|
I was out trying to find a fish again. The ponds are still
a little high after the heavy rain that we had before. They
are also dirty from everything that washed in. My hope is
that some fish might be up shallow in the water column
looking for food. It sure does sound like an intelligent
reason to be out on the pond.
I have the canoe in the water and am pitching flies by 6:15
am in the morning. I am trying to beat the sun. When the
sun gets up in the sky the fish may go deeper. That will
not be good as I can see a white boa yarn leech down
for about four inches in the water. That means that any
fly is going to have to be right on a fish's snout to be seen.
I know that there are many structural features to fish in
this pond. Breaklines, weedlines and a great number of
lily pads. There are also a few trees that have been "planted"
in this pond. I also know that the tops of the tress are about
five feet under water. I think that is too deep for fish to find
the flies.
I start out casting around the lily pads. I am hoping that
the fish might be relating to the stems of the plants and
using the pad for cover. I have changed flies so that I
am using unweighted flies.
I don't want anything that will sink quickly or have to be
retrieved very fast. I want the fish to have a long time to
look at the flies.
This does seem to work half way well. There are small
bass in these areas that I get on the flies.
The crappie I am looking for do not seem to be there.
I move toward the dam to see if they might be relating
to the breakline there. I do catch two crappie along the
dam that hit the fly just as it is dropping into the water.
Any fly that gets under the water and comes by a lily
pad gets hit by a small bass.
From the area of "you never know" I have made some
casts to the middle of the pond. I had let the fly drop
and had not had any fish take it. I decided to cast again
and keep the fly very near the surface and see what
might happen. The fly had not moved far when a fish
rolled on it and I knew that it was a crappie. I dropped
the rod tip to the surface of the water and tried to keep
the fish underwater. Great tactics, but the fish hit the
surface and came off.
If it works once then give it another try. On about half
the casts I got a fish to hit the fly. I landed about ten percent
of those that hit the fly. I have got to figure out a way to make
a fly so the hook rides horizontally, instead of vertically in an
unweighted fly. Just one of those minor things on my to do list.
I still had the advantage of some cloud cover that had
moved in just after the sun came up. When the cloud
cover burned off, or moved on the sun came out and
that ended the bite. I fished some more but did not get
any more fish to hit.
I did end up with 14 nice crappies. They were from
10 to 15 inches long and very thick. Some good eating.
Hope you can get out on the water. ~ Rick Zieger
|
