set was done. The fish were scattered, and I did not hook a fish on every cast but I got a few.
It was hot and I ran out of water again, although I had two bottles this time I must have drank it faster. No reason to hoard it. I decided to head home as it was getting hotter.
When I got home and found that I had 17 total fish in the basket. I will admit that I am prouder of these 17 than the 77 I got the week before. It took time to catch these fish and I had to figure out what they would take. The fact that I found the fly that allowed me to take some fish, means that maybe I know what I am doing. Or it could be that there are some really dumb fish in the ponds!
I was able to share some fillets and had a good time on the water. It was fun.
Hope you can get out on the water.
Rick