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I went out with one of my friends on Labor Day. It was
early in the day and this was the first time we have
fished together all year. We headed off to a pond that
has crappie in it.
This pond is a rectangle with very deep water near the
dam. It goes to 18 to 20 feet over a fairly large area
of the pond. The west end of the pond is only about two
to three feet deep from the accumulation of stuff that
has washed into the pond when there was some row crop
around it. It has been hay land for the past ten years.
It was a cool morning. The temperature was 58 degrees.
There was a very slight breeze. We got out on the pond
and started casting. I have not converted EB to fly
fishing yet. He has done a little of it, but is in love
with spin casting right now.
I went with a yellow boa yarn fly. This just because I
thought it would show up better in the water. I can see
it farther away than I can any of the other colors of boa
yarn that I have. I hoped that it would be an attractor
pattern for the crappie in the pond.
The first place we fished was a flat with about six feet
of water over it. There are weed patches spread across
this area. We were casting between the weed patches. EB
was bringing his Rooster Tail or Twister tails back in
much faster than I was retrieving the fly.
I had several hits on the fly, but the fish got off
after about five seconds. I finally saw one of the
fish hit the fly. It was a crappie and it was rolling
on the fly. By striking quickly I was hooking the fish
in the thin tissue on the side of their mouth. This
is not a good place to hook a crappie as they are
impossible to land when you do this.
On the next strike I counted to two before setting the
hook and managed to get a crappie landed.
I tried this again, but still lost most of the fish
I hooked. I tried waiting longer or shorter periods
of time, but it made no difference. The fish were
still getting off most of the time. I even tried
faster retrieves, but then they did not hit the fly.
So I went back to the two count and managed to land
about one out of ten fish that hit the fly.
The fish seemed to be feeding on something in the weeds.
We could see the weeds move as the fish swam through
the weeds and a few times we saw the backs of fish as
they went through the tops of the weeds.
After hooking about five fish they would turn off in
that area and we would be forced to move. But there
were fish around and in every patch of weeds that we
tried on the pond. The weeds were too thick to cast
into. All you did was hook weeds and spook the fish.
We tried that too many times, but hope always springs
eternal.
At about 8:30 in the morning a front came through.
The wind blew about 25 miles per hour. With the wind
making waves we could not see where the weed patches
were. We still tried but spent the vast majority of
our time taking weeds off the hooks.
It was time to quit. We got his boat out of the water,
and loaded on his truck. When we got to his house, he
wanted to count the number of fish we had. I had
out-fished him nine to one. I may have him convinced
to use a fly rod the next time we go.
When I got home and filleted the fish, I looked at
the stomach contents of each fish. They were feeding
on some sort of nymph. It looked to be about a size
18 or 20. Some peacock herl wrapped on the hook with
a small black head looked to be a good imitation.
They are tied and I will try to get back there in the
next few weeks to see if they work.
Hope you can get out on the water. ~
Rick
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