COLD FRONT 1
I had to many things to do for a retired guy, so I missed going out on the warm days. Thus I went out after a cold front came through. The weather dropped about 1.5 inches of rain on us. I had to walk in since there were too many places to get stuck going to most of the ponds.
I grabbed two rods some flies and headed for a pond. After I hiked in I decided to go to the south end to be able to cast with the wind. I had two 5 weights with me, and one had a yellow boa yarn leech on the leader and a black furl tailed mohair leech on the other.
I decided to try the flat first off since I wondered if any fish would be in the shallow water. I quickly discovered that the fish were not there. I did get a fish on each fly when it was over the break line at the edge of the flat.
I moved along the dam so the flies could come in over a break line. Also I could fish the flies along the break line. I had a couple of fish on the yellow boa yarn leech. The black furl tailed mohair leech was not doing anything so I changed flies. I put on a rust colored "Only." [Hopefully this has been a FOTW by the time this appears] I found this pattern in a "Hatches" magazine and decided that a few needed to be in my box.
I cast this fly out and let it drop a little ways. As I started bringing it in with a lift and drop retrieve, when, as it was near the break line a nice gill decided to inhale it. I needed forceps to get the fly out. I cast about 10 feet to the left side of where the previous cast went and retrieved it in again. When near the break line another bluegill inhaled the fly. This fish dove so the rod danced for a while to get it to hand. Again forceps were applied to get the fly out.
Then the fly attracted no more attention. I moved along the dam again and picked up a few more fish, all on the Only and all near the break line. I am beginning to see a pattern here.
I moved to one of my favorite places on the pond, a place where there are a few stickups about 20 feet offshore. There are also some branches laying on the bottom. It's a great place to lose flies! On the other hand there are almost always some fish in this area.
I tried the yellow boa yarn leech first. I brought it over where the stickups are and then let it drop. The line twitched and there was a nice crappie on the line. This was a squat down and lip the fish crappie since this fish was just a hair over 14 inches long.
I cast this fly out several more times and got a crappie every time I could get the fly to drop near the stickups. If I brought it in to far there were no fish.
When the crappie quit it was time to try the Only. I cast this fly out and brought it in with a lift and drop retrieves. I picked up some more gills with this. On the next cast a fish hit the fly hard and it was quickly apparent that this fish had some weight to it. The fish actually pulled line out on me. It took some time before the fish started to approach the shore. When I got in near I saw that it was a large bass. I lipped this fish and got the fly out. Using the line guides on the rod this fish was just over 23" long.
Then the second cold front arrived and the wind picked up. I did not want to fight the wind so I headed for home. It turned out that I had 30 fish to clean. The crappies were very nice.
It is always fun when a new pattern works so well for me.
Hope you can get out on the water.
Rick