ROLLING ALONG
It was a good day to go out. The temperatures had warmed up and I had most of the things that I wanted to get done finished. Cleaning up fallen limbs is a never ending task. Besides that, they will be there tomorrow.
I grabbed two rods and a few hook boxes of flies. I would be walking in because it was to muddy to drive. I had some new patterns I wanted to try and some old favorites in the hook boxes. With the fish basket and a lanyard with clippers and forceps on them I was set.
I hiked in and went to the far end of the pond. There is a wide shallow area that is about four feet deep. I wanted to see if any fish had come into that area to feed, and also it is the farthest from the truck. Hopefully as the fish basket got heavier I would be getting closer to the truck.
I had a streamer pattern and yellow boa yarn leech on the two rods. I cast the streamer out first. I had moved it until it was about three feet from shore and then a bass slammed it. It turned out to be about 16 inches long. Great fun to land, but I was looking for the cousins.
I made a few more casts with the streamer in the same area. No more fish. I cast about 10 feet to the side and started retrieving the fly in again. About three feet off shore another bass hit the fly. This one was about a foot long.
I decided it was time to go to the yellow boa yarn fly. I cast it several times and had no response to it. It was time to move to another place on the pond. Here the water was about six feet deep. About five feet offshore is the break line from the shallow water. Maybe the fish are relating to the break line, and it turned out that the bass were on the break line. I picked up several more bass, and I hooked them on both flies. I moved to another place on the pond because I was still looking for the crappie and gills.
Once again I picked up some very nice bass in this area. Two of the line guides on the one rod are separated by 18 inches, and the bass were about an inch longer on each end from this. Still they were not the fish I was looking for.
I moved to the dam at the end of the pond. The water at the edge is about 3 feet deep. Eight feet out is the break line that goes from about 8 feet to 14 feet deep. Maybe the fish were along here.
The first casts went perpendicular to the shoreline. As the line was coming off the water to make another cast a crappie hit the fly. The next cast went about two feet off shore and parallel to the bank. Could the fish be tucked in tight to the shore? Turns out they were. I got several fish doing this, most of them bass, but a few crappies along the way.
After working my way across the dam I moved to another spot. There was not much room to cast, but I was in a little bay that slopes out until it hits a break line. There are trees that grow back about 5 feet from the shore. The only nice thing is that the branches are fairly high up on the trunk and they do not stick out far.
It was time to toss out a little line and roll cast to get the fly out. The second time I made a roll cast a crappie hit the fly as it touched water. There was not much line to retrieve to land this fish. I did this again and picked up another fish the same way.
The yellow boa yarn fly worked better in this area. I had to cast a little farther after every four or five fish, but the fish were still hitting the fly just after it touched the water. It was more like popper fishing. I decided to leave the pond, and that is hard to do when the fish are being cooperative. However, I had promised to use my truck to help someone move. I needed to get home and get it cleaned out.
I had 38 crappies, so I caught more than I thought. In the process I turned back a bucket load of bass. As always, it was great fun.
Hope you can get out on the water.
Rick